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Title: The Squirrel-Cage
Author: Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 1879-1958
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Squirrel-Cage" ***
[Illustration: Paul stood by her, looking down into her eyes, bending
over her, smiling, pressing, confident, masterful. (Page 96)]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SQUIRREL-CAGE
By
DOROTHY CANFIELD
With Illustrations By
JOHN ALONZO WILLIAMS
New York
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1912
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1911, 1912,
By
THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
Copyright, 1912,
By
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Published March, 1912
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE FAIRY PRINCESS
CHAPTER PAGE
I An American Family 3
II American Beauties 12
III Picking up the Threads 22
IV The Dawn 32
V The Day Begins 42
VI Lydia's Godfather 55
VII Outside the Labyrinth 61
VIII The Shadow of the Coming Event 78
IX Father and Daughter 88
X Casus Belli 99
BOOK II
IN THE LOCOMOTIVE CAB
XI What is Best for Lydia 115
XII A Sop to the Wolves 122
XIII Lydia Decides in Perfect Freedom 131
XIV Mid-Season Nerves 139
XV A Half-Hour's Liberty 154
XVI Engaged to be Married 165
XVII Card-Dealing and Patent Candles 177
BOOK III
A SUITABLE MARRIAGE
XVIII Two Sides to the Question 193
XIX Lydia's New Motto 207
XX An Evening's Entertainment 215
XXI An Element of Solidity 226
XXII The Voices in the Wood 233
XXIII For Ariadne's Sake 244
XXIV "Through Pity and Terror Effecting a
Purification of the Heart" 261
XXV A Black Mile-stone 270
XXVI A Hint from Childhood 277
XXVII Lydia Reaches Her Goal and has Her Talk with Her Husband 289
XXVIII "The American Man" 307
XXIX ".........In Tragic Life, God Wot, No Villain Need be.
Passions Spin the Plot" 318
XXX Tribute to the Minotaur 328
BOOK IV
BUT IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR ARIADNE
XXXI Protection from the Minotaur 337
XXXII As Ariadne Saw It 342
XXXIII What is Best for the Children? 351
XXXIV Through the Long Night 359
XXXV The Swaying Balance 365
XXXVI Another Day Begins 369
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
Paul stood by her, looking down into her eyes,
bending over her, smiling, pressing, confident,
masterful (Page 96) Frontispiece
PAGE
"You say beautiful things!" he replied quietly. "My
rough quarters are glorified for me" 69
"No, no; I can't--see him--I can't stand any more--" 137
"I see everything now," she went on. "He could not stop." 272
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SQUIRREL-CAGE
BOOK I
THE FAIRY PRINCESS
CHAPTER I
AN AMERICAN FAMILY
The house of the Emery family was a singularly good example of the
capacity of wood and plaster and brick to acquire personality. It was
the physical symbol of its owners' position in life; it was the history
of their career, written down for all to see, and as such they felt in
it the most justifiable pride. When Mr. and Mrs. Emery, directly after
their wedding in a small Central New York village, had gone West to Ohio
they had spent their tiny capital in building a small story-and-a-half
cottage, ornamented with the jig-saw work and fancy turning popular in
1872, and this had been the nucleus of their present rambling,
picturesque, many-roomed home. Every step in the long series of changes
which had led from its first state to its last had a profound and
gratifying significance for the Emerys, and its final condition,
prosperous, modern, sophisticated, with the right kind of woodwork in
every room that showed, with the latest, most unobtrusively artistic
effects in decoration, represented their culminating well-earned
position in the inner circle of the best society of Endbury.
Moreover, they felt that just as the house had been attained with
effort, self-denial and careful calculations, yet still without
incurring debt, so their social position had been secured by unremitting
diligence and care, but with no loss of self-respect or even of dignity.
They were honestly proud both of their house and of their list of
acquaintances and saw no reason to regard them as less worthy
achievements of an industrious life than their four creditable grown-up
children or Judge Emery's honorable reputation at the bar. In their
youth they had conceived of certain things as worth attaining. They had
worked hard for these things and their unabashed pleasure in possessing
them had the vivid and substantial quality which comes from a keen
memory of battles with a world none too ready to grant human desires.
The two older children, George and Marietta, could remember those early
struggling days with almost as fresh an emotion as that of their
parents. Indeed, Marietta, now a competent, sharp-eyed matron of
thirty-two, could not see the most innocuous colored lithograph without
an uncontrollable wave of bitterness, so present to her mind was the
period when they painfully groped their way out of chromos.
The date of that epoch coincided with the date of their first
acquaintance with the Hollisters. The Hollisters were Endbury's First
Family; literally so, for they had come up from their farm in Kentucky
to settle in Endbury when it was but a frontier post. It was a part of
their superiority over other families that their traditions took
cognizance of the time when great stumps from the primeval forest stood
in what was now Endbury's public square, the hub of interurban trolley
traffic, whence the big, noisy cars started for their infinitely
radiating journeys over the flat, fertile country about the little city.
The particular Mrs. Hollister who, at the time the Emerys began to
pierce the upper crust, was the leader of Endbury society, had discarded
chromos as much as five years before. Mrs. Emery and Marietta, newly
admitted to the honor of her acquaintance, wondered to themselves at the
cold monotony of her black and white engravings. The artlessness of this
wonder struck shame to their hearts when they chanced to learn that the
lady had repaid it with a worldly-wise amusement at their own
highly-colored waterfalls and snow-capped mountain-peaks. Marietta
could recall as piercingly as if it were yesterday, in how crestfallen a
chagrin she and her mother had gazed at their parlor after this
incident, their disillusioned eyes open for the first time to the
futility of its claim to sophistication. As for the incident that had
led to the permanent retiring from their table of the monumental
salt-and-pepper "caster" which had been one of their most prized wedding
presents, the Emerys refused to allow themselves to remember it, so
intolerably did it spell humiliation.
Even the oldest son, prosperous, well-established manufacturer that he
was, could not recall without a shudder his first dinner-party. A branch
of the Hollisters had moved next door to the Emerys and, to Mrs. Emery's
great satisfaction, an easy neighborly acquaintance had sprung up
between the two families. Secure in this familiarity, and not
distinguishing the immense difference between a chance invitation to
drop in to dinner and a formal invitation to dine, the young
business-man had almost forgotten the date for which he had been bidden.
Remembering it with a start, he had gone straight from his office to the
house of his hosts, supposing that he would be able, as he had done many
times before, to wash his face and hands in the bath-room and brush his
hair in the room of the son of the house.
The sight of a black man in evening dress, who opened the door to him
instead of the usual maid, sent a vague apprehension through his
preoccupied mind, but it was not until he found himself in the room set
apart for the masculine guests and saw everyone arrayed in
"swallow-tails," as he thought of them, that he realized what he had
done. The emotion of the moment was one that made a mark on his life.
He had an instant's wild notion of making some excuse to go home and
dress, for his plight was by no means due to necessity. He had a correct
outfit of evening clothes, bought at the urgent command of his mother,
which he had worn several times at public dinners given by the city
Board of Trade and once at a dancing party at the home of the head of
his firm. However, the hard sense which made him successful in his
business kept him from a final absurdity now. He had been seen, and he
decided grimly that he would be, on the whole, a shade more laughable if
he appeared later in a changed costume.
He was twenty-one years old at that time; he considered himself a man
grown. He had been in business for five years and his foot was already
set firmly on the ladder of commercial success on which he was to mount
high, but not for nothing had he felt about him all his life the
inextinguishable desire of his family to outgrow rusticity. He chided
himself for unmanly pettiness, but the fact remained that throughout the
interminable evening the sight of his gray striped trousers or colored
cuffs affected him to a chagrin that was like a wave of physical nausea.
Four years later he had married a handsome young lady from among the
Hollister connections, and, moving away to Cleveland, where no memory of
his antecedents could handicap him, had begun a new social career as
eminently successful as his rapid commercial expansion. He forced
himself sometimes to think of that long-past evening as one presses on a
scar to learn how much soreness is left in an old wound, and he smiled
at the little tragedy of egotism it had been to him. But it was a wry
smile.
A brighter recollection to all the Emerys was the justly complacent and
satisfied remembrance of the house grounds during the first really
successful social event they had achieved. It was a lawn-fête, given for
the benefit of St. Luke's church, which Mrs. Emery and Marietta had
recently joined. Socially, it was the first fruits of their conversion
from Congregationalism. The weather was fine, the roses were out, the
very best people were there, the bazaar was profitable, and the dowager
of the Hollister matrons had spoken warm words of admiration of the
competent way in which the occasion had been managed to Mrs. Emery,
smiling and flushed in an indomitably self-respecting pleasure. The
older Emerys still sometimes spoke of that afternoon and evening as
parents remember the hour when their baby first walked alone, with
something of the same mixture of pride in the later achievements of the
child and of tenderness for its early weakness.
The youngest of the Emerys, many years the junior of her brothers and
sister, knew nothing at all of the anxious bitter-sweet of these early
endeavors for sophistication. By the time she came to conscious,
individual life the summit had been virtually reached. It is not to be
denied that Lydia had witnessed several abrupt changes in the family
ideal of household decoration or of entertaining, but since they were
exactly contemporaneous with similar changes on the part of the
Hollisters and other people in their circle, these revolutions of taste
brought with them no sense of humiliation. Such, for instance, was the
substitution for carpets of hardwood floors and rugs as oriental as the
purse would allow. Lydia could remember gorgeously flowered carpets on
every Emery floor, but since they also covered all the prosperous floors
in town at the same time, it was not more painful to have found them
attractive than to have worn immensely large sleeves or preposterously
blousing shirt waists, to have ridden bicycles, or read E. P. Roe, or
anything else that everybody used to do and did no more. She could
remember, also, when charades and book-parties were considered amusing
pastimes for grown-ups, but in passing beyond these primitive tastes the
Emerys had been well abreast of their contemporaries. The last charade
party had not been held in _their_ parlors, they congratulated
themselves.
A philosophic observer who had known the history of Mrs. Emery's life
might have found something pathetic in her pleasure at Lydia's
light-hearted jesting at the funny old things people used to think
pretty and the absurd pursuits they used to think entertaining. It was
to her a symbol that her daughter had escaped what had caused her so
much suffering, the uneasy, self-distrusting dread lest she might still
be finding pretty things that up-to-date people thought grotesque; lest
suddenly what she had toiled so painfully to obtain should somehow turn
out to be not the "right thing" after all. Marietta did not recall more
vividly than did her mother the trying period that had elapsed between
their new enlightenment on the subject of chromos and the day when an
unexpected large fee from a client of Mr. Emery (not yet Judge) enabled
them to hang their Protestant walls with engravings of pagan gods and
Roman Catholic saints. For their problem had never been the simple one
of merely discovering the right thing. There had always been added to it
the complication of securing the right thing out of an income by no
means limitless. The head of the household had enjoyed the success that
might have been predicted from his whole-souled absorption in his
profession, but Judge Emery came of old-fashioned rural stock with
inelastic ideas of honesty, and though he was more than willing to toil
early and late to supply funds for his family and satisfy whatever form
of ambition his women-folk might decree to be the best one, he was not
willing to take advantage of the perquisites of his position, and never,
as the phrase in the town ran, "made on the side." Of his temptations
and of his stout resistance to them, his wife and children knew no more,
naturally, than of any of the other details of his professional life,
which, according to the custom of their circle, were as remote and
hidden from them as if he had departed each morning after his hearty
early breakfast into another planet; but his wife was proud of the
integrity which she divined in her husband and, as she often declared
roundly to Marietta, would not have exchanged his good name for a much
larger income.
Indeed, the acridity which for Marietta lingered about the recollection
of their efforts to make themselves over did not exist in the more amply
satisfied mind of her mother. The difference showed itself visibly in
the contrast between the daughter's face, stamped with a certain tired,
unflagging intensity of endeavor, and the freshness of the older woman.
At thirty-two, Marietta looked, perhaps, no older than her age, but
obviously more worn by the strain of life than her mother at fifty-six.
Sometimes, as she noted in her mirror the sharp lines of a fatigue that
was almost bitterness, she experienced a certain unnerving uncertainty,
a total lack of zest for what she so eagerly struggled to attain, and
she envied her mother's single-minded satisfaction in getting what she
wanted.
Mrs. Emery had enjoyed the warfare of her life heartily; the victories
for their own sake, the defeats because they had spurred her on to fresh
and finally successful efforts, and the remembrance of both was sweet to
her. She loved her husband for himself and for what he had been able to
give her, and she loved her children ardently, although she had been
sorely vexed by her second son's unfortunate marriage. He had always
been a discordant note in the family concert, the veiled, unconscious,
uneasy skepticism of Marietta bursting out openly in Henry as a
careless, laughing cynicism, excessively disconcerting to his mother.
She sometimes thought he had married the grocer's daughter out of
"contrariness." The irritation which surrounded that event, and the play
of cross-purposes and discord which had filled the period until the
misguided young people had voluntarily exiled themselves to the Far
West, remained more of a sore spot in Mrs. Emery's mind than any blow
given or taken in her lifelong campaign for distinction. She admitted
frankly to herself that it was a relief that Harry was no longer near
her, although her mother's heart ached for the Harry he had seemed to
her before his rebellion. She fancied that she would enjoy him as of old
if the litter of inconvenient persons and facts lying between them could
but be cleared away; with a voluntary blindness not uncommon in parents,
refusing to recognize that these superficial differences were only the
outward expression of a fundamental alienation within. At all events, it
was futile to speculate about the matter, since the width of the
continent and her son's intense distaste for letter-writing separated
them. She had come, therefore, to turn all her attention and proud
affection on her youngest child.
It seemed to her sometimes that Lydia had been granted her by a
merciful Providence in order that she might make that "fresh start all
over again" which is the never-realized ideal of erring humanity.
Marietta had been a young lady fourteen years before, and fourteen years
meant much--meant everything to people who progressed as fast as the
Emerys. Uncertain of themselves, they had not ventured to launch
Marietta boldly upon the waves of a society the chart of which was so
new to them. She had no coming-out party. She simply put on long skirts,
coiled her black hair on top of her head, and began going to evening
parties with a few young men who were amused by the tart briskness of
her tongue and attracted by the comeliness of her healthful youth. She
had married the first man who proposed to her--a young insurance agent.
Since then they had lived in a very comfortable, middling state of
harmony, apparently on about the same social scale as Marietta's
parents. That this feat was accomplished on a much smaller income was
due to Marietta's unrivaled instinct and trained capacity for keeping up
appearances.
All this history had been creditable, but nothing more; and Mrs. Emery
often looked at her elder daughter with compunction for her own earlier
ignorance and helplessness. She could have done so much more for
Marietta if she had only known how. Mrs. Mortimer was, however, a rather
prickly personality with whom to attempt to sympathize, and in general
her mother felt the usual -in-law conclusion about her daughter's life:
that Marietta could undoubtedly have done better than to marry her
industrious, negligible husband, but that, on the whole, she might have
done worse; and it was much to be hoped that her little boy would
resemble the Emerys and not the Mortimers.
No such philosophical calm restrained her emotions about Lydia. She was
in positive beauty and charm all that poor Marietta had not been, and
she was to have in the way of backing and management all that poor
Marietta had lacked. It seemed to Mrs. Emery that her whole life had
been devoted to learning what to do and what not to do for Lydia. As the
time of action drew nearer she nerved herself for the campaign with a
finely confident feeling that she knew every inch of the ground. Her
expectancy grew more and more tense as her eagerness rose. During the
long year that Lydia was in Europe, receiving a final gloss, even higher
than that imparted by the expensive and exclusive girls' school where
she had spent the years between fourteen and eighteen, Mrs. Emery laid
her plans and arranged her life with a fervent devotion to one end--the
success of Lydia's first season in society. Every room in the house
seemed to her vision to stand in a bright vacancy awaiting the arrival
of the débutante.
CHAPTER II
AMERICAN BEAUTIES
On the morning of Lydia's long-expected return, as Mrs. Emery moved
restlessly about the large double parlors opening out on a veranda where
the vines were already golden in the September sunlight, it seemed to
her that the very walls were blank in hushed eagerness and that the
chairs and tables turned faces like hers, tired with patience, toward
the open door. She had not realized until the long separation was almost
over how unendurably she had missed her baby girl, as she still thought
of the tall girl of nineteen. She could not wait the few hours that were
left. Her fortitude had given way just too soon. She must have the dear
child now, now, in her arms.
She moved absently a spray of goldenrod which hid a Fra Angelico angel
over the mantel and noted with dramatic self-pity that her hand was
trembling. She sat down suddenly, and lost herself in a vain attempt to
recall the well-beloved sound of Lydia's fresh young voice. A knot came
in her throat, and she covered her face with her large, white,
carefully-manicured hands.
Marietta came in briskly a few moments later, bringing a bouquet of
asters from her own garden. She was dressed, as always, with a severe
reticence in color and line which, though due to her extreme need for
economy, nevertheless gave to the rather spare outlines of her tall
figure a distinction, admired by Endbury under the name of stylishness.
Her rapid step had carried her half-way across the wide room before she
saw to her surprise that her mother, usually so self-contained, was
giving way to an inexplicable emotion.
"Good gracious, Mother!" she began in the energetic fashion which was
apt to make her most neutral remarks sound combative.
Mrs. Emery dried her eyes with a gesture of protest, adjusted her gray
pompadour deftly, and cut off her daughter's remonstrance, "Oh, you
needn't tell me I'm foolish, Marietta. I know it. I just suddenly got so
impatient it didn't seem as though I could wait another minute!"
The younger woman accepted this explanation of the tears with a murmured
sound of somewhat enigmatic intonation. Her thin dark face settled into
a repose that had a little grimness in it. She began putting the flowers
into a vase that stood between the reproduction of a Giotto Madonna and
a Japanese devil-hunt, both results of the study of art taken up during
the past winter by her mother's favorite woman's club. Mrs. Emery
watched the process in the contemplative relief which follows an
emotional outbreak, and her eyes wandered to the objects on either side
the vase. The sight stirred her to speech. "Oh, Marietta, how _do_ you
suppose the house will seem to Lydia after she has seen so much? I hope
she won't be disappointed. I've done so much to it this last year,
perhaps she won't like it. And Oh, I _was_ so tried because we weren't
able to get the new sideboard put up in the dining-room yesterday!"
Mrs. Mortimer glanced without smiling at a miniature of her sister,
blooming in a shrine-like arrangement on her mother's writing-desk. She
shook her dark head with a gesture like her father's, and said with his
blunt decisiveness, "Really, Mother, you must draw the line about Lydia.
She's only human. I guess if the house is good enough for you and father
it is good enough for her."
She crossed the room toward the door with a brisk rattle of starched
skirts, but as she passed her mother her hand was caught and held.
"That's just it, Marietta--that's just what came over me! _Is_ what's
good enough for us good enough for Lydia? Won't anything, even the best,
in Endbury be a come-down for her?"
The slightly irritated impatience with which Mrs. Mortimer had listened
to the first words of this speech gave way to a shrewd amusement. "You
mean that you've put Lydia up on such a high plane to begin with that
whichever way she goes will be a step down," she asked.
"Yes, yes; that's just it," breathed her mother, unconscious of any
irony in her daughter's accent. She fixed her eyes, which, in spite of
her having long since passed the half-century mark, were still very
clear and blue, anxiously upon Marietta's opaque dark ones. She felt not
only a need to be reassured in general by anyone, but a reluctant faith
in the younger woman's judgment.
Marietta released herself with a laugh that was like a light, mocking
tap on her mother's shoulder. "Well, folks that haven't got real worries
will certainly manufacture them! To worry about Lydia's future in
Endbury! Aren't you afraid the sun won't rise some day? If ever there
was any girl that had a smooth road in front of her--"
The door-bell rang. "They've come! They've come!" cried Mrs. Emery
wildly.
"Lydia wouldn't ring the bell, and her train isn't due till ten," Mrs.
Mortimer reminded her.
"Oh, yes. Well, then, it's the new sideboard. I am so--"
"It's a boy with a big pasteboard box," contradicted Mrs. Mortimer,
looking down the hall to the open front door.
Seeing someone there to receive it, the boy set the box inside the
screen door and started down the steps.
"Bring it here! Bring it here!" called Mrs. Mortimer, commandingly.
"It's for Lydia," said Mrs. Emery, looking at the address. She spoke
with an accent of dramatic intensity, and a flush rose to her fair
cheeks.
Her olive-skinned daughter looked at her and laughed. "What did you
expect?"
"But he didn't care enough about her coming home to be in town to-day!"
Mrs. Emery's maternal vanity flared up hotly.
Mrs. Mortimer laughed again and began taking the layers of crumpled
wax-paper out of the box. "Oh, that was the trouble with you, was it?
That's nothing. He had to be away to see about a new electrical plant in
Dayton. Did you ever know Paul Hollister to let anything interfere with
business?" This characterization was delivered with an intonation that
made it the most manifest praise.
Her mother seconded it with unquestioning acquiescence. "No, that's a
fact; I never did."
Mrs. Mortimer in her turn had an accent of dramatic intensity as she
cried out, "Oh! they are American Beauties! The biggest I ever saw!"
The two women looked at the flowers, almost awestruck at their size.
"Have you a vase?" Mrs. Mortimer asked dubiously.
Mrs. Emery rose to the occasion. "The Japanese umbrella stand."
There was a pause as they reverently arranged the great sheaf of
enormous flowers. Then Mrs. Emery began, "Marietta--" She hesitated.
"Well," Mrs. Mortimer prompted her, a little impatiently.
"Do you really think that he--that Lydia--?"
Marietta accepted with a somewhat pinched smile her mother's boundary
lines of reticence. "Of course. Did you ever know Paul Hollister to give
up anything he wanted?"
Her mother shook her head.
Mrs. Mortimer rose with a "Well, then!" and the air of one who has said
all there is to be said on a subject, and again crossed the room toward
the door. Her mother drifted aimlessly in that direction also, as though
swept along by the other's energy.
"Well, it's a pity he is not here now, anyhow," she said, adding in a
spirited answer to her daughter's expression, "Now, you needn't look
that way, Marietta. You know yourself that Lydia is very romantic and
fanciful. It would be a very different matter if she were like Madeleine
Hollister. She wouldn't need any managing."
Mrs. Mortimer smiled at the idea. "Yes, I'd like to see somebody try to
manage Paul's sister," she commented.
"They wouldn't _have_ to," her mother pointed out, "she's so
levelheaded and sane. But Lydia's different. It's part of her
loveliness, of course, only you do have to manage her. And she'll be in
a very unsettled state for the first week or two after she gets home
after such a long absence. The impressions she gets then--well, I wish
he were here!"
Mrs. Mortimer waved her hand toward the roses.
"Of course, of course," assented her mother, subsiding peaceably down
the scale from anxiety to confidence with the phrase. She looked at the
monstrous flowers with the gaze of acquired admiration so usual in her
eyes. "They don't look much like roses, do they?" she remarked
irrelevantly.
Mrs. Mortimer turned in the doorway, her face expressing an extreme
surprise. "Good gracious, no," she cried. "Why, of course not. They cost
a dollar and a half apiece."
She did not stop to hear her mother's vaguely assenting reply. Mrs.
Emery heard her firm, rapid tread go down the hall to the front door and
then suddenly stop. Something indefinable about the pause that followed
made the mother's heart beat thickly. "What is it, Marietta?" she
called, but her voice was lost in Mrs. Mortimer's exclamation of
surprise, "Why it can't be--why, _Lydia_!"
As from a great distance, the mother heard a confused rush in the hall,
and then, piercing through the dreamlike unreality of the moment, came
the sweet, high note of a girl's voice, laughing, but with the liquid
uncertainty of tears quivering through the mirth. "Oh, Marietta! Where's
Mother? Aren't you all slow-pokes--not a soul to meet us at the
train--where's Mother? Where's Mother? Where's--" The room swam around
Mrs. Emery as she stood up looking toward the door, and the girl who
came running in, her dark eyes shining with happy tears, was not more
real than the many visions of her that had haunted her mother's
imagination during the lonely year of separation. At the clasp of the
young arms about her face took light as from an inner source, and
breath came back to her in a sudden gasp. She tried to speak, but the
only word that came was "Lydia! Lydia! Lydia!"
The girl laughed, a half-sob breaking her voice as she answered
whimsically, "Well, who did you expect to see?"
Mrs. Mortimer performed her usual function of relieving emotional
tension by putting a strong hand on Lydia's shoulder and spinning her
about. "Come! I want to see if it _is_ you--and how you look."
For a moment the ardent young creature stood still in a glowing quiet.
She drank in the dazzled gaze of admiration of the two women with an
innocent delight. The tears were still in Mrs. Emery's eyes, but she did
not raise a hand to dry them, smitten motionless by the extremity of her
proud satisfaction. Never again did Lydia look to her as she did at that
moment, like something from another sphere, like some bright,
unimaginably happy being, freed from the bonds that had always weighed
so heavily on all the world about her mother.
Before she could draw breath, Lydia moved and was changed. Her mother
saw suddenly, with that emotion which only mothers know, reminiscences
of little-girlhood, of babyhood, even of long-dead cousins and aunts, in
the lovely face blooming under the wide hat. She felt the sweet
momentary confusion of individuality, the satisfied sense of complete
ownership which accompanies a strong belief in family ties. Lydia was
not only altogether entrancing, but she was of the same stuff with those
who loved her so dearly. It gave a deeper note to her mother's passion
of affectionate pride.
The girl turned with a pretty, defiant tilt of her head. "Well, and how
_do_ I look?" she asked; and before she could be answered she flew at
Mrs. Mortimer with a gentle roughness, clasping her arms around her
waist until the matron gasped. "_You_ look too good to be true--both of
you--if you are such lazybones that you wouldn't go to the station to
meet the prodigal daughter!"
"Well, if you will come on an earlier train than you telegraphed--"
began Mrs. Mortimer, "Everybody's getting ready to meet you with a brass
band. What did you do with Father?"
The girl moved away, putting her hands up to her hat uncertainly as
though about to take out the hat-pins. There was between the three a
moment of that constraint which accompanies the transition from
emotional intensity down to an everyday level. In Lydia's voice there
was even a little flatness as she answered, "Oh, he put me in the hack
and went off to see about business. I heard him 'phoning something to
somebody about a suit. We got through the customs sooner than we thought
we could, you see, and caught an earlier train."
Mrs. Emery turned her adoring gaze from Lydia's slim beauty and looked
inquiringly at her elder daughter. Mrs. Mortimer understood, and nodded.
"What are you two making faces about?" Lydia turned in time to catch the
interchange of glances.
Mrs. Emery hesitated. Marietta spoke with a crisp straightforwardness
which served as well in this case as nonchalance for keeping her remark
without undue significance. "We were just wondering if now wasn't a good
time to show you what Paul Hollister did for your welcome home. He
couldn't be here himself, so he sent those." She nodded toward the
bouquet.
As Lydia turned toward the flowers her two elders fixed her with the
unscrupulously scrutinizing gaze of blood-relations; but their
microscopic survey showed them nothing in the girl's face, already
flushed and excited by her home-coming, beyond a sudden amused surprise
at the grotesque size of the tribute.
"Why, for mercy's sake! Did you ever see such monsters! They are as big
as my head! Look!" She whirled her hat from the pretty disorder of her
brown hair and poised it on the topmost of the great flowers, stepping
back to see the effect and laughing, "They don't look any more like
roses, do they?" she added, turning to her mother. Mrs. Emery's answer
rose so spontaneously to her lips that she was not aware that she was
echoing Marietta. "Good gracious, no; of course not. They cost a dollar
and a half apiece."
Lydia neither assented to nor dissented from this apothegm. It started
another train of thought in her mind. "As much as all that! Why, Paul
oughtn't to be so extravagant! He can't afford it, and I should have
liked something else just as--"
Her sister broke in with an ample gesture of negation. "You don't know
Paul. If he goes on the way he's started--he's district sales manager
for southern Ohio already."
Lydia paid to this information the passing tribute of a moment's
uncomprehending surprise. "Think of that! The last time Paul told me
about himself he was working day and night in Schenectady, learning the
business, and getting--oh, I don't know--fifty cents an hour, or some
such starvation wages."
Mrs. Mortimer's bitterly acquired sense of values revolted at this.
"What are you talking about, Lydia? Fifty cents an hour starvation
wages!"
"Well, perhaps it was five cents an hour. I don't remember. And he
worked with his hands and was always in danger of getting shot through
with a million volts of electricity or mashed with a breaking fly-wheel
or something. He said electricians were the soldiers of modern
civilization. I told that to a German woman we met on the boat when she
said Americans have no courage because they don't fight duels. The
idea!"
She began pulling off her gloves, with a quick energetic gesture. Mrs.
Mortimer went on, "Well, he certainly has a brilliant future before
him. Everybody says that--" She stopped, struck by her rather heavy
emphasis on the theme and by a curious look from Lydia. The girl did not
blush, she did not seem embarrassed, but for a moment the childlike
clarity of her look was clouded by an expression of consciousness.
Mrs. Emery made a rush upon her, drawing her away toward the door with a
displeased look at Marietta. "Never mind about Paul's prospects," she
said. "With Lydia just this minute home, to begin gossiping about the
neighbors! Come up to your room, darling, and see the little outdoor
sitting-room we've had fixed over the porch."
Mrs. Mortimer was not given to bearing chagrin, even a passing one, with
undue self-restraint. She threw into the intonation of her next sentence
her resentment at the rebuke from her mother. "I still live, you know,
even if Lydia has come home!" As Mrs. Emery turned with a look of
apology, she added, "Oh, I only wanted to make you turn around so that I
could tell you that I am going to bring my two men-folks over here
to-night, to the gathering of the clans, and that I must go home until
then. Dr. Melton and Aunt Julia are coming, aren't they?"
"Oh, yes!" cried Lydia. "It doesn't seem to me I can wait to see
Godfather. I sort of half hoped he might be here now."
"Well, _Lydia_!" her mother reproached her jealously.
"Oh, you might as well give in, Mother, Lydia likes the little old
doctor better than any of the rest of us."
"He talks to me," said Lydia defensively.
"_We_ never say a word," commented Mrs. Mortimer.
Lydia broke away from her mother's close clasp and ran back to her
sister. She was always running, as though to keep up with the rapidity
of her swift impulses. She held her subtly-curved cheek up to the
other's strongly-marked face. "You just kiss me, Etta dear," she pleaded
softly, "and stop teasing."
Mrs. Mortimer looked long into the clear dark eyes with an unmoved
countenance. Then her face melted suddenly till she looked like her
mother. She put her arms about the girl with a fervent gesture of
tenderness. "Dear little Lydia," she murmured, with a quaver in her
voice.
CHAPTER III
PICKING UP THE THREADS
After she was alone she looked again at the miniature of Lydia. The
youthful radiance of the face had singularly the effect of a perfect
flower. Mrs. Mortimer glanced at the hat still drooping its wide brim
over the rose where Lydia had forgotten it, and stood still in a reverie
that had, from her aspect, something of sadness in it. After a moment
she sighed out, "Poor little Lydia!"
"What's the matter with Lydia?" asked someone behind her.
She turned and faced a dark, elderly personage, the robust dignity of
whose bearing was now tempered with shamefacedness. Mrs. Mortimer's face
sharpened in affectionate malice. "What are you doing here at this hour
of the morning?" she asked with a humorously exaggerated air of
amazement. "No self-respecting man is ever seen in his house during
business hours!" She went on, "Oh, I know well enough. You let Mother
have her first to make up for her being sick and not able to go to meet
her ship; but you can't stay away."
The Judge waved her raillery away with a smile. The physical resemblance
between father and daughter was remarkable. "I asked you what was the
matter with Lydia," he repeated.
Mrs. Mortimer's face clouded. "Oh, it's a hateful, horrid sort of world
we're all so eager to push her into. It's like a can full of angleworms,
everlastingly squirming and wriggling to get to the top. I was just
thinking that it would be better for her, maybe, if she could always
stay a little girl and travel 'round to see things."
"Why, Etta! I tell you _I'm_ glad to have Lydia get through with her
traveling 'round. Maybe I can see something of her if I hurry up and do
it now before your mother gets things going. I won't after that, of
course. I never have."
To this his daughter had one of her abrupt, disconcerting responses.
"You'd better hurry and do it before you get so deep in some important
trial that you wouldn't know Lydia from a plaster image. There are more
reasons than just Mother and card parties why you don't see much of her,
I guess."
Judge Emery forbore to argue the point. "Where are they now?" he asked.
"Oh, upstairs, out of my way. Mother's usual state of mind about Lydia
is more so than ever, I warn you. She thought I wasn't refined enough
company."
"Now, Etta, you know your mother never thought any such thing."
"Well, I know she was inconsistent, whatever she thought. While we were
here alone she was speculating about Paul Hollister like anything. And
yet, because I just happened to mention to Lydia that he is getting on
in the world, I got put down as if I'd tried to make her marry him for
his prospects."
There was an edge in her voice which her father deprecated, rubbing his
shaven chin mildly. He deplored the appearance of a flaw in the smooth
surface of harmony he loved to see in his family.
"Well, you know, Marietta, we aim to have everything about right for
Lydia. She's all we've got left now the rest of you are settled."
The deepening of the careworn lines in the woman's face seemed a
justification for the undisguised bitterness of her answer. "I don't see
why nobody must breathe a word to her about what everybody knows is so.
What's the use of pretending that we'd be satisfied or she'd be
comfortable a minute if Paul didn't promise to be a money-maker--or at
least to have a good income?"
She turned away and walked rapidly down the hall, followed by her
father, half apologetic, half reproachful. "Why, Daughter, you don't
grudge your sister! We couldn't do so much for you; but we're better off
since you were a young lady and we want Lydia to have the benefit."
Mrs. Mortimer paused on the veranda and stood looking in a troubled
silence at the broad, well-kept lawn, stretching down to the asphalt
street, shaded by vigorous young maples. Her father waited for her to
speak, too good a lawyer to spoil by superfluous words the effect of a
well-calculated appeal.
Finally she turned to him contritely. "I'm hateful, Dad, and I'm sorry.
Of course I don't grudge dear little Lydia anything. Only I have a
pretty hard time of it scratching along, and when I'm awfully tired of
contriving and calculating how to manage somehow and anyhow, it's hard
to come up to the standard of saying everything's lovely that you and
Mother want for Lydia."
"Anything the trouble specially?" asked her father guardedly.
