Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

Bailey Girard spoke with confidence, his eyes bent controllingly on Lois, who trembled as she stood in the little hallway, looking up at him, with Dosia behind her. This was the third night since that one when Justin had failed to appear, and there had been no word from him in the interim. Owing to that curious way that women have of waiting for events to happen that will end suspense, rather than seeking to end it by any unaccustomed action of their own, no inquiry had been made at the Typometer Company until late in the afternoon of the next day, which had been passed in the hourly expectation of hearing from Justin or seeing him walk in. However, nobody at the company knew anything of Justin's movements, except that he had left the office rather early the afternoon before, and had been seen to take a car going up-town. It was presumable that he had been called suddenly out of town, and had sent some word to Mrs. Alexander that had miscarried.

That evening, however, Lois sent for Leverich, who was evidently bothered; though bluffly and rather irritatingly making light of her fears, he seemed to be both a little reluctant and a little contemptuous.

"My dear Mrs. Alexander, you can't expect a fellow to be always tied to his wife's apron-strings! He doesn't tell you everything. We like to have a free foot once in a while. Why, my wife's glad when I get off for a day or two--coaxes me to go away herself! And as for anything happening to Alexander--well, an able-bodied man can look out for himself every time; there's nothing in the world to be anxious about. He's meant to wire to you and forgotten to do it, that's all. I did that myself last year, when I was called away suddenly; but Myra didn't turn a hair. She knew I was all right. And if I were you, Mrs. Alexander,--this is just a tip,--I wouldn't go around telling _every_ one that he's gone off and you don't know where he is. It's the kind of thing folks get talking about in all kinds of ways; his affairs aren't in any too good shape, as he may have told you."

"Isn't the business all right?" queried Lois, with a puzzled fear.

"Oh, yes, of course--all right; but--I wouldn't go around wondering about his being away; he's got his own reasons. You haven't a telephone, have you? I'll send around word to have one put in to-day. I'll tell you what: I'll ask Bailey Girard to come around and see you on the quiet--he's got lots of wires he can pull. You won't need me any more."

Leverich's meeting with Dosia had been characterized by a sort of brusque uninterest. He seemed to her indefinably lowered and coarsened in some way; his cheeks sagged; in his eyes was an unpleasant admission that he must bluster to avoid the detection of some weakness. And Dosia had lived in his house, eaten at his table, received benefits from him, caressed him prettily! He had been really kind to her. She ought not to let that fact be defaced. But everything connected with that time seemed now to lower her in retrospect, to fill her with a sort of horror. All his loud rebuttal of anxiety now could not cover an undercurrent of uneasiness that made the anxiety of the two women tenfold greater when he was gone.

Mr. Girard had come twice the next morning. Dosia, as well as Lois, had seen him both times. He had greeted her with matter-of-fact courtesy, and appealed to her with earnest painstaking, whenever necessary, for details or confirmation, in their mutual office of helpers to Mrs. Alexander; but the retrieving warmth and intimacy of his manner the day he had avoided her in the street was lacking. There was certainly nothing in Dosia's quietly impersonal attitude to call it forth. Her face no longer swiftly mirrored each fleeting emotion at all times, for any one to see. Poor Dosia had learned in a bitter school her woman's lesson of concealment.

But, if Girard were only sensibly consulting with her, toward Lois his sympathy was instinct with strength and helpfulness. He seemed to have affiliations with reporters, with telegraph operators, with a hundred lower runways of life unknown to other people. He gave the tortured wife the feeling so dear, so sustaining to one in sorrow, of his being entirely one with her in its absorption--of there being no other interest, no other issue in life, but this one of Justin's return. When Girard came, bright and alert and confident, all fears seemed to be set at rest; during the few minutes that he stayed all difficulties were swept away, everything was on the right train, word would arrive from Justin at once; and when he left, all was black and terrible again.

The children had clung to Dosia in the hours of these strange days when mama never seemed to hear their questions. Dosia read to them, made merry for them, and saw to her household, which was dependent on the services of a new and untrained maid, going back in the interval to put her young arms around Lois and hold her close with aching pity.

The suspense of these days had changed Lois terribly. Her cheeks were hollow, her mouth was drawn, her eyes looked twice their natural size, with the black circles below them. Only the knowledge that her baby's welfare--perhaps his life--depended on her, kept her from giving way entirely. Redge, always a complicating child, had an attack of croup, which necessitated a visit from the doctor and further anxiety. Toward afternoon of this third day a man came to put in the telephone, which set them in touch with the unseen world. Girard's voice over it later had been mistakenly understood to promise an immediate ending of the mystery.

Everything was excitement: delicacies were bought, in case Justin might like them; Redge and Zaidee were hurriedly dressed in their best "to see dear papa," and, even though they had to go to bed without the desired result, Redge in a fresh spasm of coughing, it was with the repeated promise that the father should come up-stairs to kiss them as soon as he got in.

