Mary Stewart Cutting

“ As she sat bending over Lois now, her attitude was instinct with something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia who had only wanted to be loved, now felt—after a year of trial and conflict with death—that she only wanted, and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, even though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness a strange and tragic thing that it should be all she wanted. The mysterious, fathomless depression of youth, as of something akin to unknown primal depths of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart ”

“ A hamper of fruit came for her at luncheon, almost unimaginably beautiful in its arrangement of white hothouse grapes and peaches, and strawberries as large as the peaches, and the contents of a box of flowers filled every available vase and jug and bowl in the house, as Dosia arranged them, with the help of Zaidee and Redge—the former winningly helpful, and the latter elfishly agile, his bare knees nut-brown from the sun of the spring-time, jumping on her back whenever she stooped over, to be seized in her arms and hugged when she recovered herself. ”

“ If you could talk to the soul of a man like that as if he had the soul of an angel, and learn from him what you wanted to know—get his guidance—But Lois was before all things inviolably a wife, with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between her and Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes that in some brief moment she might reveal in words, to be forever regretted afterwards, conditions which he knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene Larue would love a woman! ”

“ Dosia has been ill described if it has not been made evident that to caress, to touch her, seemed the involuntarily natural expression of any feeling toward her. Something in the bright, tendril-curling hair, the curve of her young cheek, the curve of her red lips, her light, yet rounded form, with its confiding, unconscious movements, made as inevitable an allure as the soft rosiness of a darling child, with always the suggestion of that illusive spirit that dared, and retreated, ever giving, ere it veiled itself, the promise of some lovelier glimpse to come. ”

“ To be sure, the fairy prince had not arrived as yet—Bailey Girard, who had come to the house while she was still a stranger to it, had been half across the Continent since. It is one of the shabby jests that life is always playing us, that two who have met once as wayfarers on the same road, with the memory of that one meeting so curiously vivid and intimate that it seems as if the fate of the next turning must bring them within touch again, are yet kept out of sight or sound of each other for miles by the slight accidents of travel. ”

“ She bowed now to Dosia with a patronizing dignity, pointed by the plaintive warmth of the greeting to Lois, who had come hurrying down-stairs out of those passion-depths of darkness so that Mrs. Snow wouldn’t suspect anything. She had an uncanny faculty of divining just what you didn’t want her to.
Once before Lois had suspended tragedy for Mrs. Snow. The same things happen to us over and over again daily in our crowded yet restricted lives—it is we who change in our meeting with them. We have our great passions, our great joys, our heartbreaks, no matter how small our environment. ”

“ In Dosia’s world so far it was a matter of course that some people were married—their household life went unnoticed, the fact had no relation to her own intangible dreams or hopes; it was a condition inherent to these elders, and not of any particular interest to her. But Alice Wayne had been a girl like herself until now. This matter-of-fact community of living forced itself upon her notice, as if for the first time, as an absolutely new thing. The blood surged up suddenly through the ice of her indifference; the room choked her. George Button’s neckties, not to speak of his shoes——! ”

“ What scrape will you get into next?”
“Isn’t it dreadful!” gasped poor Dosia. She sat up straight and looked at Lois with tragic eyes.
“Now two men have kissed me. I can never get over that in this world. I can never be nice again—no one can ever think I’m nice again! No one can ever—love me in this world!” She buried her hot face in Lois’ bosom, sobbing tearlessly against that new shelter, in spite of the other’s incoherent words of comfort so unalterably, so inherently a woman made to be loved that the loss of the dream of it was like the loss of existence. ”

“ The light was still brightly that of day at a quarter of seven, when Dosia, who had been putting Zaidee and Redge to bed, came into Lois’ room, and found her with crimson cheeks and eyes red from weeping. At Dosia’s entrance she rose at once from her chair, and Dosia saw that she was partially dressed in her walking-skirt; she flared out passionately as she was crossing the room, as if in answer to some implied criticism:
“I don’t care what you say—I don’t care what anybody says. I can’t stand it any longer, when it’s killing him! He can’t rest unless he has that money. ”

“ The walk had become an incessant, endless thing, dreadful as a journey through the inferno, but for the protecting, enfolding clasp of that guiding hand—a strong, clean touch, that subtly conveyed warmth to the blood and courage to the heart. With her palm pressed to that of this unseen friend, Dosia felt clearly that she could have walked blindfolded to the end of the world, sure that he knew the path and that it led to some unknown good. They seemed to grow as one in the unspoken comforting of trust. ”

“ Leverich or George Sutton and that chorus of onlookers was like passing through fire. One braces one’s self to withstand the pain of scenes of joy or sorrow revisited, to find that, after all, when the moment comes, there is little of that dreaded pain—it has been lived through and the climax passed in that previsioning which imagination made more intense, more harrowingly real, than the reality. ”