"Oh, no; same old thing. Keeping up a two-maid and a man establishment
on a one-maid income, and mostly not being able to hire the one maid.
There aren't _any_ girls to be had lately. It means I have to be the
other maid and the man all of the time, and all three, part of the
time." She was starting down the step, but paused as though she could
not resist the relief that came from expression. "And the cost of
living--the necessities are bad enough, but the other things--the things
you have to have not to be out of everything! I lie awake nights. I
think of it in church. I can't think of anything else but the way the
expenses mount up. Everybody's getting so reckless and extravagant and I
_won't_ go into debt! I'll come to it, though. Everybody else does!
We're the only people that haven't oriental rugs now. Why, the
Gilberts--and everybody knows how much they still owe Dr. Melton for
Ellen's appendicitis, and their grocer told Ralph they owe him several
hundred dollars--well, they have just got an oriental rug that they paid
a hundred and sixty dollars for. Mrs. Gilbert said they 'just _had_ to
have it, and you can always have what you have to have.' It makes me
sick! Our parlor looks so common! And the last dinner party we gave
cost--" She detected a wavering in her father's attention, as though he
were listening for sounds inside the house, and broke off abruptly with
a hurt and impatient "Oh, well, no matter!" and ran down the steps.
Judge Emery called after with a relieved belittling of her complaints,
"Oh, if that's all you mean. Why, that's half the fun. I remember when
you were a baby your mother did the washings so that we could have a
nurse to take you out with the other children and their nurses."
Mrs. Mortimer was palpably out of earshot before he finished his
exhortation, so he wasted no more breath but turned back eagerly in
response to a call from Lydia, who came skimming down the hall. "Oh,
Daddy dearest, it's a jewel of a little sitting-room, the one you fixed
up for me--and Mother says we can serve punch there the night of my
coming-out party."
Mrs. Emery was at her heels. Her husband laughed at his wife's
expression, and drew her toward him. "Here, Mother, stop staring at
Lydia long enough to welcome me home, too." He bent over her and rubbed
his cheek against hers. "Come, tell me the news. Are you feeling
better?" He gave her a little playful push toward the door of the
parlor. "Here, let's go in and visit for a while. I'm an old fool! I
can't do any work this morning. I kept Lydia from telling me a thing all
the way from New York, so that we could hear it together."
Lydia protested. "Tell you! After those monstrous great letters I've
written! There's nothing you don't know. There's nothing much to tell,
anyhow. I've been museumed and picture-galleried, and churched, and
cultured generally, till I'm full--up to there!" She drew her hand
across her slim white throat and added cheerfully, "But I forgot the
most of that the last three months in Paris. Nearly every girl in the
party was going home to come out in society, and of course we just
concentrated on clothes. You don't mind, do you?"
As she hesitated, with raised eyebrows of doubt, her mother, heedless of
what she was saying, was suddenly overcome by her appealing look and
drew her close with a rush of little incoherent tender cries choked with
tears. It was as though she were seeing her for the first time. Judge
Emery twice tried to speak before his husky voice was under control. He
patted his wife on the shoulder. "There, there, Mother," he said
vaguely. To Lydia he went on, "You've been gone quite a while, you know,
and--well, till you have a baby-girl of your own I guess you won't have
much notion of how we feel."
Lydia's dark eyes filled, responsive to the emotion about her. "I'm just
about distracted," she cried. "I love everybody and everything so, I
can't stand it! I want to kiss you both and I can't make up my mind
which to kiss first--and it's that way about everything! It's all so
good I don't know what to begin on." She brought their faces together
and achieved a simultaneous kiss with a shaky laugh. "Now, look here! If
we stand here another minute we'll all cry. Come and show me the house.
I want to see every single thing. All the old things, and all the new
ones Mother's been writing about." She seized their hands and pulled
them into the parlor. "I've been in this room already, but I didn't see
it. I don't believe I even touched the floor when I walked, I was so
excited. Oh, it's lovely--it's lovely!"
She darted about the room like a humming-bird, recognizing what was
familiar with fond little exclamations. "Oh, that darling little wicker
chair!--the picture of the dog!--oh! oh! here's my china lamb!" and
crying out in admiration over new acquisitions.
"Oh, Mother, what a perfectly lovely couch--sofa--what do you call it?
Why, it is so beautifully _different_! Wherever did you get that?"
Mrs. Emery turned to her husband. "There, Nathaniel, what did I tell
you?" she triumphed.
"That's one of your mother's latest extravagances," explained Judge
Emery. "There's a crazy fad in Endbury for special handmade furniture.
Maybe it's all right, but I can't see it's so much better than what you
buy in the department stores. Grand Rapids is good enough for me."
"He doesn't like the man who made it," said Mrs. Emery accusingly.
"What's the matter with him?" asked Lydia, rubbing her hand luxuriously
over the satin-smooth, lusterless wood of the sofa's high back.
Judge Emery replied, with his laugh of easy, indifferent tolerance for
everything outside the profession of the law, "Oh, I never said I didn't
like him; I only said he struck me as a crack-brained, self-willed,
conceited--"
Lydia laughed. She thought her father's dry, ironic turns very witty.
"I never saw anything conceited about him," protested Mrs. Emery,
admitting the rest of the indictment.
Judge Emery sat down on the sofa in question and pulled his tie into
shape. "Well, folks are always conceited who find the ordinary ways of
doing things not good enough for them. Lydia, what do you think of this
tie? Nobody pays a proper attention to my ties but you."
"I've brought you some beauties from London," said Lydia. Then reverting
with a momentary curiosity to the subject they had left, "Whatever does
this man do that's so queer?"
"Oh, he's just one of the back-to-all-fours faddists," said her father.
"Back-to-all-fours?" Lydia was dim as to his meaning, but willing to be
amused.
"That's just your father's way," exclaimed Mrs. Emery, who had not her
daughter's fondness for the Judge's tricks of speech.
"He lives as no Dago ditch-digger with a particle of get-up-and-get in
him would be willing to," said Judge Emery finally.
Lydia turned to her mother.
"Why, it's nothing that would interest you in the least, dear," said the
matron, taking in admiringly Lydia's French dress. "Only for a little
while everybody was talking about how strangely he acted. He was an
insurance man, like Marietta's husband, and getting on finely, when all
of a sudden, for no reason on earth, he threw it all up and went to live
in the woods. Do you mean to say you only paid twenty dollars for that
dress?"
"In the woods!" repeated Lydia.
"Yes; the real woods. His father was a farmer, and left him--why you
know, you've been there ever so many times--the Black Rock woods, the
picnic woods. He has built him a little hut there and makes his
furniture out of the trees."
Lydia's passing curiosity had faded. "Not quite twenty, even--only
ninety-two francs," she at last answered her mother's question. "You
never saw anything like the bargains there in summertime. Well, I should
think your carpenter man _was_ crazy." She glanced down with
satisfaction at the hang of her skirt.
"Oh, not dangerous," her mother reassured her; "just socialistic, I
suppose, and all that sort of thing."
"Well, who's crazier than a socialist?" cried her father genially. He
added, "Where are you going, Daughter?"
Lydia stopped in the doorway, with a look of apology for her lack of
interest in their talk. "I thought I'd just slip into the hall and see
if there's anything new there. There's so much I want to see--all at
once."
Her fond impatience brought her parents forward with a start of
pleasure, and the tour of inspection began. She led them from one room
to another, swooping with swallow-like motions upon them for sudden
caresses, dazzling them with her changing grace. She liked it
all--all--she told them, a thousand times better than she remembered.
She liked the new arrangement of the butler's pantry; she loved the
library for being all done over new; she adored the hall for being left
exactly the way it was. The dining-room was the best of all, she
declared, with so much that was familiar and so much that was new. "Only
no sideboard," she commented. "Have they gone out of fashion while I was
away?"
Mrs. Emery, whose delight at Lydia's approval had been mounting with
every breath, looked vexed. "I knew you'd notice that!" she said. "We
tried so hard to get the new one put in before you got back, but Mr.
Rankin won't deliver a thing till it's just so!"
"Rankin!" cried Lydia, stopping so short in one of her headlong rushes
across the room that she gave the impression of having encountered an
invisible obstacle, "Who's that?"
"Oh, that's the crazy cabinet-maker we were talking about. The one
who--"
"Why, I've met a Mr. Rankin," said Lydia, with more emphasis than the
statement seemed to warrant.
"It's a common enough name," said her mother, struck oddly by her
accent.
"But here, in Endbury. Only it can't be the same person. He wasn't
queer; he was awfully nice. I met him once when a crowd of us were out
skating that last Christmas I was home from school; the time when you
and Father were in Washington and left me at Dr. Melton's with Aunt
Julia. I used to see him there a lot. He used to talk to the doctor by
the hour, and Aunt Julia and I were doing that set of doilies in
Hardanger work and we used to sit and sew and count threads and listen."
"That's the one," said her father. "Melton has one of his flighty
notions that the man is something wonderful."
"But he wasn't queer or anything then!" protested Lydia. "He never
talked to me any, of course, I was such a kid, but it was awfully
interesting to hear him and Godfather go on about morals, and the
universe, and the future of man, and such--I never heard such talk
before or after--but it can't be that one!" Lydia broke off to marvel
incredulously at the possibility. "He was--why, he was awfully nice!"
she fell back on reiteration to help out her affirmation.
"They say there's queer blood in the family, and I guess he's got his
share," Judge Emery summed up and dismissed the case with a gesture of
finality. He glanced up at a tall clock standing in the corner, compared
its time with his watch, exclaimed impatiently, "Slow again!" and
addressed himself with a householder's seriousness to setting it right.
A new aspect of the matter they had been discussing struck Lydia. "But
what does he--what do people do about him?" she asked.
This misty inquiry was as intelligible to her mother as a cipher to the
holders of a key. "Oh, he's very nice about that. He has dropped out of
society completely and keeps out of everybody's way. Of course you see
him when he comes to set up a piece of his furniture or to take an
order, but that's all. And he used to be so popular!" The regret in the
last clause was that of a thrifty person before waste of any kind. "I
understand he still goes to Dr. Melton's a good deal, but that just
counts him in as one of the doctor's collection of freaks; it doesn't
mean anything. You know how your godfather goes on about--" She broke
off to look out the window. "Oh, Lydia! your trunks are here. Quick!
where are your keys? It seems as though I couldn't wait to see your
dresses!" She hurried to the door and vanished.
Lydia did not stir for a moment. She was looking down at the table,
absorbed in watching the dim reflections of her pink finger-tips as she
pressed them one after another upon the dark polished wood. Her father
opened the door of the clock with a little click, but she did not heed
it. She drew her hand away from the table and inspected her finger-tips
intently, as though to detect some change in them. When her father
closed the clock-door and turned away she started, as though she had
forgotten his presence. Her gaze upon him gave him an odd feeling of
wonder, which he took to be apologetic realization that he had spent a
longer time oblivious of her than he had meant. His explanation had a
little compunction in it. "I have a time with that pendulum always. I
can't seem to get it the right length!"
Lydia continued to look at him blankly for a moment. Then she drew a
long breath and took an aimless step away from the table. "Well, if that
isn't too queer for anything!" she exclaimed.
Judge Emery stared. "Why, no; it's quite common in pendulum clocks," he
told her.
CHAPTER IV
THE DAWN
The morning after her return from Europe, Lydia awoke with a start, as
though in answer to a call. The confusion of the last days had been such
that she had for a moment the not uncommon experience of an entire
blankness as to her whereabouts and identity. Realization of where and
who she was came back to her with much more than the usual neutral
relief at slipping into one's own personality as into the first
protection available against the vague horror of nihility. After an
instant's uncomfortable wandering in chaos, Lydia found herself with a
thrill of exultation. She was not negatively relieved that she was
somebody; she rejoiced to find herself Lydia Emery. She pounced on her
own personality with a positive joy which for a moment moved her to a
devout thanksgiving.
It all seemed, as she said to herself, too good to be true--certainly
more than she deserved. Among her unmerited blessings she quaintly
placed being herself, but this was the less naïve in that she placed
among her blessings nearly everything of which she was conscious in her
world. Her world at this time was not a large one, and every element in
it seemed to her ideal. Her loving, indulgent father, who always had a
smile for her as he looked up over his newspaper at the table, and who,
though she knew he was too good to be wealthy, always managed somehow to
pay for dresses just a little prettier than other girls' clothes; her
devoted, idolizing mother, whose one thought was for her daughter's
pleasure; her rich big Brother George in Cleveland, whom she saw so
seldom, but whose handsome presents testified to an affection that was
to be numbered among the objects of her gratitude; good, sharp-tongued
Sister Etta, who said such quick, bright things and ran her house so
wonderfully; Aunt Julia, dear, dear Aunt Julia, whose warm heart was one
of Lydia's happiest homes, and Aunt Julia's brother, Dr. Melton--ah, how
could anyone be grateful enough for such an all-comprehending,
quick-helping, ever-ready ally, teacher, mentor, playmate, friend and
comrade as her godfather!
As she lay in her soft white bed and looked about her pretty room with
an ineffable sense of well-being, it seemed to her that everything that
had happened to her was lovely and that the prospect of her future could
contain only a crescendo of good-fortune. It was not that she imagined
for herself a future remarkably different in detail from what was the
past of the people about her. Even now at what she felt was the
beginning of the first chapter, she knew the general events of the story
before her; but this morning she was penetrated with the keenest sense
of the unfathomable difference it made in those events in that they were
about to happen to her. She had been passively watching the excited
faces of people hurling themselves down-hill on toboggans, but now she
was herself poised on the crest of the slope, tense with an excitement
not only more real, but somehow more vital to the scheme of things, than
that felt by other people who had made the thrilling trip before her.
She lay still for a few moments, luxuriating in the innocent egotism of
this view of her future, which was none the less absorbing for being so
entirely unterrifying, and then sprang up, impatient to begin it. No one
else in the house was awake. She saw with surprise that it was barely
five o'clock. She wondered that she felt so little sleepy, since she had
been up late the night before. All the family and connections had
gathered, and she had talked with an eager breathlessness and had
listened as eagerly to pick up all those details of home news which do
not go into letters; those insignificant changes and events that make up
the physiognomy of an existence, without which one cannot again become
an integral part of a life once familiar. It had been a fatiguing,
illuminating evening.
A change of mood had come in the night. As she dressed she felt that, in
some way, neither the fatigue nor the illumination had lasted on through
the blankness of her sound young sleep. She felt restlessly fresh and
vigorous, like a creature born anew with the morning light, and she did
not feel herself as yet an integral part of the busy, absorbing life to
which she had returned. The countless tendrils of Endbury feelings,
standards, activities, brushed against her, but had not as yet laid hold
on her. Europe had never been more real to her young-lady eyes than an
immense World's Exposition, rather overwhelmingly full of objects to be
inspected, and now, here in Ohio, even that impression was dim and
remote. But so, also, was Endbury; she had left the one, she had not yet
arrived at the other. She felt herself for the moment in a neutral
territory that was scarcely terrestrial.
The silent house was a kingdom of delight to be rediscovered. She
wandered about it, enchanted with the impressions which her solitude
gave her leisure to savor and digest. She threw open a window, and was
struck with the sweet freshness of the morning air, as though it were a
joy new in the history of the world. She looked out on the lawn, with
its dew-studded cobwebs, and felt her heart contract with pleasure. When
she stepped out on the veranda, the look of the trees, the breath of the
light wind across her cheek, the odor of dawn, all the indefinable
personality of that early hour was like an enchantment about her.
She ran out to her favorite arbor and plucked one of the heavy clusters
of purple grapes, finding their cool acidity an exquisite surprise. She
raised her face to the sky with wonder. She had never, it seemed to her,
seen so pure yet colorful a sky. The horizon was still faintly flushed
with the promise of a dawn already fulfilled in the fresh splendor of
the sunbeams slanting across the fresh splendor of her own youth.
Never again did Lydia see the things she saw that morning. Never again
did she have so unquestioningly the happy child's conception of the
whole world as magically centered in indulgent kindness about herself.
As she looked up the clean, empty street stretching away under the shade
of its thrifty young trees, it seemed made only to lead her forward into
the life for which she had been so long preparing herself. Endbury, with
its shops, its bustle of factories so unmeaning to her, the great bulk
of its inexplicable "business," existed only as the theater upon the
stage of which she was to play the leading rôle in the drama of
life--she almost consciously thought of it in those terms--which, after
some exciting and pleasurable incidents and a few thrilling situations,
was to have a happy ending, none the less actual to her mind because
lost in so vague a golden shimmer. Her father's house, as familiar to
her as her hand, took on a new and rich dignity as the background for
the unfolding of that wonderful creature, herself; that unknown, future,
grown-up self, which was to be all that everyone who loved her expected,
and more than she in her inexperience knew how to expect.
She was in a little heaven, made up of the most ingenuous aspirations,
the innocence of which seemed to her a guarantee of their certain
fulfillment. Her fervent desire to be good was equal to and of the same
quality as her desire to be a successful débutante. It would make her
family so happy to have her both. These somewhat widely diverging aims
were all a part of the current of her life, the impulse to be what those
she loved would like to have her. It was not that she was willing to
give up her own individuality to gratify the impulse, but rather that
she did not for an instant conceive of the necessity for such a
sacrifice. It was part of her immense happiness that she had always
loved to be what it pleased everyone to have her, and that, apparently,
people wished to have her only what she wished to be. She was like a
child guarded by her elders from any knowledge of forbidden food. All
the goodies of which she had ever heard were hers for the asking. In
such a carefully arranged nursery it would be perversity to doubt the
everlasting quality of the coincidence between one's desires and one's
obedience. It was no more remarkable a coincidence than that both dew
and sunshine were good for the grass over which she now ran lightly to
another corner of the grounds about her parents' house. Here, just
outside the circle of deep shade cast by an exuberantly leaved maple,
she stood for a moment, her hands full of grapes, her eyes wandering
about the green, well-kept double acres called diversely in the family
"the grounds" (Mrs. Emery's name) and "the yard." Lydia always clung to
her father's name; she had very little inborn feeling for the finer
shades of her mother's vocabulary. Mrs. Emery rejoiced in the careless
unconsciousness of the importance of such details, but she felt that
Lydia should be cautioned against going too far. It was one of the
girl's odd ways to be fond of the few phrases left over in the Emery
dictionary from their simpler earlier days. She always called the two
servants "the girls" or "the help" instead of "the maids," spoke of the
"washwoman" instead of the "laundress," and, as did her father, called
the man who took care of the grounds, ran the furnace, and drove the
Emery's comfortable surrey, the "hired man" instead of the "gardener" or
the "coachman," or, in Mrs. Emery's elegantly indefinite phrase, "our
man."
Lydia explained this whimsical reaction rather incoherently by saying
that those nice old words were so much more fun than the others, and in
spite of remonstrance she clung to her fancy with so lightly laughing an
obstinacy that neither she nor anyone suspected it of being a surface
indication of a significant tendency.
She had occasionally other droll little ways of differing from the
family, which were called indulgently "Lydia's notions." Her mother
would certainly have thus named this flight out into the early morning.
She would have found extravagant, and a little disconcerting, the
completeness of Lydia's content in so simple a thing as standing in the
first sunshine of an early morning in September, and she would have
been unquestionably disturbed, perhaps even a little alarmed, by the
beatific expression of Lydia's face as she gazed fixedly up into the
sky, the tempered radiance of which was as yet not too bright for her
clear gaze.
All the restless joy of a few minutes before, which had driven her about
from one delight to another, fused under the sun's first warmth into a
trance-like quiet. She stood still in the sunshine, a slow flush, like a
reflection of dawn, rising to her cheeks, her lips parted, her eyes
bright and vacant. An old person coming upon her at this moment would
have been painfully moved by that tragic pity which age feels for the
unreasoning joy of youth. She looked a child, open-eyed and breathless
before the fleeting beauties of a bubble, most iridescent when about to
disappear.
It was a man by no means old who swung suddenly into sight around the
corner, walking swiftly and noiselessly upon the close-cut grass, and
the startled expression with which he found himself close to Lydia was
by no means one of pity. He fell back a step, and in the instant before
the girl was aware of his presence his gaze upon her was that of a man
dazzled by an incredible vision.
She brought her eyes down to him, and for the space of a breath the
expression was hers as well. The sunlight glowing about them seemed the
reflection of their faces. Then, for a moment longer, though mutual
recognition flashed into their eyes, they did not speak, looking at each
other long and seriously.
Finally, with a nymph-like stir of all her slender body, Lydia roused
herself. "Well, I can speak--can you?" she asked whimsically. "Don't you
remember me?"
The man drew a long breath and took off his cap, showing close-cropped
auburn hair gleaming, like his beard, red in the sun. "You took my
breath away!" he exclaimed.
"What was the matter with me?" asked Lydia, prettily confident of a
compliment to follow.
It came in so much less direct a form than she had expected that before
she recognized it she had returned it with naïve impulsiveness.
"I didn't think you could be real," said the man, "you looked so exactly
the way this glorious morning made me feel."
"Why, that's just how you looked to me!" she cried, and flushed at the
significance of her words.
Before her confusion the other turned away his quiet gray eyes, and said
lightly, "Well, that's because we are the only people in all the world
with sense enough to get up so early on a morning like this. I've been
out tramping since dawn."
Lydia explained herself also. "I just couldn't sleep, it seemed so
lovely. It's my first morning home, you know."
"Is it?" responded the man, with a vagueness he made no effort to
conceal.
It came over Lydia with a shock that he did not know she had been away.
She felt hurt. It seemed ungracious for anyone in Endbury not to have
missed her, not to share in the joyful excitement of her final return.
"I've been in Europe for a year," she told him, with a dignity that was
a reproach.
"Oh, yes, yes; I remember now hearing Dr. Melton speak of it," he
answered, with no shade of apology for his forgetfulness. He looked at
her speculatively, as if wondering what note to strike for the
continuation of their talk. Apparently he decided on the note of
lightness. "Well, you're the most important person there is for me
to-day," he told her unexpectedly.
Lydia arched her dark eyebrows inquiringly. She was always sensitively
responsive, and now had forgotten, like a sweet-tempered child, her
momentary pique.
He smiled suddenly, moved, as people often were, to an apparently
irrelevant tenderness for her. His voice softened into a playfulness
like that of a person speaking to an imaginative little girl. "Why,
didn't you learn in school that all wise old nations have the belief
that the first person you meet after you go out in the morning decides
the fortune of the day for you? Now, what kind of a day are you going
to give me?"
Lydia laughed. "Oh, you must tell first! You forget you're the first
person I've seen this morning. I'll see what I can do for you after I've
seen what you are going to do for me." She added, with a solemnity only
half jocular, "But it's ever so much more important in my case, for
you're the first person I meet as I begin my life in Endbury. Think what
a responsibility for you! You ought to give me something extra nice
beside, for not remembering me any better and never noticing that I had
been away." She broke into a sunny mitigation of her own severity, "But
you can have some grapes, even if you are not very flattering."
The man took the cluster she held out to him, but only eyed them as he
answered, "Oh, I remember you very well. You're a niece of Mrs.
Sandworth's, or of her husband's, and Mrs. Sandworth is Dr. Melton's
sister. You're the big-eyed little girl who used to sit in a corner and
sew while the doctor and I talked, and now," he brought it out rotundly,
"you've been to Europe for a year, and you're grown-up."
Lydia hung her head laughingly at his good-natured caricature. "Well,
but I _have_, really and truly," she protested, "all of that. And I just
guess you haven't had two such interesting things happen to you in such
a short time as--" She stopped short, struck dumb by a sudden
recollection. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she murmured; "I forgot about
what they said you had--"
Her expression was so altered, she looked at him with so curious a
change from familiarity to strangeness, that his steady eyes wavered a
moment in startled surprise. "What's that?" he asked sharply; "I didn't
catch what you said."
"Why, nothing--nothing--only they were telling me yesterday about how
you--why, it just came over me that you _had_ had a great deal happen to
you this last year, as well as I."
He looked a relieved and slightly annoyed comprehension of the case.
"Oh, that!" he summed it up for her with a grave brevity. "I have lost
my father, and I have started life on a new footing during the past
year."
Lydia fumbled for words that would be applicable and not wounding. "I
was so sorry to hear that--about your father, I mean. And about the
other--it must be very--_interesting_, I'm sure."
His silence and enigmatic gaze upon her moved her to a fluttered fear
lest she seem ungracious. She added, with a droll little air of letting
him see that she was not of the enemy, "I do hope some day you'll tell
me all about it; it sounds so romantic."
The young man gave an inarticulate sound, and stroked his ruddy beard to
conceal a smile. "It's not," he said briefly. He put his cap back on his
head and looked down the street as though his thoughts were already
away.
His lack of responsiveness came, Lydia thought, from her having wounded
his feelings. "Oh, I'm sure you must have some good reason for doing
such a _queer_ thing," she said hurriedly. Then, appalled by the words
on which the haste of her good intentions had carried her, "Oh, I mean
that it's very brave, heroic, of you to have the courage--perhaps
something very sad happened to you, and to forget it you--"
The other broke into the laugh he had been trying to suppress. His gray
eyes lighted up brilliantly with his mirth. "You're very kind," he said,
"you're very kind, but rather imaginative. It doesn't take any courage;
quite the reverse. And it's not a picturesque way of doing a retreat
from active life. I hope and pray that it's to be a way of getting into
it."
The girl's face of bewilderment at his tone moved him to add, a ripple
of amusement still in his voice, "Ah, don't try to make me out. I don't
belong in your world, you know; I'm real."
Lydia continued to look at him blankly. The obscurity of his remarks was
in no way lessened by this last addition, but he vouchsafed no further
explanation. "You've given me my breakfast," he said, holding up the
grapes; "I mustn't keep you any longer from yours."
He waited for a moment for Lydia to respond to this speech, struck by a
sudden realization that it might sound like an unceremonious hint to her
to retire, rather than the dismissal of himself he intended. When she
made no answer, he turned away with a somewhat awkward gesture of
leave-taking. Lydia looked after him in silence.
CHAPTER V
THE DAY BEGINS
She watched him until he was out of sight, and although the vigorous,
rhythmic swing of his broad shoulders was like another manifestation of
the morning's joyous, buoyant spirit, it did not move her to a
responsive alertness. After he had turned a corner, she lowered her eyes
to the cluster of grapes she still held; a moment after, without any
change in expression, she relaxed her grasp on them and let them fall,
turning away and walking soberly back to the house. The dew had already
disappeared from the grass. There was now no hint of the dawn's
coolness; the day had begun.
Her father met her at the door with an exclamation about her early
hours. He would really see something of her, he said, if she kept up
this sort of thing. It would be too good to be true if he could
breakfast with her every morning. Whereupon he rang for the coffee and
unfolded his newspaper. Lydia did not notice his absorption in the news
of the day, partly because she was trained from childhood up to consider
reading the newspaper as the main occupation of a man at home, but more
because on this occasion she was herself preoccupied. When Mrs. Mortimer
came in on an errand and was prevailed upon to sit down for some
breakfast with her father and sister, there was a little more
conversation.
Mrs. Emery had not come down stairs. A slight indisposition which she
had felt for several days seemed to have been augmented by the
excitement of Lydia's return. She had slept badly, and was quite
uncomfortable, she told her husband, and thought she would stay in bed
and send for Dr. Melton. It seemed foolish, she apologized, but now
that Lydia was back, she wanted to be on the safe side and lose no time.
After these facts had been communicated to her older daughter, Mrs.
Mortimer asked, "How in the world does it happen that you're up at this
hour?"
Lydia answered that she had been inspecting the yard, which she had not
seen the day before. She described quite elaborately her tour of
investigation, without any mention of her encounter with her early
caller, and only after a pause added carelessly, "Who do you suppose
came along but that Mr. Rankin you were all talking about yesterday?"
Judge Emery laid down his paper. "What under the sun was he prowling
about for at that hour?"
"He wasn't prowling," said Lydia. "He was fairly tearing along past the
house so fast that he 'most ran over me before I saw him. I'd forgotten
he is so handsome."
"Handsome!" Mrs. Mortimer cried out at the idea. "With that beard!"
"I like beards, sometimes," said Lydia.
"It makes a man look like a barbarian. I'd as soon wear a nose-ring as
have Ralph wear a beard."
"Why, everybody who is anybody in Europe wears a beard, or a mustache,
anyhow," opposed Lydia. "I got to liking to see them."
"Oh, of course if they do it in Europe, we provincial stay-at-homes
haven't a word to say." Mrs. Mortimer had invented a peculiar tone which
she reserved for speeches like this, the neutrality of which gave a
sharper edge to the words.
"Now, Marietta, that's mean!" Lydia defended herself very energetically;
"you know I didn't say it for that." There was a moment's pause, of
which Marietta did not avail herself for a retraction, and then Lydia
went on pensively, "Well, he may be handsome or not, but he's certainly
not very polite."
"He didn't say anything to you, did he?" asked her father in surprise,
laying down the paper he had raised again during the passage between the
sisters.
Lydia hastily proffered an explanation. "He couldn't help speaking; he
almost ran into me, you know. I was standing under the maple tree in the
corner as he came around from Garfield Avenue. He just took off his cap
and said good morning, and what a fine day it was, and a few words like
that."
"I don't see anything so impolite in that. Perhaps he wasn't European in
his manners," suggested Mrs. Mortimer dryly. She had evidently arisen in
the grasp of a mood, not uncommon with her, when an apparently causeless
irritability drove her to say things for which she afterward suffered an
honest but fruitless remorse. Dr. Melton had recently evolved for this
characteristic of hers one of the explanations which the Emerys found so
enigmatic. "Marietta," he said critically, "is in a perpetual state of
nervous irritation from eye-strain. She has naturally excellent and
normal eyesight, but she has always been trained to wear other people's
spectacles. It puts her out of focus all the time, and that makes her
snappy."
She had answered explicitly to this vague diagnosis, "Nonsense! The
thing that makes me snappy is the lack of an oriental rug in our
parlor."
"You're looking at that through Mrs. Gilbert's magnifying glasses,"
suggested the doctor.
"I'm not looking at it at all, and that's the trouble," Marietta had
assured him.
"Absence makes the heart--" the doctor had the last word.
Lydia tried this morning at breakfast to obtain the same advantage over
her sister. She flushed with a mixture of emotions and tried in a
resentful silence to think of some definable cause for her accusation
against Rankin's manners. Finally, "Well, I gave him a bunch of grapes,
and he never so much as said thank you. He just took them and marched
off."
"Perhaps he doesn't like grapes," suggested Mrs. Mortimer, grim to the
last.
After breakfast, when Mrs. Mortimer and her father disappeared, Lydia
found herself with a long morning before her. The doctor telephoned that
he could not come before noon. Judge Emery, after his proprietary
good-by kiss, advised her to be quiet and rest. She looked a little
pale, he thought, and he was afraid that, after her cool ocean voyage,
she would find the heat of an Ohio September rather trying. Indeed, as
Lydia idled for a moment over the dismantled breakfast table she was by
no means moved to activity. Dark shades were everywhere drawn down and
the house was like a dimly-lighted cave, but through this attempt at
protection the sun was making itself felt in a slowly rising,
breathless, moist heat.
Lydia climbed the stairs to her mother's room. She was looking forward
to a long visit, but finding the invalid asleep she turned away from the
door rather blankly. She was as yet too much a stranger in her own home
to have at hand the universal trivial half-dozen unfinished tasks that
save idle women from the perils of uninterrupted thought. The ribbons
were all run in her pretty underwear; she owed no notes to anyone,
because she had been at home too short a time to have received any
letters; her hair had been washed the last day on the steamer, and her
new dresses needed no mending. Her trunks had been unpacked the day
before by her mother's competent hands, which had also arranged every
detail of her tasteful room until to touch it would disturb the effect.
Lydia began to experience that uneasy, unsettling discomfort that comes
to modern people in ordinary modern life if some unusual circumstance
throws them temporarily on their own resources. She lingered aimlessly
for some time at the head of the stairs, and then, leaning heavily
against the rail, began to descend slowly, one step at a time, to
prolong the transit. Where the stairs turned she noticed a stain on the
crisp sleeve of her white dress. It came, evidently, from one of the
grapes she had eaten that morning under the maple tree. A current of
cool air blew past her. It was the first relief from the stagnation of
the sultry day and, sitting down on the landing, she lost herself in
prolonged meditation.
In the obscurity of the darkened hall she was scarcely visible save as a
spot of light showing dimly through the balustrade, and she sat so still
that the maid, stepping about below, did not see her. On her part, Lydia
noticed but absently this slight stir of domestic activity, nor, after a
time, louder but muffled noises from the dining-room. Even when the door
to the dining-room opened and quick, light steps came to the foot of the
stairs, she did not heed them. A confused, hushed sound of someone busy
about various small operations did not rouse her, and it was not until
the fall of a large object, clattering noisily on the floor, that she
became conscious that someone beside the maid was in the hall. She
leaned forward, and saw that the object which had fallen was the
newel-post of the stairs. It had evidently been detached from its
fastenings by the workman who, with his back to her, now knelt over a
tool-box, fumbling among the tools with resultant little metallic clicks.
Lydia ran down the stairs, finger on lip. "Hush! Don't make any more
noise than you can help. Mother's still asleep." At his gaze of
stupefaction she broke into her charming light laugh, "Why, I always
seem to strike you speechless. What's the matter with me now?"
The other emerged from his surprise with a ready, smiling acceptance of
her tone, "I was wondering if I oughtn't to apologize to you--if I
should ever see you again--for being so curt this morning. And then you
spring up out of the ground before me. Well, so I will apologize. I do.
I'm very sorry."
They adopted, as in the first part of their earlier talk, the
half-humorous familiarity of people surprised in an unconventional
situation, but, in spite of this, the young man's apology was not
without the accent of serious sincerity.
Lydia responded heartily in kind. "Oh, it was I who was horrid.
And--wasn't it funny--I was just thinking--wondering if I should ever
have a chance to try to make you see that I didn't mean to be so--" she
hesitated, and fell back on iteration again--"so horrid."
The fashionable Endbury boarding-school had not provided its graduate
with any embarrassment of riches in the way of expression for various
shades of meaning. He answered, lowering his voice as she did, "Oh, you
were all right, but I was most objectionable with my impertinent laugh.
I'm sorry."
She challenged his sincerity, "Are you really, really?"
"Oh, really, really," he assured her.
