Lois was still standing near the portico when Thor had a.s.sisted his charge to his room, stretched him on a couch, covered him with a rug, left him in a heavy sleep, and crept down the stairs again. It did not escape his eye, quickened by the minutes he had spent with Rosie Fay, that Lois lacked color. For the first time in his life he acutely observed the difference between a plain woman and a pretty one.
"Oh, Thor," she began, as soon as he came out, "I don"t know how to thank you for your kindness to papa! How is it to go on? Where is it to end? Oh, Thor, you"re a doctor! Tell me what you think. Is there anything I can do?"
His kind, searching eyes, as he stood with one hand on the steering-wheel, rested on her silently. After all, she was twenty-seven, and must take her portion of life"s responsibilities. Besides, whatever she might have to bear he meant to share with her. She should not be obliged, like Rosie Fay, for instance, to carry her load alone.
And yet she didn"t look as if she would shirk her part. With that tall, erect figure, delicate in outline but strong with the freedom of an open-air life, that proud head which was nevertheless carried meekly, and that straightforward gaze, she gave the impression of being ready to meet anything. The face might be irregular, lacking in many of the tender prettinesses as natural to other girls, even at twenty-seven, as flowers to a field; but no one could deny its force of character.
"I"ll tell you something you could do," he said, at last. "You could see--or try to see--that he doesn"t spend too much." A slight pause marked his hesitation before adding, "That no one spends too much."
"You mean mamma and me?"
He smiled faintly. "I mean whoever does the spending--but your father most of all, because I"m afraid he"s rather reckless. He"s spent a good deal during the last twelve or fifteen years, hasn"t he?"
She was very quick. "More than he had a right to spend?"
"Well, more than my father," he felt it safe to say.
"But he had more than your father to spend, hadn"t he?"
"Do you know that for a certainty?"
"I only know it from papa himself. But, oh, Thor, what is it? Why are you asking?"
He ignored these questions to say: "Couldn"t your mother tell us? After all, it was her money, wasn"t it?"
She shook her head. "Oh, mamma wouldn"t know. If you"re in any doubt about it, why don"t you ask Mr. Masterman? He could tell you better than any one. Besides, mamma isn"t in."
He spoke with a touch of scorn. "I suppose she"s in town."
The tone evoked on Lois"s part a little smile. They had had battles on the subject before. "That"s just where she is."
"That"s just where she always is."
"Oh no; not always. Sometimes she stays at home. But she"s there pretty often, I admit. She has to make calls, partly because I won"t--when I can help it."
He spoke approvingly. "You, at any rate, don"t fritter away your time like other women."
"It depends on what other women you mean. I fritter away my time like some women, even though it isn"t like the women who make calls. I play golf, for instance, and tennis; I even ride."
"All the same, you don"t like the silly thing called society any more than I do."
There was daylight enough to show him the blaze of bravado in her eyes.
Her way of holding her head had a certain daring--the daring of one too frank, perhaps too proud, to shrink at truth. "Oh, I don"t know. I dare say I should have liked society well enough if society had liked me. But it didn"t. As mamma says, I wasn"t a success." To compel him to view her in all her lack of charm, she added, with a persistent smile, "You know that, don"t you?"
He did know it, though he could hardly say so. He had heard Claude descant on the subject many a time in the years when Lois was still putting in a timid appearance at dances. Claude was interested in everything that had to do with girls, from their clothes to their complexions.
"Can"t make it out," he would say at breakfast, after a party; "dances well; dresses well; but doesn"t take. Fellows afraid of her. Everybody shy of a girl who isn"t popular. Hasn"t enough devil. Girl ought to have some devil, hang it all! Dance with her myself? Well, I do--about three times a year. Have her left on my hands an hour at a time. Fellow can"t afford that. Think we have no chivalry? Should come to dances yourself, old chap. You"d be a G.o.dsend to the girls in the dump."
Thor"s dancing days were over before Lois"s had begun, but he could imagine what they had been to her. He could look back over the four or five years that separated her from the ordeal, and still see her in "the dump"--tall, timid, furtively watching the young men with those swimming brown orbs of hers, wondering whether or not she should have a partner; heartsore under her finery, often driving homeward in the weary early hours with tears streaming down her cheeks. He knew as much about it as if he had been with her. He suffered for her retrospectively. He did it to a degree that made his long face sorrowful.
The sorrow caused Lois some impatience. "For mercy"s sake, Thor, don"t look at me like that! It isn"t as bad as you seem to think. I don"t mind it."
"But I do," he declared, with indignation, only to feel that he was slowly coloring.
He colored because the statement brought him within measurable distance of a declaration which he meant to make, but for which he was not ready.
She seemed to divine his embarra.s.sment, speaking with forced lightness.
"Please don"t waste your sympathy on me. If any one"s to be pitied, it"s mamma. I"m such a disappointment to her. Let"s talk of something else.
Where have you been to-day, and what have you been doing?"
He was not blind to her tact, counting it to her credit for the future, and asked abruptly if she knew Fay, the gardener.
"Fay, the gardener?" she echoed. "I know who he is." She went more directly to the point in saying, "I know his daughter."
"Well, she"s having a hard time."
"Is she? I should think she might."
His face grew keener. "Why do you say that?"
"Oh, I don"t know--she"s that sort. At least, I should judge she was that sort from the little I"ve seen of her."
"How much have you seen of her?"
"Almost nothing; but little as it was, it impressed itself on my mind. I went to see her once at Mr. Whitney"s suggestion."
"Whitney? He"s the rector at St. John"s, isn"t he? What had he to do with her? She doesn"t belong to his church?"
Lois explained. "It was when we established the branch of the Girl"s Friendly Society at St. John"s. Mr. Whitney thought she might care to join it."
"And did she?"
"No; quite the other way. When I went to ask her, she resented it. She had an idea I was patronizing her. That"s the difficulty in approaching girls like that."
He looked at her with a challenging expression. "Girls like what?"
"I suppose I mean girls who haven"t much money--or who"ve got to work."
He still challenged her, his head thrown back. "They probably don"t consider themselves inferior to you for that reason. It wouldn"t be American if they did."
"And it wouldn"t be American if I did; and I don"t. They only make me feel so because they feel it so strongly themselves. That"s what"s not American; and it isn"t on my part, but on theirs. They force their sentiment back on me. They make me patronizing whether I will or no."
"And were you patronizing when you went to see Miss Fay?"
To conceal the slightly irritated attentiveness with which he waited for her reply he began to light his motor lamps. Condescension toward Rosie Fay suddenly struck him as offensive, no matter from whom it came.
"I"m sure I don"t know," she replied, indifferently. "There was something about her that disconcerted me."