“ Lois remembered once looking upon a man who had lost his wife after ten years of wedded happiness, and rather wondering at the pity bestowed upon him. Ten years! Why, it seemed like half a century—life must be nearly over, anyway. She was beginning to realize now, with a sort of wonder, that, as the years lengthened, one’s inner limit of youth lengthened also; even after a decade they might still think of themselves as young married people with a future all to come.
The tender proprietorship of Justin’s caress was more comforting to Lois than words. ”

“ As she sat in the Pullman car, with her head in its little gray felt hat against the high back of the seat, 37 and looked down at the tips of her new shoes, and then at the fingers of her new gloves, she felt like a princess.
Dress in Balderville had been a matter of necessity, not of choice—bleared and shapeless in effect from much “making over,” as purchase was not to be thought of. Dosia had had no new clothing for such a long time that the sensation of delight was so keen that she almost felt as if it must be wicked. ”

“ She found herself after a while idly scanning Justin’s face and wondering if it embodied all that was high and good to her cousin Lois; after one was married a long time, say six or seven years, did it still matter how a man looked? She felt herself a little in awe of his keen blue eyes, in spite of his kindness; she thought she preferred a dark man.
She clung to Justin’s arm at the crossings and ferry, and hardly heard his words, bewildered by the unaccustomed sights and sounds and the weakness of her knees. ”

“ To give up those little incidental meetings with Lawson was to give up the one silver string on which hung happiness, and yet—and yet—Dosia felt the sting 116 of Lois’ matter-of-fact contempt for him; it lowered him indescribably. All women look down upon a man who will allow himself to be despised. She had cherished an ideal of him as a man lonely, misunderstood, terribly handicapped by opinion, by his own nature even, and yet capable of good and noble things. ”

“ It was the third day after her arrival that he suddenly made his appearance in the drawing-room, where she was seated by the piano, looking over a pile of music. Mrs. Leverich was out driving, but had thought the air too damp for Dosia.
She tried to accomplish the indifferent handshake she had prefigured, and could have flagellated herself for the color that she felt enveloping her from brow to throat under his cool, appraising eyes, as he bent over the piano as if to help her with her search.
“What do you wish to find?” he asked in a businesslike way. “Perhaps I can assist you.” ”

“ And Dosia! She had never supposed that any girl could care for a man until he had shown that he cared for her—it was the unmaidenly, impossible thing. And now—how beautiful he was, how dear! A wistful smile trembled around her lips. All that had gone before with other men suddenly became as nothing, forgotten and out of mind, and she herself made clean by this purifying fire. Even if she never had anything more in her whole life, she had this—even if she never had anything more. ”

“ There are times when the touch of money is as the elixir of life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth for ten thousand dollars, and needing imperatively at least as much more, felt that with this paltry fifty dollars 276 it was suddenly possible to draw a free breath, felt a sheer, uncalculating lightness of spirit that showed how terrible was the persistent weight under which he was living. ”

“ The fitful light revealed a tiny apartment, half sitting-room, half nursery, crowded with many things, the overflow of a small household. It was not in the least as Lois would have liked it to be, but she always felt that it was only a temporary arrangement. There was hardly space to walk between the wicker chairs, the sewing-table, and the covered box by the window that served both as a seat and as a receptacle for toys—a doll’s cradle and a horse on wheels taking up two of the corners by the window. ”

“ The home was supposed to be woman’s domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper, sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. The Woman’s Kingdom, Queen of the Home. Gradually the words drew her down long lanes of retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby’s fingers; they kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She poor, bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a queen! Home and the heart of her husband—there lay her woman’s kingdom, her realm, her God-given province. ”

“ Dosia packed up her belongings, with the sweet, wise little help of Zaidee, who brought shoes and slippers from the closet and toilet articles from the dressing-table, and in her efforts dropped the red ribbon from her hair into the trunk, to her own great glee, amid fond, swift huggings from Dosia. The latter arranged herself for this transmigration with quick, excited fingers, yet there was something on her mind. As she heard Lois on the floor below, she ran down to speak to her, half dressed: “Lois, I hate to leave you here alone; I don’t mind being kept from things, really and truly. ”

“ To break an unwritten bond is perhaps worse than to break one printed and scheduled, because it presupposes a greater faith and trust. Justin could smile proudly at Leverich, but he couldn’t smile when he thought of Cater—it weighed upon and humiliated him for the man who had been his friend.
“I am glad that you couldn’t do it anyway!” said Lois. “It wouldn’t have been you if you had! Can’t you take a rest now, dear, when you look so ill? No, no; I didn’t mean that—of course you can’t!” ”

“ Dosia had worked early and late, nursing, looking after the children, cooking, sewing, and later on, when sickness and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood, trying to earn money for the immediate needs by teaching the scales to some of the temporary tribe at the hotel—an existence in which self was submerged in loving care for 250 those who clung to her, and to cling to Dosia was always to receive from her. Sleep was the goal of the day, and too much of a luxury to have any of its precious moments wasted in wakeful dreaming ”