"And you want to do something nice to make it up to me?"
"Anything," he promised, smiling at her as at a child.
"You've promised! You've promised!" She indulged herself in a noiseless
hand-clasp. "Well, then, the forfeit is to tell me all about it."
"All about what?"
"Goodness gracious! Don't you remember? That's what we were both horrid
about. I asked you to tell me about it, and you--"
He remembered, evidently with an amusement not entirely free from
annoyance. "Oh, I'm safe. I'll never see you to tell you."
She sat down on the bottom step and drew her white skirts about her.
"What's the matter with right now?" she asked, smiling.
"I've got to earn my living right now," he objected, beginning with a
swift deftness to bore a tiny hole.
She was diverted for an instant. "What are you doing to our nice old
newel-post?" she asked. "I thought they said you were going to set up
the new sideboard."
"Oh, that's no job at all; it's done. Didn't you hear me pushing and
banging things around? Now I've the job before me of fitting the very
latest thing in newel-posts in place of your old one."
The girl returned to her first attack. "Well, anyhow, if it's a long
job, it's all the better. Go ahead and talk at the same time. You won't
feel you're wasting time."
Their low-toned talk and the glimmering light of the hall made them seem
oddly intimate. Lydia expressed this feeling while Rankin stood looking
doubtfully at her, a little daunted by the pretty relentlessness of her
insistence. "You see, you're not nearly so much a stranger to me as I am
to you. Remember how I sewed and listened. I'm a grown-up little
pitcher, and my ears are still large. I was remembering just now, before
you came in, how strangely you used to talk to Dr. Melton, and I thought
it wasn't so surprising, after all, your doing 'most anything queer."
Rankin laughed as he bent over his tools. "Little pitchers have tongues,
too, I see."
Either Lydia felt herself more familiar with her interlocutor than
before, or one result of her meditation had been the loss of her
excessive fear of wounding his feelings. She spoke now quite
confidently, "But, honestly, what in the world did you do it for?"
"It?" He made her define herself.
"Oh, you know! Give up everything--lose your chance in society, and poke
off into the woods to be a common--" In spite of her new boldness she
faltered here.
He supplied the word, with a flash of mirth. "Don't be afraid to say it
right out--even such an awful term as workman, or carpenter. I can bear
it."
"I knew it!" Lydia exclaimed. "As I was thinking it over on the stairs
just now, I said to myself that probably you weren't a bit apologetic
about it; probably you had some queer reason for being proud of yourself
for doing it."
He cast a startled look at her. "You're the only person in Endbury with
imagination enough to guess that."
"But why? why? why?" she urged him, her flexible eyebrows raised in the
eagerness of her inquiry. "I feel just as though I were going to hear
the answer to a perfectly maddeningly unanswerable riddle."
He had another turn in his attempt at evasion. "It wouldn't be polite to
tell you the answer, for what I'm trying to do is to get out of being
what everybody you know thinks is the only way to be--except Dr. Melton,
of course."
"What's the matter with 'all the people I know,'" she challenged him
explicitly.
He laughed and shook his head. "Oh, I've nothing new to say about them.
Everybody has said it, from Ecclesiastes to Tolstoi."
"They never say anything about just ordinary folks in Endbury that I
know."
Rankin looked at her whimsically. "Oh, _don't_ they?"
"_Do_ they?" Lydia wondered at the possibility. Presently she brought
out, as a patently absurd supposition, "You don't mean to say that
Endbury people are wicked?"
"Do you think that none but wicked people are written about in serious
books? No; Lord, no! I don't think they are wicked--just mistaken."
"What about? Now we're getting warm. I'll guess in a minute."
He looked a little sadly down at her bright, eager face. "I'm afraid you
would never guess. It's all gone into your blood. You breathe it in and
out as you live, every minute."
"What? what? what? You can't say it, you see, when it comes right down
to the matter."
"Oh, yes, I can; I can ask you if it wouldn't be a tragedy if they
should all be killing themselves to get what they really don't want and
don't need, and starving for things they could easily have by just
putting out their hands."
Lydia's blankness was immense.
He said, with ironic triumph: "You see, when I do say it you can't make
anything out of it." After this he turned for a time all his attention
to his work.
He had evidently reached a critical point in his undertaking. Lydia
watched in silence the deft manipulations of his strong, brown fingers,
wondering at the eager, almost sparkling, alertness with which he went
from one step to another of the process that seemed unaccountably
complicated to her. After he had finally lifted the heavy piece of wood
into place, handling its great weight with assurance, and had submitted
the joint to the closest inspection, he gave a low whistle of
satisfaction with himself, and stepped back to get the general effect.
As he did so he happened to glance at the girl, drooping rather
listlessly on the stair. He paused instantly, with an exclamation of
dismay.
"No; I'm not going to cry," Lydia told him with a very small smile, "but
it would serve you right if I did."
The workman wiped his forehead and surveyed her in perplexity. "What,
can I do for you?" he asked.
"If you're really serious in asking that," said Lydia with dignity,
"I'll tell you. You can take for granted that I am not an idiot or a
child and talk to me sensibly. Dr. Melton does. And you can tell me what
you started out to--the real reason why you are a common carpenter
instead of in the insurance business. Of course if you think it is none
of my concern, that's another matter. But you said you would."
Rankin looked a little abashed by the grave seriousness of this appeal,
although he smiled at its form. "You speak as though I had my reason
tied up in a package about me, ready to hand, out."
Lydia said nothing, but did not drop her earnest eyes.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and returned this intent gaze, a
new expression on his face. Then picking up a tool, and drawing a long
breath, he said, with the accent of a man who takes an unexpected
resolution: "Well, I _will_ tell you."
He returned to his work, tightening various small screws under the
railing, speaking, as he did so, in a reasonable, quiet tone, with none
of the touch of badinage which had thus far underlain his manner to the
girl. "It's very simple--nothing romantic or sudden about it all. I did
not like the insurance business as I saw it from the inside, and the
more I saw of it, the less I liked it. I couldn't see how I could earn
my living at it and arrive at the age of forty with an honest scruple
left. Not that the insurance business is, probably, any worse than any
other--only I knew about it from the inside. So far as I could guess
the businesses my friends were in weren't very different. At least, I
didn't think I could improve things by changing to them. Also, it was
going to grow more and more absorbing--or, at least, that was the way it
affected the older men I knew--so that at forty I shouldn't have any
other interests than getting ahead of other people in the line of
insurance.
"Now, what was I to do about it? I can't make speeches, and nobody but
crack-brained soreheads like me would listen to them if I did. I'm not a
great philosopher, with a cure for things. But I didn't want to fight so
hard to get unnecessary things for myself that I kept other people from
having the necessaries, and didn't give myself time to enjoy things that
are best worth enjoying. What could I do? I bothered the life out of Dr.
Melton and myself for ages before it occurred to me that the thing to
do, if I didn't like the life I was in, was to get out of it and do
something harmless, at least, if I didn't have gumption enough to think
of something worth while, that might make things better.
"I like the cabinet-maker's trade, and I couldn't see that practicing it
would interfere with my growing all the honest scruples that were in me.
Oh, I know that it's the easiest thing in the world for a carpenter to
turn out bad work for the sake of making a little more money every day;
I haven't any illusions about the sanctity of the hand-crafts. But,
anyhow, I saw that as a maverick cabinet-maker I could be pretty much my
own master. If I had strength of mind enough I could be honest without
endless friction with partners, employers, banks, creditors, employés,
and all the rest of the spider web of business life. At any rate, it
looked as though there were a chance for me to lead the life I wanted,
and I had an idea that if I started myself in square and straight, maybe
after a little while I could see clearer about how to help other people
to occupations that would let them live a little as well as make money,
and let them grow a few scruples into the bargain.
"You see, there's nothing mysterious about it--nor interesting. Just
ordinary. I'm living the way I do because I'm not smart enough to think
of a better way. But one advantage of it is that I have a good deal of
time to think about things. Maybe I'll think of a way to help, later.
And, anyway, just to look at me is proof that you don't _have_ to get
ground up in the hopper like everybody else or shut the door of the
industrial squirrel-cage on yourself in order not to starve. Perhaps
that'll give some cleverer person the courage to start out on his own
tangent."
Lydia drew a long breath at the conclusion of this statement. "Well--"
she said, inconclusively; "_well!_" After a pause she advanced, "My
sister's husband is in the insurance business."
"You see," said the workman, drilling a hole with great rapidity, "you
see I ought not to talk to you. I can't without being impolite."
Lydia seemed in no haste to assure him that he had not been. She pulled
absently a loose lock of hair--a little-girl trick that came back to her
in moments of abstraction--and looked down at her feet. When she looked
up, it was to say with a bewildered air, "But a man has to earn his
living."
Rankin made a gesture of impatience, and stopped working to answer this
remark. "A living isn't hard to earn. Any healthy man can do that. It's
earning food for his vanity, or his wife's, that kills the average man.
It's coddling his moral cowardice that takes the heart out of him. Don't
you remember what Emerson says--Melton's always quoting it--'Most of our
expense is for conformity to other men's ideas? It's for cake that the
average man runs in debt.' He must have everything that anyone else has,
whether he wants it or not. A house ever so much bigger and finer than
he needs, with ever so many more things in it than belong there. He must
keep his wife idle and card-playing because other men's wives are. He
must have his children do what everyone else's children do, whether it's
bad for their characters or not. Ah! the children! That's the worst of
it all! To bring them up so that these futile complications will be
essentials of life to them! To teach them that health and peace of mind
are not too high a price for a woman to pay for what is called social
distinction, and that a man must--if he can get it in no other way--pay
his self-respect and the life of his individuality for what is called
success--"
Lydia broke in with a sophisticated amusement at his heat. "Why, you're
talking about Newport, or the Four Hundred of New York--if there is any
such thing! The rest of America--why, any European would say we're as
primitive as Aztecs! They do say so! Endbury's not complicated. Good
gracious! A little, plain, middle-western town, where everybody that is
anybody knows everybody else!"
"No; it's not complicated compared with European standards, but it's
more so than it was. Why, in Heaven's name, should it strain every nerve
to make itself as complicated as possible as fast as it can? We're free
yet--we're not Europeans so shaken down into a social rut that only a
red revolution can get us out of it. Why can't we decide on a
rational--" He broke off to say, gloomily: "The devil of it is that we
don't decide anything. We just slide along thinking of something else.
If people would only give, just once in their lives, the same amount of
serious reflection to what they want to get out of life that they give
to the question of what they want to get out of a two-weeks' vacation,
there aren't many folks--yes, even here in Endbury that seems so
harmless to you because it's so familiar--who wouldn't be horrified at
the aimless procession of their busy days and the trivial false
standards they subscribe to with their blood and sweat."
"My goodness!" broke in Lydia.
The exclamation came from her extreme surprise, not only at the
extraordinary doctrine enunciated, but at the experience, new to her, of
hearing convictions spoken of in ordinary conversation. The workman took
it, however, for a mocking comment on his sudden fluency. He gave a
whimsical grimace, and said, as he began picking up his tools, "Ah, I
shouldn't have given in to you. When I get started I never can stop."
His expression altered darkly. "But I hate all that sort of thing so! I
_hate_ it!"
Lydia shrank back from him, startled, but aroused. "Well, I hate hate!"
she cried with energy. "It's horrid to hate anything at all, but most of
all what's wrong and doesn't know it's wrong. That needs help, not
hate."
He had slung his tool-box on his shoulder before she began speaking, and
now stood, ready for departure, looking at her intently. Even in the dim
light of the hall she was aware of a wonderful change in his face. She
was startled and thrilled by the expression of his eyes in the moment of
silence that followed.
Finally, "You've given me something to remember," he said, his voice
vibrating, and turned away.
CHAPTER VI
LYDIA'S GODFATHER
Lydia stood where he left her, listening to the sound of his footsteps
die down the walk outside. She was still standing there when, some time
later, the door to the dining-room behind her opened and a tiny elderly
man trotted across the hall to the stairs. Lydia recognized him before
he saw that she was there, so that he exclaimed in surprise and pleasure
as she came running toward him, her face quivering like a child's about
to weep.
"Oh, dear Godfather!" she cried, as she flung herself on him; "I'm so
glad you've come! I never wanted so much to see you!"
He was startled to feel that she was trembling and that her cheek
against his forehead, for she was taller than he, was burning hot. "Good
gracious, my dear!" he said, in the shrill voice his size indicated,
"anybody'd think you were the patient I came to see."
His voice, though high, was very sweet--a quality that made it always
sound odd, almost foreign, in the midst of the neutral, colorless
middle-western tones about him. He spoke with a Southern accent,
dropping his _r's_, clipping some vowels and broadening others, but
there was no Southern drawl in the clicking, telegraphic speed of his
speech. He now looked up at his tall godchild and said without a smile:
"If you'll kindly come down here where I can get at you, I'll shake you
for being so foolish. You needn't be alarmed about your mother."
Lydia recoiled from the little man as impulsively as she had rushed upon
him. "Why, how _awful_!" she accused herself, horrified. "I'd
_forgotten_ Mother!"
Dr. Melton took off his hat and laid it on the hall shelf. "I will
climb up on a chair to shake you," he continued cheerfully, "if already,
in less than twenty-four hours, you're indulging in nerves, as these
broken and meaningless ejaculations seem to indicate."
He picked up a palm-leaf fan, lost himself in a big hall-chair, and
began to fan himself vigorously. He looked very hot and breathless, but
he flowed steadily on.
"I can't diagnose you yet, you know, without looking at you, the way I
do your mother, so you'll have to give me some notion of what's the
occasion of these alternate seizures and releases of a defenseless
Lilliputian godfather." He made a confident gesture toward the upper
part of the house with his fan. "About your mother--I know without going
upstairs that she is floored with one or another manifestation of the
great disease of social-ambitionitis. But calm yourself. It's not so bad
as it seems when you've got the right doctor. I've practiced for thirty
years among Endbury ladies. They can't spring anything new on me. I've
taken your mother through doily fever induced by the change from
table-cloths to bare tops, through portière inflammation, through
afternoon tea distemper, through _art-nouveau_ prostration and mission
furniture palsy, not to speak of a horrible attack of acute insanity
over the necessity for having her maids wear caps. I think you can trust
me, whatever dodge the old malady is working on her."
He had run on volubly, to give Lydia time to recover herself, his keen
blue eyes fixing her, and now, as she wavered into something like a
smile at his chatter, he shot a question at her with a complete change
of manner: "But what's the matter with _you_?"
Lydia started as though he had suddenly clapped her on the shoulder.
"I--why, I--just--" she hesitated, "why, I don't know what _is_ the
matter with me." She brought it out with the most honest surprise in the
world.
Dr. Melton's approval of this answer was immense. "Why, Lydia, I'm proud
of you! You're one in a thousand. You'll break the hearts of everyone
who knows you by turning out a sensible woman if you don't look out. I
don't believe there's another girl in Endbury who would have had the
nerve to tell the truth and not fake up a headache, or a broken heart,
or _Weltschmerz_, or some such trifle, for a reason." He pulled himself
up to his feet. "Of course, you don't know what's the matter with you,
my dear. _I_ do. _I_ know everything, and can't do a thing. That's me!
Physically, you're upset by Endbury heat after an ocean voyage, and
mentally it's the reaction caused by your subsidence into private life
after being the central figure of the returned traveler. Last evening,
now, with that mob of friends and the family pawing at you and trying to
cram-jam you back into the Endbury box and shut the lid down--_that_ was
enough to kill anybody with a nerve in her body. What's the history of
the morning? I hope you slept late."
Lydia shook her head. "No; I was up ever so early.--Marietta came over
to borrow the frames for drying curtains, and stayed to breakfast."
Something about her accent struck oddly on the trained sensitiveness of
the physician's ear. Her tone rang empty, as with something kept back.
"Marietta's been snapping at you," he diagnosed rapidly.
"Well, a little," Lydia admitted.
The doctor laid the palm-leaf fan aside and took Lydia's slim fingers in
both his firm, sinewy hands. "My dear, I'm going to do as I have always
done with you, and talk with you as though you were a grown-up person
and could take your share in understanding and bearing family problems.
Your sister Marietta is not a very happy woman. She has too many of your
father's brains for the life she's been shunted into. She might be
damming up a big river with a finely constructed concrete dam, and what
she is giving all her strength to is trying to hold back a muddy little
trickle with her bare hands. The achievement of her life is to give on a
two-thousand-a-year income the appearance of having five thousand like
your father. She does it; she's a remarkably forceful woman, but it
frets her. She ought to be in better business, and she knows it, though
she won't admit it. So, don't you mind if she's sharp-tongued once in a
while. It's when she feels the muddy water oozing through her fingers."
He fancied that Lydia's eyes on his were a little blank, perhaps absent,
and broke off with a short laugh. He was quite hardened to the fact that
people never understood his fanciful metaphors, but Lydia, as a child,
had used to have a curious intuitive divination of his meaning. After
his laugh he sighed and turned the talk.
"Well, and has Flora Burgess been after you to get your impression of
Endbury as compared with Europe? Your mother said she wanted an
interview with you for next Sunday's _Society Notes_."
Lydia smiled. The subject was an old joke with them. "No; she hasn't
appeared yet. I haven't seen her--not since my birthday a year ago, the
time she described the supper-table as a 'glittering, scintillating mass
of cut-glass and silver, and yet without what could really be called
ostentation.' Isn't she delicious! How is the little old thing, anyway?"
"Still trotting industriously about Endbury back yards sowing the
dragon's teeth of her idiotic ideas and standards."
"Oh, I remember, you don't like her," said Lydia. "She always seems just
funny to me--funny and pathetic. She's so dowdy, and reverential to
folks with money, and enjoys other people's good times so terrifically."
"She's like some political bosses--admirable in private life, but a
menace to the community just the same."
Lydia laughed involuntarily, in spite of her preoccupation. "Flora
Burgess a menace to the community!"
The doctor turned away and began to mount the stairs. "Me and
Cassandra!" he called over his shoulder in his high, sweet treble. "Just
you wait and see!"
He disappeared down the upper hall, finding his way about the darkened
house with a familiarity that betokened long practice.
Lydia sat down on the bottom step to wait for his return. The clock in
the dining-room struck twelve. It came over her with a clap that but
half a day had passed since she had run out into the dawn. For an
instant she had the naïve, melodramatic instinct of youth to deck out
its little events in the guise of crises. She began to tell herself with
gusto that she had passed some important turning-point in her life;
when, as was not infrequent with her, she lost the thread of her thought
in a sudden mental confusion which, like a curtain of fog, shut her off
from definite reflection. Complicated things that moved rapidly always
tired Lydia. She had an enormous capacity for quiet and tranquillity.
To-day she felt that more complicated things were moving rapidly inside
her head than ever before--as though she had tried to keep track of the
revolutions of a wheel and had lost her count and could now only stare
stupidly at the spokes, whirling till they blended into one blur. What
was this Endbury life she had come back to? What in the world had that
man been talking about? What a strange person he was! How very bright
his eyes were when he looked at you--as though he were, somehow, seeing
you more than most people did. What did the doctor mean by all that
about Marietta? It had never occurred to her that the life of anyone
about her might have been different from what it was. What else was
there for people to do but what everybody else did? It was all very
unsettling and, in this heat and loneliness, daunting.
Through this vague discomfort there presently pierced a positive
apprehension of definite unpleasantness. She would have to tell her
mother that she had spent the whole morning talking to Mr. Rankin, and
her mother would be cross, and would say such--Lydia remembered as in a
distant dream her supreme content with life of only a few hours earlier.
It seemed a very bewildering matter to her now.
Ought she so certainly to tell her mother? She lingered for a moment
over this possibility. Then, "Oh, of course!" she said aloud, flushing
with an angry shame at her moment's parley with deceit.
She heard her mother's door open and turned to see the doctor running
down the stairs, his wrinkled little face very grave. "You were right,
Lydia, to be anxious about your mother, and I am an old fool! There is
no fool like a fluent fool! I'm afraid she's in for quite a siege.
There's no danger, thank Heaven! but I don't believe she can be about
for a month or more. I'm going to 'phone for a trained nurse. Just see
that nobody disturbs her, will you?"
He darted away, leaving Lydia leaning against the newel-post, gasping.
The clock in the dining-room chimed the quarter-hour. She cried out to
herself, as she climbed the stairs heavily, that she could not stand it
to have things happen to her so fast. If all Endbury days were going to
be like this one--
She was for a moment brought to a standstill by a realization of depths
within herself that she had not dreamed of. She realized, horrified,
that on hearing the doctor's verdict her first thought--gone before it
was formulated, but still her first thought--had been one of relief that
now she need not tell her mother.
It had not occurred to her at all, nor did it now, that she either
should or should not tell her father.
CHAPTER VII
OUTSIDE THE LABYRINTH
The Black Rock woods lay glowing under the cloudy autumn sky like a heap
of live coals, the maples still quivering in scarlet, the chestnuts sunk
into a clear yellow flame, the oaks, parched by the September heat,
burnt out into rusty browns. Above them, the opalescent haze of October
rose like a faint blue smoke, but within the woods the subdued light was
richly colored, like that which passes through the stained glass of a
great cathedral. The first of the fallen leaves lay in pools of gold in
the hollows of the brown earth, where the light breezes had drifted
them.
It was, for the moment, singularly quiet, so, that, as Lydia walked
quickly along the footpath, the pleasant rustle of her progress was the
only sound she heard. Under a large chestnut she paused, gathering her
amber-colored draperies about her and glancing uncertainly ahead to
where the path forked. She looked a yellow leaf blown by some current of
the air unfelt by the rest of the forest and caught against the rough
bark of the tree. After hesitating for a moment, she drifted slowly
along the right-hand path, looking about her with dreamy, dazzled eyes.
From time to time, she stopped and lifted her face to the light and
color above her, and once she stood a long time leaning against a tree,
stirring with the tip of her parasol a heap of burning maple leaves.
Under her drooping hat her face was almost vacant in a wide beatitude of
harmony with the spirit of day. When she walked on again it was with a
lighter and lighter step, as though the silence had come to have a
lovely meaning for her which she feared to disturb.
The path turned sharply after passing through a thicket of ruddy
brambles, and she found herself in a little clearing which the haze of
the upper air descended to fill. The yellow chestnuts stood in a ring
about the sunburnt grass. It was like a golden cup filled with some
magic, impalpable draught.
Through this she now saw a rough little house, brown as an oak leaf,
with a wide veranda, under which, before a work-bench, sat Daniel
Rankin. His tanned arms moved rhythmically backward and forward, but his
ruddy head was high, and his eyes, roving about the leafy walls of the
clearing, caught sight of Lydia as soon as she had turned the corner.
She stopped short, with a startled gesture, on the edge of the woods,
but remained standing quietly while Rankin sprang up from his seat and
walked toward her smiling.
"Oh, Miss Emery," he called welcomingly. "I didn't recognize you for a
minute. Every once in a while a young lady or a child loses her way from
a picnic in the woods and stumbles into my settlement. I always have to
hurry to show them there's no danger of the wild man who lives in that
house eating them up." He came up to her now, and put out his hand with
a frank pleasure.
"I wasn't afraid," said Lydia; "I was startled for a minute, but I knew
right away it must be your house. You described it to me, you know."
"It's very much flattered that you remember its portrait," said the
owner. "Won't you honor it some more by sitting down in its veranda for
a while? Or must I take you back to your picnic party at once?"
Lydia moved on, looking about her at the piles of boards, half hidden by
vines, at the pool of clear water welling up through white sand in front
of the house, and at the low rough building, partly covered with
woodbine ruby-red against the weather-beaten wood.
"My picnic party's gone home," she explained. "It was only Marietta and
her little boy, anyhow. My sister thought it was going to rain, and took
the quickest way home. I told Marietta I'd walk across and take the
Garfield Avenue trolley line. I must have taken a wrong turn in the
path."
They had reached the veranda now, and Lydia sank into the chair which
Rankin offered her. She smiled her thanks silently, her face still
steeped in quiet ecstasy, and for a long time she said nothing. The
quick responsiveness that was at all times her most marked
characteristic answered this rare mood of Nature with an intensity
almost frightening in its visible joy.
Rankin also said nothing, looking at her reflectively and stroking his
close-clipped red beard. Above the faded brown of his work-shirt, his
face glowed with color. In the silent interval of the girl's slow
emergence from her reverie, his gaze upon her was so steady that when
Lydia finally glanced up at him he could not for a moment look away. The
limpid unconsciousness of her eyes changed into a startled look of
inquiry, as though he had spoken and she had not understood. Then a
flush rose to her cheeks, she looked down and away in a momentary
confusion, moved in her chair, and began to talk at random.
"So this is where you live. It's lovely. It looks like a fairy
story--the little house in the wood, you know--nothing seems real
to-day--the woods--it makes me want to cry, they are so beautiful. I've
been wondering and wondering what outdoors was looking like. You know
poor Mother is sick, and though she's not so awfully sick, and of course
we've a trained nurse for her, still I've had to be housekeeper and I
haven't had time to breathe. The second girl left right off because of
the extra work she thought sickness would make, but it seems to me we've
had a million new second girls in the three weeks. It's been awful! I
haven't had time to get out at all or to see anybody."
She was quite herself now, and confided her troubles with a naïve
astonishment, as though they were new to humanity.
"Yes; I've heard ladies say before that it's quite awful," agreed her
companion gravely. He swung himself up to sit on his work-bench, his
long legs stretched before him, just reaching the ground. "Envy me," he
went on, smiling; "I don't have to have a second girl, or a first one,
either."
"What _do_ you do?" asked Lydia, not waiting, however, for an answer,
but continuing her relieved outpouring of her own perplexities. "It's
perfectly desperate at home. I haven't had a minute's peace. This
afternoon I just got wild, and said I _would_ get away from it for a
minute, and just ran away. Father's nice about it, but he does look
something fierce when he comes home and finds another one left. He says
that Mother doesn't have to change more than two or three times a year!"
She presented this as the superlative of stability.
Rankin laughed again. Lydia felt more and more at her ease. He was
evidently thinking of her pretty looks and ways rather than of what she
was saying, and, like all of her sisterhood, this was treatment which
she thoroughly understood. For the moment she forgot that he was the man
who had startled and almost shocked her by his unabashed presentation,
in a conversation with a young lady, of ideas and convictions. She
leaned back in her chair and put on some of the gracefully imperious
airs of regnant American young-ladyhood. "You must show me all about how
you live, and everything," she commanded prettily. "I've been so curious
about it--and now here I am."
She was enchantingly unconscious of the possibility of her having seemed
to seek him out. "What a perfectly beautiful piece of wood you have in
that chair-back." She laid her ungloved, rosy finger-tips on a dark
piece of oak. "And so this is where you work?"
"I work everywhere," he told her. "I do all that's done, you see."
"You must have to walk quite a ways to get your meals, don't you?" Lydia
turned her white neck to glance inside the house.
Rankin's mouth twitched humorously. "You'll never understand me," he
said lightly. "I get my meals myself, here."
Lydia turned on him sharply. "You don't _cook_!" she cried out.
"And wash dishes, and make my bed, and sweep my floor, and, once in a
great while, dust."
The romantic curiosity died out of the girl's eyes into a shocked
wonder. She glanced at his large brown hands, and seemed about to speak.
Nothing came from her lips finally, however, beyond the pregnant "Well!"
which seemed the only expression in her vocabulary for extreme surprise.
Rankin threw back his head, showing a triangle of very white throat
above his loose collar, and laughed aloud. The sound of his mirth was so
infectious that Lydia laughed with him, though half uneasily.
"It's so funny," he explained, "to see the picture of myself I gather
from your shocked and candid eyes. I'm so used to my queer ideas
nowadays that I forget that what seems perfectly natural to me still
seems perfectly crazy to others."
"Well, not _crazy_." Lydia proffered this negation in so halting an
accent that Rankin burst into another peal of laughter. "But it must be
horrid for you to wash dishes and cook!" protested Lydia, feeling
resentful that her inculcated horror of a man's "lowering himself" to
woman's work should be taken with so little seriousness. She tried to
rearrange a mental picture which the other was continually destroying.
"But I suppose it's very picturesque. You cook over an open fire, I
imagine."
There was a humorous glint in his eye, "I cook over the best brand of
oil-stove that money can buy," he told her, relentlessly, watching her
wince from the sordid image. "I have all the conveniences I can think
of. All I'm trying to do is to get myself fed with the least expenditure
of gray matter and time on my part, and as things are now arranged in
this particular corner of the country I find I can do it best this way.
It's more work trying to persuade somebody who doesn't want to wait on
me than to jump up and do it myself. Also, having brains, I can
certainly cook like a house afire."
At this, Lydia was overcome by that openness to conviction from
unexpected sources which gave her mother one of her great anxieties for
her. "Well, honestly, do you know," she said unexpectedly, "there is a
lot in that. I've thought ever so many times in the last two weeks that
if Father would let me wait on the table, for instance, I could get on
ever so much easier."
"And I'll just warrant," the man went on, "that I've had more time to
myself lately than you have, for all I've my living to earn as well as
the housework."
"My goodness!" cried Lydia, repudiating the comparison. "That needn't be
saying much for you, for I haven't had a minute--not even to sit with
Mother as much as I ought."
"What did you have to do that kept you from that?"
"Oh, you're no housekeeper, that's evident, or you wouldn't ask. A man
_never_ has any idea about the amount of work there is to do in a house.
Why, set the table, and sweep the parlors, and change the flower vases,
and dust, and pick up, and dust--I don't know what makes things get so
dusty. We've got an awfully big house, you know, and of course I want to
keep everything as nice as if Mother were up. Everybody expects me to do
that!"
"I had a great-aunt," began Rankin with willful irrelevancy, "a very
wonderful old woman who taught me most of what I value. She was
considered cracked, so maybe that's why I am a freak, and she was as
wise as wise! And she had stories that fitted every occasion. One that
she used to tell was about a farmer cousin of hers, who had a team of
spirited young horses that he was breaking. Everybody warned him that if
they ever ran away they'd be spoiled for life, and he got carefuller and
carefuller of them. One day he and his father were haying beside a
river, and the father, who couldn't swim a stroke, fell in. The horses
were frightened by the splash and began to prance, and the son ran to
their heads, beside himself with fear. The old man came to the top and
screamed, 'Help! help!' and the son answered, fairly jumping up and down
in his anguish of mind over his poor old father's fate, 'Oh, help,
somebody! Somebody come and help! I can't leave my horses!'"
He stopped. Lydia slid helplessly into the naïve question, "Well, did
his father drown?" before the meaning of the little parable struck her.
She began to laugh, with her gay, sweet inability to resent a joke made
at her own expense. "Don't you think you are a good hand at
sermon-making!" she mocked him. "It's all very well to preach, but just
you tell me what you would have done in my place."
"I should have left those big rooms, filled with things to dust, and let
the dust lie on them--even such an awful thing as that!"
Lydia considered this with honest surprise. "Why, do you know, it never
occurred to me I could do that!"
Rankin nodded. "It's a common hallucination," he explained. "I've had
it. I have to struggle against it still."
"Hallucination?"
"The notion that you belong to the things that belong to you."
Lydia looked at him sidewise out of her clear dark eyes. She was
beginning to feel more at home in his odd repertory of ideas. "I
wonder," she mused, "if that's why I always feel so much freer and
happier in old clothes--that I don't forget that they're for me and I'm
not for them. But really, you know, dressmakers and mothers and folks
get you to thinking that you are for clothes--you're made to show them
off." Rankin vouchsafed no opinion as to this problem of young-ladyhood.
"Here's your sister's rain," he said instead, pointing across the
clearing, where against the dark tree-trunks fine, clear lines slanted
down to the dry grass. Lydia rose in some agitation. "Why, I didn't
really think it would rain! I thought it was just Marietta's--" She
glanced down in dismay at her thin low shoes and the amber-colored silk
of her ruffled skirt.
Rankin stood up eagerly. "Ah, I've a chance to do you a service. Just
step in, won't you, a moment and let me skirmish around and see what a
bachelor's establishment can offer to a beautiful young lady who mustn't
get wet."
Lydia moved into the wide, low room, saying deprecatingly, "It wouldn't
hurt _me_ to get wet, you know. But this dress just came from Paris, and
I haven't had a chance to show it to anybody yet."
Rankin laughed, hastening to draw up a chair before the hearth, where a
few embers still glowed, their presence explained by the autumnal chill
which now struck sharply across the room from the open door as the rain
began to patter on the roof. The girl looked about her in silence,
apparently with surprise.
"Well, how do you like it?" asked the master of the house, throwing some
dry twigs on the fire so that the flame, leaping up, lighted the
corners, already dusky with the approach of evening. "It's not very
tidy, is it?" He began rummaging in a recess in the wall, tumbling out
coats and shoes and hats in his haste. Finally, "There!" he cried in
triumph, shaking out a rain-coat, "That will keep your pretty French
finery dry."
He turned back to the girl, who was sitting very straight in her chair,
peering about her with wide eyes and a strange expression on her face.
"Why, what's the matter?" he asked.
[Illustration: "You say beautiful things!" he replied quietly. "My
rough quarters are glorified for me."]
Lydia stood up, with a quick indrawn breath. "I don't know," she said,
"what it is. It seems as though I'd been here before. It looks so
familiar to me--so good--" She went closer to where, still holding out
the rain-coat, he stood on the other side of a table strewn with papers.
She leaned on this, fingering a pen and looking at him with a shy
eagerness. She was struggling, as so often, with an indefinable feeling
which she had no words to express. "Don't you know," she went on, "every
once in a while you see somebody--an old man or woman, perhaps, on the
street cars, in the street--and somehow the face goes home to you. It
seems as though you'd been waiting to see that face again. Well, it's
just so with this room. It has a face. I like it very--" She broke off,
helplessly inarticulate before the confusion of her thoughts, and looked
timidly at the man. She was used to kindly, amused laughter when she
tried, stumblingly, to phrase some of the quickly varying impressions
which made her life so full of invisible incidents.