Expectation had been unwarrantedly raised so high in the suddenly sanguine heart of Lois that now, to-night, at Girard's word that nothing more had been heard, as she was still looking up at him everything turned black before her. She found herself half lying on the little spindle-legged sofa, without knowing how she got there, her head pillowed on a green silken cushion, with Dosia fanning her, while Girard leaned against the little mirrored mantelpiece with set face and contracted brows. Presently Lois pushed away the fan, made a motion as if to rise, only to relapse again on the cushion, looked up at Girard, and tried to smile with piteous, brimming eyes.

"Ah, don't!" he said, with a quick gesture. His voice had an odd sound, as if drawing breath hurt him, yet with it mingled also a compassionate tenderness so great that it seemed to inform not only his face but his whole attitude as he bent over her.

"You're very good to be so sorry for me," she whispered.

He made a swift gesture of protest. "There's one thing I _can't_ stand--to see a woman suffer."

She waited a moment, as if to take in his words, and then motioned him to the seat beside her. When she spoke again, it was slowly, as if she were trying to concentrate her mind:

"You have known sorrow?"

"Yes."

"Tell me."

He saw that she wished to forget her own trouble for a moment in that of another, yet the effort to obey evidently cost him much. They had both spoken as if they two were alone in the room. Dosia, who had withdrawn to the ottoman some paces away, out of the radius of the lamp, sat there in her white cotton frock, leaning a little forward, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her face upraised and her eyes looking somewhere beyond. So still was she, so gentle, so fair, that she might have been a spirit outside the stormy circle in which these two communed. (In such moments as these she prayed for Lawson.)

"I"--it was Girard who spoke at last--"my mother--Cater said once that he'd told you something about me."

"Yes, I remember."

"I was so little when we drifted off. I didn't know how to help, how to save anything. Yet it has always seemed to me since that I ought to have known--I ought to have known!" His hands clenched; his voice had subsided to a groan.

"You were her comfort when you least thought it," said Lois.

"Perhaps. I've always hoped so, in my saner moments. We stumbled along from day to day, and slept out at night, always trying to keep away from people, when--she thought we were going home, and that they would prevent me." He stopped for a moment, and then went on, driven by that Ancient Mariner spirit which makes people, once they have touched on a forbidden subject, probe it to its haunting depths. "Did Cater tell you how she died? She died in a barn. My _mother_! She used to hold me in her arms at night, and make me rest my head against her bosom when I was tired; and I didn't even have a pillow for her when she was dying! It's one of those things you can never make up for--that you can never change, no matter how you live, no matter what you do. It comes back to you when you least expect it."

Both were silent for a while before Lois murmured: "But the pain ended in happiness and peace for her. It would hurt her more than anything to know that you grieved."

"Yes, I believe that," he acquiesced simply. "I'm glad you said it now. I couldn't rest until I got money enough to take her out of her pauper grave and lay her by the side of her own people at home."

"And you have had a pretty hard time."

"Oh, that's nothing!" He squared his shoulders with unconscious rebuttal of sympathy. "When I was a kid, perhaps--but I get a lot of pleasure out of life."

"But you must be lonely without any one belonging to you," said Lois, trying to grope her way into the labyrinth. "Wouldn't you be happier if you were married?"

He laughed involuntarily and shook his head, with a slight flush that seemed to come from the embarrassment of some secret thought. The action, and the change of expression, made him singularly charming. "Possibly; but the chance of that is small. Women--that is, unmarried women--don't care for my society."

"Oh, oh!" protested Lois, with quick knowledge, as she looked at him, of how much the reverse the truth must be. "But if you found the right woman you might make her care for you."

He shook his head, with a sudden gleam in his gray eyes. "No; there you're wrong. I'd never make any woman care for me, because I'd never want to. If she couldn't care for me without my _making_ her--! I'd have to know, when I first looked at her, that she was _mine_. And if she were not, if she did not care for me herself, I'd never want to make her--never!"

"Oh, oh!" protested Lois again, with interested amusement, shattered the next instant as a fragile glass may be shattered by the blow of a hammer.

The telephone-bell had rung, and Girard ran to it, closing the intervening door behind him. The curtain of anxiety, lifted for breathing-space for a moment, hung over them again somberly, like a pall. Where was Justin?

The two women clinging together hung breathlessly on Girard's movements; his low, murmuring voice told nothing. When he returned to where they stood, his face was impassive.

"Nothing new; I'm just going to town for a couple of hours, that's all."

"Oh, must you leave us?"

"I'm coming back, if you'll let me." He bent over Lois with that earnest look which seemed somehow to insure protection. "I want you to let me stay down-stairs here all night, if you will. I'm going to make arrangements to get a special message through, no matter what time it comes, and I'll sit here in the parlor and wait for it, so that you two ladies can sleep."

"Oh, I'd be so glad to have you here! Redge has that croupy cough again. But you can't sit up," said Lois.

"Why not? It's luxury to stay awake in a comfortable chair with a lot of books around. I'll be back in a couple of hours without fail."

