"I know all the men I want to know."
"You don"t know all the men you want to know, and if you do I should be ashamed to say it. A girl who"s had all your advantages and doesn"t make more show! What on earth are you doing that you don"t want to come?"
Lois hesitated, but she was too frank for concealments. "I"m going to see a girl Thor Masterman wants me to look after. He thinks I may be able to help her."
The mother subsided. "Oh, well--if it"s that!" She added, so as not to seem to hint too much: "I always like you to do what you can toward uplift. I"ll take you as far as the Old Village, if you"re going that way."
There had been a time when such concessions at the mention of Thor Masterman would have irritated Lois more than any violence of opposition; but that time was pa.s.sing. She could hardly complain if others saw what was daily becoming more patent to herself. She could complain of it the less since she found it difficult to conceal her happiness. It was a happiness that softened the pangs of care and removed to a distance the conditions incidental to her father"s habits and impending financial ruin.
Nevertheless, the conditions were there, and had to be confronted. She made, in fact, a timid effort to confront them as she sat beside her mother in the admirably fitted limousine.
"Mother, what are we going to do about papa?"
Mrs. Willoughby"s indignant rising to the occasion could be felt like an electric wave. "Do about him? Do about what?"
"About the way he is."
"The way he is? What on earth are you talking about?"
"I mean the way he comes home."
"He comes home very tired, if that"s what you"re trying to say. Any man who works as they work him at that office--"
"Do you think it"s work?"
"No, I don"t think it"s work. I call it slavery. It"s enough to put a man in his grave. I"ve seen him come home so that he could hardly speak; and if you"ve done the same you may know that he"s simply tired enough to die."
Lois tried to come indirectly to her point by saying, "Thor Masterman has been bringing him home lately."
"Oh, well; I suppose Thor knows he doesn"t lose anything by that move."
Lois ignored the remark to say, "Thor seems worried."
The mother"s alertness was that of a ruffled, bellicose bird defending its mate. "If Thor"s worried about your father, he can spare himself the trouble. He can leave that to me. I"ll take care of him. What he needs is rest. When everything is settled I mean to take him away. Of course we can"t go _this_ winter. If we could we should go to Egypt--he and I.
But we can"t. We know that. We make the sacrifice."
These discreet allusions, too, Lois thought it best to let pa.s.s in silence. "It wasn"t altogether about papa that Thor was worried. He seems anxious about money."
Bessie tossed her head. "That may easily be. If your father takes our money out of the firm, as he threatens to do, the Mastermans will be--well, I don"t know where."
The girl felt it right to go a step further. "He seemed to hint--he didn"t say it in so many words--that perhaps papa wouldn"t have so very much to take out."
This was dismissed lightly. "Then he doesn"t know what"s he talking about. Archie"s frightfully close in those things, I must say. He"s never let either of the boys know anything about the business. He won"t even let me. But your father knows. If Thor thinks for a minute the money isn"t nearly all ours he may come in for a rude awakening."
Rea.s.sured by this firmness of tone, Lois began to take heart. Getting out at the Old Village, she continued her way on foot, and found Rosie among the azaleas and poinsettias.
Thor Masterman met her an hour later, as she returned homeward. He knew where she had been as soon as he saw her turn the corner at which the road descends the hill, recognizing with a curious pang her promptness in carrying out his errand. The pang was a surprise to him--the beginning of a series of revelations on the subject of himself.
Her desire to please him had never before this instant caused him anything but satisfaction. It had been but the response to his desire to please her. He had not been blind to the goal to which this mutual good-will would lead them, but he had quite made up his mind that she would make him as good a wife as any one. As a preliminary to marriage he had weighed the possibility of falling ardently in love, coming at last to the conclusion that he was not susceptible to that pa.s.sion.
His long-standing intention to marry Lois Willoughby was based on the fact that besides being sympathetic to him she was plain and lonely. If the motive hadn"t taken full possession of his heart it was because the state of being plain and lonely had never seemed to him the worst of calamities, by any means. The worst of calamities, that for which no patience was sufficient, that for which there was no excuse, that which kings, presidents, emperors, parliaments, congresses, emba.s.sies, and armies should combine their energies to prevent, was to be poor. He was entirely of Mrs. Fay"s opinion, that with money ill-health and unhappiness were details. You could bear them both. You could bear being lonely; you could bear being plain. Consequently, the menace that now threatened Lois Willoughby"s fortunes strengthened her claim on him; but all at once he felt, as he saw her descend the hill, that the claim might make complications.