But Rankin did not laugh, even kindly. His clear eyes were more than
serious. They seemed to show him moved to an answering emotion. "You say
beautiful things!" he replied quietly. "My rough quarters are glorified
for me. I've been fond of them before--they're the background to a good
many inward struggles and a considerable amount of inward peace, but
now--" He looked about him with new eyes, noting the dull gleam of gold
with which the chestnut ceiling answered the searching flicker of the
fire, the brighter sparkles which were struck out from the gilded
lettering on the books which lined the walls, and the diamond-like
flashes from the polished steel of the tools on the work-bench at the
other end of the room. There was a pause in which the silence within the
house brought out the different themes composing the rich harmony of the
rain, the steady, resonant downpour on the roof, the sweet whispers of
the dried grass under the torrent, the muted thuddings of the big drops
on the beaten earth of the veranda floor, and the hurried liquid
overflow of the eaves. It was still light enough to see the fine color
of the leather that covered the armchairs, and the glossy black of a
piano, heaped with a litter of music. Near the piano, leaning against
the wall, a violoncello curved its brown crook-neck over the shapeless
bag that sheltered it.
Lydia pointed to it. "You're musical!" she said, as if she had made an
important discovery.
Rankin roused himself, followed the direction of her gaze, and shook
his head. "No; I can't play a note," he said cheerfully, laying the
rain-coat down and going to look over the pile of overshoes in a box;
"but I like it. My queer old great-aunt left me that 'cello. It had
belonged to her grandfather. I believe being so old makes it quite
valuable. The piano belongs to an old German friend of mine who has seen
better days and has now no place to keep it. Two or three times a week
he comes out here with an old crony who plays the 'cello, and they make
music till they get to crying on each other's necks."
"Do you cry, too?" Lydia smiled at the picture.
Rankin came back to the fire with a pair of rubbers in his hand. "No;
I'm an American. I only blow my nose hard," he said gravely.
"Well, it must be lovely!" She sighed this out ardently, sinking back in
her chair. "I love music so it 'most kills me, but I don't get very much
of it. I took piano lessons when I was little, but there were always so
many other things to do I never got time to practice as much as I wanted
to, and so I didn't get very far. Anyhow, after I heard a good orchestra
play, my little tinklings were worse than nothing. I wish I could hear
more. But perhaps it's just as well, Mother says. It always gets me so
excited. I'm sure I should cry, along with the Germans."
"They would like that," observed her host, "above everything."
"Father keeps talking about getting one of those player-pianos, but
Mother says they are so new you can't tell what they are going to be.
She says they may get to be too common."
Rankin looked at her hard. "Would you like one?" He asked this trivial
question with a singular emphasis.
"Why, I haven't really thought," said Lydia, considering the matter.
The man looked oddly anxious for her answer.
Finally, "Why, it depends on how much music you can make with them. If
they are really good, I should want one, of course."
Rankin smiled, drew a long breath, and fell sober again as if at a
sudden thought.
"I don't see any oil-stove," said the girl, skeptically, looking about
her.
"Oh, I have a regular kitchen. It's there," he nodded back of him; "and
two rooms beside for me and for Dr. Melton or my Germans, or some of my
other freak friends when they stay too long and miss the last trolley in
to town. Oh, I have lots of room."
"It looks really rather nice, now I'm here and all," Lydia vaguely
approved; "though I don't see why you couldn't have gone on more like
other folks and just changed some things--not been so _awfully_ queer!"
Rankin was kneeling before her, holding out a pair of rubbers. At this
remark he sat back on his heels, and began: "My great-aunt said that
there was a man in her town who had such a terrible temper that his wife
was in perfect terror of him, and finally actually died of fear.
Everybody was paralyzed with astonishment when, two or three years
after, one of the nicest girls in town married him. People told her she
was crazy, but she just smiled and said she guessed she could get along
with him all right. Everything went well for a week or two, and then one
day he said the tea was cold and not fit for a pig to drink, and threw
the cup on the floor. She threw hers down and broke it all to smash. He
stared and glared, and threw his plate down. She set her lips and banged
her own plate on the hearth. He threw his knife and fork through the
window. She threw hers after, and added the water-pitcher for good
measure."
Lydia's astonishment at this point was so heartfelt that the raconteur
broke off, laughed, and ended hastily, "I spare you the rest of the
dinner-service. The upshot of it was that every dish in the house was
smashed and not a word spoken. Then the man called for his carriage (he
was a rich man--that sort usually is), drove to the nearest china-store,
bought a new set, better than the old, took it back, and lived in peace
and harmony with his wife ever after. And here is the smallest pair of
rubbers I can find, and I shall have to tie these on!"
Lydia watched the operation in silence. As he finished it and rose to
his feet again, "What was that all about?" she inquired simply.
"Compromise," he answered. "There are occasions when it doesn't do any
good."
"Does it do such a lot of good to go off in the woods by yourself and do
your own cooking?" asked Lydia with something of her father's shrewd
home-thrusting accent. "What would happen if everybody did that?"
Rankin laughed. "Everybody'd have a good time, for one thing," he
answered, adding, more seriously, "The house of Rimmon may be all right
for some people, but _my_ head isn't clear enough."
Lydia looked frankly at a loss. She did not belong to the alert, quickly
"bluffing" type of young lady. "Rimmon?" she asked.
"He's in the Bible."
"That's a good reason why I've never heard of him," she said ruefully.
"All I meant by him was that people who conform outwardly to a standard
they don't really believe in, are in danger of getting most awfully
mixed up. And certainly they don't stand any chance of convincing
anybody else that there's anything the matter with the standard. What's
needed isn't to upset everything in a heap, but to call people's
attention to the fact that things could be a lot better than they are.
And that's hard to do. And who ever called more people's attention to
that fact than an impractical, unbalanced nobleman who took to cobbling
shoes for the peace of his soul? There wasn't a particle of sense to
what Tolstoi _did_, but--" He stopped, hesitating in an uncertainty that
Lydia understood with a touching humility.
"Oh, you needn't explain who Tolstoi is. I've heard of him."
"Well, you mustn't imagine I'm anything like Tolstoi!" cried the young
man, laughing aloud at the idea, "for I don't take a bit of stock in
his deification of working with your muscles. That was an exaggeration
he fell into in his old age because he'd been denied his fair share of
manual work when he was young. If he'd had to split kindlings and tote
ashes and hoe corn when he was a boy, I bet he wouldn't have thought
there was anything so sanctifying about callouses on your hands!"
"Oh, dear! You're awfully confusing to me," complained Lydia. "You
always seem to be making fun of something I thought just the minute
before you believed in."
Rankin looked intensely serious. "There isn't an impression I'd be
sorrier to give you," he said earnestly. "Perhaps the trouble is that
you don't as yet know much about the life I've got out of."
"I've lived in Endbury all my life," protested Lydia.
"There may still be something for you to learn about the lives of its
men," suggested her companion.
"If you think it's so wrong, why don't you reform it?" Lydia launched
this challenge suddenly at him with the directness characteristic of her
nation.
"I have to begin with reforming myself," he said, "and that's job enough
to last me a long while. I have to learn not to care about being
considered a failure by all the men of my own age who are passing me by;
and I don't mind confessing to you that that is not always easy--though
you mustn't tell Dr. Melton I'm so weak. I have to train myself to see
that they are not really getting _up_ so fast, but only _scrambling_
fast over slipping, sliding stones; and then I have to try to find some
firm ground where I can make a path of my own, up which I can plod in my
own way."
The tone of the young people, as they talked with their innocent
grandiloquence of these high matters, might have been taken for that of
a couple deep in some intimate discussion, so honestly serious and moved
was it. There was a silence now, also like the pause in a profoundly
personal talk, in which they looked long into each other's eyes.
The clock struck five. Lydia sprang to her feet. "Oh, I must hurry on!
I told Marietta to telephone home that I'd be there at six."
She still preserved her charming unconsciousness of the
unconventionality of her situation. A European girl, brought up in the
strictest ignorance of the world, would still have had intuitions to
make her either painfully embarrassed or secretly delighted with this
impromptu visit to a young bachelor; but Lydia, who had been allowed to
read "everything" and the only compromise to whose youth had been fitful
attempts of the family to remember "not to talk too much about things
before Lydia," was clad in that unearthly innocence which the advancing
tide of sophistication has still left in some parts of the United
States--that sweet, proud, pathetic conviction of the American girl that
evil is not a vital force in any world that she knows. The young man
before her smiled at her in as artless an unconsciousness as her own.
They might have been a pair of children.
"You've plenty of time," he assured her. "Though I live so far out of
the world, the Garfield Avenue trolley line is only five minutes' walk
away. Oh, I'm prosaic and commonplace, with my oil-stove and trolley
cars. There's nothing of the romantic reactionary about me, I'm afraid."
He wrapped the rain-coat about her and took an umbrella.
"Don't you lock up your house when you go away?" asked Lydia.
"The poor man laughs in the presence of thieves," quoted Rankin.
They stood on the veranda now, looking out into the blue twilight. The
rain drummed noisily on the roof and the soft swish of its descent into
the grass rose to a clear, sibilant note. The wind had died down
completely, and the raindrops fell in long, straight lines like an
opaque, glistening wall, which shut them off from the rest of the world.
Back of them, the fire lighted up the empty chair that Lydia had left.
She glanced in, and, moved by one of her sudden impulses, ran back for
a moment to cast a rapid glance about the quiet room.
When she returned to take Rankin's arm as he held the open umbrella, she
looked up at him with shining eyes. "I have made friends with it--your
living-room," she said.
As they made their way along the footpath, she went on, "When I get into
the trolley car I shall think I have dreamed it--the little house in the
clearing--so peaceful, so--just look at it now. It looks like a little
house in a child's fairy-tale." They paused on the edge of the clearing
and looked back at the pleasant glow shimmering through the windows,
then plunged into the strip of forest that separated the clearing from
the open farming country and the main road to Endbury.
Neither of them spoke during this walk. The rain pattered swiftly,
varying its monotonous refrain as it struck the umbrella, the leaves,
the little brook that ran beside them, or the stony path. Lydia clung to
Rankin's arm, peering about her into the dim caves of twilight with a
happy, secure excitement. After her confinement to the house for the
last fortnight, merely to be out of doors was an intoxication for her,
and ever since she had left her sister and begun her wanderings in the
painted woods she had felt the heroine of an impalpable adventure. The
silent flight through the dripping trees was a fitting end. Except for
breaking in upon the music of the rain, she would have liked to sing
aloud.
She thought, flittingly, how Marietta would laugh at her manufacturing
anything romantic out of the commonplace facts of the insignificant
episode, but even as she turned away from her sister's imagined mocking
smile, she felt an odd certainty that to Rankin there was also a glamour
about their doings. It was as though the occasional contact of their
bodies as they moved along the narrow path were a wordless
communication.
He said nothing, but as they emerged upon the long treeless road,
stretching away over the flat country to where the lights of Endbury
glowed tremulously through the rain, he looked at his companion with a
quick intensity, as though it were the first time he had really seen
her.
It was that man's look which makes a woman's heart beat faster, even if
she is as inexperienced as Lydia. She was already tingling with an
undefined emotion, and the shock of their meeting eyes made her face
glow. It shone through the half-light as though a lamp had been lighted
within.
They stood silently waiting for the car which flashed a headlight toward
them far down the track. As it drew near, bounding over the rails,
humming like a great insect, and bringing visibly nearer and nearer the
end of their time together, Lydia was aware that Rankin was in the grasp
of an emotion that threatened to become articulate. The steady advance
of the car was forcing him to a speech against which he struggled in
vain. Lydia began to quiver. She felt an expectancy of something lovely,
moving, new to her, which grew tenser and tenser, as though her nerves
were the strings of an instrument being pulled into tune for a melody.
Standing there in the cold, rainy twilight, she had a moment of the
exultation she had thought was to be so common in her Endbury career.
She felt warmed through with the consciousness of being lovely, admired,
secure, supremely fortunate, just as she had thought she would feel; but
she had not been able to imagine the extraordinary happiness that this,
or some unrecognized element of the moment, gave to her.
The car was almost upon them; the blinding glare of the headlight showed
their faces with startling suddenness. She saw in Rankin's eyes a
tenderness that went to her heart. She leaned to him from the steps of
the car to which he swung her--she leaned to him with a sweet,
unconscious eagerness. In the instant before the car moved forward, as
he stood gazing up at her, he spoke at last.
The words hummed meaningless in Lydia's ears, and it was not until some
time after, in the garish white brilliance of the car, that she
convinced herself that she had heard aright. Even then, though she still
saw his face raised to hers, the raindrops glistening on his hair and
beard, even though she still heard the fervor of his voice, she remained
incredulous before the enigma of his totally unexpected words. He had
said, with a solemn note of pity in his voice: "Ah, my poor child, I am
so horribly, horribly sorry for you!"
CHAPTER VIII
THE SHADOW OF THE COMING EVENT
Judge Emery looked tired and old as he sat down heavily at his
dinner-table opposite his pretty daughter. The discomfort and
irregularity of the household for the last two weeks had worn on the
nerves of a very busy man who needed all of his strength for his work.
It seemed an evil fate of his, he reflected as he took his napkin out of
its ring, that whenever he was particularly hard-pressed in his
profession, domestic turmoil was sure to set in. He was now presiding
over a suit between the city and the electric railway company, involving
many intricate details of electrical engineering and accounting methods.
Until that suit was settled, he felt that it was unreasonable for his
family to expect him to give time or attention to anything else.
In the absence of other vital interests in his life, he had come to
focus all his faculties on his profession. On the adroitness of clever
attorneys he expended the capacity for admiration which, as his life was
arranged, found no other outlet; and, belonging to the generation before
golf and bridge and tennis had brought games within the range of
serious-minded adults, he had the same intent curiosity about the
outcome of a legal contest that another man might have felt in the
outcome of a Newport tournament. His wife had long ago learned, so she
said, that any attempt to catch his mental eye while an interesting
trial was in progress was as unavailing as to try to call a street gamin
away from a knot-hole in a fence around a baseball field.
She knew him and all his capabilities very well, his wife told herself,
and so used was she to the crystallized form in which she had for so
many years beheld him, that she dismissed, as typically chimerical
"notions," the speculations of her doctor--also a lifelong friend of
her husband's--as to what Judge Emery might have become if--the doctor
spoke in his usual highly figurative and fantastic jargon--"he had not
had to hurry so with that wheel in his cage." "When I first knew Nat
Emery," he once said, "he was sitting up till all hours reading _Les
Miserables_, and would knock you down if you didn't bow your head at the
mention of Thackeray. He might have liked music, too. An American isn't
inherently incapable of that, I suppose." At which he had turned on
sixteen-year-old Lydia with, "Which would you rather have, Lyddy; a
husband with a taste for Beethoven or one that'd make you five thousand
a year?" Lydia had shudderingly made the answer of sixteen years, that
she never intended to have a husband of any kind whatever, and Mrs.
Emery had rebuked the doctor later for "putting ideas in girls' heads."
It was an objection at which he had laughed long and loud.
Mrs. Emery liked her doctor in spite of not understanding him; but she
loved her husband because she knew him through and through. In his turn,
Judge Emery bestowed on his wife an esteem the warmth of which was not
tempered by his occasional amusement at her--an amusement which Mrs.
Emery was far from suspecting. He did heartily and unreservedly admire
her competence; though he never did justice to her single-handed battle
against the forces of ignorance and irresponsibility in the kitchen
until an illness of hers showed that the combat must be continuous,
though his wisdom in selecting an ambitious wife had shielded him, as a
rule, from the uproar of the engagement.
This evening, as he looked across the white table-cloth at his daughter,
he had a sudden qualm of doubt, not unusual in parents, as to the
capacity of the younger generation to carry on the work begun by the
older. Of course, he reassured himself, this had scarcely been a fair
trial. The child had been plunged into the business the day after her
return, with the added complication of her mother's illness; but, even
making all allowances, he had been dismayed by the thorough-going
domestic anarchy that had ensued. He was partly aware that what alarmed
him most was Lydia's lack of zest in the battle, an unwillingness to
recognize its inevitability and face it; a strange, apparently willful,
blindness to the value of victory. Her father was disturbed by this
failure to acquiesce in the normal, usual standard of values. He
recalled with apprehension the revolutionary sayings and doings of his
second son, which had been the more disconcerting because they flowed
from the young reactionary in such a gay flood of high spirits. Harry
had no more shared the reverent attitude of his family toward household
æsthetics than toward social values. A house was a place to keep the
weather from you, he had said laughingly. If you could have it pretty
and well-ordered without too much bother, well and good; but might the
Lord protect him from everlastingly making omelets to look at and not to
eat.
Lydia, to be sure, had ventured no irreverent jokes, and, so far as her
father could see, had never conceived them; but a few days before she
had suggested seriously, "Why can't we shut up all of the house we don't
really use, and not have to take care of those big parlors and the
library when you and I are always in the dining-room or upstairs with
Mother, now she's sick?"
Judge Emery had thought of the grade of society which keeps its "best
room" darkened and closed, of the struggles with which his wife had
dragged the family up out of that grade, and was appalled at Lydia's
unconscious reversion to type. "Your mother would feel dreadfully to
have you do that; you know she thinks it very bad form--very green."
Lydia had not insisted; it ran counter to every instinct in Lydia to
insist on anything. She had succumbed at the first of his shocked tones
of surprise; but the suggestion had shown him a glimpse of workings in
her mind which made him uneasy.
However, to-night there were several cheering circumstances. The doctor
had left word that, in all probability, Mrs. Emery would be quite
herself in ten days--a shorter time than he had feared. Lydia was really
charming in a rose-colored dress that matched the dewy flush in her
cheeks; the roast looked cooked as he liked it, and he had heard some
warm words that day about the brilliancy of young Paul Hollister's
prospects. He took a drink of ice-water, tucked his napkin in the top of
his vest--a compromise allowed him by his wife at family dinners, and
smiled at his daughter. "Your mother tells me that you've had a letter
from Paul, saying that he'll be back shortly," he said with a jocosely
significant emphasis. "I suppose we shall hardly be able to get a
glimpse of you after he's in town again."
At this point, beginning to carve the roast, he had a sinking
premonition that it was going to be very tough, and though he heroically
resisted the ejaculation of embittered protest that rose to his lips,
this magnanimity cost him so dear that he did not think of Lydia again
till after he had served her automatically, dashing the mashed potato on
her plate with the gesture of an angry mason slapping down a trowelful
of mortar. It seemed to him at the moment that the past three weeks had
been one succession of tough roasts. He took another drink of ice-water
before he gloomily began on his first mouthful. It was worse than he
feared, and he was in no mood to be either very imaginative or very
indulgent to a girl's whims when Lydia said, suddenly and stiffly, "I
wish you wouldn't speak so about Paul. I don't know what makes everybody
tease me so about him!"
Her father was chewing grimly. "I don't know why they shouldn't, I'm
sure," he said. "Young folks can't expect everybody to keep their eyes
shut and draw no conclusions. Of course I understand Paul's not saying
anything definite till now, on account of your being so young."
Something of Marietta's unsparing presentation of facts was inherited
from her father, though, under his wife's tutelage, he usually spared
Lydia when he thought of it. At this time he was speaking almost
absently, his attention divided between the exceptions to his rulings
taken by the corporation counsel and the quality of his dinner; both
disturbing to his quiet. He finally gave up the attempt at mastication
and swallowed the morsel bodily, with a visible gulp. As he felt the
consequent dull lump of discomfort, he allowed himself his first
articulate protest. "Good Heavens! What meat!"
Lydia had grown quite pale. She pushed back her plate and looked at her
father with horrified eyes. "Father! What a thing to say!" she finally
cried out. "You make me ashamed to look him--to look anybody in the
face. Why, I never dreamed of such a thing! I never--"
Judge Emery was very fond of his pretty daughter, and at this appeal
from what he felt to be a very mild expression of justified discontent,
he melted at once. "Now, never mind, Lydia, it won't kill me. Only as
soon as your mother gets about again, for the Lord's sake have her take
you to a butcher shop and learn to select meats."
Lydia looked at him blankly. She had the feeling that her father was so
remote from her that she could hardly see him. She opened her lips to
speak, but at that moment the maid--the latest acquisition from the
employment agency, a slatternly Irish girl--went through the dining-room
on her way to answer the door-bell, and her father's amused comment cut
her short. "Lydia, you'll have your guests thinking they're at a lunch
counter if you let that girl go on wearing that agglomeration of hair."
The maid reappeared, sidling into the room, half carrying, half dragging
a narrow, tall green pasteboard box, higher than herself but still not
long enough for its contents, which protruded in leafy confusion from
one end. "It's for you," she said bluntly, depositing it beside Lydia
and retreating into the kitchen.
Lydia looked at it in wonder, turning to crimson confusion when her
father said: "From Paul, I suppose. Very nice, I'm sure. Ring the bell
for dessert before you open it. Of course you're in a hurry to read the
card." He smiled with a tender amusement at the girl, who met his eyes
with a look of fright. She opened the box, from which arose a column of
strong, spicy odor, almost like something visible, and naïvely read the
card aloud: "To the little girl grown up at last--to the young lady I've
waited so long to see."
She laid the card down beside her plate and kept her eyes upon it,
hanging her head in silence. Her father began to consume his dessert
rapidly. The cream in it was delicious, and he ate with appreciation. To
him, as to many middle-aged Americans, the two vital parts of a meal
were the meat and the dessert. The added pleasures or comforting
consolations of soup, salads, vegetables, entrées, made dishes, were not
for him. He ate them, but with a robust indifference. "Meat's business,"
he was wont to say, "and dessert's fun. The rest of one's victuals is
society and art and literature and such--things to leave to the women."
He now stopped his consumption of his dessert and recalled himself with
an effort to his daughter's impalpable difficulties. She was murmuring,
"But, Father--you must be mistaken-- Why, nobody so much as hinted at
such a--"
"That's your mother's doings. She'd be furious now if she knew I'd
spoken right out. But you don't want to be treated like a little girl
all your life, do you?" He laughed at her speechless embarrassment with
a kind obtuseness to the horror of youth at seeing its shy fastnesses of
reserve laid open to indifferent feet. Divining, however, through his
affection for her, that she was really more than pleasantly startled by
his bluntness, he began to make everything smooth by saying: "There
aren't many girls in Endbury who don't envy my little Lydia, I guess.
Paul is considered--"
At this point Lydia rose hurriedly and actually ran away from the sound
of his voice. She fled upstairs so rapidly that he heard the click of
her heel on the top step before he could draw his breath. He laughed
uneasily, finished his dessert in one or two huge mouthfuls, and
followed her. He was recalled by the ringing of the telephone bell, and
when he went upstairs again he was smiling broadly. With his lawyer's
caution, he waited a moment outside his wife's room, where he heard
Lydia's voice, to see if her mother had hit upon some happy inspiration
to quiet the girl's exaggerated maidenly shyness. He had the tenderest
indulgence to his daughter's confusion, but he was not without a
humorous, middle-aged realization of the extremely transitory nature of
this phase of youth. He had lived long enough to see so many blushing
girls transformed into matter-of-fact matrons that the inevitable end of
the business was already present to his mind. He was vastly relieved
that Lydia had a mother to understand her fancies, and upon his wife,
whom he would not have trusted to undertake the smallest business
transaction without his advice, he transferred, with a sigh of content,
the entire responsibility of wisely counseling their daughter. "Thank
the Lord, that's not my job!" he had often said about some knotty point
in the up-bringing of the children. Mrs. Emery had always answered that
she could not be too thankful for a "husband who was not a meddler."
The Judge now listened at the door to the conversation between the two
women with a grin of satisfaction.
"Why, my dear, what is there so terrible in having the handsomest and
most promising young man in Endbury devoted to you? You don't need to
marry him for years and years if you don't want to--or never, if you
don't like him enough." She laughed a little, teasingly, "Perhaps it's
all just our nonsense, and he never has thought of you in that way.
Maybe when he comes to see you he'll tell you about a beautiful girl in
Urbana or Cincinnati that he's engaged to--and _then_ what would your
silly father say?"
"Oh, if I could only think that," breathed Lydia, as though she had been
reprieved from a death sentence. "Of course! Father was just joking. But
he startled me so!"
"He was probably thinking of his horrid law business, darling. When a
big trial is on he wouldn't know me from Eve. He says _anything_ at such
times."
Judge Emery laughed noiselessly, and quite without resentment at this
wifely characterization.
Lydia went on: "It wasn't so much what he said, you know--as--oh, the
way he took it for granted--"
"Well, don't think about it any more, dear; just be your sweet natural
self when Paul comes to see you the first time--and don't let's talk any
more now. Mother gets tired so easily."
Lydia's remorseful outcry over having fatigued her mother seemed a good
occasion for Judge Emery's entrance into the room and for his
announcement. He felt that she would make an effort to control any
agitation she might feel, and indeed, beyond a startled gasp, she made
no comment on his news. Mrs. Emery herself was more obviously stirred to
emotion. "To-night? Why, I didn't think he'd be in town for several days
yet."
"He only got in at five o'clock this afternoon, he said."
The two parents exchanged meaning glances over this chronology, and Mrs.
Emery flushed and smiled. "Now, Lydia," she said, "it's a perfect shame
I'm not well enough to be there when he comes. It would make it easier
for you. But I wish you'd say honestly whether you'd rather have your
father there or see Paul alone."
Judge Emery's face took on an aggrieved look of alarm. "Good gracious,
my dear! What good would I be? You know I can't be tactful. Besides,
I've got an appointment with Melton."
Lydia rose from where she knelt by the bed. Her chin was quivering.
"Why, you make me feel so--so queer! Both of you!--As though it were
anything--to see Paul--when I've known him always."
Her mother seized on the rôle opened to them by this speech, and said
quickly: "Why, of course! Aren't we silly! I don't know what possesses
us. When he comes you just run along and see him, and say your father
and I are sorry not to be there."
During the next half-hour she made every effort, heroically though
obviously seconded by her husband, to keep the conversation in a light
and casual vein, but when the door-bell rang, they all three heard it
with a start. Mrs. Emery said, very carelessly, "There he is, dear. Run
along and remember me to him." But she pulled Lydia down to her,
straightened a bow on her waist with a twitch, loosened a lock of the
girl's shining dark hair, and kissed her with a sudden yearning fervor.
After they were alone, Judge Emery laughed aloud. "You're just as bad as
I am, Sarah. You don't _say_ anything, but--"
"Oh, I know," his wife said; "I can't help it!" She deliberated
unresignedly over the situation for a moment, and then, "It seems as
though I couldn't have it so, to be sick just now, when I'm needed so
much. This first month is so important! And Lydia's getting such a
different idea of things from what I meant, having this awful time with
servants, and all. I have a sort of feeling once in a while that she's
getting notions!" She pronounced the word darkly.
"Notions?" Judge Emery asked. He had never learned to interpret his
wife's obscurities when the mantle of intuitions fell on her.
"Oh, don't ask me what kind! I don't know. If I knew I could do
something about it. But she speaks queerly once in a while, and the
evening of the day she was out with Marietta in the Black Rock woods she
was-- Do you know, I think it's not good for Lydia to be outdoors too
much. It seems to go to her head so. She gets to looking like
Harry--almost reckless, and like some little scampering wild animal."
Judge Emery rose and buttoned his coat about his spare figure. "Maybe
she takes a back track, after some of my folks. You know there's one
line in my mother's family that was always crazy about the woods. My
grandfather on my mother's side used to go off just as regular as the
month of May came around, and--"
Mrs. Emery interrupted him with the ruthless and justifiable impatience
of people at the family history of their relations by marriage. "Oh, go
along! And stop and speak to Paul on your way out. Just drop in as you
pass the door. We don't want to really chaperone her. Nobody does that
yet--but--the Hollisters are so formal about their girls--well, you stop
in, anyhow. It's borne in on me that that'll look better, after all."
CHAPTER IX
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
In the midst of his conference with Dr. Melton, an hour later, it came
upon Judge Emery with a clap that he had forgotten this behest of his
wife's, plunged deep in legal speculations as he had been, the instant
he turned from her door. He brought his hand down on the table.
"What's the matter?" asked the little doctor, peering up at him.
"Oh, nothing important--women's cobwebs. I'm afraid I'll have to go,
though. We can take this up again to-morrow, can't we?"
"At your service," said the doctor; but he pulled with some exasperation
at a big pile of pamphlets still to be examined.
"It's something about Lydia's receiving a call from Paul Hollister, and
her mother wanting me to stop in as I left the house and say
good-evening--sort of represent the family--do the proper thing. Don't
it tickle you to see women who used to sleigh-ride from seven to eleven
every evening in a little cutter just big enough for one and a half,
begin to wonder if they hadn't better chaperone their girls when they
have callers in the next room?"
He stirred up the pamphlets with a discontented look. "Confound it, I
wish I could stay! Which one of those has the statistics about the
accidents when the men aren't allowed one day in seven?"
"See here, Emery!" In spite of his evident wish to exhort, the doctor
continued sitting as he spoke. He was so short that to rise could have
given him no perceptible advantage over the tall lawyer. "See here; do
you know that you have a most unusual girl for a daughter?"
"I have heard people say that I have a glimmering notion of her merits,"
said the other with a humorous gravity.
"Oh, I don't mean pretty, and appealing, and with a good complexion, and
all that--and I don't mean you don't spoil her most outrageously. I mean
she's got the oddest make-up for a modern American girl--she's simple."
"I don't see anything odd about her--or simple!" Her father resented the
adjectives with some warmth.
Dr. Melton answered with his usual free-handed use of language: "Well,
it's because, like everybody else old and spoiled and stodgy and
settled, you've no eyes in your head when it comes to something
important, like young people. Because they're all smooth and rosy you
think they're all alike." He rushed on, delivering himself as always
with restless vivacity of gesture, "I tell you youth is one of the most
wastefully ignored forces in the world! Talk about our neglecting to get
the good out of our water-power! The way we shut off the capacity of
youth to see things as they are, before it gets purblind with our own
cowardly unreason--why, it's as if we tried to make water run uphill
instead of turning our mill-wheels with its natural energy."
Judge Emery had listened to a word or two of this harangue and then had
looked for and found his hat and coat, with which he had invested
himself, and now stood ready for the street, one hand on the knob of the
door. "Well, good-night to you," he said pleasantly, as though the
doctor were not speaking; "I'll try to see you to-morrow."
Dr. Melton jumped to his feet, laughing, ran across the room and caught
at the other's arm. "Don't blame me. Much preaching of true gospel to
deaf ears has made me yell all the time. You know you don't really hear
me, any more than anyone else."
"There's no doubt about that, I don't!" acquiesced the Judge frankly.
"I will run on, though I know it never does any good. How'd I begin
this time? What started me off? What was I saying?"
"You were saying that Lydia was queer and half-witted," said the Judge
moderately.
"I said she was simple--and by that I mean she's so wise you'd better
look out or she'll find you out. She's as dangerous as a bomb. She has a
scent for essentials. She can tell 'em from all our flummery. I'm afraid
of her, and I'm afraid _for_ her! Remember the fate of the father in the
_Erl-King_! He thought, I dare say, that he was doing a fine thing for
his child, to hurry it along to a nice, warm, dry, safe place!"
Judge Emery broke in, impatient of this fantastic word-bandying. "Oh,
come, Melton, I can't stand here while you spin your paradoxes. I've got
to get home before young Hollister leaves or my wife won't like it."
"I'll go with you, then," cried the little doctor, clapping on his hat.
"You sha'n't escape me that way. I'm in full cry after the best figure
of speech I've hit on in months."
"Good Lord!" The lawyer looked down laughingly at his friend as the two
set off, a stork beside a sparrow. "You and your figures!"
"It came over me with a bang the other day that in Lydia we have in our
midst that society-destroying child in _The Kaiser's New Clothes_."
"Eh?" said Lydia's father blankly.
"You remember the last scene in that inimitable tale? Where the Kaiser
walks abroad with all the people shouting and hurrahing for the new
clothes, and not daring to trust their own eyes, and suddenly a little
child's voice is heard, 'But the Kaiser has nothing on!'"
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the Judge with a patient
indifference.
"Well, you will know when you hear Lydia say that some day. She
knows--she'll know! Perhaps you've done well to send her to that idiotic
finishing school."
"Don't lay it to me!" cried the Judge, laughing; "_I_ didn't send
her--or not send her. If you were married you'd know that fathers never
have anything to say about what their daughters do."
"More fools they!" rejoined the doctor pointedly. "But in this case
maybe it's all right. She's as ignorant as a Hottentot, of course, but
perhaps any real education might have spoiled her innate capacity to--"
"Oh, pshaw!" The Judge was vaguely uneasy. "You let Lydia alone. Talk
your nonsense about something else. There's nothing queer about Lydia,
thank heavens! She's just like all young ladies."
"That's a horrible thing to say about one's own daughter!" cried the
doctor, falling immediately into the lightly mournful, satirical vein
that was the alternative to his usual racing talk. "There won't be
anything queer about her long, that's fact. In real life the child is
never really allowed to complete that sentence. A hundred hands are
clapped over its mouth, and it's hustled, and shaken, and frightened,
and scolded, till it thinks there's something the matter with its
eyesight. And Lydia's a sweet, gentle child, who'll want to say whatever
pleases people she loves--that'll be another bandage over her eyes. And
she's not dowered with an innate fondness for shrieking out
contradictions at the top of her voice, and unless you've a real passion
for that you get silenced early in life."
The lawyer laughed with the good-natured contempt of a large, silent man
for a small, voluble one. "That's a tragedy you can't know much about
from experience, Melton. No cruel force ever silenced you."
He paused at the walk leading to his house. A big street light glowed
and sputtered over their heads. "Come in, won't you, and see Lydia?"
"No; no cruel force has ever _silenced_ me," the doctor mused, putting
his hands slowly into his pockets, "but it has bound me hand and foot. I
talk, and I talk, but do you ever see me doing anything different from
the worst fools of us all?"
"Are you coming in?" The Judge spoke with his absent tolerance of his
doctor's fancies.
"No, thank you, as the farmer said to the steeple-climber. I'm going
home to my lonely office to give thanks to Providence that I'm not
responsible for a daughter."
The Judge frowned. "Nonsense! Look at Marietta."
"I do," said the doctor.
"Well--?" The lawyer was challenging. In the long run the doctor rubbed
him the wrong way.
"I hope you make a better job of bandaging Lydia's eyes than you did
hers."
The Judge had turned toward the house. At this he stopped and made an
irritated gesture. "Melton, you are enough to give a logical man brain
fever. You're always proclaiming that parents have no real influence
over their children's lives--that it's fate, or destiny, or
temperament--and now--you blame me because Marietta's discontented over
her husband's small income."