A couple of hours! If he had said a couple of years, the words could have brought, it seemed, no deeper sense of desolation. Hardly had he gone, however, when the door-bell rang, and word was brought to Lois, who with Dosia had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the typometer office. The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room with a decorously self-effacing step, and sat now on the edge of his chair, his body bent forward and his hat still held in one hand, with an effect of being entirely isolated from social relations and existing here solely at the behest of business. He rose as Lois came into the room, and handed her a small packet, in response to her greeting, before reseating himself.

"Thank you very much," said Lois. "This is the money, I suppose. I'm sorry you went to the trouble of bringing it out yourself. I thought you might send me out a check."

Mr. Harker shook his head with a grim semblance of a smile. "That's the trouble, Mrs. Alexander. We can't send any checks. Mr. Alexander is the one who does that. Everything is in Mr. Alexander's name. I went to Mr. Leverich to-day to see how we were going to straighten out things; but he doesn't seem inclined to take hold at all, though he could help us out easily enough if he wanted to. I--there's no use keeping it back, Mrs. Alexander. This is a pretty bad time for Mr. Alexander to stay away. He ought to be home."

"Why, yes," said Lois.

"Exactly. His absence places us all in a very strange, very unpleasant position." Mr. Harker spoke with a sort of somber monotony, with his gaze on the ground. "The business requires the most particular management at the moment--the most particular. I--" He raised his eyes with such tragic earnestness that Lois realized for the first time that this manner of his might not be his usual manner, but was called forth by the stress of anxiety. For the first time also, the force of the daily tie of business companionship was borne in upon her. She looked at Mr. Harker. This man spent more waking hours with Justin than she did--knew him, perhaps, in a sense, better.

He went on now, with a tremor in his voice: "Mrs. Alexander, your husband and I have worked together for a year and a half now, with never a word between us. I'm ready to swear by him any moment, if I've got him to swear by. I'll back him up in anything, no matter what, if it's his say-so. We've pulled through a good many tight places. But I can't do it alone; it's madness to try. If he doesn't show up, I'd better close the place down at once."

"Why do you say this to me?" asked Lois, shrinking a little.

"Why? Because, Mrs. Alexander, this is no time to mince words. If you know where your husband is, for God's sake, get word to him to come back--every minute is precious. He may be ill,--Heaven knows he had enough to make him so; my wife knows the strain I've been through; she says she wonders I'm alive,--but he can't look after his health now. If he's on top of ground, he's got to _come_. I've put every cent I own into this business. I haven't drawn my whole salary, even, for months. I don't know what reasons he has for staying away, but his nerve mustn't give out now."

"Mr. Harker!" cried Lois. She turned blankly to Dosia, who had come forward. "What does he mean?"

"She doesn't know where her husband is," said the girl convincingly. Her eyes and Mr. Harker's met. The somber eagerness faded out of his; he sighed and rose.

"Anything I can do for you, Mrs. Alexander? I think I'll hurry to catch the next train; I haven't been home to my dinner yet."

"Won't you have something here before you go?" asked Lois. "It's so late."

"Oh, that's nothing. I'm used to it," returned Mr. Harker, with a pale smile and the passive, self-effacing business manner as he departed, while Lois went up-stairs once more. The baby cried, and she soothed him, holding the warm little form close, closer to her--some thing tangible before she put him down again to step back into this strange void where Justin was not.

For the first time, in this meeting with Mr. Harker, Lois realized the existence of a world beyond her ken--a world that had been Justin's. New as the visitor's words had been, they seemed to open to her a vision of herculean struggle: the way this man had looked--_his_ wife had "wondered that he was still alive." And Justin--where was he now? _She_ had not noticed, she had not wondered--until lately.

Slight as seemed her recognition, her sympathy, her help, it was the one thing now that kept her reason firm. She knew that she had not been all unfaithful; sometimes he had been rested, sometimes cheered, when she was near. She had suffered, too; _she_ had longed for _his_ help and sympathy. No, she would not think of that; she would not. When two are separated, one must love enough to bridge the gulf--what matter which one? It seemed now as if there were so much that she might have given, if all this torrent of love that nearly broke her heart might have been poured out and poured out at his feet--lavished on him, without regard to need or fitness or expense, as Mary lavished her precious box of spikenard on One she loved. Now that he was gone, there could be nothing too hard to have done for him, no words too sweet for her to have said to him.

Redge woke up and cried for her, and she told him hoarsely to be still; and then, suddenly conscience-stricken and fearful at the slighting of this other demand of love,--what awful reprisal might it not exact from her?--she went to kiss the child, to infold him in her arms, the boy that Justin loved, before she bade him go to sleep, for mother would stay by her darling. And, left to herself again, the grinding and destroying wheel of thought had her bound to it once more.

He could not have left her of his own will! If he did not come, it would be because he was dead--and then he could never know, never, never know. There would be nothing left to her but the place where he had been. She looked at the walls and the homely furnishings as one seeing them for the first time bare forever of the beloved presence, and fell on her knees, and went on them around the room, dragging herself from chair to sofa, from sofa to bed,--these were the Stations of the Cross that she was making,--with sobs and cries, low and inarticulate, yet carrying with them the awful anguish of a heart laid bare before the Almighty. Here his dear hand had rested, while he thought of her; on this table--here--and here; and here his head had lain. Her tears ceased; she buried her face in the pillow. She must go after him, wherever he was, in this world or another. For he was her husband. Where he was she must be, either in body or in spirit.

