The Wayfarers. Mary Stewart Cutting

she had been too greatly in awe of him at first to ask many questions. He himself had spoken little, but had been kind in numberless ways, and thoughtful of her comfort, and always smiled encouragingly when he looked at her. Now, at the journey’s end, he began to talk, in a secret restlessness which he could not own. His mind had been busy all day with the typometer and his plans for the morrow, but as he neared home he could not shake off a haunting premonition of something unpleasant to come.

      “Lois and the children will all be drawn up in line expecting the new cousin,” he said.

      “Will they?” asked Theodosia, with pleased interest. “But they will be looking out for you as well as for me.”

      “Yes, I suppose so; I very seldom go away from home. But I was wrong in saying that both children would be up, for it will be nearly seven when we reach the house, and they go to bed at six; perhaps Zaidee will be there. I hope you like children, or you will have a bad time of it at our house.”

      “I love children,” said Dosia, with the solemnity of a profession of faith.

      “I think you will like Zaidee, then; she is a little girl who has her hair tied up with bunches of blue ribbon, and the rest of it straggles around in light wisps, or is gathered into an inconceivably small pigtail at the back of her neck. She has a pug-nose, round blue eyes, little white teeth, and an expression of great responsibility and wisdom, because at the age of six she is the eldest daughter—and that means a great deal, you know.”

      “Oh,” said Dosia, “I am an ‘eldest daughter.’” She choked, momentarily, as she thought of the family at home. “Was it only last night that you started for me?” she asked, after a pause during which she had looked hard out of the car-window.

      “Yes; I’ve made pretty good time, I think. It was lucky that we could catch that eight-thirty express this morning; if we hadn’t it would have put us back nearly twenty-four hours—and that would have been bad,” he added under his breath.

      “Perhaps it was hard for you to leave even for one day,” said Dosia timidly. She felt somehow away outside of his inner thought, as if she had no inherent place in his mind at all. “You are just starting in business, aren’t you?”

      “Oh, that is all right. We are both starting in new ventures—Dosia and the typometer appear on the scene at the same moment, starting out on a career together; and for this time Dosia had to take precedence, that is all. I hope we’ll both be equally successful.”

      “Yes, indeed.” She responded to his smile, and tried to rally her failing powers.

      “I am very glad I went for you.” He regarded her with anxiety. “You could not have made the journey alone.”

      “Oh, I could have—but I am so glad you came!” said Dosia. She leaned against the window, with closed eyes, to rest—her wan face, her dress, crumpled and stained, the negligence of her hair, which she had been unable to arrange properly, and her air of fatigue making a pitiful contrast to the girl who had started out so gayly on her travels in her trim attire two days before. Now, as in many another moment of silence, she felt once more the hurtling fall, the pressure of darkness, and the ravages of the rain and wind; the nightmare horror of the wreck was upon her; only the remembered clasp of a hand held her reason firm. She had spent half the day in thinking of that unknown friend, and the thought seemed to put her under some obligation of high and pure living, in a cloistered gratitude. A girl who had been saved in that way ought to be worthy of it. Some day or other—some day—it must be meant that she should meet him again and tell him what his help had been to her. She imagined herself engaged in some errand of mercy—supporting the tottering footsteps of an old woman as she crossed a crowded street, or carrying a little sick child, or kneeling by a fever-touched bedside in a tenement-house, or encouraging a terror-stricken creature through smoke and fire. She would meet him thus, and when he said, “How good and brave you are!” she might look up and say: “I learned it from you. Do you remember the girl you helped the night the train was wrecked? I am she.” And when he asked, “How did you know it was I?” she would answer: “By the tones of your voice; I would know that anywhere.” And then he would take her hand again——

      Her eyes ached with unshed tears at the lost comfort of it. She tried to see his form through the blur of darkness that had enveloped it,—a swinging step, a square set of the shoulders, an effect of strong young manhood,—and she pictured his face as noble and beautiful as his care for her. Her reverie passed through different grades. 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. Her feet slipped on the cobblestones, the hurrying people made her dizzy, and the electric lights danced before her eyes.

      As they were standing on the boat, two men came up to speak to Justin; she gathered that they had heard of the accident and of his journey from Mrs. Alexander at the whist club the night before, and stopped now to make courteous inquiries. One, who was short and stout, with a pleasant if commonplace face, passed on, after his introduction to Dosia; but the other turned back, as he was following, to say:

      “By the way, I see that there was a fire in your new quarters to-day, Alexander.”

      “A fire! For Heaven’s sake, Barr——”

      “Oh, I don’t think it amounted to much; there’s just a line in the evening paper about it. Here, read for yourself—‘fire confined to one floor, machinery slightly damaged.’ Insured, weren’t you?”

      “Oh, yes, yes—that isn’t the point now. We can’t afford to be kept back a minute! I’m glad you told me; I must go—I must go back at once and see for myself.” He stopped and looked hopelessly at Dosia.

      Short as the journey was now, he could not let her continue it by herself; yet every fiber in him was quivering in his wild desire to get over to the scene of disaster. He looked at his informant, who, in his turn, was regarding the girl beside Justin.

      “I can go on by myself,” said Dosia, divining his thought, and wondering when this terrible journey would ever end. “Truly, I can. I know you want to go and see about the fire; please, please do! Oh, please!”

      “Barr, will you take charge of Miss Linden?” asked Justin abruptly. He did not particularly like Barr, but this was an emergency. “Will you take her to Mrs. Alexander?”

      “I will, indeed,” said the newcomer, with responsive earnestness.

      “Very well, then; I’ll go back on this boat. I’ll be out on a later train, tell Lois.” He started to make his way to the other end of the boat, to be in readiness for the return trip, and turned back once more to give the girl her ticket; then he was lost to sight, and Theodosia was left, for the third time, on the hands of an unknown man.

      This one only spoke to give her the necessary directions as they joined the usual rush for the train, and refrained from talking, to her great relief, after he had settled her comfortably in the car for the last half-hour of traveling. She leaned against the window-casing, as before, as far away from him as possible, suddenly and wretchedly aware of her dilapidated appearance and the boy’s cap that covered the fair hair curling out from under it. Her cheeks were whiter than ever, and the corners of her mouth had the pathetic droop of extreme fatigue.

      She looked, without knowing it, very young, very forlorn, and very frightened, and the hand in which she held the ticket given her by Justin trembled. She was morbidly afraid that this new person would question her as to the accident, about which she shrank from speaking; but after a while, encouraged by his silence, she tried to turn her thoughts by stealthily observing him.

      If her friend of the voice and hand of the night before had been only a tall blur