The doctor looked up quickly, his face twitching. "You think that's the
cause of Marietta's discontent? By Heaven, I wish Lydia could go into a
convent."
Suddenly his many-wrinkled little face set like a mask of tragedy. "Oh,
Nat, you know what Lydia's always been to me--like my own--as
precious--Oh, take care of her! take care of her! See, Lydia can't
fight. She can't, even if she knew what was going on to fight against--"
His voice broke. He looked up at his tall friend and shivered.
Judge Emery clapped him on the shoulder with a rough friendliness. "No
wonder you do miracles in curing women, Marius. You must know their
insides. You talk like a mother in a fit of the nerves over a sick
child. In the Lord's name, what has Lydia to fight against? If there was
ever a creature with a happy, successful life before her-- Besides,
don't we all stand ready to do her fighting for her?"
Though the night was cool, the doctor took off his hat and wiped his
forehead. He looked up once as though he were about to speak, but in
the end he only put his hat back on his head, nodded, and went his way,
his quick, light, uneven tread waking a faint echo in the empty street.
As the Judge let himself in at the front door, a murmur of voices from
the brightly-lighted parlor struck gratefully on his ear. He was not too
late. "How are you, Hollister?" he called as he pulled off his overcoat.
"Glad to see you back. Let's hear all about the Urbana experience."
Hollister's dramatic interest in each engagement of his battle for
success was infectious. Those who knew him, whether they liked him or
not, waited for news of the results of his latest skirmish as they
waited for the installments of an exciting serial story.
As the older man entered, the tall, quick-moving young fellow came over
to the door and shook his hand with energy. The Judge reflected that
nobody but Hollister could so convey the effect that he was being made
kindly welcome in his own house; but he did not dislike this vigor of
personality. He sat down on the chair which his young guest indicated as
a suitable one, and rubbed his chin, smiling at his daughter. "Dr.
Melton sent his love to you, but he wouldn't come in."
Paul looked brightly at Lydia. "I should hope not! My first evening with
her! To share it with anybody! Except her father, of course!" He added
the last as an afterthought, more with the air of putting the Judge at
his ease than of excusing himself for an ungraceful slip of the tongue.
The Judge laughed, restraining an impulse to call out, "You're a wonder,
young man!" and said instead, "Well, let's hear the news."
Lydia said nothing, but her aspect, always vividly expressive of her
mood, struck her father as odd. As he glanced at her from time to time
during the ready, spirited narrative of the young "captain in the army
of electricity," as he had once called himself, Lydia's father felt a
qualm of uneasiness. Her lips were very red and a little open, as though
she were breathless from some exertion, and a deep flush stained her
cheeks. She looked at Paul while he talked animatedly to her father, but
when he addressed himself to her she looked down or away, meeting her
father's eyes with a curious effect of not seeing him at all. The Judge,
moved by the oblique, harassing intimations he had been forced to hear
from the doctor as to the possibility of his not understanding all that
was in his daughter's mind, was oppressed by that most nightmarish of
emotions for a man of clear-cut intellectual interests--an apprehension,
like an imperceptible, clinging cobweb, not to be brushed away. He
wished heartily that the next year were over and Lydia "safely married."
Daughters were so much more of a responsibility than sons. They forced
on one the reality of a world of intangible conditions which one could,
somehow, comfortably ignore with sons. And yet, how about Harry? Perhaps
if some one had not ignored with him--
"I should have been back ten days ago," Paul drew to the end of his
story, "but I simply had to wait to oversee those tests myself. Since
I've adopted that rule of personally checking the inspector's work,
we've been able to report forty per cent. fewer complaints of newly
installed dynamos to the general office. And you see in this case, from
the accident, what might have happened."
"By the Lord!" cried the lawyer, moved in spite of his preoccupations by
the story of danger the other had been relating, "I should think it
would turn your hair white every time a dynamo's installed. How did you
feel when the fly-wheel broke?"
"The fly-wheel isn't on the dynamo, of course," corrected Paul, "so I
don't feel responsible for it in a business way, and that's everything.
As for being frightened, why, it's all over so quickly. You don't have
time to take in what's happening. You're there or you're not. And if you
are, the best thing is to get busy with repairs," he added, with a
simple, manly depreciation of his courage. "You mustn't think it often
happens, you know; it's supposed never to."
He spoke of the personal side of the matter with a dry brevity which
contrasted effectively with the unconscious eloquence with which he had
previously brought before their eyes the tense excitement in the new
power-house when the wheels first stir to life in incredibly rapid
revolutions and the mysterious modern genii begins to rush through the
wires. At no time did Lydia's suitor show to better advantage than in
speaking of his profession. The alertness of his face and the prompt
decision of his speech suited the subject. His mouth fell into lines of
grimly fixed purpose which expressed even more than his words when he
spoke of the rivalry in endurance, patience and daring in the army of
young electrical engineers, all set, as he was, on crowding one another
out of the rapidly narrowing road to preferment and the few great golden
prizes of the profession.
This evening he was more than usually fervent. Judge Emery thought he
detected in him traces of the same excitement that flamed from Lydia's
cheeks. "I tell you, Judge, I was wrong when I spoke of the 'army' of
electricity. In the army advancement comes only from somebody's death,
and with us it's simply a question of who's got the most to give. He
gets the most back--and that's all there is to it. The company's bound
to have the man it can get the most work out of. If you can do two
ordinary men's work, you get two men's pay. See? There's no limit to the
application of that principle. Why, our field organizer on the Pacific
Coast is only a little older than I, and, by Jove! the work they say
he'll turn off is something marvelous! You wouldn't believe it. But you
can train yourself to it, like everything else. To be able to
concentrate--not to lose a detail--to put every ounce of your force into
it--that's the thing."
He brought one hand down inside the other, and sat for a moment in
silence as tense with stirring possibilities to the others as to
himself. The Judge felt moved to a most unusual sensation, as if he were
a loosened bowstring beside this twanging, taut intensity. He felt
slightly dismayed to have his unspoken principles carried to this _n_th
power. He had given the best of himself, all his thoughts, illusions,
hopes, endeavors, to his ideal of success, but his ambition had never
been concentrated enough to serve as a lens through which the rays of
his efforts might focus themselves into the single beam of devastating
heat on which Paul counted so certainly to burn away the obstacles
between himself and success. Various protesting comments rose to his
lips, which he kept back, disconcerted to find how much they resembled
certain remarks of Dr. Melton's.
The young man stirred, looked at Lydia, and smiled brilliantly. "I
mustn't keep this little sick-nurse up any later, I suppose," he said;
but for a moment he made no movement to go. He and Lydia exchanged a
gaze as long and silent as if they had been alone. It occurred to the
Judge that they both looked dazzled. When Paul rose he drew a long
breath and shook his head half humorously at his host. "You and I will
have to look to our guns, during the next season, to hold our own, won't
we? I've been making Lydia promise to reserve me three dances at every
single ball this winter, and I think I'm heroic not to insist on
more--but her first season--!"
Lydia said, with her pretty, light laugh, a little shaking now, "But
suppose you're out of town, setting up some new dynamo or something and
your three dances come along?"
Paul crossed the room to her, as if drawn irresistibly by the sound of
her voice. He stood by her, looking down into her eyes (he was very
tall), bending over her, smiling, pressing, confident, masterful.
"You're to sit out those three dances and think of me, and think of
me--of course! I shall be thinking of you."
Lydia's little tremulous air of archness dropped under this point-blank
rejoinder. She flushed, and looked at her father. That unimaginative
person started toward her as though she had called to him for help, and
then, ashamed of his inexplicable impulse, turned away confusedly and
disappeared into the hall.
Paul took this movement as a frank statement of the older man's desire
to be, for the moment, rid of him. "Oh, I _am_ going, Judge," he called
after him, unabashed; "it is just a bit hard to tear myself away--I've
been waiting so long for her to get back!" To Lydia he went on, "I've
grown thin and pale waiting for you, while you--look at yourself, you
heartless little witch!"
He pointed across to a tall mirror in which they were reflected against
the rich background of his roses. For a moment both the beautiful young
creatures looked each into his own eyes, mysterious with youth's total
ignorance of its own meaning. Paul took Lydia's hand in his, and pointed
again to their reflections as they stood side by side. He tried to
speak, but for once his ready tongue was silent. Judge Emery came back
to the door, a weary patience on his white, tired face.
The young man turned away with a sigh and a smile. "Yes, yes, Judge, I'm
off. Good-night, Lydia. Don't forget the theater Wednesday night."
He crossed the room with a rapid, even step, shook hands with the Judge,
and got himself out of the room with an easy briskness which the older
man, mindful of his own rustic youth, was half-inclined to envy.
After he and Lydia were left alone he did not venture a word of comment,
lest he hit on the wrong thing. He went silently about, putting out the
lights, and locking the windows. Lydia stood where Paul had left her,
looking at her bright image in the mirror. When the last bulb went out,
the room was in a flickering twilight, the street arc-light blinking
uncertainly into the windows. Judge Emery stood waiting for his daughter
to move. He could scarcely see her form--her face not at all, but there
flashed suddenly upon him the memory of her appealing look toward him
earlier. It shook him as it had then. His heart yearned over her. He
would have given anything he possessed for the habit of intimate talk
with her. He put out his hands, but in the twilight she did not see the
gesture. He felt shy, abashed, horribly ill at ease, torn by his
tenderness, by his sense of remoteness. He said, uncertainly,
"Lydia--Lydia dear--"
She started. "Oh, yes, of course. It's late." She passed, brushed
lightly against him, as he stood trembling with the sense of her
dearness to him. She began to ascend the stairs. He had felt from her
the emanation of excitement, guessed that she was shivering like himself
before a crisis--and he could find no word to say.
She had passed him as though he were a part of the furniture. He had
never talked to her about--about things. He stood at the foot of the
stairs in the darkness, listening to her light, mounting footfall. Once
he opened his mouth to call to her, but the habit of a lifetime closed
it.
"She will talk to her mother," he told himself; "her mother will know
what to say." When he followed her up the stairs he was conscious
chiefly that he was immeasurably tired. Melton, perhaps, had something
on his side with his everlasting warnings about nervous breakdowns. He
could not stand long strains as he used to do.
He fell asleep tracing out the thread of the argument presented that day
by the counsel for the defense.
CHAPTER X
CASUS BELLI
Dr. Melton looked up in some surprise from his circle of lamplight as
his goddaughter came swiftly into the room. "Your mother worse?" he
queried sharply.
"No, no, dear Godfather. I just thought I'd come over and see you for a
while. I had a little headache--Marietta's back from Cleveland to-day,
and she and Flora Burgess are at the house--"
"You've said enough. I'm thankful that you have this refuge to fly to
from such--"
"Oh, Flora's not so bad as you make her out, the queer, kind little old
dowdy--only I didn't feel like talking 'parties,' and 'who's who,'
to-night--and their being with Mother made it all right for me to leave
her."
The doctor took off his eye-shade and showed his little wizened face
rather paler than usual. "That's a combination that would kill _me_, and
your mother not well yet--still, many folks, many tastes."
He looked at Lydia penetratingly. She had taken a chair before the
soft-coal fire and was staring at it rather moodily. "Well, Lydia, my
dear, and how does Endbury strike you now? Speaking of many tastes, what
are yours going to be like, I wonder?"
"I wonder," she repeated absently.
"Well, at least you know whether the young man who called on you last
night is to your taste?"
Lydia turned her face away and made a nervous gesture. "Oh, don't,
Godfather!"
"Very well, I won't," he said cheerfully, turning to his books with the
instinct of one who knows his womankind.
There was a long silence, broken only by the purring of the coal. Then
Lydia gave a laugh and went to sit on the arm of his chair. "Of course
that was what I came to see you about," she admitted, her sensitive lips
quivering into a smile that was not light-hearted; "but now I'm here I
find I haven't anything to say. Perhaps you'd better give me a pink pill
and send me home to forget all about everything."
Dr. Melton took her fingers and held them closely in his thin, sinewy
hands. "Oh, if I could--if I only could do something for you!" He
searched her face anxiously. "What did young Hollister say that makes
you so troubled?"
She sat down on the edge of his writing-table and reflected. "It wasn't
anything he _said_," she admitted. "He was all right, I guess. Father
had scared the life out of me before he came, by sort of taking it for
granted--Oh, you know--the silly way people do--"
"Yes."
"Well, Paul was as nice as could be about that, so far as words go-- He
didn't say a thing embarrassing or--or hard to answer, but he let me
_see_--all the same! He kept saying what an immense help I'd be to an
ambitious man. He said he didn't see why I shouldn't grow into the
leader of Endbury society, like the Mrs. Hollister, his aunt, that he
and his sister live with, you know."
"I suppose he's right," conceded the doctor, reluctantly.
"Well, while he was talking about it, it seemed all very well--you know
the way he goes at things--how he makes you feel as though he were a
locomotive going sixty miles an hour and you were inside the engine cab,
holding on for dear life?"
Dr. Melton shook his head. "Paul has given me a great variety of
sensations," he admitted, "but I can't say that he ever gave me quite
this locomotive-cab illusion you speak of."
"Well, he has me, lots of times," persisted Lydia. "It's awfully
exciting--you don't know where you're going, and you can't stop to
think, everything tears past you so fast and your breath is so blown out
of you. You feel like screaming. You forget everything else, you get
so--so stirred up and excited. But after it's over there's always a time
when things are flat. And this morning, and all day long, I've felt
very--different about what he wants and all. I don't believe I'm very
well, perhaps--or maybe--" she broke off, to say with emotion, "Oh,
Godfather, wouldn't it be too awful if I should turn out to be without
ambition." She pronounced the word with the reverence for its meaning
that had been drilled into her all her life, and looked at Dr. Melton
with troubled eyes.
He thrust his lips out with a grimace habitual to him in moments of
feeling, and for an instant said nothing. When he spoke his voice broke
on her name, as it had the night before when he had stood looking up at
her windows. "Oh, Lydia!--Oh, my dear, I'm terribly afraid of your
future!"
"I'm a little scared of it myself," she said tremulously, and hid her
face on his shoulder.
She was the first to speak. "Wouldn't Marietta just scream with laughter
at us?" she reminded him. "We _are_ foolish, too! There's nothing in the
world you could lay your finger on. There's nothing anyhow, I guess, but
nerves. I wouldn't dare breathe it to anybody else, but you always know
how I'm feeling, anyhow. It's as though--here I am, grown up, and
there's nothing for me to do that's worth while--even if--even
if--Paul--"
The doctor took a sudden resolution. "Why don't you talk to your father,
Lydia? Why don't you ask him about--"
He was cut short by Lydia's gesture of utter wonder. "_Father_? Don't
you know that there's a big trial on? He couldn't tell without figuring
up, if you should ask him quick, whether I'm fourteen or nineteen--or
nine! Mother wouldn't let me, anyhow, even if he could have any idea of
what I was driving at. She never let us bother him the least bit when
there was something big happening in his lawyering. I remember that
time I had pneumonia and nearly died, when I was a little girl, that she
told him I had just a cold; and he never knew any different for years
afterward, when I happened to say something about it. She didn't want
him worried when he needed all his wits for some important business."
The doctor looked at her with frowning intensity, and then down at his
papers. He seemed on the point of some forcible utterance, which he
restrained with many twitchings of his mouth. Finally he got up and went
to a window, staring out silently.
"I think I'll go and look up dear Aunt Julia," said Lydia.
"Very well, my dear," said the doctor over his shoulder. "She's in her
room, I think." In exactly the same mild tone, he added, "Damnation!"
"What did you say?" asked Lydia.
He turned toward her, and took up a book from the table. "I said
nothing, dear Lydia--I've nothing to say, I find."
Lydia broke into a light, mocking laugh--the doctor's volubility was an
old joke--and began to speak, when a woman's voice called, "Oh, Marius,
here's Mr.---- why, Lydia, how did you get in without my seeing you?"
She entered the room as she spoke--a middle-aged woman, with large blue
eyes and graying fair hair, who evidently did her duty by the prevailing
styles in dress with a comfortable moderation of effort. Lydia's mother,
as the sister of Mrs. Sandworth's long-dead husband, thought it
necessary, from time to time, to endeavor to stir her sister-in-law up
to a keener sense of what was due the world in the matter of personal
appearance; but Mrs. Sandworth, born a Melton, had the irritating
unconcern for social problems of that distinguished Kentucky family. She
cared only to please her brother Marius, she said, and he never cared
what she had on, but only what was in her mind--a remark that had once
caused Judge Emery to say, in a fit of exasperation with her wandering
wits, that if she ever had as little on as she had in her mind, he
guessed Melton would sit up and take notice.
Lydia now rushed at her aunt, exclaiming, "Oh, Aunt Julia, how _good_
you do look to me! The office door was open and I slipped in that way,
without ringing the bell."
"It's four years old, and never been touched, not even the sleeves,"
said the other deprecatingly.
Her brother laughed. "Who did you say was here--Oh, it's you, Rankin;
come in, come in."
The newcomer was half-way across the room before he saw Lydia. He
stopped, with a look of extreme pleasure and surprise, which Lydia
answered with a frank smile.
"Why, have you met my niece?" asked Mrs. Sandworth, looking from one to
the other.
"Oh, yes; Mr. Rankin's my oldest new friend in Endbury. I met him the
first day I was back."
"And when I set up the newel-post--"
"And I ran on to his house by accident the day Marietta and I were out
with little Pete, when it rained and I borrowed his overcoat and
umbrella--"
"And then I had to call to take them away, of course--"
They intoned their confessions like a gay antiphonal chant. A bright
color had come up in Lydia's cheeks. She looked very sunny and
good-humored, like a cheerful child, an expression which up to that year
had been habitual to her. Dr. Melton looked at her without speaking.
"So, you see," she concluded, "not to speak of several other
times--we're very well acquainted."
"Well, Marius! Did you ever!" Mrs. Sandworth appealed to her brother.
"Oh, I've known about it all along. Rankin and I have discussed Lydia as
well as other weighty matters, a great many times."
Mrs. Sandworth's easily diverted mind sped off into another channel.
"Yes, how you do discuss. I'm going to look right at the clock every
minute from now on, so's to be sure to remind you of that engagement at
Judge Emery's office at half-past nine. I know what happens when you and
Mr. Rankin get to talking."
"I'll not stay long; Miss Emery has precedence."
"Oh, don't mind me," said Lydia.
"They won't--nor anything else," her aunt assured her.
Rankin laughed at this characterization. The doctor did not seem to
hear. He was brooding, and drumming on the table. From this reverie he
was startled by the younger man's next statement.
"I've got an apprentice," he announced.
"Eh?" queried the doctor with unexpected sharpness.
"The fifteen-year-old son of my neighbor, Luigi Carfarone, who works on
the railroad. The boy's been bad--truant--street gamin--all that sort of
thing, and his mother, who comes in to clean for me sometimes, has been
awfully anxious about him. But it seems he has a passion for
tools--maybe his ancestors were mediæval craftsmen. Anyhow, he's been
working for me lately, doing some of the simpler jobs, and really
learning fast. And he's been so interested he's forgotten all his
deviltry. So, yesterday, didn't he and his father and his mother and
about a dozen littler brothers and sisters all come in solemn
procession, dressed in their best, to dedicate him to me and my
profession, as they grandly call it."
"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" cried Lydia.
The doctor resumed his drumming morosely. "Of course you know the end of
that."
"You mean he'll get tired of it, and take to robbing chicken-roosts
again?"
"Not much! He'll like it, and stick to it, and bring others, and you'll
extend operations and build shops, and in no time you'll go the way of
all the world--a big factory, running night and day; you on the keen
jump every minute; dust an inch thick over your books and music; nerves
taut; head humming with business schemes to beat your competitors;
forget your wife most of the time except to give her money; making
profits hand over fist; suborning legislators to wink at your getting
special railroad rates for your stuff; can't remember how many children
you have; grand success; notable example of what can be done by
attention to business; nervous prostration at forty-five; Bright's
disease at fifty; leave a million."
Rankin burst into a great roar of boyish laughter at this prophetic
flight. The doctor gnawed his lower lip, and looked at him without
smiling. "I've got ten million blue devils on my back to-night," he
said.
"So I see--so I see." Rankin was still laughing, but as he continued to
look into his old friend's face his own grew grave by reflection. "You
don't believe all that?"
"Oh, you won't mean to. It'll come gradually." He broke out suddenly,
"Good Heavens, Rankin, give me a serious answer."
"Answer!" The cabinet-maker's bewilderment was immense. "Have you asked
me anything?"
The doctor turned away to his desk with the pettish gesture of a woman
whose inner thoughts are not divined.
"He makes me feel very thick-witted and dense," Rankin appealed to the
two women.
Mrs. Sandworth exonerated him from blame. "Oh, nobody ever can make out
what he's driving at. I never try." She took out a piece of crochet
work. "Lydia, they're at it now. I know the voice Marius gets on.
_Would_ you make this in shell stitch? It's much newer, of course, but
they say it don't wash so well." As Lydia's attention wavered, "Oh,
there's not a particle of use in trying to make out what they're saying.
They just go on and on."
Rankin was addressing himself to the doctor's back. "I don't, you know,
see anything wicked in making a lot of chairs by machinery instead of a
few by hand. I'm no handcraft faddist. I did that in the beginning only
because I had to begin somehow to earn my living honestly without being
too tied up to folks, and I couldn't think of any other way. But I
think, now that you've put the idea into my head--I think it would be a
good thing to gather the boys of the neighborhood around me--and, by
gracious! the girls too! That's one of my convictions--that girls need
very much the same treatment as boys. And if it should develop into a
large business (which I doubt strongly), what's the harm? The motive
lying back of it would be different from what I so fear and hate in big
businesses. You can bet your last cent on one thing, and that is that
the main idea would not be to make as much furniture as fast as
possible, as cheap as possible, but to make it good, and to make only as
much as would leave me and every last one of the folks that work for me
time and strength to live--'leisure to be good.' Who said that, anyway?
It's fine."
"_Hymn to Adversity_," supplied the doctor, who was better read in the
poets than the younger generation. He added, skeptically, "Could you,
though, do any such thing? Wouldn't it run _you_, once you got to
going?"
"Well, if worst came to worst--" began Rankin, then changing front, he
began again: "My great-aunt--"
The doctor fell back in his chair with a groan and a laugh.
"Yes; the same one you may have heard me mention before. She told me
that all through her childhood her family was saving and pulling
together to build a fine big house. They worked along for years until,
when she was a young lady, they finally accomplished it; built a big
three-story house that was the admiration of the countryside. Then they
moved in. And it took the women-folks every minute of their time, and
more, to keep it clean and in order; it cost as much to keep it up,
heated, furnished, repaired, painted, and everything the way a fine
house should be, as their entire living used to cost. The fine big
grounds they had laid out to go with the mansion took so much time to--"
"You see. You see. That's just what I meant," broke in the doctor.
"Well, I'm a near relative of my great-aunt's. One day, when all the
rest of the family was away, she set fire to the house and burned it to
the ground, with everything in it."
"She didn't!" broke in Mrs. Sandworth, who had been coaxed to a fitful
attention by the promise of a coherent story.
Rankin laughed. "Well, that was the way she told it to me, and I don't
doubt she _would_ have," he amended.
The doctor grunted, "Huh! But would _you_!" He went on, "You couldn't
compete with your rivals, anyhow, if you didn't concentrate everything
on making chairs. Don't you know the successful business man's best
advertisement? 'All of my life-strength I've put into the product I
offer you,' he says to the public, and it's true."
"Oh, well, if I couldn't do business there'd be an end of the matter,
and none of your horrible prophecies would come true."
"Your wife wouldn't let you."--Dr. Melton took up another line of
attack--"she'd want a motor-car and 'nice' associates and a fashionable
school for the children, and a home in the 'respectable' part of town."
Rankin's easy-going manner changed. He sat up and frowned. "There you
step on one of my corns, Doctor"--he did not apologize for the rustic
metaphor--"I don't believe a single, solitary identical word of that.
It's my most hotly held conviction that women are so much like humans
that you can't tell the difference with a microscope. I mean, if they're
interested in petty, personal things it's because they're not given a
fair chance at big, impersonal things. Everybody's jumping on the
American woman because she knows more about bridge-whist than about her
husband's business. _Why_ does she? Because he's satisfied to have
her--you can take my word for it! He likes her to be absorbed in clubs
and bridge and idiotic little dabblings in near-culture and pseudo-art,
just for the reason that a busy mother gives her baby a sticky feather
to play with. It keeps the baby busy. It keeps his wife's attention off
him. It's the American man just as much as the woman who's mortally
afraid of a sure-enough marriage with sure-enough shared interests. He
doesn't want to bother with children, or with the servant problem or the
questions of family life, and he doesn't want his wife bothering him in
his business any more than she wants him interfering with hers. That
idea of the matter is common to them both."
"That's a fine, chivalric view of the situation," said the doctor
sardonically. "Maybe if you'd practiced as long in as many American
families as I have, you might have a less idealistic view of your female
compatriots."
"I don't idealize 'em," cried Rankin. "Good Lord! Don't I say they're
just like men? They amount to something if they're given something worth
while to do--not otherwise."
"Don't you call bringing up children worth while?"
"You bet I do. So much so that I'd have the fathers take their full half
of it. I'd have men do more inside the house and less outside, and the
women the other way 'round."
The doctor recoiled at this. "Oh, you're a visionary. It couldn't be
done."
"It couldn't be done in a minute," admitted Rankin.
The doctor mused. "It's an interesting thought. But it's not for our
generation. A new idea is like a wedge. You have to introduce it by the
thin edge. The only way to get it started is by beginning with the
children. Adults are hopeless. There's never any use trying to change
them."
"Oh, you can't fool children," said Rankin. "It's no use teaching them
something you're not willing to make a try at yourself. They see through
that quick enough! What you're really after, is what they see and learn
to go after themselves. If anything's to be done, the adults must take
the first step."
"But, as society is organized, the idea is preposterous."
"Society's been organized a whole lot of different ways in its time. Who
tells me that it's bound to stay this way? I tell you right now, it
hasn't got _me_ bluffed, anyhow! My wife--if I ever have one--is going
to be my sure-enough wife, and my children, _my_ children. I won't
_have_ a business that they can't know about, or that doesn't leave me
strength enough to share in all their lives. I can earn enough growing
potatoes and doing odd jobs of carpentering for that!"
The doctor looked wonderingly at the other's kindling face. "Rankin,"
he asked irrelevantly, "aren't there _ever_ moments when you despair of
the world?"
The voice of the younger man had the fine tremor of sincerity as he
answered, "Why, good heavens, _no_, Doctor! That's why I dare criticize
it so."
The doctor looked with an intensity almost fierce into the other's
confident eyes. He laid his thin, sinewy hand on the other's big brown
fist, as though he would fain absorb conviction by contact. "But I'm
sick with the slowness of the progress you talk of--believe in," he
burst out finally. "It comes too late--the advance from our tragic
materialism; too late for so many that could have profited by it most."
He looked toward Lydia bending over her aunt's fancy work. Rankin
followed the direction of his eyes.
"Yes; that's what I mean," said the doctor heavily, rising from his
chair. "That and such thousands of others. Oh, for a Theseus to hunt
down this Minotaur of false standards and wretched ideas of success! I
see them, the precious youths and maidens, going in by thousands to his
den of mean aspirations, and not a hand is raised to warn them. They
must be silly and tragic because everyone else is!"
Rankin shook his head. "I think I'm proving that you don't have to go
into the labyrinth--that you can live in health and happiness outside."
"There's rather more than that to be done, you'll admit," said the
doctor with an uncompromising bitterness.
Rankin colored. "I don't pretend that it's much of anything--what I've
done."
The doctor did not deny him. He thrust out his lips and rubbed his hand
nervously over his face. Finally, "But you have done it, at least," he
brought out, "and I've only talked. As another doctor has said: 'I've
never taken a bribe; but there's a pale shade of bribery known as
prosperity.'"
They fell into a silence, broken by Mrs. Sandworth's asking, "Lydia,
have your folks got an old mythology book? I studied it at school, of
course, but it has sort of passed out of my mind. Was it the Minotaur
that sowed teeth and something else very odd came up that you wouldn't
expect?"
Lydia did not smile. "I don't know whether we have the book or not, but
Miss Slater told us the story of the Minotaur. There's a picture of
Theseus and Ariadne in Europe somewhere--Munich, I think--or maybe
Siena. It was where one of the girls had a sore throat, I remember, and
we had to stay quite a while. Miss Slater told us about it then."
The doctor stood up. "Julia, it's nearly half-past now. Who remembered
this time? I'm off, all of you. Rankin, see that Lydia gets home safely,
will you?"
"Oh, I must go too--now, with you." The girl jumped up. "I didn't
realize it was so late. They'll be wondering at home."
"Come along, then, both of you. I'll go with you to the corner where I
take my car."
The chill of the night air sent them along at a brisk gait, Lydia
swinging easily between them, her head on a level with Rankin's, the
doctor's hat on a level with her ear. She said nothing, and the two
talked across her, disjointed bits of an argument apparently under
endless discussion between them.
The doctor flung down, with a militant despondency, "It'd be no use
trying to do anything, even if you weren't so slothful and sedentary as
you are! It moves in a vicious circle. Because material success is what
the majority want, the majority'll go on wanting it. Hardy says
somewhere that it's innate in human nature not to desire the undesired
of others."
Rankin sang out a ringing "Aw, g'wan! It's innate in human nature to
murder and steal whenever it pleases, and I guess even Hardy'd admit
that those aren't the amusements of the majority quite so extensively as
they used to be--what? First thing you know people'll begin to desire
things because they're worth desiring and not because other folks have
them--even so astonishing a flight as that!" he made a boyish
gesture--"and what a grand time that'll be to live in, to be sure!"
They were waiting at the corner for the doctor's street car, which now
came noisily down toward them. He watched it advance, and proffered as a
valedictory, his gloom untempered to the last, "You're a wild man that
lives in the woods. I've doctored everybody in the world for thirty
years. Which knows human nature best?"
Rankin roared after him defiantly, waking the echoes and startling the
occupants of the car, "I do! I do! I do!"
The car bore the doctor away, a perversely melancholy little figure,
contemplating the young people blackly.
"Whatever do you suppose set him off so?" Rankin wondered aloud as they
resumed their rapid, swinging walk through the cold air.
"I'm afraid I did," Lydia surmised. "I had a wretched fit of the blues,
and I guess he must have caught them from me."
Rankin looked down at her keenly, his thoughts apparently quite altered
by her phrase. "Ah, he worries a great deal about you," he murmured.
Lydia laughed nervously, and said nothing. They walked swiftly in
silence. The stars were thick above them in the wind-swept autumn night.
Lydia tilted her head to look up at them once or twice. She saw Rankin's
face pale under the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat, his eyes meeting
hers in an intent regard like a wordless speech. The fine, cold, austere
wind swept them along like leaves, whipping their young pulses, chanting
loudly in the leafless branches of the maples, and filling the dark
spaces above with a great humming roar. They thrilled responsive to all
this and to the mood of high seriousness each divined in the other.
Lydia's voice, breaking in upon the intimate silence, continued the
talk, but it was with another note. The mute interval, filled with wind
and darkness and the light of stars, had swung them up to a higher
plane. She spoke with an artless sureness of comprehension--a
certainty--they were close in spirit at that moment, and she was not
frightened, not even conscious of it. "Why should the doctor worry?
_What is the matter?_ Marietta says the trouble with me is that I'm
spoiled with having everything that I want."
"_Have_ you everything you want?" Rankin's bluntness of interrogation
was unmitigated.
Lydia looked up at him swiftly, keenly. In his grave face there was that
which made her break out with an open quivering emotion she had not
shown even to the doctor's loving heart. "It's a weight on my very
soul--that there's nothing for me to look forward to--nothing, nothing
that's worth growing up to do. I haven't been taught anything--but I
know I want to be something better than--perhaps I can't be--but I want
to try! I want to try! That's not much to ask--just a chance to try--But
I don't even know how to get that. I don't even dare to speak
of--of--such things. People laugh and say it's Sunday-schooley fancies
that'll disappear, that I'll forget as I get into living. But I don't
want to forget. I'm afraid I shall. I want to keep trying. I don't
know--"
They did not slacken their swift advance as they talked. They looked at
each other seriously in the starlight.
Rankin had given an indrawn exclamation as she finished, and after an
instant's pause he said, with a deep emotion, "Oh, perhaps--at least we
both want to try--_Be Ariadne for me!_ Help me to find the clue to
what's wrong in our lives, and perhaps--" He looked down at her, shaken,
drawing quick breaths. She answered his gaze silently, her face as
shining white as his.
He went on: "You shall decide what Ariadne may be or may come to be--I
will take whatever you choose to give--and bless you!"
She had a gesture of humility. "_I_ haven't anything to give."
His accent was memorable as he cried, "You have yourself--you--you! But
you are too gentle! It is hard for you--it will be too hard for you to
do what you feel should be done. I could perhaps do the things if you
would tell me--help you not to forget--not to let life make you forget
what is worth doing and learning!"
She put back a mesh of her wind-blown hair to look at him intently, and
to say again in wonder, "I'm not anything. What can you think I--what
can you hope--"
They were standing now on the walk before her father's house. "I can
hope--" his voice shook, "I can hope that you may make me into a man
worthy to help you to be the best that's in you."
Lydia put out her hand impulsively. It did not tremble. She looked at
him with radiant, steady eyes. He raised the slim, gloved fingers to his
lips. "Whether to leave you, or to try to--Oh, I would give my life to
know how best to serve you," he said huskily. He turned away, the sound
of his steps ringing loud in the silent street.
Lydia went slowly up the walk and into the empty hall. She stood an
instant, her hands clasped before her breast, her eyes closed, her face
still and clear. Then she moved upstairs like one in a dream.
As she passed her mother's door she started violently, and for an
instant had no breath to answer. Some one had called her name
laughingly.
Finally, "Yes," she answered without stirring.
"Oh, come in, come in!" cried Marietta mockingly. "We know all about
everything. We heard you come up the street, and saw you philandering on
the front walk. And for all it's so dark, we made out that Paul kissed
your hand when he went away."
There was a silence in the hall. Then Lydia appeared in the door. Mrs.
Emery gave a scream. "Why, Lydia! what makes you look so queer?"