The telephone-bell rang, and Dosia answered it, the voice at the other end inquiring for Mr. Girard, cautiously, it seemed, withholding information from any other. The doctor rang up, in response to an earlier call, with directions for Redge. Hardly had the receiver been laid down when the door-bell clanged. This was to be a night of the ringing of bells!

XXII

This time, of course, the visitor was Mrs. Snow. In any exigency, any mind-and body-absorbing event of life, the inopportune presence of Mrs. Snow was inexorably to be counted on, though it came always as one of those exasperating recurrences which bring with them a ridiculously fresh irritation each time. It seemed to be the one extra thing you couldn't stand. In either trouble or joy, she affected one like a clinging, ankle-flapping mackintosh on a rainy day. 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.

"How do you do, my dear? Mr. Girard has just told me that he was going to stay here to-night, in Mr. Alexander's absence. He said little Redge was threatened with the croup. Now, if I had only known that Mr. Alexander was away, _I_ could have come and stayed with you!"

"Oh, that wasn't at all necessary," said Lois hastily. "Thank you very much. Do sit down, won't you, Mrs. Snow?"

"Only for a minute, then; I must go back to Bertha," said Mrs. Snow, seating herself and fumbling for something under her cloak. "I just came over to read you a letter. It's in my bag--I can't seem to find it. Well, perhaps I'd better rest for a minute." Mrs. Snow's face looked unusually lined and set; in spite of her plaintiveness, her eyes had a harassed glitter.

"Isn't it rather late for you to be out alone?" asked Lois.

"Yes; Ada would have come around here with me, but she was expecting Mr. Sutton. She was expecting him last night, but he didn't come. If _I_ were a young lady, I'd let a gentleman wait for _me_ the next time; it used to be thought more attractive, in my day: but Ada's so afraid of not seeming cordial; gentlemen seem to be so sensitive nowadays! I said to her, 'Ada, when a man is enough at home in a house to kick the cat, and ask for cake whenever he feels like it, I do _not_ see that it is necessary to stand on ceremony with him.' But Ada thinks differently."

"It is difficult to make rules," said Lois vaguely.

"Yes," sighed Mrs. Snow. "As I was saying to Bertha, you don't find a young man like Mr. Girard, so considerate of every one--not that he's so _very_ young, either; I'm sure he often appears much older than he is. It's his manner--he has a manner like my dear father. He and Bertha have long chats together; really, he is what _I_ would call quite attentive, though she won't hear of such a thing--but sometimes young men _do_ take a great fancy for older girls. I had a friend who married a gentleman twenty-seven years younger--he died soon afterward. But many people think nothing of a little difference of twelve or fifteen years. I said to Bertha this morning, 'Bertha, if you'd dress yourself a little younger--if you'd only wear a blue bow in your hair.' But no; I can't say anything nowadays to my own children without being flown at!" Mrs. Snow's voice trembled. "If my darling William were here!"

"Have you heard from William lately?" asked Lois, with supreme effort.

"My dear, he's in Chicago. I came over to read you a letter from him that I got to-night. That new postman left it at the Scovels', by mistake, and they never sent it over until a little while ago. There was a sentence in it," Mrs. Snow was fumbling with a paper, "that I thought you'd like to hear. Where is it? Let me see. 'Next month I hope to be able to send you more'--no, no, that's not it. 'When my socks get holes in them I throw them'--that's not it, either. Oh! he says, 'I caught a glimpse of Mr. Alexander last night, getting on a West Side car'--this was written yesterday morning. 'I called to him, but too late. I'm sorry, for I'd like to have seen him,' That's all; but Mr. Girard seemed so pleased with the letter, I promised that I would bring it around to you that very minute,--he had to run for the train,--but I was detained. He thought you'd like to hear that William had seen Mr. Alexander."

Like to hear! The relief for the moment turned Lois faint. Yet, after Mrs. Snow went, the torturing questions began to repeat themselves again. Justin was alive--Justin was alive on Tuesday night. Was he alive now? And why had he gone to Chicago at all? Why had he sent her no word? The wall between them seemed only the more opaque. Every fear that imagination could devise seemed to center around this new fact.

She and Dosia went around, straightening up the little drawing-room, making it ready for Girard's occupancy--pulling out a big chair for his use, and putting fresh books on the table. The maid had long ago gone to bed, and there was coffee to be made for him--he might get hungry in the night. When he came in at last, he brought all the brightness and courage of hope with him. He had wired to William; he had phoned to a dozen different places in Chicago.

"Oh, what should we do without you?" breathed Lois, her foot on the stairway.

"It doesn't seem to me I've helped you very much so far. Our one clue has been from Mrs. Snow. I want you to go to bed now, and to sleep, Mrs. Alexander; take all the rest you can. I'm here to do the watching. If there's anything really to tell, I'll call you. I promise faithfully. What is it, Miss Linden? Did you want to speak to me?"