Was it because she was plain? Curious that he had never attached importance to that fact before! But it blinded him now to her graceful carriage as well as to the way she had of holding her head with a n.o.ble, independent poise that made her a woman of distinction.
She was smiling with an air at once intimate and triumphant. "I think I"ve won in the first encounter, at any rate."
In his wincing there was the surprise of a man who in a moment of expansion has made a sacred confidence only to find it crop up lightly in subsequent conversation. He was obliged to employ some self-control in order to say, with a manner sufficiently offhand, "What happened?"
She told of making her approaches under the plea of buying potted plants. A cold reception had given way before her persistent friendliness, while there had been complete capitulation on the tender of an invitation to County Street to tea. The visit had been difficult to manage, but amusing, and a little pitiful.
To the details that were difficult or pitiful he could listen with calm, but he was inwardly indignant that Lois should find anything in her meeting with Rosie that lent itself to humor. He knew that humor. The superior were fond of indulging in it at the expense of the less fortunate. Even Lois Willoughby had not escaped that taint of cla.s.s.
Fearing to wound her by some impatient word, he made zeal in his round of duties the excuse for an abrupt good-by.
But zeal in his round of duties changed to zeal of another kind as with set face and long, swinging stride he hurried up the hill. The plans he had been maturing for the psychological treatment of Mrs. Fay melted into eagerness to know how the poor little thing had taken Lois"s advances. He was disappointed, therefore, that Rosie should receive him coldly.
Within twenty-four hours his imagination had created between them something with the flavor of a friendship. He had been thinking of her so incessantly that it was disconcerting to perceive that apparently she had not been thinking of him at all. He was the doctor to her, and no more. She continued to direct Antonio, the Italian, who was opening a crate of closely packed azalea-plants, while she discussed the effect of his sedative on her mother. Her manner was dry and business-like; her replies to his questions brief and to the point.
But professional duty being done, he endeavored to raise the personal issue. "What did you mean yesterday when you said that you couldn"t play fair, but that you"d play as fair as you could?"
She turned from her contemplation of the stooping Antonio"s back. "Did I say that?"
He hardly heeded the question in the pleasure he got from this glimpse of her green eyes. "You said that--or something very much like it."
His uncertainty gave her the chance to correct that which, in the light of Claude"s warning, might prove to have been an indiscretion. "I"m sure I can"t imagine. You must have--misunderstood me."
He pursued the topic not because he cared, but in order to make her look at him again. "Oh no, I didn"t. Don"t you remember? It was after you said that there was one thing that might happen--"
She was sure of her indiscretion now. He might even be setting a snare for her. Dr. Sim Masterman might have withdrawn from her mother"s case in order to put the one brother on the other"s tracks. If Claude was right in his suspicions, there was reasonable ground for alarm. She said, with a.s.sumed indifference: "Oh, that! That was nothing. Just a fancy."
He still talked for the sake of talking, attaching no importance to her replies. "Was it a fancy when you said that I would be one of the people opposed to it--if it happened?"
"Well, yes. But you"d only be one among a lot." She shifted to firmer ground. "I wasn"t thinking of you in particular--or of any one in particular."
"Were you thinking of any _thing_ in particular?"
The question threw her back on straight denial. "N-no; not exactly; just a fancy."
"But I shouldn"t be opposed to it, whatever it is--if it was to your advantage."
His persistence deepened her distrust. A man whom she had seen only once before would hardly display such an interest in her and her affairs unless he had a motive, especially when that man was a Masterman. She took refuge in her task with the azaleas. "No, not there, Antonio. Put them there--like this--I"ll show you."
The necessity for giving Antonio practical demonstration taking her to the other side of the hothouse, Thor felt himself obliged to go. He went with the greater regret since he had been unable to sound her on the subject of Lois Willoughby"s advances, though her skill in eluding him heightened his respect. His disdain for the small arts of coquetry being as sincere as his scorn of sn.o.bbery, he counted it to her credit that she eluded him at all. There would be plenty of opportunities for speech with her. During them he hoped to win her confidence by degrees.
In the bedroom up-stairs, where the mother was again seated in her upholstered arm-chair with the quilt across her knees, he endeavored to put into practice his idea of mental therapeutics. He began by speaking of Matt, using the terms that would most effectively challenge her attention. "When he comes back, you know, we must make him forget that he"s ever worn stripes."
She eyed him sternly. "What"d be the good of his forgetting it? He"ll have done it, just the same."