They turned startled, inquiring, daunting faces upon her. It was the
baptism of fire to Lydia. The battle, inevitable for her, had begun. She
faced it; she did not take refuge in the safe, silent lie which opened
before her, but her courage was a piteous one. In her utter heartsick
shrinking from the consequences of her answer she had a premonition of
the weakness that was to make the combat so unequal. "It was not Paul,"
she said, pale in the doorway; "it was Daniel Rankin."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BOOK II
IN THE LOCOMOTIVE CAB
CHAPTER XI
WHAT IS BEST FOR LYDIA
The girls who were to be débutantes that season, the "crowd" or (more
accurately to quote Madeleine Hollister's racy characterization) "the
gang," stood before Hallam's drug store, chattering like a group of
bright-colored paroquets. They had finished three or four ice-cream
sodas apiece, and now, inimitably unconscious that they were on the
street corner, they were "getting up" a matinée party for the
performance of the popular actress whom, at that time, it was the
fashion for all girls of their age and condition to adore. They had
worked themselves up to a state of hysteric excitement over the
prospect.
A tall brown-eyed blonde, with the physical development of a woman and
the facial expression of a child of twelve, cried out, "I feel as though
I should swoon for joy to see that darling way she holds her hands when
the leading man's making love to her--so sort of helpless--like this--"
"Oh, Madeleine, that's not a _bit_ the way. It's so!"
The first speaker protested, "Well, I guess I ought to be able to do it.
I've practiced for _hours_ in front of the glass doing it."
"For mercy's sake that's nothing. So have I. Who hasn't?"
Madeleine referred the question to Lydia, "Lyd has seen her later than
anybody. She saw her in London. Just think of going to the theater in
London--as if it was anywhere. She says they're crazy about her over
there."
"_Oh, wild!_" Lydia told them. "Her picture's in every single window!"
"Which one? Which one?" they clamored, hanging on her answer
breathlessly.
"That fascinating one with the rose, where she's holding her head
sideways and--" Oh, yes, they had that one, their exclamation cut her
short, relieved that their collections were complete.
"Lyd met a woman on the steamer coming back whose sister-in-law has the
same hairdresser," Madeleine went on.
They were electrified. "Oh, _honestly_? Is it her own?" They trembled
visibly before solution of a problem which had puzzled them, as they
would have said, "for eternities."
"Every hair," Lydia affirmed, "and naturally that color."
Their enthusiasm was prodigious, "How grand! How perfectly grand!"
They turned on Lydia with reproaches. "Here you've been back two months
and we haven't got a bit of good out of you. Think of your having known
that, all this--"
"Her mother's sick, you know," Madeleine Hollister explained.
"She hasn't been so sick but what Lydia could get out to go buggy-riding
with your brother Paul ever since he got back this last time."
Lydia, as though she wished to lose herself, had been entering with a
feverish intensity into the spirit of their lively chatter; but now,
instead of responding with some prompt, defensive flippancy, she colored
high and was silent. A clock above them struck five. "Oh, I must get
on," she cried; "I'm down here, you know, to walk home with Father."
They laughed loudly, "Oh, yes, we know all about this sudden enthusiasm
for Poppa's society. Where are you going to meet Paul?"
Lydia looked about at the crush of drays, trolley-cars, and
delivery-wagons jamming the busy street, "Well, not here down-town," she
replied, her tone one of satisfied security.
A confused and conscious stir among her companions and a burst of talk
from them cut her short. They cried variously, according to their
temperaments, "Oh, there he comes now!" "I think it's mean Lydia's
gobbling him up from under our noses!" "I used to have a ride or two
behind that gray while Lydia was away!" "My! Isn't he a good-looker!"
They had all turned like needles to the north, and stared as the
spider-light wagon, glistening with varnish, bore down on them, looking
singularly distinguished and costly among the dingy business-vehicles
which made up the traffic of the crowded street. The young driver guided
the high-stepping gray with a reckless, competent hand through the most
incredibly narrow openings and sent his vehicle up against the
flower-like group of girls, laughing as he drew rein, at the open,
humorous outcry against him. A chorus of eager recrimination rose to his
ears, "Now, Mr. Hollister, this is the first time Lydia's been out with
our crowd since she came home!" "You might let her alone!" "Go away,
Paul, you greedy thing!" "I haven't asked Lydia a single thing about her
European trip!"
"Well, maybe you think," he cried, springing out to the sidewalk, "that
I've been spending the last year traveling around Europe with Lydia! I
haven't heard any more than you have." He threw aside the lap-robe of
supple broadcloth, and offered his hand to Lydia. A flash of resentment
at the cool silence of this invitation sprang up in the girl's eyes.
There was in her face a despairing effort at mutiny. Her hands nervously
opened and shut the clasp of the furs at her throat. She tried to look
unconscious, to look like the other girls, to laugh, not to know his
meaning, to turn away.
The young man plunged straight through these pitiful cobwebs. "Why, come
on, Lydia," he cried with a good-humored pointedness, "I've been all
over town looking for you." She backed away, looking over her shoulder,
as if for a lane of escape, flushing, paling. "Oh, no, no thank you,
Paul. Not _this_ afternoon!" she cried imploringly, with a soft fury of
protest, "I'm on my way to Father's office. I want to walk home with
him. I want to see him. I thought it would be nice to walk home with
him. I see so little of him! I thought it would be nice to walk home
with him." She was repeating herself, stammering and uncertain, but
achieving nevertheless a steady retreat from the confident figure
standing by the wagon.
This retreat was cut short by his next speech. "Oh, I've just come from
your father. I went to his office, thinking you might be there. He said
to tell you and your mother that he won't be home to dinner to-night at
all. He's got some citations on hand he has to verify."
Lydia had stopped her actual recoil at his first words and now stood
still, but she still tugged at the invisible chain which held her. She
was panting a little. She shook her head. "Well--anyhow--I want to see
him!" she insisted with a transparently aimless obstinacy like a
frightened child's. "I want to see my father." Paul laughed easily,
"Well, you'd better choose some other time if you want to get anything
out of him. He had turned everybody out and was just settling to work
with a pile of law-books before him. You know how your father looks
under those circumstances!" He held the picture up to her, relentlessly
smiling.
Lydia's lips quivered, but she said nothing.
Paul went on soothingly, "I've only come to take you straight home,
anyhow. Your mother wants you. She said she had one of those fainting
turns again. She said to be sure to bring you."
At the mention of her mother's name, Lydia turned quite pale. She began
to walk slowly back towards the wagon. There was angry, helpless misery
in her dark eyes, but there was no longer any resistance. "Oh, if Mother
needs me--" she murmured. She took the offered hand, stepped into the
wagon and even went through some fitful pretense of responding to the
chorus of facetious good-bys which rose from the group they were
leaving.
She said little or nothing in answer to the young man's kind, cheerful
talk, as they drove along one main thoroughfare after another,
conspicuous by the brilliant, prosperous beauty of their well-fed youth
and their handsome garb, pointed out by people on the sidewalks,
constantly nodding in response to greetings from acquaintances. Lydia
flushed deeply at the first of these salutations, a flush which grew
deeper and deeper as these features of their processional advance
repeated themselves. She put her hand to her throat from time to time as
though it ached and when the red rubber-tired wheels turned noiselessly
in on the asphalt of her home street, she threw the lap-robe brusquely
back from her knees as though for an instant escape.
The young man's pleasant chat stopped. "Look here, Lydia," he said in
another tone, one that forced her eyes to meet his, "look here, don't
you forget one thing!" His voice was deep with the sincerest sympathy,
his eyes full of emotion, "Don't you forget, little Lydia, that nobody's
sorrier for you than I am! And I don't want anything that--" he cried
out in sudden passion--"Good Lord, I'd be cut to bits before I'd even
_want_ anything that wasn't best for you!" He looked away and mastered
himself again to quiet friendliness, "You know that, _don't you_, Lydia?
You know that all I want is for you to have the most successful life
anyone can?"
He leaned to her imploring in his turn.
She drew a quick breath, and moved her head from side to side
restlessly. Then drawn by the steady insistence of his eyes, she said,
as if touched by his patient, determined kindness, "Oh, yes, yes, Paul,
I realize how awfully good you're being to me! I wish I could--but--yes,
of course I see how good you are to me!"
He laid his hand an instant over hers, withdrawing it before she herself
could make the action. "It makes me happy to have you know I want to
be," he said simply, "now that's all. You needn't be afraid. I shan't
bother you."
They were in front of the Emery house now. He did not try to detain her
longer. He helped her down, only repeating as she gave him her gloved
hand an instant, "That's what I'm for--to be good to you."
The wagon drove off, the young man refraining from so much as a backward
glance.
The girl turned to the house and stood a moment, opening and shutting
her hands. When she moved, it was to walk so rapidly as almost to run up
the walk, up the steps, into the hall and into her mother's presence,
where, still on the crest of the wave of her resolution, she cried,
"Mother, did you really send Paul for me again. Did you _really_?"
"Why, yes, dear," said Mrs. Emery, surprised, sitting up on the sofa
with an obvious effort; "did somebody say I didn't?"
"I hoped you didn't!" cried Lydia bitterly; "it was--horrid! I was out
with all the girls in front of Hallam's--everybody was so--they all
laughed so when--they looked at me so!"
Mrs. Emery spoke with dignity, "Naturally I couldn't know where he would
find you."
"But, Mother, you _did_ know that every afternoon for two weeks
you've--it's been managed so that I've been out with Paul."
Mrs. Emery ignored this and went on plaintively, "I didn't see that it
was so unreasonable for an invalid to send whoever she could find after
her only daughter because she was feeling worse."
Lydia's frenzy carried her at once straight to the exaggeration which is
the sure forerunner of defeat in the sort of a conflict which was
engaging her. "_Are_ you feeling any worse?" she cried in a despairing
incredulity which was instantly marked as inhumanly unfilial by the
scared revulsion on her face as well as Mrs. Emery's pale glare of
horror. "Oh, I didn't mean that!" she cried, running to her mother;
"I'm sorry, Mother! I'm sorry!"
The tears began running down Mrs. Emery's cheeks, "I don't know my
little Lydia any more," she said weakly, dropping her head back on the
pillow.
"I don't know myself!" cried Lydia, sobbing violently, "I'm so unhappy!"
Mrs. Emery took her in her arms with a forgiveness which dropped like a
noose over Lydia's neck, "There, there, darling! Mother knows you didn't
mean it! But you must remember, Lydia dearest, if you're unhappy these
days, so is your poor mother."
"I'm making you so!" sobbed Lydia, "I know it! something like this
happens every day! It's why you don't get well faster! I'm making you
unhappy!"
"It doesn't make any difference about me!" Mrs. Emery heroically assured
her, "I don't want you to be influenced by thinking about my feelings,
Lydia. Above everything in the world, I don't want you to feel the
_slightest_ pressure from me--or any one of the family. Oh, darling, all
I want--all any of us want, is what is best for our little Lydia!"
CHAPTER XII
A SOP TO THE WOLVES
Six o'clock had struck when Mrs. Sandworth came wearily back from her
Christmas shopping. It was only the middle of November, but each year
she began her preparations for that day of rejoicing earlier and
earlier, in a vain attempt to avoid some of the embittering desolation
of confusion and fatigue which for her, as for all her acquaintances,
marked the December festival. She let herself down heavily from the
trolley-car which had brought her from the business part of Endbury back
to what was known as the "residential section," a name bestowed on it to
the exclusion of several other much larger divisions of town devoted
exclusively to the small brick buildings blackened by coal smoke in
which ordinary people lived.
As she walked slowly up the street, her arms were full of bundles, her
heart full of an ardent prayer that she might find her brother either
out or in a peaceable mood. She loved and admired Dr. Melton more than
anyone else in the world, but there were moments when the sum total of
her conviction about him was an admission that his was not a reposeful
personality. For the last fortnight, this peculiarity had been
accentuated till Mrs. Sandworth's loyalty had cracked at every seam in
order not to find him intolerable to live with. Moreover, her own kind
heart and intense partiality for peace in all things had suffered
acutely from the same suspense that had wrought the doctor to his
wretched fever of anxiety. It had been a time of torment for
everybody--everybody was agreed on that; and Mrs. Sandworth had felt
that life in the same house with Lydia's godfather had given her more
than her share of misery.
On this dark November evening she was so tired that every inch of her
soft plumpness ached. She had not prospered in her shopping. Things had
not matched. She let herself into the front door with a sigh of relief
at finding the hall empty. She looked cautiously into the doctor's study
and drew a long breath, peeped into the parlor and, almost smiling, went
on cheerfully upstairs to her room. From afar, she saw the welcoming
flicker of the coal fire in her grate, and felt a glow of surprised
gratitude to the latest transient from the employment agency who was now
occupying her kitchen. She did not often get one that was thoughtful
about keeping up fires when nobody was at home. It would be delicious to
get off her corset and shoes, let down her hair--there he was, bolt
upright before the fire, his back to the door. She took in the
significance of his tense attitude and prepared herself for the worst,
sinking into a chair, letting her bundles slide at various tangents from
her rounded surface, and surveying her brother with the utmost
unresignation. "Well, what is it now?" she asked.
He had not heard her enter, and now flashed around, casting in her face
like a hard-thrown missile, "Lydia's engaged."
All Mrs. Sandworth's lassitude vanished. She flung herself on him in a
wild outcry of inquiry--"Which one? Which one?"
He answered her angrily, "Which do you suppose? Doesn't a steam-roller
make some impression on a rose?"
"Oh!" she cried, enlightened; and then, with widespread solemnity,
"Well, think--of--that!"
"Not if I can help it," groaned the doctor.
"But that's not fair," his sister protested a moment later as she took
in the rest of his speech.
"Heaven knows it's not," he agreed bitterly.
She stared. "I mean that Paul hasn't been nearly so steam-rollery as
usual."
The doctor rubbed his face furiously, as though to brush off a
disagreeable clinging web. "He hasn't had to be. There have been plenty
of other forces to do his rolling for him."
"If you mean her father--you know he's kept his hands off
_religiously_."
"He has that, damn him!" The doctor raged about the room.
A silent prayer for patience wrote itself on Mrs. Sandworth's face.
"You're just as inconsistent as you can be!" she cried.
"I'm more than that," he sighed, sitting down suddenly on a chair in the
corner of the room; "I'm heartsick." He shivered, thrust his hands into
his pockets and surveyed his shoes gloomily.
One of Mrs. Sandworth's cheerful capacities was for continuing
tranquilly the minute processes of everyday life through every
disturbance in the region of the emotions. You _had_ to, she said, to
get them done--anybody that lived with the doctor. She now took
advantage of his silence to count over her packages, remove her wraps,
loosen a couple of hooks at her waist and fluff up the roll of graying
hair over her forehead. The doctor looked at her.
She answered him reasonably, "It wouldn't help Lydia any if I took it
off and threw it in the fire, would it? It's my best one, too; the
other's at the hairdresser's, getting curled."
"It's not," the doctor broke out--"it's not, Heaven be my judge! that
_I_ want to settle it. But I did want Lydia to settle it herself."
"She has, at last," Mrs. Sandworth reminded him, in a little surprise at
his forgetting so important a fact.
"She has _not_!" roared the doctor.
His literal-minded sister looked aggrieved bewilderment. She felt a
bitterness at having been stirred without due cause. "Marius, you're
unkind. What did you tell me she had for--when I'm so tired it seems as
if I could lie down and die if I--"
Dr. Melton knew his sister. He made a rapid plunge through the
obscurity of her brain into her heart's warm clarity, and, "Oh, Julia,
if you had seen her!" he cried.
She leaned toward him, responsive to the emotion in his voice. "Tell me
about it, poor Marius," she said, yearning maternally over his pain.
"I can't--if you had seen her--"
"But how did you hear? Did she tell you? When did--"
"I was there at five, and her mother met me at the door. She took me
upstairs, a finger on her lip, and there she and Marietta said they
guessed this afternoon would settle things. A week ago, she said, she'd
had an up-and-down talk with that dreadful carpenter and as good as
forbade him the house--"
Mrs. Sandworth had a gesture of intuition. "Oh, if they've managed to
shut Lydia off from seeing him--"
The doctor nodded. "That's what her mother counted on. She said she
thought it a sign that Lydia was just infatuated with Rankin--her being
so different after she'd seen him--so defiant--so unlike Lydia! But now
she hadn't seen him for a week, and her mother and Marietta had been
'talking to her'--_Julia!_--and then Paul had come to see her every
evening, and had been just right--firm and yet not exacting, and ever so
gentle and kind--and this afternoon when he came Lydia cried and didn't
want to go down, but her mother said she mustn't be childish, and
Marietta had just taken her right down to the library and left her there
with Paul, and there she was now." The doctor started up and beat his
thin, corded hand on the mantel. He could not speak. His sister got up
and laid a tender hand on his shoulder. "Poor Marius!" she said again.
He drew a long breath. "I did not fly at their throats--I turned and ran
like mad down the stairs and into the library. It was Rankin I wanted to
kill for letting his pride come in--for leaving her there alone with
those--I was ready to snatch Lydia up bodily and carry her off to--" He
stopped short and laughed harshly. "I reach to Lydia's shoulder," he
commented on his own speech. "That's me. To see what's to be done and--"
"What _was_ to be done?" asked Mrs. Sandworth patiently. She was quite
used to understanding but half of what her brother said and had acquired
a quiet art of untangling by tireless questionings the thread of
narrative from the maze of his comments and ejaculations.
"There was nothing to be done. I was too late."
"You didn't burst in on them while Paul was kissing her or anything, did
you?"
"Paul wasn't there."
"Not there! Why, Marius, you're worse than usual. Didn't you tell me her
mother said--"
"He had been there--one look at Lydia showed that. She sat there alone
in the dim light, her face as white--and when I came in she said,
without looking to see who it was, 'I'm engaged to Paul.' She said it to
her mother, who was right after me, of course, and then to Marietta."
"Well--!" breathed Mrs. Sandworth as he paused; "so that was all there
was to it?"
"Oh, no; they did the proper thing. They kissed her, and cried, and
congratulated everybody, and her mother said, with an eye on me:
'Darling, you're _not_ doing this just because you know it'll make us so
very happy, _are_ you?' Lydia said, 'Oh, no; she supposed not,' and
started to go upstairs. But when Marietta said she'd go and telephone to
Flora Burgess to announce it, Lydia came down like a flash. It was _not_
to be announced she told them; she'd _die_ if they told anybody! Paul
had promised solemnly not to tell anybody. Her mother said, of course
she knew how Lydia felt about it. It _was_ a handicap for a girl in her
first season. Lydia was half-way up the stairs again, but at that she
looked down at her mother--_God!_ Julia, if a child of mine had ever
looked at me like that--"
Mrs. Sandworth patted him vaguely. "Oh, people always look white and
queer in the twilight, you know--even quite _florid_ complexions."
The doctor made a rush to the door.
"But dinner must be ready to put on the table," she called after him.
"Put it on, then," he cried, and disappeared.
A plain statement was manna to Mrs. Sandworth. She had finished her
soup, and was beginning on her hamburg steak when the doctor came
soberly in, took his place, and began to eat in silence. She took up the
conversation where they had left it.
"So it's all over," she commented, watching his plate to see that he did
not forget to salt his meat and help himself to gravy.
"Nothing's ever over in a human life," he contradicted her. "Why do you
suppose she doesn't want it announced?"
"You don't suppose she means to break it off later?"
"I haven't any idea _what_ she means, any more than she has, poor child!
But it's plain that this is only to gain time--a sop to the wolves."
"Wolves!" cried poor Mrs. Sandworth.
"Well, tigers and hyenas, perhaps," he added moderately.
"They're crazy about Lydia, that whole Emery family," she protested.
"They are that," he agreed sardonically. "But I don't mean only her
family. I mean unclean prowling standards of what's what, as well as--"
"They'd lie down and let her walk over them! You know they would--"
"If they thought she was going in the right direction."
Mrs. Sandworth gave him up, and drifted off into speculation. "I wonder
what she could have found in that man to think of! A girl brought up as
she's been!"
"Perhaps she was only snatching a little sensible talk where she could
get it."
"But they _didn't_ talk sensibly. Marietta said Lydia tried, one of the
times when they were going over it with her, Lydia tried to tell her
mother some of the things they said that night when he took her home
from here. Marietta said they were 'too sickish!' 'Flat Sunday-school
cant about wanting to be good,' and all that sort of thing."
"That certainly wouldn't have tempted _Marietta_ from the path of virtue
and sharp attention to a good match," murmured the doctor. "Nobody can
claim that there's anything very seductive to the average young lady in
Rankin's fanaticism."
"Oh, you admit he's a fanatic!" Mrs. Sandworth seized on a valuable
piece of driftwood which the doctor's tempest had thrown at her feet.
"Everybody who's worth his salt is a fanatic."
"Not Paul. Everybody says he's so sane and levelheaded."
"There isn't a hotter one in creation!"
"Than _Paul_?"
"Than Paul."
"Oh, Marius!" she reproached him for levity.
"He's a fanatic for success."
"Oh, I don't call _that_--"
"Nor nobody else in Endbury--but it is, all the same. And the only
wonder is that Lydia should have been attracted by Rankin's heretical
brand and not by Paul's orthodox variety. It shows she's rare."
"Good gracious, Marius! You talk as though it were a question of ideas
or convictions."
"That's a horrible conception," he admitted gravely.
"It's which one she's in love with!" Mrs. Sandworth emitted this with
solemnity.
The doctor stood up to go. "She's not in love with either," he
pronounced. "She's never been allowed the faintest sniff at reality or
life or experience--how can she be in love?"
"Well, they're in love with her," she triumphed for her sex.
"I don't know anything about Paul's inner workings, and as for Rankin, I
don't know whether he's in love with her or not. He's sorry for
her--he's touched by her--"
Mrs. Sandworth felt the ground slip from beneath her feet. "Good
gracious me! If he's not in love with her, nor she with him, what are
you making all this fuss about?"
The doctor thrust out his lips. "I'm only protesting in my usual feeble,
inadequate manner, after the harm's all done, at idiots and egotists
laying their dirty hands on a sacred thing--the right of youth to its
own life--"
"Well, if you call that a feeble protest--!" she called after him.
He reappeared, hat in hand. "It's nothing to what I'd like to say. I
will add that Daniel Rankin's a man in a million."
Mrs. Sandworth responded, rather neatly for her, that she should hope so
indeed, and added, "But, Marius, she couldn't have married him--really!
Mercy! What had he to offer her--compared with Paul? Everybody has
always said what a _suitable_ marriage--"
Dr. Melton crammed his hat on his head fiercely and said nothing.
"But it's so," she insisted.
"He hasn't anything to offer to Marietta, perhaps."
"Marietta's _married_!" Mrs. Sandworth kept herself anchored fast to the
facts of any case under discussion.
"_Is_ she?" queried the doctor with a sincerity of interrogation which
his sister found distracting.
"Oh, Marius!" she reproached him again; and then helplessly, "How did we
get on to Marietta, anyhow? I thought we were talking of Lydia's
engagement."
"I was," he assured her.
"And I was going to ask you really seriously, just straight out, what
you are so down on the Emerys for? What have they done that's so bad?"
"They've brought her up so that now in her time of need she hasn't a
weapon to resist them."
"Oh, Ma--" began Mrs. Sandworth despairingly.
"Well, then, I will tell you--I'll explain in words of one syllable.
Mind you, I don't undertake to settle the question--Heaven forbid! It
may be all right for Marietta Mortimer to kill herself body and soul by
inches to keep what bores her to death to have--a social position in
Endbury's two-for-a-cent society, but, for the Lord's sake, why do they
make such a howling and yelling just at the time when Lydia's got the
tragically important question to decide as to whether that's what _she_
wants? It's like expecting her to do a problem in calculus in the midst
of an earthquake."
Mrs. Sandworth had a mortal antipathy to figures of speech, acquired of
much painful experience with her brother's conversation. She sank back
in her chair and waved him off. "Calculus!" she cried, outraged;
"earthquakes! And I'm sure you're as unfair as can be! You can't say her
father's obscured any question. You _know_ he's not a dictatorial
father. His principle is not to interfere at all with his children."
"Yes; that's his principle all right. His specialties are in other
lines, and they have been for a long time. His wife has seen to that."
Mrs. Sandworth had one of her lucid divinations of the inner meaning of
a situation. "Oh, the poor Emerys! Poor Lydia! Oh, Marius, aren't you
glad we haven't any children!"
"Every child that's not getting a fair chance at what it ought to have,
should be our child," he said.
He went up to her and kissed her gently. "Good-night," he said.
"Where are you going?"
"To the Black Rock woods."
"Tell him--" she was inspired--"tell him to try to see Lydia again."
"I was going to do that. But she won't be allowed to. It's pretty late
now. She ought to have seen him a great many years ago--from the time he
was born."
"But she's ever so much younger than he," cried Mrs. Sandworth after
him, informingly.
CHAPTER XIII
LYDIA DECIDES IN PERFECT FREEDOM
The maid had announced to Mrs. Emery, finishing an unusually careful
morning toilet, that Miss Burgess, society reporter of the Endbury
_Chronicle_, was below. Before the mistress of the house could finish
adjusting her well-matched gray pompadour, a second arrival was
heralded, "The gentleman from the greenhouse, to see about Miss Lydia's
party decorations." And as the handsome matron came down the stairs a
third comer was introduced into the hall--Mme. Boyle herself, the best
dressmaker in town, who had come in person to see about the refitting of
the débutante's Paris dresses, the débutante having found the change
back to the climate of Endbury so trying that her figure had grown quite
noticeably thinner.
"It was the one thing necessary to make Maddemwaselle's tournoor exactly
perfect," Mme. Boyle told Mrs. Emery. Out of a sense of what was due her
loyal Endbury customers, Mme. Boyle assumed a guileless coloring of
Frenchiness, which was evidently a symbol, and no more intended for a
pretense of reality than the honestly false brown front that surmounted
her competent, kindly Celtic face.
Mrs. Emery stopped a moment by the newel-post to direct Madame to
Lydia's room and to offer up a devout thanksgiving to the kindly
Providence that constantly smoothed the path before her. "Oh, Madame,
just think if it had been a season when hips were in style!" As she
continued her progress to what she was beginning to contemplate calling
her drawing-room, she glowed with a sense of well-being which buoyed her
up like wings. In common with many other estimable people, she could
not but value more highly what she had had to struggle to retain, and
the exciting vicissitudes of the last fortnight had left her with a
sweet taste of victory in her mouth.
She greeted Miss Burgess with the careful cordiality due to an ally of
many years' standing, and with a manner perceptibly but indefinably
different from that which she would have bestowed on a social equal.
Mrs. Emery had labored to acquire exactly that tone in her dealings with
the society reporter, and her achievement of it was a fact which brought
an equal satisfaction to both women. Miss Burgess' mother was an
Englishwoman, an ex-housekeeper, who had transmitted to her daughter a
sense, rare as yet in America, of the beauty and dignity of class
distinctions. In her turn Miss Burgess herself, the hard-working,
good-natured woman of fifty who for twenty years had reported the doings
of those citizens of Endbury whom she considered the "gentry," had
toiled with the utmost disinterestedness to build up a feeling, or, as
she called it, a "tone," which, among other things, should exclude her
from equality. When she began she was, perhaps, the only person in town
who had an unerring instinct for social differences; but, like a kindly,
experienced actor of a minor rôle in theatricals, she had silently given
so many professional tips to the amateur principals in the play, and had
acted her own part with such unflagging consistency and good-will, that
she had often now the satisfaction of seeing one of her pupils move
through her rôle with a most edifying effect of having been born to it.
Long ago she had taken the Emerys to her warm heart and she had rejoiced
in all their upward progress with the sweet unenvious joy of an ugly
woman in a pretty, much-loved sister's successes. Lydia was to her, as
to Mrs. Emery, a bright symbol of what she would fain have been herself.
Miss Burgess' feeling for her somewhat resembled that devout affection
which, she had read, was felt by faithful old servants of great English
families for the young ladies of the house. The pathetic completeness of
her own insignificance of aspect had spared her any uneasy ambitions
for personal advancement, and it is probable that the vigor of her
character and her pleasure in industry were such that she had been
happier in her daily column and weekly five-column _Society Notes_ than
if she had been as successful a society matron as Mrs. Emery herself.
She lived the life of a creator, working at an art she had invented, in
a workroom of her own contriving, loyally drawing the shutters to shade
an unfortunate occurrence in one of the best families, setting forth a
partial success with its best profile to the public, and flooding with
light real achievements like Mrs. Hollister's rose party (_the_ Mrs.
Hollister--Paul's aunt, and Madeleine's). All that she wrote was read by
nearly every woman in Endbury. She was a person of importance, and a
very busy and happy old maid.
Mrs. Emery had a great taste for Miss Burgess' conversation, admiring
greatly her whole-hearted devotion to Endbury's social welfare. She had
once said of her to Dr. Melton, "There is what _I_ call a
public-spirited woman." He had answered, "I envy Flora Burgess with the
fierce embittered envy I feel for a cow"--an ambiguous compliment which
Mrs. Emery had resented on behalf of her old ally.
Now, as Mrs. Emery added to her greeting, "You'll excuse me just a
moment, won't you, I must settle some things with my decorator," Miss
Burgess felt a rich content in her hostess' choice of words. There
_were_ people in Endbury society who would have called him, as had the
perplexed maid, "the gentleman from the greenhouse." Later, asked for
advice, she had walked about the lower floor of the house with Mrs.
Emery and the florist, saturated with satisfaction in the process of
deciding where the palms should be put that were to conceal the
"orchestra" of four instruments, and with what flowers the mantels
should be "banked."
After the man had gone, they settled to a consideration of various
important matters which was interrupted by an impassioned call of Madame
Boyle from the stairs, "Could she bring Maddemwaselle down to show this
_perfect_ fit?"--and they glided into a rapt admiration of the
unwrinkled surface of peach-colored satin which clad Lydia's slender and
flexibly erect back. When she turned about so that Madame could show
them the truly exqueese effect of the trimming at the throat, her face
showed pearly shadows instead of its usual flower-like glow. As Madame
left the room for a moment, Miss Burgess said, with a kind, respectful
facetiousness, "I see that even fairy princesses find the emotions of
getting engaged a little trying."
Lydia started, and flushed painfully. "Oh, Mother--" she began.
Her mother cut her short. "My _dear_! Miss Burgess!" she pointed out, as
who should deplore keeping a secret from the family priest, "You know
she never breathes a word that people don't want known. And she had to
be told so she can know how to _put_ things all this winter."
"I'm sure it's the most wonderfully _suitable_ marriage," pronounced
Miss Burgess.
A ring at the door-bell was instantly followed by the bursting open of
the door and the impetuous onslaught of a girl, a tall, handsome,
brown-eyed blonde about Lydia's age, who, wasting no time in greetings
to the older women, flung herself on Lydia's neck with a wild outcry of
jubilation. "My dear! Isn't it dandy! Perfectly _dandy_! Paul met me at
the train last night and when he told me I nearly swooned for joy! Of
all the tickled sisters-in-law! I wanted to come right over here last
night, but Paul said it was a secret, and wouldn't let me." A momentary
failure of lung-power forced her to a pause in which she perceived
Lydia's attire. She recoiled with a dramatic rush. "Oh, you've got one
of them _on_! Lydia, how insanely swell you do look! Why, Mrs.
Emery"--she turned to Lydia's mother with a light-hearted
unconsciousness that she had not addressed her before--"she doesn't look
_real_, does she!"
There was an instant's pause as the three women gazed ecstatically at
Lydia, who had again turned her back and was leaning her forehead
against the window. Then the girl sprang at her again. "Well, my
goodness, Lydia! I just love you to pieces, of course, but if we were of
the same complexion I should certainly put poison in your candy. As it
is, me so blonde and you so dark--I tell you what--what we won't do this
winter--" She ran up to her again, putting her arms around her neck from
behind and whispering in her ear.
Miss Burgess turned to her hostess with her sweet, motherly smile.
"Aren't girls the _dearest_ things?" she whispered. "I love to see them
so young, and full of their own little affairs. I think it's dreadful
nowadays how so many of them are allowed to get serious-minded."
Madeleine was saying to Lydia, "You sly little thing--to land Paul
before the season even began! Where are you going to get your lingerie?
Oh, _isn't_ it fun? If I go abroad I'll smuggle it back for you. You
haven't got your ring yet, I don't suppose? Make him make it a ruby.
That's ever so much sweller than that everlasting old diamond. He's
something to land, too, Paul is, if I do say it--not, of course, that
we've either of us got any money, but," she looked about the handsomely
furnished house, "you'll have lots, and Paul'll soon be making it hand
over fist--and I'll be marrying it!" She ended with a triumphant
pirouette her vision of the future, and encountered Madame Boyle,
entering with a white and gold evening wrap which sent her into another
paroxysm of admiration. The dressmaker had just begun to say that she
thought another line of gold braid around the neck would--when Mrs.
Emery, looking out of the window, declared the caterer to be approaching
and that she _must_ have aid from her subordinates before he should
enter. "I do _not_ want to have that old red lemonade and sweet crackers
everybody has, and slabs of ice-cream floating around on your plate.
Think quick, all of you! What kind of crackers can we have?"
"Animal crackers," suggested Madeleine, with the accent of a remark
intended to be humorous, drawing Lydia into a corner. "Now, don't make
Lydia work. She's _It_ right now, and everything's to be done for her.
Madame, come over here with that cloak and let's see about the--and Oh,
you and Lydia, for the love of Heaven tell me what I'm to do about this
fashion for no hips, and me with a figure of eight! Lydia, the fit of
that thing is _sublime_!"
"Maddemwaselle, don't you see how a little more gold right here--"
"Here, Lydia," called her mother, "it wasn't the caterer after all; it's
flowers for you. Take it over there to the young lady in pink," she
directed the boy.
Madeleine seized on the box, and tore it open with one of her vigorous,
competent gestures. "_Orchids!_" she shouted in a single volcanic burst
of appreciation. "I never had orchids sent me in my life! Paul must have
telegraphed for them. You can't buy them in Endbury. And here's a note
that says it's to be answered at once, while the boy waits--Oh, my! Oh,
my!"
"Lydia, dear, here's the caterer, after all. Will you just please say
one thing. Would you rather have the coffee or the water-ices served
upstairs--Oh, here's your Aunt Julia--Julia Sandworth, I never needed
advice more."
Mrs. Sandworth's appearance was the chord which resolved into one burst
of sound all the various motives emitted by the different temperaments
in the room. Every one appealed to her at once.