"There was a message for you while you were gone," said Dosia in a low tone.

His eyes assented. "Yes, I know. I went there--to the place that they--but it wasn't Alexander, I'm glad to say, though I was afraid when I went in----"

"I know," said Dosia.

Another strange night had begun, with the master of the house away. Lois went to her room to lie down clothed, jumping up to come to the head of the stairs whenever the telephone-bell rang, and then going back again when she found that those who were consulting were asking for information instead of giving it; but by and by the messages ceased.

Suppose Justin never came back! She began to feel that he had been gone for years, and tried confusedly to plan out the future. There were the children--how should she support them? She must support them. It was hard to get work when you had a baby. If she hadn't the baby--no one should take the baby from her! She clasped him to her for a moment in terror, as if she were being hunted, before she grew calm and began planning again. There was only a little money left. To-morrow they must still eat. She must make the money last.

Dosia, on the bed by Redge's crib, went softly after a while into the other room, and saw that Lois at last slept, though she herself could not. Each time that she saw Girard he seemed more and more a stranger, so far removed was he from her dream of him. Through all his softness, his gentleness, she felt the streak of hardness, if nobody else did (though Mr. Cater, she remembered now, had spoken of it too), that the fires of adversity had molded. Perhaps no man could have worked up from the cruel circumstances of his early days without that hardening streak to uphold him. She divined, with some surprising new power of divination, that, for all his strong, capable dealing with actualities, his magnetic drawing of men, for the inner conduct of his own life he was shyly dependent on odd, deeply held theory--theory that he had solitarily woven for himself. She felt impersonally sorry for him, as for a boy who must be disappointed, though he was nothing to her.

Yet, as Dosia lay there in the dumb stretches of the night, her tired eyes wide open, close to Redge's crib, with his little hot hand clinging to hers, the mere fact of Girard's bodily presence in the house, down-stairs, seemed something overpoweringly insistent; she couldn't get away from it. It gave her, apparently, neither pleasure nor pain; it called forth no conscious excitement as had been the case with Lawson--unless this strange, rarefied sense was a higher excitement. This consciousness of his presence was, tiresomely enough, something not to be escaped from; it pulsed in every vein, keeping her awake. She tried to lose it in the thought of Lois' great trouble, of this weighting, pitiful mystery of Justin's absence--of what it meant to him and to the household. She tried to lose it in the thought of Lawson, with the prayer that always instinctively came at his name. Nothing availed; through everything was that wearing, persistent consciousness of Girard's bodily presence down-stairs. If it would only fade out, so that she might sleep, she was so tired! The clock struck two. A voice spoke from the other room, sending her to her feet instantly:

"Dosia?"

"Yes, Lois, dearest, I'm here."

"Has any word come from Justin?"

"No."

Lois shivered. "I think, when Redge wakes up next, you'd better give him a drink of water; he sounds so hoarse. I've used all I brought up. Do you mind going down to get some more? I would go myself, but I can't slip my arm from under baby; he wakes when I move. Here is the pitcher."

"Yes," said Dosia, stopping for a moment to pull the coverlet tenderly over Lois, before stepping out into the lighted hall.

It seemed very silent; there was no sound from below. Dosia went down the low, wide stairs with that indescribable air of the watcher in the night. Her white cotton gown, the same that she had worn throughout the afternoon, had lost its freshness, and clung to her figure in twisted folds; the waist was slightly open at the throat, and the long white necktie hung half untied. One cheek was warm where it had pressed the pillow; the other was pale, and her hair, half loosened, hung against it. Her eyes, very blue, showed a rayed starriness, the pupils contracted from the sudden light--her expression, tired and half bewildered, had in it somewhat of the little lost look of a child, up in the unwonted middle of the night, who might go naturally and comfortably into any kind arms held out to her. The turn of the stairs brought her fronting the little drawing-room and the figure of Girard, who sat leaning forward, smoking, in the Morris chair, with his elbow resting on the arm of it and his head on his hand. The books and bric-a-brac on the table beside him had been pushed back to make room for the tray containing the coffee-pot, a cup and saucer, and a plate with some biscuits. A newspaper lay on the floor at his feet. Notwithstanding the light in the hallway and the room, there was that odd atmospheric effect which belongs only to the late and solitary hours of the night, when the very furniture itself seems to share in a chill detachment from the life of the day. Yet, in the midst of this night silence, this withdrawing of the ordinary vital forces, the figure of Bailey Girard seemed to be extraordinarily instinct with vitality, even in that second before he moved; his attitude, his eyes, his expression, were informed with such intense and eager thoughts that it was as startling, as instantly arresting, as the blast of a trumpet.

At the sound of Dosia's light oncoming step opposite the door, he rose at once--however, laying the cigar on the table--and with a quick stride stood beside her. He seemed tall and unexpectedly dazzling as he confronted her; his deep-set gray eyes were very brilliant.

"What is the matter? Is Mrs. Alexander ill?"