"Just a touch of gold braid on the collar, next the face, don't you--"
"Why not a real supper at midnight, with creamed oysters and things, as
they do in the East?"
"Do _you_ see anything out of the way in publishing the details of Miss
Lydia's dress the day before? It gives people a chance to know what to
look for."
[Illustration: "No, no; I can't--see him--I can't see him any more--"]
"How can we avoid that awful jam-up there is on the stairs when people
begin to--"
Mrs. Sandworth made her way to the corner where Lydia stood, presenting
a faultlessly fitted back to the world so that Madame Boyle might, with
a fat, moist forefinger, indicate the spot where a "soupçon" of gold
was needed.
"Please, ma'am, the gentleman said I was to wait for an answer," said
the messenger boy beside her.
"And she hasn't _read_ it, yet!" Madeleine was horrified to remember
this fact.
"Turn around, Lydia," said Mrs. Sandworth.
Lydia's white lids fluttered. The eyes they revealed were lustrous and
quite blank. Madeleine darted away, crying, "I'm going to get pen and
paper for you to write your note right now."
"Lydia," said Mrs. Sandworth, in a low tone, "Daniel Rankin wants to
speak with you again. Your godfather is waiting here in the hall to know
if you'll see him. He didn't want to _force_ an interview on you if you
didn't want it. He wants to see you but he wanted you to decide in
perfect _freedom_--"
The tragic, troubled, helpless face that Lydia showed at this speech was
a commentary on the last word. She looked around the room, her eyebrows
drawn into a knot, one hand at her throat, but she did not answer. Her
aunt thought she had not understood. "Just collect your thoughts,
Lydia--"
The girl beat one slim fist inside the other with a sudden nervous
movement. "But that's what I can't do, Aunt Julia. You know how easily I
get rattled--I don't know what I'm--I _can't_ collect my thoughts."
As the older woman opened her lips to speak again she cut her short with
a broken whispered appeal. "No, no; I can't--see him--? I can't stand
any more--tell him I guess I'll be all right--it's settled now--Mother's
told all these--I like Paul. I _do_ like him! Mother's told everybody
here--no, no--I can't, Aunt Julia! I _can't_!"
Mrs. Sandworth, her eyes full of tears, opened her arms impulsively, but
Lydia drew back. "Oh, let me alone!" she wailed. "I'm so tired!"
Madame Boyle caught this through the clatter of voices. "Why, poor
Maddemwaselle!" she cried, her kindly, harassed, fatigued face melting.
"Sit down. Sit down. I can show the ladies about this collar just as
well that way--if they'll ever look."
Mrs. Sandworth had disappeared.
Madeleine, coming with the pen and ink, was laughing as she told them,
"I didn't know Dr. Melton was in the house. I ran into him pacing up and
down in the hall like a little bear, and just now I saw him--isn't he
too comical! He must have heard our chatter--I saw him running down the
walk as fast as he could go it, his fingers in his ears as if he were
trying to get away from a dynamite bomb before it went bang."
"He hasn't much patience with many necessary details of life," said Mrs.
Emery with dignity. She turned her criticism of her doctor into a
compliment to her brother's widow by adding, "Whatever he would do
without Julia to look after him, I'm sure none of us can imagine."
"He is a very original character," said Miss Burgess, discriminatingly.
Madeleine dismissed the subject with a compendious, "He's the most
killingly, screamingly funny little man that ever lived!"
"Now, _ladies_," implored Madame Boyle, "one more row--not solid--just a
soupçon--"
CHAPTER XIV
MID-SEASON NERVES
"If I should wait and read my paper here instead of on the cars, do you
suppose Lydia would be up before I left?" asked the Judge as he put his
napkin in the ring and pushed away from the breakfast table.
Mrs. Emery looked up, smiling, from a letter, "'Of course such a great
favorite as Miss Emery,'" she read aloud, "'will be hard to secure, but
both the Governor and I feel that our party wouldn't be complete without
her. We're expecting a number of other Endbury young people.' And do you
know who writes that?" she asked triumphantly of her husband.
"How should I?" answered the Judge reasonably.
"Mrs. Ex-Governor Mallory, to be sure. It's their annual St. Valentine's
day house-party at their old family estate in Union County."
The Judge got up, laughing. "Old family estate," he mocked.
"They are one of the oldest and best families in this State," cried his
wife.
"The Governor's an old blackguard," said her husband tolerantly.
"The Mallorys--the Hollisters--Lydia is certainly," began Mrs. Emery,
complacently.
Lydia's father laughed again. "Oh, with you and Flora Burgess as manager
and press agent--! You haven't answered my question about whether if I
waited and--"
"No, she wouldn't," said Mrs. Emery decisively. "After dancing so late
nights, I want her to sleep every minute she's not wanted somewhere. _I_
have the responsibility of looking after her health, you know. I hope
she'll sleep now till just time to get up and dress for Marietta's
lunch-party at one o'clock."
The father of the family frowned. "Is Marietta giving another
lunch-party for Lydia? They can't afford to do so much. Marietta's--"
"This is a great chance for Marietta--poor girl! she hasn't many such
chances--Lydia's carrying everything before her so, I mean."
"How does Marietta get into the game?" asked her father obtusely.
Mrs. Emery hesitated a scarcely perceptible instant, a hesitation
apparently illuminating to her husband. He laughed again, the tolerant,
indifferent laugh he had for his women-folks' goings-on. "She thinks she
can go up as the tail to Lydia's kite, does she? She'd better not be too
sure. If I don't miss my guess, Paul'll have a word or two to say about
carrying extra weight. Gosh! Marietta's a fool some ways for a woman
that has her brains."
He stated this opinion with a detached, impersonal irresponsibility, and
began to prepare himself for the plunge into the damp cold of the
Endbury January. His wife preserved a dignified silence, and in the
middle of a sentence of his later talk, which had again turned on his
grievance about never seeing Lydia, she got up, went into the hall, and
began to use the telephone for her morning shopping. Her conversation
gave the impression that she was ordering veal cutlets, maidenhair
ferns, wax floor-polish, chiffon ruching, and closed carriages, from one
and the same invisible interlocutor, who seemed impartially unable to
supply any of these needs without rather testy exhortation. Mrs. Emery
was one of the women who are always well served by "tradespeople," as
she now called them, "and a good reason why," she was wont to explain
with self-gratulatory grimness.
The Judge waited, one hand on the door-knob, squaring his jaw over his
muffler, and listening with a darkening face to the interminable
succession of purchases. After a time he released the door-knob,
loosened his muffler, and sat down heavily, his eyes fixed on his wife's
back.
After an interval, Mrs. Emery paused in the act of ringing up another
number, looked over her shoulder, saw him there and inquired uneasily,
"What are you waiting for? You'll catch cold with all your things on.
Isn't Dr. Melton always telling you to be careful?"
She felt a vague resentment at his being there "after hours," as she
might have put it, so definitely had long usage accustomed her to a
sense of solitary proprietorship of the house except at certain fixed
and not very frequent periods. She almost felt that he was eavesdropping
while she "ran her own business." There was also his remark about
Marietta and kites, unatoned for as yet. She had not forgotten that she
"owed him one," as Madeleine Hollister light-heartedly phrased the
connubial balanced relationship which had come under her irreverent and
keen observation. A cumulative sharpness from all these causes was in
her voice as she remarked, "Didn't I tell you that Lydia--"
Judge Emery's voice in answer was as sharp as her own. "Look-y here,
Susan, I bet you've ordered fifty dollars' worth of stuff since you
stood there."
"Well, what if I have?" She was up in arms in an instant against his
breaking a long-standing treaty between them--a treaty not tacit, but
frequently and definitely stated.
They regulated their relations on a sound business basis, they were wont
to say of themselves, the natural one, the right one. The husband earned
the money, the wife saw that it was spent to the best advantage, and
neither needed to bother his head or dissipate his energies about the
other's end of the matter. They had found it meant less friction, they
said; fewer occasions for differences of opinion. Once, when they had
been urging this system upon their son George, then about to marry, Dr.
Melton had made the suggestion that there would be still fewer
differences of opinion if married people agreed never to see each other
after the ceremony in the church. There would be no friction at all
with that system, he added. It was one of his preposterous speeches
which had become a family joke with the Emerys.
"Well, what if I have?" Mrs. Emery advanced defiantly upon her husband,
with this remark repeated.
Judge Emery shared a well-known domestic peculiarity with other
estimable and otherwise courageous men. He retreated precipitately
before the energy of his wife's counter-attack, only saying sulkily, to
conceal from himself the fact of his retreat, "Well, we're not
millionaires, you know."
"Did I ever think we were?" she said, smiling inwardly at his change of
front. "If you stand right up to men, they'll give in," she often
counseled other matrons. She began to look up another number in the
telephone book.
"If you order fifty dollars' worth every morning, besides--"
"Three-four-four--Weston," remarked his wife to the telephone. To her
husband she said conclusively, "I thought we were agreed to make Lydia's
first season everything it ought to be. And isn't she being worth it?
There hasn't a girl come out in Endbury in _years_ that's been so
popular, or had so much--" She jerked her head around to the
telephone--"Three-four-four--Weston? Is this Mr. Schmidt? I want Mr.
Schmidt himself. Tell him Mrs. Emery--"
The Judge broke in, with the air of launching the most startling of
arguments, "Well, my salary won't stand it; that's sure! If this keeps
up I'll have to resign from the bench and go into practice again."
His wife looked at him without surprise. "Well, I've often thought that
might be a very good thing." She added, with good-humored impatience,
"Oh, go along, Nathaniel. You know it's just one of your bilious
attacks, and you will catch cold sitting there with all your--Mr.
Schmidt, I want to complain about the man who dished up the ice-cream at
my last reception. I am going to give another one next week, and I want
a different--"
"I won't be back to lunch," said her husband. The door slammed.
As he turned into the front walk it opened after him, and his wife
called after him, "I'm going to give a dinner party for Lydia's girl
friends here this evening, so you'd better get your dinner down-town or
at the Meltons'. I'll telephone Julia that--"
The Judge stopped, disappointment, almost dismay, on his face. "I'm
going to keep track from now on," he called angrily, "of just how often
I catch a glimpse of Lydia. I bet it won't be five minutes a week."
Mrs. Emery evidently did not catch what he said, and as evidently
considered it of no consequence that she did not. She nodded
indifferently and, drawing in her head, shut the door.
At the end of the next week the Judge announced that he had put down
every time he and Lydia had been in a room together, and it amounted to
just forty-five minutes, all told. Lydia, a dazzling vision in white and
gold, had come downstairs on her way to a dance, and because Paul, who
was to be her escort, was a little late, she told her father that now
was his time for a "visit." This question of "visiting" had grown to be
quite a joke. Judge Emery clutched eagerly at anything in the nature of
an understanding or common interest between them.
"Oh, I don't know you well enough to visit with you," he now said
laughingly, "but I'll look at you long enough so I'll recognize you the
next time I meet you on the street-car."
Lydia sat down on his knee, lightly, so as not to crumple her gauzy
draperies, and looked at her father with the whimsical expression that
became her face so well. "I'm paying you back," she said gayly. "I
remember when I was a little girl I used to wonder why you came all the
way out here to eat your meals. It seemed so much easier for you to get
them near your office. Honest, I did."
"Ah, that was when I was still struggling to get my toes into a crack in
the wall and climb up. I didn't have time for you then. And you're very
ungrateful to bring it up against me, for all I was doing was to wear my
nose clear off on the grindstone so's to be able to buy you such pretty
trash as this." He stroked the girl's shimmering draperies, not thinking
of what he was saying, smiling at her, delighted with her beauty, with
her nearness to him, with this brief snatch of intimate talk.
"Ungrateful--yourself! What am I doing but wearing my nose off on the
grindstone--Dr. Melton threatens nervous prostration every day--so's to
show off your pretty trash to the best advantage. _I_ haven't any time
to bother with _you_ now!" she mocked him laughingly, her hands on his
shoulders.
"Well, that sounds like a bargain," he admitted, leaning back in his
chair; "I suppose I've got to be satisfied if you are. _Are_ you
satisfied?" he asked with a sudden seriousness. "How do you like Paul,
now you know him better?"
Lydia flushed, and looked away in a tremulous confusion. "Why, when I'm
with him I can't think of another thing in the world," she confessed in
a low, ardent tone.
"Ah, well, then that's all right," said the Judge comfortably.
There was a pause, during which Lydia looked at the fire dreamily, and
he looked at Lydia. The girl's face grew more and more absent and
brooding.
The door-bell rang. "There he is, I suppose," said her father.
"But isn't it a pity we couldn't make connections?" she asked musingly.
"Maybe I'd have liked you better with your nose on, better even than
pretty trash."
"Eh?" said Judge Emery. His blankness was so acute that he slipped for
an instant back into a rusticity he had long ago left behind him. "What
say, Lydia?" he asked.
"Yes, yes, Paul; I didn't hear you come in," called the girl, jumping up
and beginning to put on her wraps.
The young man darted into the room to help her, saying over his
shoulder: "Much obliged to you, Judge, for your good word to Egdon,
March and Company. I got the contract for the equipment of their new
factory to-day."
The Judge screwed himself round in his chair till he could see Paul
bending at Lydia's feet, putting on her high overshoes. "That's quite a
contract, isn't it?" he asked, highly pleased.
"The biggest I ever got my teeth into," said Paul, straightening up.
"I'm ashamed to have Lydia know anything about it, though. I didn't
bring a hack to take her to the dance."
"Oh, I never thought you would," cried Lydia, standing up and stamping
her feet down in her overshoes--an action that added emphasis to her
protest. "I'd rather walk, it's such a little way. I like it better when
I'm not costing people money."
"You're not like most of your sex," said Paul. "Down in Mexico, when I
was there on the Brighton job, I heard a Spanish proverb: 'If a pretty
woman smiles, some purse is shedding tears.'"
The two men exchanged laughing glances of understanding. Lydia frowned.
"That is hateful--and horrid--and a _lie_!" she cried energetically,
finding that they paid no attention to her protest.
"_I_ didn't invent it," Paul exonerated himself lightly.
"But you laughed at it--you think it's so--you--" She was trembling in a
sudden resentment at once inexplicable and amusing to the other two.
"Highty-tighty! you little spitfire!" cried her father, laughing. "I see
_your_ finish, my boy!"
"Good gracious, Lydia, how you do fly at a man! I take it back. I take
it back." Paul looked admiringly at his pretty sweetheart's flashing
eyes and crimson cheeks as he spoke.
She turned away and picked up her cloak without speaking.
"To tell the truth," said Paul, going on with the conversation as though
it had not been interrupted, and addressing his father-in-law-to-be,
"every penny I can rake and scrape is going into the house. Lydia's
such a sensible little thing I knew she'd think it better to have
something permanent than an ocean of orchids and candy now. Besides,
such a belle as she is gets them from everybody else."
Mrs. Emery often pointed out to Lydia's inexperience that it was rare to
see a man so magnanimously free from jealousy as her fiancé.
"The architect and I were going over it to-day," the young electrician
went on, "and I decided, seeing this new contract means such a lot, that
I would have the panels in the hall carved, after all--of course if you
agree," he turned to Lydia, but went on without waiting for an answer.
"The effect will be much handsomer--will go with the rest of the house
better."
"They'd be lots harder to dust," said Lydia dubiously, putting a
spangled web of gold over her hair. The contrast between her aspect and
the dingy suggestions of her speech made both men laugh tenderly. "When
Titania takes to being practical--" laughed Paul.
Lydia went on seriously. "Honestly, Paul, I'm afraid the house is
getting too handsome, anyhow--everything in it. It's too expensive,
I'm--"
"Nothing's too good for you." Paul said this with conviction. "And
besides, it's an asset. The mortgage won't be so very large. And if
we're in it, we'll just have to live up to it. It'll be a stimulus."
"I hope it doesn't stimulate us into our graves," said Lydia, as she
kissed her father good-night.
"Well, your families aren't paupers on either side," said Paul.
A casual remark like this was the nearest approach he ever made to
admitting that he expected Lydia to inherit money. He would have been
shocked at the idea of allowing any question of money to influence his
marriage, and would not have lifted a hand to learn the state of his
future father-in-law's finances. Still, it was evident to the most
disinterested eye that there were plenty of funds behind the Emery's
ample, comfortable mode of life, and on this point his eyes were keen,
for all their delicacy.
As the young people paused at the door, Judge Emery took a note-book out
of his pocket and elaborately made a note. "Fifty-five minutes in eight
days, Lydia," he called.
At the end of a fortnight he proclaimed aloud that the record was too
discouraging to keep any longer; he was losing ground instead of
gaining. He had followed Mrs. Emery to her room one afternoon to make
this complaint, and now moved about uneasily, trying to bestow his
large, square figure where he would not be in the way of his wife, who
was hurrying nervously about to pack Lydia's traveling bag. She looked
very tired and pale, and spoke as though near a nervous outbreak of some
sort. Didn't he know that Lydia had to start for the Mallory Valentine
house-party this afternoon, she asked with an asperity not directed at
the Judge's complaint, for she considered that negligible, but at Lydia
for being late. She often became so absorbed and fascinated by her own
managerial capacity that she was vastly put out by lapses on the part of
the object of it. She did not spare herself when it was a question of
Lydia's career. Without a thought of fatigue or her own personal tastes,
she devoted herself with a fanatic zeal to furthering her daughter's
interests. It sometimes seemed very hard to bear that Lydia herself was
so much less zealous in the matter.
When the girl came in now, flushed and guiltily breathless, Dr. Melton
trotted at her heels, calling out excuses for her tardiness. "It's my
fault. I met her scurrying away from a card-party, and she was exactly
on time. But I walked along with her and detained her."
"It was the sunset," said Lydia, hurrying to change her hat and wraps.
"It was so fine that when Godfather called my attention to it, I just
_stood_! I forgot everything! There may have been sunsets before this
winter, but it seems as though I hadn't had time to see one before--over
the ironworks, you know, where that hideous black smoke is all day, and
the sun turned it into such loveliness--"
"You've missed your trolley-car," said her mother succinctly.
"Oh, I'm _sorry_!" cried Lydia, in a remorse evidently directed more
toward displeasing her mother than the other consequences of her delay,
for she asked in a moment, very meekly, "Will it make so very much
difference if I don't go till the next one?"
"You'll miss the Governor. He was coming down to meet those on this car.
You'll have to go all alone. All the rest of the party were on this
one."
"Oh, I don't care about that," cried Lydia. "If that's all--I'd ever so
much rather go alone. I'm never alone a single minute, and it'll rest
me. The crowd would have been so noisy and carried on so--they always
do."
Her mother's aggrieved disappointment did not disappear. She said
nothing, bringing Lydia's traveling wraps to her silently, and emanating
disapproval until Lydia drooped and looked piteously at her godfather.
Dr. Melton cried out at this, "Look here, Susan Emery, you're like the
carpenter that was so proud of his good planing that he planed his
boards all away to shavings."
Mrs. Emery looked at him with a lack of comprehension of his meaning
equaled only by her evident indifference to it.
"I mean--I thought what you were going in for was giving Lydia a good
time this winter. You're running her as though she were a
transcontinental railway system."
"You can't accomplish anything without system in this world," said Mrs.
Emery. She added, "Perhaps Lydia will find, when she comes to ordering
her own life, that she will miss her old mother's forethought and care."
Lydia flung herself remorsefully on her mother's neck. "I'm so _sorry_,
Mother dear," she almost sobbed. Dr. Melton's professional eye took in
the fact that everyone in the room was high-strung and tense. "The
middle-of-the-social-season symptom," he called it to himself. "I'm so
sorry, Mother," Lydia went on. "I will be more careful next time. You
are _so_ good to--to--"
"Good Heavens!" said Dr. Melton. "All the child did was to give herself
a moment's time to look at a fine spectacle, after spending all a
precious afternoon on such a tragically idiotic pursuit as cards."
"Oh, _sunsets_!" Mrs. Emery disposed of them with a word. "Come, Lydia."
"I'll go with her, and carry her bag," said the doctor.
"You made such a good job of getting her here on time," said Mrs. Emery,
unappeased.
The Judge offered to go, as a means of one of his rare visits with
Lydia, but his wife declared with emphasis that she didn't care who went
or didn't go so long as she herself saw that Lydia did not take to
star-gazing again. It ended by all four proceeding down the street
together.
"You're sure you remember everything, Lydia?" asked her mother.
"Let me see," said the girl, laughing nervously. "Do I? The Governor's
wife is his second, so I'm to waste no time admiring the first set of
children. They're Methodists, so I'm to keep quiet about our being
Episcopalians--"
"I guess we're not Episcopalians enough to hurt," commented her father,
who had never taken the conversion of his women-folks very seriously.
"And it's my pink crêpe for dinner and tan-colored suit if they have
afternoon tea. And Mrs. Mallory is to be asked to visit us, but not her
daughter, because of her impossible husband, and I'm to play my
prettiest to the Governor, because he's always needing dynamos and such
in the works, and Paul--"
The big car came booming around the corner, and she stopped her category
of recommendations. The doctor rushed in with a last one as they stepped
hurriedly toward the rear platform: "And don't forget that your host is
the most unmitigated old rascal that ever stood in with two political
machines at once."
The Judge swung her up on the platform, the doctor gave her valise to
the conductor, her mother waved her hand, and she was off.
The two men turned away. Not so Mrs. Emery. She was staring after the
car in a fierce endeavor to focus her gaze on the interior. "Who was
that man that jumped up so surprised to speak to Lydia?"
"I didn't notice anybody," said the Judge.
Dr. Melton spoke quickly. "Lydia's getting in a very nervous state, my
friends; I want you to know that. This confounded life is too much for
her."
"She doesn't kill herself getting up in the morning," complained her
father. "It is a month now since I've seen her at breakfast."
"I don't _let_ her get up," said Mrs. Emery. "I guess if you'd been up
till two every morning dancing split dances because you were _the_ belle
of the season, you'd sleep late! Besides," she went on, "she'll be all
right as soon as her engagement is announced. The excitement of that'll
brace her up."
"Good Lord! It's not more excitement she needs," began Dr. Melton; but
they had reached the house, and Mrs. Emery, obviously preoccupied,
pulled her husband quickly in, dismissing the doctor with a nod.
She drew the Judge hurriedly into the hall, and, "It was that Rankin!"
she cried, the slam of the door underscoring her words, "and _I_ believe
Marius Melton knew he was going on that car and made Lydia late on
purpose."
Judge Emery was in the state in which of late the end of the day's work
found him--overwhelmingly fatigued. He had not an ounce of superfluous
energy to answer his wife's tocsin. "Well, what if it was?" he said.
"They'll be an hour and a half together--alone--more alone than anywhere
except on a desert island. Alone--an hour and a half!"
"Oh, Susan! If Paul can't in three months make more headway than Rankin
can tear down in an hour and a half--"
She raged at him, revolted at the calmness with which he was
unbuttoning his overcoat and unwinding his muffler, "You don't
understand--_anything_! I'm not afraid she'll elope with him--Paul's got
her too solid for that--Rankin probably won't say anything of _that_
kind! But he'll put notions in her head again--she's so impressionable.
And she says queer things now, once in a while, if she's left alone a
minute. She needs managing. She's not like that levelheaded, sensible
Madeleine Hollister. Lydia has to be guided, and you don't see
anything--you leave it all to me."
She was almost crying with nervous exhaustion. That Lydia's course ran
smooth through a thousand complications was not accomplished without an
incalculable expenditure of nervous force on her mother's part. Dr.
Melton had several times of late predicted that he would have his old
patient back under his care again. Judge Emery, remembering this
prophecy, was now moved by his wife's pale agitation to a
heart-sickening mixture of apprehension for her and of recollection of
his own extreme discomfort whenever she was sick. He tried to soothe
her. "But, Susan, there's nothing we can do about it," he said
reasoningly, hanging up his overcoat, blandly ignorant that her
irritation came largely from his failure to fall in with her conception
of the moment as a tragic one.
"You could _care_ something about it," she said bitterly, standing with
all her wraps on. The telephone bell rang. She motioned him back. "No; I
might as well go first as last. It'll be something I'd have to see
about, anyway."
As he hesitated in the middle of the hall, longing to betake himself to
a deep easy chair and a moment's relaxation, and not daring to do so, he
was startled by an electric change in his wife's voice. "You're at
Hardville, you say? Oh, Flora Burgess, I could go down on my knees in
thanksgiving. I want you to run right out as fast as you can and get on
the next Interurban car from Endbury. Lydia's on it--" she cast caution
from her desperately--"and I've just heard that there's somebody I
don't want her to talk to--you know--_carpenters_--run--fly--never mind
what they say! Make them talk to you, too!"
She turned back to her husband, transfigured with triumph. "I guess
that'll put a spoke in _his_ wheel!" she cried. "Flora Burgess's at
Hardville, and that's only half an hour from here. I guess they can't
get very far in half an hour."
The Judge considered the matter with pursed lips. "I wish it hadn't
happened," he mused, as unresponsive to his wife's relief as he had been
to her anxiety. "At first, I mean--last autumn--at all."
His wife caught him up with a good humor gay with relief. "Oh, give you
time, Nat, and you come round to seeing what's under your nose. I was
wishing it hadn't happened long before I knew it had. I breathed it in
the air before we ever knew she'd so much as seen him."
"Melton says he thinks the fellow has a future before him--"
"Oh, Marius Melton! How many of his swans have stuffed feather pillows!"
The Judge demurred. "I often wish I could think he _was_--but Melton's
no fool." He added, uneasily, "He's been pestering me again about taking
a long rest--says I'm really out of condition."
"Perhaps a change of work would do you good--to be in active practice
again. You could be your own master more--take more vacations, maybe."
The Judge surveyed her with a whimsical smile. "I'd make a lot more
money in practice," he admitted.
If she heard this comment she made no sign, but went on, "You do work
too constantly, too. I've always said so! If you'd be willing to take a
little more relaxation--go out more--"
Judge Emery shuddered. "Endbury tea-parties--!"
His wife, half-way up the stairs, laughed down at him. "Tea-parties!
There hasn't been a tea-party given in Endbury since we were wearing
pull-backs."
The laugh was so good-natured that the Judge hoped for a favorable
opening and ventured to say irrelevantly, as though reverting
automatically to a subject always in his mind, "But, honest, Susie,
can't we shave expenses down some? This winter is costing--"
She turned on him, not resentfully this time, but with a solemn appeal.
"Why, Nat! Lydia's season! The last winter we'll have her with us, no
doubt! I'd go on bread and water afterward to give her what she wants
now--wouldn't _you_? What are we old folks good for but to do our best
by our children?"
The Judge looked up at her, baffled, inarticulate. "Oh, of course," he
agreed helplessly, "we want to do the best by our children."
CHAPTER XV
A HALF-HOUR'S LIBERTY
Inside the big Interurban car Lydia and Rankin were talking with a
freedom that enormously surprised Lydia. The man had started up with an
exclamation of pleasure, had taken her bag, found a vacant seat, put her
next the window and sat down by her before Lydia, quite breathless with
the shock of seeing him, could do more than notice how vigorous he
looked, his tall, spare figure alert and erect, his ruddy hair and
close-clipped beard contrasting vividly with his dark-blue flannel shirt
and soft black hat. He was on a business trip, evidently, for on his
knees he held a tool-box with large ungloved hands, roughened and red.
With his usual sweeping disregard of conventional approaches, he plunged
boldly into the matter with which their thoughts were at once occupied.
"So this was why Dr. Melton insisted I should take this car. Well, I'm
grateful to him! It gives me a chance to relieve my mind of a weight of
remorse I've been carrying around."
Lydia looked at him, relieved and surprised at the hearty spontaneity of
this opening.
He misunderstood her expression. "You don't mind, do you, my speaking to
you about last fall--my saying I am so very sorry I made you all the
trouble Dr. Melton tells me I did? I'm really very sorry!"
Nothing could have more completely disarmed Lydia's acquired fear of him
as the bogey-man of her mother's exhortations. It is true that she was,
as she put it to herself, somewhat taken down by the contrast between
her secret thought of him as a wounded, rejected suitor, and this
clear-eyed, self-possessed, friendly reality before her; but, after a
momentary feeling of pique, coming from a sense of the romantic,
superficially grafted on her natural good feeling, she was filled with
an immense relief. Lydia was no man-eater. In spite of traditional
wisdom, she, like a considerable number of her contemporaries, was as
far removed from this stage of feminine development as from a Stone-age
appetite for raw meat. She now drew a long breath of the most honest
satisfaction that she had done him no harm, and smiled at Rankin. He
waited for her to speak, and she finally said: "It's awfully good of you
to put it that way! I've been afraid you must have been angry with me
and hurt that I--so you didn't mind at all!"
Rankin smiled at little ruefully at her swift conclusion. "I believe in
telling the truth, even to young ladies, and I can not say I didn't mind
at all--or that I don't now. But I am convinced that you were right in
dropping me--out of the realm of acquaintances." His assumption was,
Lydia saw with gratitude, that they were talking simply about a possible
acquaintanceship between them. "It's evidently true--what I told you the
very first time I saw you. We don't belong in the same world."
As he said this, he looked at her with an expression Lydia thought
severe. She protested, "What makes you so sure?"
"Because to live in my world--even to step into it from time to
time--requires the courage to believe in it."
"And you think I didn't?" asked Lydia. It was an inestimable comfort to
her to have brought into the light the problem that had so long lain in
the back of her head, a confused mass of dark conjecture.
"Did you?" he asked steadily. "You ought to know."
There was silence, while Lydia turned her head away and looked at the
brown, flat winter landscape jerking itself past the windows as the car
began to develop speed in the first long, open space between
settlements. She was trying to remember something distinct about the
nightmare of misery that had followed her admission of the identity of
the man who had kissed her hand that starry night in October, but from
the black chaos of her recollection she brought out only, "Oh, you don't
realize how things are with a girl--how many million little ways she's
bound and tied down, just from everybody in the family loving her as--"
"Oh, yes, I do; I prove I do by saying that you were probably right in
yielding so absolutely to that overwhelming influence. If you hadn't the
strength to break through it decisively even once, you certainly
couldn't have gotten any satisfaction out of doing things contrary to
it. So it's all right, you see."
Lydia's drooping face did not show that she derived the satisfaction
from this view of her limitations that her companion seemed to expect.
"You mean I'm a poor-spirited, weak thing, who'd better never try to
take a step of my own," she said with a sorry smile.
"I don't mean anything unkind," he told her gently. "I've succeeded in
convincing myself that your action of last autumn was the result of a
deep-rooted instinct for self-preservation--and that's certainly most
justifiable. It meant I'd expected too harsh a strength from you--" he
went on with a whimsical smile, which even the steadiness of his eyes
did not keep from sadness--"as though I'd hoped you could lift a
thousand-pound weight, like the strong woman in the side-show."
She responded to his attempt at lightness with as plain an undercurrent
of seriousness as his own. "Why do you live so that people have to lift
thousand-pound weights before they dare so much as say good-morning to
you?"
"Because I don't dare live any other way," he answered.
"It's hard on other people," Lydia ventured, but retreated hastily
before the first expression of upbraiding she had seen in his eyes. He
had so suddenly turned grave with the thought that it had been harder on
him than on anyone else that she cried out hurriedly, "But you didn't
help a bit--you left it all to me--"
She stopped, her face burning in uncertainty of the meaning of her
words.
Rankin's answer came with the swiftness of one who has meditated long on
a question. "I'm glad you've given me a chance to say what--I've wished
you might know. I thought it over and over at the time--and since--and
I'm sure it would not have been honorable--or delicate--or right, _not_
to leave it all to you. That much was yours to decide--whether you would
take the first step. It would have been a crime to have hurried or urged
you beyond what lay in your heart to do--or to have overborne you
against some deep-lying, innate instinct."
Lydia's voice was shaking in self-pity as she cried out, "Oh, if you
knew what the others--nobody _else_ was afraid to hurry or urge me to--"
She stopped and looked away, her heart beating rapidly with a flood of
recollections. Rankin's lips opened, but he shut them firmly, as though
he did not trust himself to speak. His large red hands closed savagely
on the handle of his tool-box. There was a silence between them.
The car began to move more slowly, and the conductor, standing up from
the seat where he had been dozing, remarked in a conversational tone to
a woman with two children near him, "Gardenton--this is the cross-roads
to Gardenton." Later, as the car stood still under the singing vibration
of the trolley-wire overhead, he added in the general direction of Lydia
and Rankin, now the only passengers, "Next stop is Wardsboro'!" His
voice came to them with a singular clearness in the quiet of the
momentary stop. They were in the midst of a mournful expanse of bare
ploughed fields, frozen and brown. The motorman released his brake,
letting the brass arm swing noisily about, the conductor sat down again,
and as the car began to move forward again he closed his eyes. He looked
very tired and, now that an almost instant sleep had relaxed his
features, pathetically young.
"How pale he is," said Lydia, wishing to break the silence with a
harmless remark. "He looks tired to death."
"He probably is just that," said Rankin, wincing. "It's sickening, the
way they work. Seven days a week, most of them, you know."
"No; I didn't know," cried Lydia, shocked. "Why, that's awful. When do
they see their families?"
"They don't. One of them, whose house isn't far from mine, told me that
he hadn't seen his children, except asleep, for three weeks."
"But something ought to be done about it!" The girl's deep-lying
instinct for instant reparation rose up hotly.
"Are they so much worse off than most American business men?" queried
Rankin. "Do any of them feel they can take the time to see much more
than the outside of their children; and isn't seeing them asleep about
as--"
Lydia cut him short quickly. "You're always blaming them for that," she
cried. "You ought to pity them. They can't help it. It's better for the
children to have bread and butter, isn't it--"
Rankin shook his head. "I can't be fooled with that sort of talk--I've
lived with too many kinds of people. At least half the time it isn't a
question of bread and butter. It's a question of giving the children
bread and butter and sugar rather than bread and butter and father. Of
course, I'm a fanatic on the subject. I'd rather leave off even the
butter than the father--let alone the sugar."
"But here's this very motorman you know about--what could he do?"
"They're not forced by the company to work seven days a week--only
they're not given pay enough to let them take even one day off without
feeling it. This very motorman I was talking with got to telling me why
he was working so extra hard just then. His oldest daughter is going to
graduate from the high school and he wants to give her a fine graduating
dress, as good as anybody's, and a graduating 'present.' It seems that's
the style now for graduating girls. He said he and his wife wanted her
always to remember that day as a bright spot, and not as a time when
she was humiliated by being different from other girls."