"No--oh, no; the children have been restless, that is all," said Dosia, recovering, with annoyed self-possession, from a momentary shock, and feeling disagreeably conscious of looking tumbled and forlorn. "I came down to get a pitcher of water."

"Can't I get it in the dining-room for you?" he asked, with formal politeness.

"Thank you. The water isn't running in the butler's pantry; I have to go in the kitchen for it. If you would light the gas there for me----"

"Yes, certainly," he responded promptly, pushing the portieres aside to make a passage for her, as he went ahead to scratch a match and light the long, one-armed flickering kitchen burner. The bare, deeply shadowed floor, the kitchen table, the blank windows, and the blackened range, in which the fire was out, came desolately into view. There was a sense as of deep darkness of the night outside around everything.

A large white cat lying on a red-striped cushion on a chair by the chilly hearth stretched itself and blinked its yellow eyes toward the two intruders.

"Let me fill this," said Girard, taking the pitcher from her--a rather large, clumsy majolica article with a twisted vine for a handle--and carrying it over to the faucet. The intimacy of the hour and the scene emphasized the more the punctilious aloofness of this enforced companionship.

Dosia leaned back against the table, while he let the water run, that it might grow cold. It sounded in the silence as if it were falling on a drumhead. The moment--it was hardly more--seemed interminable to Dosia. The white cat, jumping up on the table, put its paws on her shoulders, and she leaned back very absently, and curved her throat sideways, that her cheek might touch him in recognition. Some inner thought claimed her, to the exclusion of the present; her eyes, looking dreamily before her, took on that expression that was indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet.

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 round 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.

The water had stopped running, and Dosia straightened herself. She raised her head, to meet his eyes upon her. What was in them? The color flamed in her face and left her white, although in a second there was nothing more to see in his but a deep and guarded gentleness as he came toward her with the pitcher.

"I'll take it now, please," she said hurriedly.

"Won't you let me carry it up for you?"

"Thank you, it isn't necessary. I'll go along, if you'll wait and turn out the light."

"Very well. You're sure it's not too heavy for you?" he asked anxiously, as her wrists bent a little with the weight.

"Oh, no, indeed," said Dosia quickly, turning to go. At that moment the white cat, jumping down from the table in front of her, rubbed itself against her skirts, and she stumbled slightly.

"Take care!" cried Girard, grasping the shaking pitcher over her slight hold of it.

Their hands touched--for the first time since the night of disaster, the night of her trust and his protection. The next instant there was a crash; the fragments of the jug lay upon the kitchen floor, the water streaming over it in rivulets.

"Dosia!" called the frightened voice of Lois from above.

"Yes, I'm coming," Dosia called back. "There's nothing the matter!" She had run from the room without looking up at that figure beside her, snatching a glass of water automatically from the dining-table as she passed by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep pace with her beating heart.

When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to confirm the tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago.

TO BE CONCLUDED

THE PROBLEMS OF SUICIDE

BY GEORGE KENNAN

Few branches of sociological investigation have more practical importance, or present a greater number of problems, difficulties, and interesting speculative questions, than the branch that deals with the complex, varied, and often inexplicable phenomena of suicide. When we consider the fact that more than ten thousand persons take their own lives in the United States every year, that more than seventy thousand die annually by their own hands in Europe, and that the suicide rate is constantly and rapidly increasing throughout the greater part of the civilized world, we are forced to admit that, from the view-point of vital economy at least, the subject is one of the utmost gravity. In 1881 the annual suicide rate of the United States was only 12 per million of the population, and our total number of suicides was only 605; last year our suicide rate had risen to 126 per million, and our suicides numbered 10,782. If the present rate of increase be maintained, we shall lose by suicide, in the next five years, nearly as many lives as were lost by the Union armies in battle in the five years of the Civil War. We are already losing annually from this cause more men than were killed on the Union side in the three great battles of Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, and the Wilderness taken together.

Statisticians have estimated that, in the world as a whole, there is a suicide every three minutes, and we know, with an approximation to certainty, that there is a suicide every six minutes and a half in Europe and the United States alone. Suicide has cost France 274,000 lives since 1871, Germany 158,000 since 1893, and the United States 120,000 since 1890. I need hardly point out the practical importance of the questions that present themselves in connection with this abnormal and apparently unnecessary waste of human life. Among such questions are: Upon what general and world-wide conditions does suicide depend? Are any of its causes removable? What are the reasons for the steady and progressive increase of self-destruction in civilized countries? Is suicide controlled or affected by any natural laws, and, if so, by what laws? These are all questions of practical importance, because upon the answers to them depends the possibility of economizing human life and increasing the sum total of human happiness. But the subject is one of deep interest, entirely apart from its practical importance.

_Psychological Problems of Suicide_

In some of its aspects, suicide raises psychological questions which bristle with difficulties, but which, nevertheless, pique the curiosity and demand explanatory answers. Why, for example, is the rate of suicide strictly dependent everywhere upon season and weather? Why is the tendency to self-destruction lessened by war? What is the explanation of suicide in the face of impending death, when there is still a fair chance of escape, or when the natural death that is threatened would involve less suffering than the act of self-destruction? What is the mental state of the hundreds of persons who kill themselves every year upon what would seem to be absurdly inadequate provocation--of the man, for example, who commits suicide because his wife declines to get out his clean underclothes, or the woman who takes poison because she has received a comic valentine? In its religious aspect, why is the tendency to suicide greatest among Protestant Christians and least among Mohammedans and Jews? In its racial aspect, why is the suicide rate of Japan eight times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites eight or ten times that of full-blooded American blacks? Why do the Slavs of Bohemia kill themselves at the rate of 158 per million, while the Slavs of Russia commit suicide at the rate of only 31 per million? Why do emigrants, going to a new country, carry their national suicide rates with them, and maintain such rates, with little or no alteration, long after their environment has completely changed? These questions may not have great practical importance, but, from the view-point of the psychologist and the sociologist, they are full of speculative interest.

When we study the phenomena of suicide as they appear in the light of statistics, we are struck by the fact that among the general and world-wide conditions that limit or control the suicidal impulse are weather and war. Other factors, such as education, religion, or economic status, may seem to be more influential, if observation be limited to a single nation or a single continent; but if a comprehensive survey be made of the whole world, weather and war will be seen to take a prominent place among the few agencies that affect uniformly the suicidal tendency.

As soon as accurate and trustworthy statistics of self-destruction became available in Europe, sociologists began to study the question whether suicide is controlled or regulated in any way by natural laws, and, if so, whether cosmical causes, such as climate, temperature, season, and weather, have any perceptible influence upon the suicide rate. It was soon discovered that the tendency to self-destruction is greatest in the zone lying between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth parallels of north latitude. South of forty-three degrees the annual suicide rate is only 21 per million, and north of fifty-five degrees it is only 88 per million; but between the parallels of forty-three and fifty it rises to 93 per million, and between fifty and fifty-five it reaches its maximum of 172 per million. The suicide belt, therefore, lies in the north temperate zone, where the climate is most favorable to human development and happiness. This fact, however, does not prove that a moderate and equable climate predisposes to suicide. Things may coexist without being in any way related to each other, and the frequency of suicide in the north temperate zone may be due wholly to the fact that the zone in question is the home of the most cultivated races and the seat of the highest and most complicated civilization. In this zone the struggle for life is fiercest, the interference with natural laws is most extensive, and the physical and emotional wear and tear of the economic contest is most acutely felt. It is more than probable, therefore, that the high rate of suicide in the north temperate zone is due to the civilization, rather than to the climate, of that region. This phase of the subject need not be discussed at length, because all competent authorities agree that climate, in its relation to suicide, is not a controlling or determining factor.

A very different state of affairs appears, however, when we bring the suicide rate into correlation with season and weather. Long ago, before accurate statistics made a scientific investigation of the subject possible, there was a widely prevalent popular belief that dark and dismal months of the year, and gloomy, rainy, or uncomfortable weather, predisposed mankind to self-destruction, and that the suicide rate was highest in November or December, and lowest in spring or early summer.

_Spring and Summer the Suicide Seasons_

The French philosopher Montesquieu went so far as to explain the supposed frequency of suicide in London by connecting it with English rains and fogs. It was only natural, he argued, that unhappy people should kill themselves in a country where the autumnal and winter months were so dark, and where there was so much gloomy, depressing weather. When, however, investigators began to study the subject in the light of accurate statistics, when they grouped suicides by months and compared one month with another, they were surprised to find that the tendency to suicide was greatest, not in the gloomy and depressing months of November and December, but in the bright and cheerful month of June. In 1898 Dr. Oscar Geck, of Strasburg, published statistics of about 100,000 suicides that took place in Prussia in the twenty-year period between 1876 and 1896. They showed that, so far at least as Prussia was concerned, suicides invariably attained their maximum in June and their minimum in December. There was a constant rise in the suicide curve from January to the end of June, and a constant decline from June to the end of the first winter month.

Durkheim, of Paris, and Dr. Gubski, of St. Petersburg, who are among the most recent investigators of the subject, assert that, so far as the seasonal distribution of suicides is concerned, the figures for Prussia hold good throughout Europe. June is everywhere the suicide month, and December is everywhere the month in which self-destruction is least frequent. Durkheim gives tabulated statistics for seven of the principal countries of Europe, which show conclusively that, in point of predisposing tendency to suicide, the four seasons stand in the following order: summer first, spring second, autumn third, and winter last.[17] Even in Russia, which differs most from the rest of Europe in ethnology and economic status, the seasonal distribution of suicides is the same. Dr. Gubski's statistics show that of every thousand Russian suicides, 328 take place in summer, 272 in spring, 215 in autumn, and 185 in winter. If we divide the year into halves, and group the suicides in semi-annual periods, we find that 600 occur in the pleasant spring and summer months and only 400 in the gloomy months of winter and fall.

A study of American statistics brings us to almost exactly the same result. In September, 1895, Dr. Forbes Winslow, of New York, read a paper before the medico-legal congress which was then in session in that city upon the subject of "Suicide as a Mental Epidemic." The statistics which he submitted showed that in the United States, as in Europe, suicide reaches its maximum in June and falls to its minimum in December. The average annual number of American suicides in June is 336 and in December 217. If we divide the year into halves and compare the figures of the semi-annual periods with those of Russia, the correspondence is almost startling.

Notwithstanding the immense difference between the population of Russia and that of the United States, in environment, in education, in religion, in inherited character, in temperament, and in civilization generally, the mysterious law that controls the seasonal distribution of suicides operates in America exactly as it operates in the great empire of the Slavs. In Russia, out of every thousand suicides, the number who kill themselves in the fall-and-winter half of the year is precisely 400; in America it is 386. In Russia, the proportion per thousand in the spring-and-summer half of the year is 600; in America it is 614. There is a slightly greater tendency to spring-and-summer suicide in the United States than in Russia, but the variation is only a little more than one per cent., and taking into consideration the great difference between the oppressed and ignorant peasants of Russia, and the free, well-educated citizens of our own country, the practical identity of their seasonal suicide rates seems to me a most extraordinary social and psychological fact.

This, however, is by no means a complete statement of the problem involved in the seasonal distribution of suicides. Spring and summer are the suicide seasons, not only among the closely related nationalities of Europe and the United States, but among the ethnologically alien peoples of the Far East. The reports of the Statistical Bureau of Japan show that between 1899 and 1903 the average annual number of suicides was 8,840. They were distributed through the year as follows: winter 1,711, spring 2,475, summer 2,703, fall 1,951. If we divide the year into halves, we find that 59 per cent. of the Japanese suicides occur in the spring and summer months and only 41 per cent. in the months of fall and winter. This corresponds almost exactly with the annual distribution of suicides in the United States, in Russia, and in Europe as a whole. The seasonal percentages may be shown in tabular form as follows:[18]

United
States Russia Europe Japan
per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent.
Spring and summer 61 60 59 59
Fall and winter 39 40 41 41

It thus appears that the tendency of mankind to commit suicide in spring and summer, rather than in fall and winter, is quite as strongly marked in Japan as it is in Europe and America. Despite all differences of character and environment, the suicidal impulses of Yankee, muzhik, and coolie are governed by the same law.

_Suicide Weather_

The evidence above set forth, and much more for which I cannot here find space, seems conclusively to establish the fact that, throughout the civilized world, the pleasantest seasons of the year are most conducive to suicide. The question then arises, Does this rule hold good if applied to the pleasantest days of the pleasantest seasons? In other words, is the tendency to suicide greater on clear, dry, and sunny days in June than on dark, cloudy, and rainy days in June? Professor Edwin G. Dexter, of the University of Illinois, published in the _Popular Science Monthly_, in April, 1901, a long and interesting paper entitled "Suicide and the Weather," in which he gave the result of a comparison between the police records of 1,962 cases of suicide in the city of New York and the records of the New York Weather Bureau for all the days on which these suicides occurred. His comparisons and computations, which seem to have been made with great thoroughness and care, show not only that the tendency to suicide is greatest in the spring and summer months, but that it is most marked on the clearest, sunniest, and pleasantest days of those months. To state his conclusions in his own words: "The clear, dry days show the greatest number of suicides, and the wet, partly cloudy days the least; and with differences too great to be attributed to accident or chance. In fact, there are thirty-one per cent. more suicides on dry than on wet days, and twenty-one per cent. more on clear days than on days that are partly cloudy."

It thus appears that, as a rule, the tendency to suicide, throughout the civilized world, is greatest in the pleasantest seasons of the year; that it is everywhere greatest in the pleasantest month of the pleasantest season; and that in New York City it is greatest on the clearest and sunniest days of the pleasantest month. From the point of view of science, therefore, it is perfectly reasonable and absolutely accurate to say on a beautiful, sunny day in early June, "This is regular suicide weather."

Now, what is the explanation of this world-wide tendency to self-destruction in the seasons, months, and days when life would seem to be best worth living? The cause, whatever it be, can have no connection with race, religion, history, political status, or geographical location, because it acts uniformly among peoples as widely different, in all these respects, as the Russians, the Italians, the Americans, and the Japanese. It is evidently a cosmic cause, but what is its nature?

Some investigators have suggested that the suicidal tendency is dependent on heat; but June is not the hottest month, nor is December the coldest. Durkheim has tested this conjecture by comparing temperatures with suicides in France, Italy, and Prussia. He finds that, in all three of these countries, suicides reach their maximum in June and their minimum in December, while the temperature does not rise to its maximum until July and does not fall to its minimum until January.[19] Moreover, if heat were a predisposing cause of suicide, we should find the suicide rate of Europeans much higher in the tropics than it is in the north temperate zone; but such is not the case. Heat, therefore, as a possible cause, must be eliminated. Other writers, including Dr. Gubski, have called attention to the very close relation between suicide and light. It is true that daylight, if measured by hours, has its minimum in December and its maximum in June, in precise correspondence with the seasonal rates of suicide; but what about the equinoctial periods of March and September?