"Well, my goodness! you're not criticizing them for that, are you? I
think it was just as sweet and lovely of them as can be to realize how a
girl feels."
Rankin looked at her, smiled slightly, and said nothing. His silence
made Lydia thoughtful. After a time, "I see what you mean, of course,"
she said slowly, "that it would be _better_ for her, perhaps--but if he
_loves_ her, her father _wants_ to do things for her."
Rankin's roar of exasperation at this speech was so evidently directed
at an old enemy of an argument that Lydia was only for an instant
startled by it. "I _don't_ say he can do too much for her," he cried.
"He can't! Nobody can do too much for anybody else if it's the right
thing."
"And what in the world do you think _would_ be the right thing in this
case?" Lydia put the question as a poser.
"Why, of course, to pamper her vanity; to feed her moral cowardice; to
make her more afraid than ever of senseless public opinion; to deprive
her of a fine exercise for her spiritual force; to shut her off from a
sense of her material situation in life until the knowledge of it will
come as a tragedy to her; to let her grow up without any knowledge of
her father's point of view--"
"There, there! That's enough!" said Lydia.
"I didn't need to be so violent about it, that's a fact," apologized
Rankin.
"But you're talking of people the way they ought to be," objected Lydia,
apparently drawing again from a stock of inculcated arguments. "Do you
really, honestly, suppose that that girl would rather have an
opportunity to do something for her parents and--and--and all that, than
have a fine dress that would cost a lot and make the other girls
envious?"
"Oh, Lydia!" cried her companion, not noticing the betrayal of a mental
habit in the slipping out of her name. "You're just in a state of
saturated solution of Dr. Melton. Don't you believe a word he says
about folks. They're lots better than he thinks. The only reason anybody
has for raging at them for being a bad lot is because they are such a
good lot! They are so chuck-full of good possibilities! There's so much
more good in them than bad. You think that, don't you? You _must_!
There's nothing to go on, if you don't."
As Lydia began to answer she felt herself, as once or twice before when
with Rankin, suddenly an immeasurable distance from her usual ways of
mental life. She looked about her upon a horizon very ample and quite
strange, without being able to trace the rapid steps that had carried
her away from the close-walled room full of knickknacks and trifles,
where she usually lived. She drew a deep breath of surprise and changed
her answer to an honest "I don't believe I know whether I believe you or
not. I don't think I ever thought of it before."
"What _do_ you think about?" The question was evidently too sincere an
interrogation to resent.
The girl made several beginnings at an answer, stopped, looked out of
the window, looked down at her shoe-tip, and finally burst into her
little clear trill of amusement. "I don't," she said, looking full at
Rankin, her eyes shining. "You've caught me! I can't remember a single
time in my day when I think about anything but hurrying to get dressed
in time to be at the next party promptly. Maybe some folks can think
when they're hurrying to get dressed, but I can't."
Rankin was very little moved to hilarity by this statement, but he was
too young to resist the contagion of Lydia's mirth, and laughed back at
her, wondering at the mobility of her ever-changing face.
"If you don't think, what do you _do_?" he interrogated with mock
relentlessness.
"Nothing," said Lydia recklessly, still laughing.
"What do you feel?" he went on in the same tone, but Lydia's face
changed quickly.
"Oh--lots!" she said uncertainly, and was silent.
The car began to pass some poor, small houses, and in a moment came to
a standstill in the midst of a straggling village. The young conductor
still slept on, his head fallen so far on his shoulder that his
breathing was difficult. The motorman, getting no signal to go on,
looked back through the window, putting his face close to the glass to
see, for it had grown dusky outside and the electric lights were not yet
turned on. After a look at the sleeping man he glanced apprehensively at
the two passengers, and then, apparently reassured that they were not
"company detectives," he pushed open the door. "This is Wardsboro'," he
told them as he went down the aisle, "and the next stop is Hardville."
He was a strong, burly man, and easily lifted the slight, boyish form of
the conductor to a more comfortable position, propping him up in a
corner of the seat. The young man did not waken, but his face relaxed
into peaceful lines of unconsciousness as his head fell back, and his
breathing became long and regular, like a sleeping child's. As the big
motorman went back to his post, he explained a little sheepishly to the
two, who had watched his operation in attentive silence, "It's against
the rules, I know, but there ain't anybody but you two here, and he
don't look as though he'd really got his growth yet. I got a boy ain't
sixteen that looks as old as he does, and ruggeder at that. I reckon the
long hours are too much for him."
"Do you know him?" asked Rankin.
The motorman turned his red, weather-beaten face to them from the
doorway where he stood, pulling on his clumsy gloves. "Who, me?" he
asked. "No; I never seen him till to-day. He's a new hand, I reckon." He
drew the door after him with a rattling slam, rang the bell for himself,
and started the car forward.
In the warm, vibrating solitude of the car, the two young people looked
at each other in a silent transport. Lydia's dark eyes were glistening,
and she checked Rankin, about to speak, with a quick, broken "No; don't
say a word! You'd spoil it!"
There was between them one of the long, vital silences, full of
certainty of a common emotion, which had once or twice before marked a
significant change in their relation. Finally, "That's something I shall
never forget," said Lydia.
Rankin looked at her in silence, and then, quickly, away.
"It's like an answer to what I was saying--a refutation of what Dr.
Melton thinks--about people--"
As Rankin still made no answer, she exclaimed in a ravished surprise,
"Why, I never saw anything so lovely--that made me so happy! I feel warm
all over!"
Indeed, her face shone through the dusk upon her companion, who could
now no longer constrain himself to look away from her. He said, his
voice vibrant with a deep note which instantly carried Lydia back to the
other time when she had heard it, under the stars of last October, "It's
only an instrument exquisitely in tune which can so respond--" He broke
off, closed his lips, and, turning away from her, gazed sightlessly out
at the dim, flat horizon, now the only outline visible in the twilight.
Lydia said nothing, either then or when, after a long pause, he said
that he would leave the car at the next station.
"It has been very pleasant to see you again," he said, bending over his
tool-box, "and you mustn't lay it up against me that I haven't
congratulated you on your engagement. Of course you know how I wish you
all happiness."
"Thank you," said Lydia.
Ahead of the car, some lights suddenly winking above the horizon
announced the approach of Hardville. Rankin stood up, slipped on his
rough overcoat, and sat down again. He drew a long breath, and began
evenly: "I know you won't misunderstand me if I try to say one more
thing. I probably won't see you again for years, and it would be a great
joy to me to be sure that you know how hearty is my good-will to you.
I'm afraid you can't think of me without pain, because I was the cause
of such discomfort to you, but I know you are too generous to blame me
for what was an involuntary hurt. Of course I ought to have known how
your guardians would feel about your knowing me--"
"Oh, _why_ should you be so that all that happened!" cried Lydia
suddenly. "If it was too hard for me, why couldn't you have made it
easier--thought differently--acted like other people. _Would_ you--if I
hadn't--if we had gone on knowing each other?"
Rankin turned very white. "No," he said; "I couldn't."
"It seems to me," said Lydia hurriedly, "that, without being willing to
concede anything to their ideas, you ask a great deal of your friends."
"Yes," said Rankin, "I do. It's a hard struggle I'm in with myself and
the world--oh, evidently much too hard for you even to look at from a
distance." His voice broke. "The best thing I can do for you is to stay
away--" He rose, and stepped into the aisle. "But you are so kind--you
will let me serve you in any other way, if I can--ever. If I can ever do
something that's hard for you to do--you must know that I stand as ready
as even Dr. Melton to do it for you if I can."
Indeed, for the moment, as Lydia looked up into his kind, strong face,
his impersonal tenderness made him seem almost such an old, tried friend
as her godfather; almost as unlikely to expect any intimate personal
return from her.
"You must remember," he went on, "the great joy it gave us both to-day
even to see an act of kindness. Give me an opportunity to do one for you
if I ever can."
It already seemed to Lydia as though he had gone away from her, as
though this were but a beneficent memory of him lingering by her side.
She hardly noticed when he left her alone in the car.
The conductor started up, wakened by the silence, and announced wildly,
"Wardsboro', Wardsboro'!"
"No, it ain't; it's the first stop in Hardville," contradicted the
motorman, sticking his head in through the door. "Turn on them lights!"
As the glass bulbs leaped to a dazzling glare, Lydia blinked and looked
away out of the window. A moment later an arm laid about her neck made
her bound up in amazement and confront a small, middle-aged woman, with
a hat too young for her tired, sallow face, with a note-book in her
hand and an apologetic expression of affection in her light blue eyes.
"I'm sorry I startled you, Miss Lydia," she said. "I keep forgetting
you're not still a little girl I can pick up and hug."
"Oh, you!" breathed the girl, sitting down again. "I didn't think there
was anybody in the car with me, you see."
"Have you come all the way from Endbury alone, then?" asked Miss
Burgess, looking about her suspiciously.
"No, I have not," said Lydia uncompromisingly. "Mr. Rankin, the
cabinet-maker, has been with me till just now."
Miss Burgess sat down hastily in the vacant seat by Lydia. "And he's
coming back?" she inquired.
"No; he got off at Hardville. This _is_ Hardville, isn't it?"
"Yes. I happened to be out reporting a big church bazaar here." She
settled back comfortably. "What a nice chance for a cozy little visit I
shall have with you. These long trips on the Interurban are fine for
talking. Unless I shall tire you? Did Mr. Rankin talk much? What does he
talk _about_, anyhow? He's always so rude to me that I've never heard
him say a word except about his work."
Lydia considered for a moment. "We talked about the street-car
conductors having such long hours to work," she said, "and later about
whether people have more bad in them than good."
"Oh!" said Miss Burgess.
Lydia smiled faintly, the ghost of her whimsical little look of mockery.
"We decided that they have more good," she said.
Miss Burgess cast about her for a suitable comment. At last, "Really!"
she said.
CHAPTER XVI
ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED
All over the half-finished house the workmen began to lay down their
tools. Paul Hollister's face broke into a good-humored smile as a moment
later he caught the faraway five-o'clock whistles calling from the city.
He was in a very happy mood these days and the best aspect of the
phenomena of the world was what impressed him most. As the workmen
disappeared down the driveway to the main road, running to catch the
next trolley-car to Endbury, he looked after them with little of the
usual exasperation of the house-builder whose work they were slighting,
but with an agreeable sense of their extreme inferiority to him in the
matter of fixity of purpose. He felt that they symbolized the weakness
of most of humanity, and promised himself with a comfortable confidence
an easy and lifelong victory over such feeble adversaries. Of late,
business had been going even better than ever.
The days had begun to grow appreciably longer with the approach of
spring, and there had been several noons of an almost summer-like
mildness, but now, in spite of the fact that the sun was still shining,
the first chill of the late March evening dropped suddenly upon the
bare-raftered structure whose open windows and door-spaces offered no
barrier to the damp breeze. Hollister stirred from his pleasant reverie
and began to walk briskly about, inspecting the amount of work
accomplished since his last visit. He kept very close track of the
industry of his workmen and the competence of his contractor, and
Lydia's father admired greatly the way in which his future son-in-law
did not allow himself to be "done" by those past masters of the art. It
argued well for the future, Judge Emery thought, and he called Lydia's
attention to the trait with approval.
Before the wide aperture which was to be the front door, the owner of
the house stopped and looked eagerly out toward the road. It was near
the time when Lydia had promised to be there, and he meant to see her
and run to meet her when she first turned in upon the ground that was to
be her home. It was the first time that Lydia had happened to visit the
new house alone. Either her mother or Hollister's sister had accompanied
her on the two or three other occasions, but to-day she telephoned that
Mrs. Emery had been really out-and-out forbidden by Dr. Melton to get
out of bed for two or three days, and as for Madeleine--at this point
Madeleine had snatched the receiver from Lydia's hand and had informed
her brother that Madeleine was going to be busy with _her_ young man and
couldn't get off to chaperone people that had been as long engaged as he
and Lydia.
That was part of the bright color of the world to Paul--his sister's
recent engagement to their uncle's partner in the iron works, a very
prosperous, young-old bachelor of fifty-odd, whose intense preoccupation
with business had never been pierced by any consciousness of the other
sex until Madeleine had, as she proclaimed in her own vernacular, "taken
a club to him." It was a very brilliant match for her, and justified her
own prophecy concerning herself that she was not to be satisfied with
any old-fashioned, smooth-running course for true love. "It must shoot
the chutes, or nothing," she was accustomed to say, in her cheerful,
high-spirited manner.
Paul thought, with self-approval, that, for orphans of the poorer branch
of the Hollister family, he and Madeleine had not done badly with their
lives thus far.
He looked again impatiently toward the entrance to the grounds. A
trolley-car had just rattled by on the main road. If Lydia was on it,
she would appear at that turning under the trees. No; evidently she had
not been on that one. The harsh jar of the trolley's progress died away
in the distance and no Lydia appeared. He had fifteen minutes to wait
for the next one.
He drew out a note-book and began jotting down some ideas about the
disposition of the five acres surrounding the house. He was ambitious to
have the appearance of a country estate and avoid the "surburban" look
which would be so fatally easy to acquire in the suburban place. He
decided that he would not as yet fence in his land. The house was the
last one of a group of handsome residences that had lately sprung up in
the vicinity of the new Country Club, and to the south was still open
country, so that without a fence, he reflected, he could have himself,
and convey tacitly to others, the illusion of owning the wide sweep of
meadow and field which stretched away a mile or more to a group of beech
trees.
He jumped down lightly from the porch, as yet but sketchily outlined in
joists and rafters, and stood in a litter of shavings, bits of board and
piles of yellow earth, with a kindling eye. He had that happy prophetic
vision of the home-builder which overlooks all present deficiencies and
in an instant, with a confident magic, erects all that the slow years
are to build. He saw a handsome, well-kept house, correctly colonial in
style, grounds artfully laid out to increase the impression of space, a
hospitable, smoothly run interior, artistic, homelike, admired.
A meadow-lark near him began to tinkle out its pretty silver notes. The
sun set slowly below the smoky horizon; a dewy peace fell about the
deserted place. Paul had his visions of other than material elements in
his future and Lydia's. Such a dream came to him there, standing in the
dusk before the germ of his home to be. He saw himself an alert man of
forty-five, a good citizen, always on the side of civic honor; a good
captain of industry, quick to see and reward merit; a good husband who
loved and cherished his wife as on the day he married her, and protected
her from all the asperities of reality; a good father--he had almost an
actual vision of the children who would carry on his work in
life--girls of Lydia's beauty and sweetness, boys with his energy and
uprightness--and there was Lydia, too, the Lydia of twenty years from
now--in the full bloom of physical allurement still, a gracious hostess,
a public-spirited matron, lending the luster of his name to all worthy
charities indorsed by the best people, laying down with a firm good
taste dictates as to the worthy social development of the town. Before
this vision there rose up in him the ardent impulse to immediate effort
which is the sign manual of the man of action. He stirred and flung his
arm out.
"It's all up to me," he said aloud. "I can do it if I go after it hard
enough. I've got to make good for Lydia's sake and mine. She must have
the best I can get--the very best I know how to get for her."
A sound behind him made him catch his breath. He was trembling as he
turned about and saw Lydia coming swiftly up the driveway. "Good
Heavens, how I love her!" he thought as he ran down to meet her.
He was trembling when he took her in his arms, folding her in that close
embrace of surprised rapture at finding everything real, and no dream,
which is the unique joy of betrothal. He would not let her speak for a
moment, pressing his lips upon hers. When he released her, she cried in
a whisper, "Oh, it's wonderful how when you're close to me everything
else just isn't in the world!"
"That's being in love, Lydia," Paul told her with a grave thankfulness.
"I don't mean," she went on, with her ever-present effort to express
honestly her meaning, "I don't mean just--just being really
close--having your arms around me, though that always makes me forget
things, too--but being--_feeling_ close, you know--inside. Not having
any inner corner where we're not together--the way we are now--the way I
knew we should be when I saw you running down to meet me. I always know
the minute I see you whether it's going to be this way." She added, a
little wistfully, "Sometimes, you know, it isn't."
Paul lifted her up to the porch and led her across into the hallway.
Here he took her in his arms again and said with a shaken accent:
"Dearest Lydia, dearest! I wish it were always the way you want it--"
Lydia dropped her head back on his shoulder and looked at him earnestly.
In the half-light, white and clear from the freshly plastered walls, her
face was like alabaster. "Dear Paul, isn't that what getting married
means--to learn how to be really, really close to each other all the
time. There isn't anything else worth getting married for, is there?
_Is_ there?"
Her lover looked down into her eyes, into her sweet, earnest face, and
could not speak. Finally, his hand at his throat, "Oh, Lydia, you're too
good for me!" he said huskily. "You're too good for any man!"
"No, no, no!" she protested with a soft energy. "I'm weak, as weak as
water. You must give me a lot of your strength or I'll go under."
"God knows I'll give you anything I have."
"Then, never let things come between us--never, never, never! I'm all
right as long as I'm close to you. If we just keep that, nothing else
can matter."
They were silent, standing with clasped hands in the passage-way that
was to be the thoroughfare of their common life. It was a moment that
was to come back many times to Lydia's memory during later innumerable,
hurried daily farewells. The thought of the significance of the place
came to her mind now. She said softly, "This must be a foretaste of what
we're to have under this roof. How good it seems not to be in a hurry
to--"
With a start Paul came to himself from his unusual forgetfulness of his
surroundings. "We _ought_ to be in a hurry now, dearest. Dr. Melton
keeps me stirred up all the time to take care of you, and I'm sure I'm
not doing that to let you stand here in this cold evening air. Come, let
me show you--the closet under the stairs, you know, and the place for
the refrigerator."
Lydia yielded to his care for her with her sweet passivity, echoed his
opinion about the details, and ran beside him down the driveway, to
catch the next car to Endbury, with a singular light grace for a tall
woman encumbered with long skirts.
In spite of their haste, they missed the car and were obliged to wait
for a quarter of an hour beside the tracks. They talked cheerfully on
indifferent topics, the sense of intimate comradeship gilding all they
said. In their hearts was fresh the memory of the scene in the new
house. They looked at each other and smiled happily in the intervals of
their talk.
Paul was recapitulating to Lydia the advantages of the location of their
house. "We are in the vanguard of a new movement in American life," he
said, "the movement away from the cities. Madeleine tells me that she
and Lowder are planning a house at the other end of this street, and you
can be sure they know what they are about."
Lydia did not dissent from this opinion of her future sister-in-law, but
she interrupted Paul a moment later, to say fondly, "_Oh_, but I'm glad
that you aren't fifty-five and bald and with lots of money!"
Paul laughed. "Madeleine'll get on all right. She knows what she's
about. It's a pair of them."
"Well, I am church-thankful that that is not what _we_ are about!"
exclaimed Lydia.
Her lover voiced the extreme content with his lot which had been his
obsession that day. "We have _everything_, darling. We shall have all
that Madeleine and old Lowder have and we have now all this heavenly
happiness that they'll never know--or miss," he added, giving them their
due.
"I didn't mean that," protested Lydia. "It seems to me that being like
them and being like us are two contradictory things. You _can't_ be both
and have the things that go with both. And what I'm so thankful for is
that we're us and not them."
Paul laughed. "You just see if there's anything so contradictory. Trust
me. You just see if you don't beat Madeleine on her own ground yet."
"I don't _want_--" began Lydia; but Paul had gone back to his first
theme and was expanding it for her benefit. "Yes; we're getting the
English idea. In twenty years from now you'll find the social center of
every moderate-sized American city shifted to some such place as this."
Lydia craned her neck down the tracks impatiently. "I hope we don't miss
a trolley car every day of those twenty years," she said, laughing.
"We'll have an automobile," he said. Then, reflecting that this was a
somewhat exaggerated prophecy, he went on, with the honesty he meant
always to show Lydia (so far as should be wise), "No; I'm afraid we
sha'n't, either--not for some time. It'll take several years to finish
paying altogether for the house, and we'll have to pull hard to keep up
our end for a time. But we're young, so much won't be expected of
us--and if we just dig in for a few years now while we're fresh, we can
lie back and--"
"Well, _gracious_!" said Lydia, "who wants an automobile, anyhow! Only I
wish the trolley didn't take so long. It's going to take the best part
of an hour, you know; the ten or twelve minutes to get here from the
house, the two or three minutes to wait, the thirty minutes on the car,
the ten minutes to your office--and then all that turned inside out when
you come back in the evening."
"Oh, I'll be able to do a lot of business figuring in that time. It
won't be wasted."
They fell into happy picture-making of their future. Lydia wanted to
have chickens and a garden, she said. She'd always wanted to be a
farmer's wife--an idea that caused Paul much laughter. They revised the
plans for the furnishing of the hall--the china closet could stand
against the west wall of the dining-room; why had they not thought of
that before? The little room upstairs was to be a sewing-room "Although
I hate sewing," cried Lydia, "and nowadays, when ready-mades are so
cheap and good--"
"Nobody expected you to make yourself tailored street dresses," said
Paul; "but don't I all the time hear Madeleine and my aunt saying how
the 'last _chic_ of a costume, the little indefinable touches that give
a toilet distinction,' they have to fuss up themselves out of bits of
lace and ribbon and fur and truck?" He was quoting, evidently, with an
amused emphasis.
Lydia leaned to him, her eyes wide in a mock solemnity. "Paul, I have a
horrible confession to make to you. I _loathe_ the 'last _chic_, the
little indefinable touches that give a toilet,' and so forth! It makes
me sick to spend my time on them. What difference does it make to real
folks if their toilets _aren't_ 'and so forth!'"
She looked so deliciously whimsical with her down-drawn face of
rebellious contrition that Paul was enchanted. "And this I learn when
it's too late for me to draw back!" he cried in horror. "Woman! woman!
this tardy confession"
"Oh, there are lots of other confessions. Just wait."
"Out with them!"
"I don't know _anything_."
"That's something," admitted Paul.
"And you must teach me."
"Oh, this docile little 1840 wife! Don't you know the suffragists will
get you if you talk meek like that? What do you want to know? Volts, and
dynamos, and induction coils?"
"Everything," said Lydia comprehensively, "that you know. Books,
politics, music--"
"Lord! what a hash! What makes you think I know anything about such
things?"
"Why, you went through Cornell. You must know about books. And you're a
man, you must know about politics; and as for music, we'll learn about
that together. Aunt Julia and Godfather are going to give us a
piano-player--though I know they can't afford it, the dears!"
"People _are_ good to us." Paul's flush of gratitude for his good
fortune continued.
"You like music, don't you?" asked Lydia.
"I guess so; I don't know much about it. Some crazy German post-grads at
Cornell used to make up a string quartette among themselves and play
some things I liked to hear--I guess it was pretty good music, too. They
were sharks on it, I know. Yes; now I think of it, I used to like it
fine. Maybe if I heard more--"
"Oh, the evenings together!" breathed Lydia. "Doesn't it take your
breath away to think of them? We'll read together--"
Paul saw the picture. "Yes; there're lots of books I've always meant to
get around to."
They were silent, musing.
Then Paul laughed aloud. Lydia started and looked at him inquiringly.
"Oh, I was just thinking how old married folks would laugh to hear us
infants planning our little castles in Spain. You know how they always
smile at such ideas, and say every couple starts out with them and after
about six months gets down to concentrating on keeping up the furnace
fire and making sure the biscuits are good."
Lydia laid her hand eagerly on his arm. "But don't let's, Paul! Please,
_please_ don't let us! Just because everybody else does is no reason why
we _have_ to. You're always saying folks can make things go their way if
they try hard enough--you're so clever and--"
"Oh, I'm a wonder, I know! You needn't tell me how smart I am."
"But, Paul, I'm in earnest--I mean it--"
The car had arrived by this time and he swung her up to the platform.
Like other moderns they were so accustomed to spend a large part of
their time in being transported from place to place that they were quite
at home in the noisy public conveyance, and after a pause to pay fares,
remove wraps, and nod to an acquaintance or two, they went on with their
conversation as though they were alone. People looked approvingly at the
comely, well-dressed young couple, so naïvely absorbed in each other,
and speculated as to whether they were just married or just about to
be.
After they were deposited at the corner nearest the Emery house, the
change to the silent street, up which they walked slowly, reluctant to
separate, took them back to their first mood of this loveliest of all
their hours together--the sweet intimacy of their first meeting in the
new house.
Lydia felt herself so wholly in sympathy with Paul that she was moved to
touch upon something that had never been mentioned between them. "Paul,
dear," she said, her certainty that he would understand, surrounding her
with an atmosphere of spiritual harmony which she recognized was the
thing in all the world which mattered most to her, "Paul dear, I never
told you--there's nothing to tell, really--but when I went to the
Mallory's house-party in February I rode from here to Hardville with Mr.
Rankin and had a long talk with him. You don't mind, do you?"
Her lover drew her hand within his arm and gave it an affectionate
pressure. "You may not know things, Lydia, as you say, but you are the
_nicest_ girl! the straightest! I knew that at the time--Miss Burgess
told me. But I'm glad you've given me a chance to say how sorry I was
for you last autumn when everybody was pestering you so about him. I
knew how you felt--better than you did, I'll bet I did! I wasn't a bit
afraid. I knew you could never care for anybody but me. Why, you're
_mine_, Lydia, I'm yours, and that's all there is to it. You know it as
well as I do."
"_I know it when I'm with you_," she told him with a bravely honest,
unspoken reservation.
He laughed his appreciation of her insistent sincerity. "Well, when
you're married won't you be with me all the time? So that's fixed! And
as for meeting somebody by accident on the street-cars--why, you foolish
darling, you're not marrying a Turk, or an octopus--but an American."
Lydia was silent, but her look was enough to fill the pause richly. She
was savoring to the full the joy of close community of spirit which had
been so rare in her pleasant life of material comfort, and she was
saying a humble prayer that she might be good enough to be worthy of it,
that she might be wise enough to make it the daily and hourly atmosphere
of her life with Paul.
"What are you thinking about, darling?" asked the other.
"I was thinking how lovely it's going to be to be really married and
come to know each other well. We don't know each other at all yet,
_really_, you know."
Paul was brought up short, as so often with Lydia, by an odd,
disconcerted feeling, half pleasure, half shock, from the discovery in
her of pages that he had not read, germs of ideas that had not come from
him. "Why, darling Lydia, what do you mean? We know each other through
and through!" he now protested. It gave a tang of the unexpected to her
uniform sweetness, this always having a corner still to turn which kept
her out of his sight. Paul was used to seeing most women achieve this
effect of uncertainty by the use of coquetry, and in the free-and-easy
give and take between young America of both sexes, he had learned with a
somewhat cynical shrewdness to discount it. He entered into the game,
but, in his own phrase, he always knew what he was about. Lydia, on the
contrary, often penetrated his armor by one of these shafts, barbed by
her complete unconsciousness of any intent. He felt now, with a
momentary anguish, that he could never be sure of her belonging quite to
him until they were married, and cried out upon her idea almost angrily,
"I don't know what you mean! We know each other now."
"Oh, no, we don't," she insisted. "There are lots of queer fancies in me
that you'll only find out by living with me--and, Oh, Paul! the fine,
noble things I _feel_ in you! But I can see the whole of them only by
seeing you day by day. And then there are lots of things that aren't in
us, really, yet, but only planted. They'll grow--we'll grow--Paul,
to-day is an epoch. We've passed a new milestone."
"How do you mean?" he asked.
"The way we've felt--the way we've talked--of real things--out there in
our own--" She laughed a little, a serene murmur of drollery which came
to her when she was at peace. "We've been engaged since November, but we
only got engaged to be married to-day--just as our wedding's to be in
June, but goodness knows when our marriage will be."
Paul smiled at her tenderly. "If I'd known the date was so uncertain as
that I shouldn't have dared to go so far in my house-building."
"Oh, it's all right so far," she reassured him, smiling; "but we must
pitch in and finish it. Why, that's just it, Paul--" she was struck with
the aptness of her illustration--"that's just it. We've got the rafters
and joists up now; maybe before we're married, if we're good, we can get
the roof on so it won't rain on us; but all the finishing, all that
makes it good to live in, has got to be done after the wedding."
He did not know exactly what she was talking about, but he made up for
vagueness by fervor. "After we are married," he cried, "I'll move
mountains and turn stones to gold."
"But the first thing to do is to lay floors for us to walk on," Lydia
told him.
For answer, he drew her into his arms and closed her mouth with a kiss.
CHAPTER XVII
CARD-DEALING AND PATENT CANDLES
Spring had come with its usual hotly advancing rush upon the low-lying,
sheltered southerly city. There had been a few days of magical warmth,
full of spring madness, when every growing thing had expanded leaves
with furious haste, when the noise of children playing in the street
sounded loud through newly-opened windows, when, even on city streets,
every breath of the sweet, lively air was an intoxicating potion. Then,
with a bound, the heat was there. Evenings and nights were still cool,
but noons were as oppressive as in July. The scarcely expanded leaves
hung limp in a summer heat.
All during that eventful winter, Mrs. Emery had frequently remarked to
her sister-in-law that Lydia's social career progressed positively with
such brilliancy that it was like "something you read about." Mrs.
Sandworth invariably added the qualifying clause, "But in a very nice
book, you know, with only nice people in it, where everything comes out
nicely at the end." Her confidence in literature as a respectable source
of pleasure was not so guileless as Mrs. Emery's. It had been cruelly
shaken by dipping into some of the Russian novels of the doctor's.
Not infrequently the two ladies felt, with a happy importance, that they
were the authors of the book and that the agreeable episodes and
dramatic incidents which had kept the flow of the narrative so sparkling
were the product of their own creative genius. When April came on, and
Lydia agreed to the announcement of her engagement, they felt the need
of some remarkable way of signaling that important event and of closing
her season with a burst of glory. For her season had to end! Dr. Melton
said positively that if Lydia had another month of the life she had been
leading he would not be responsible for the consequences. "She has a
fine constitution, inherited from her farmer grandparents," he said,
smiling to see Mrs. Emery wince at this uncompromising statement of
Lydia's ancestry, "but her nervous organization is too fine for her own
good. And I warn you right now that if you get her nerves once really
jangled, I shall take to the woods. You can just give the case to
another doctor. It would be too much for _me_."
The girl herself insisted that she felt perfectly well and able to stand
more than when she first began going out. She affirmed this with some
impatience, her eyes very bright, her cheeks flushed, whenever her
godfather protested against a new undertaking. "When you get going, you
_can't_ stop," she told him, shaking off his detaining hand. Mrs. Emery
told the doctor that he'd forgotten the time when he was young or he'd
remember that all girls who'd been popular at all--let alone a girl like
Lydia--looked thin and worn by the end of the season; but during the
last week of April, when the first hot days had arrived, a small
incident surprised her into thinking that perhaps the doctor had some
right on his side.
Not that there was in itself anything so very alarming about a nervous
explosion from a girl so high-strung and susceptible as Lydia. The
startling thing was that this explosion proceeded, so far as her mother
could see, from nothing at all, from the idlest of chance remarks by
Mrs. Sandworth, as always, whitely innocent of the smallest intention to
wound.
She and Mrs. Emery were much given to watching Lydia dress for the
innumerable engagements that took her away from the house. They made a
pretext of helping her, but in truth they were carried away by the
delight in another's beauty which is more common among women than is
generally imagined. They took the profoundest interest in the selection
of the toilet she should wear, and regarded with a charmed surprise the
particular aspect of Lydia's slim comeliness which it brought out. They
could not decide whether they liked her best in clinging, picture
costumes, big hats, plumes, trailing draperies, and the like, or
dashing, jaunty effects. Once in the winter, after she had left them on
her way to an evening skating party and they had seen her from the
window join Hollister and add her skates to those glittering on his
shoulder, Mrs. Sandworth promulgated one of her unexpected apothegms:
"Do you know what we are, Susan Emery? We're a couple of old children
playing with a doll." Mrs. Emery protested with an instant, reproving
self-justification: "_You_ may be--you're not her mother; but I
understand Lydia through and through."
Mrs. Emery felt that if Lydia had overheard that remark of her aunt's
her excitement and resentment might have been natural; but the one which
led to the distressing little scene in late April was as neutral as an
ordinary morning salutation. The two were watching Lydia dress for a
luncheon which Mrs. Hollister--_the_ Mrs. Hollister--was giving in her
honor. It was about noon of a warm day, and the air that came in at the
open windows was thrillingly alive with troubling, disquieting
suggestions of the new life of spring. Lydia, however, showed none of
the languor which the sudden heat had brought to the two elder women.
She was a little late, and her hurry had sent a high color to her
cheeks, the curves of which were refined to the most exquisite subtlety
by the loss of flesh so deplored by Dr. Melton. She was used, by this
time, to dressing in a hurry, but her fingers trembled a little, and she
tried three times before she could coil her dark silky hair smoothly.
She was frowning a little with the fixity of her concentration as she
turned to snatch up her long gloves and she did not hear Mrs.
Sandworth's question until it had been repeated,
"I said, Lydia, is it to be bridge this afternoon?"
"I don't know," said Lydia with the full stop of absent indifference.
"Didn't Mrs. Hollister say?"
"Maybe she did. I didn't notice." The girl was tugging at her glove.
"Well, anyhow," said her mother, "since everybody's giving you
card-parties, I should think you'd want to practice up and learn how to
deal better. It's queer," she went on to Mrs. Sandworth, "Lydia's so
deft about so many things, that she should deal cards so badly."
"Oh, goodness! As if there was nothing better to do than that!" cried
Lydia, beginning on the other glove.
"Well, what _have_ you to do that's better?" asked her aunt in some
astonishment. "Lydia, my dear, your collar is pinned the least bit
crooked. Here, just let me--"
Lydia had stopped short, her glove dangling from her wrist. "Why, what a
horrible thing to say!" She brought this out with a tragic emphasis,
immensely disconcerting to her two elders.
"Horrible!" protested Mrs. Sandworth.
"Yes, horrible," insisted the girl. She had turned very pale. "The very
way you say it and don't think anything about it, _makes_ it horrible."
Mrs. Sandworth began to doubt her own senses. "Why, what did I say?" she
appealed to Mrs. Emery in bewildered interrogation, but before the
latter could answer Lydia broke out: "If I really believed that, why,
I'd--I'd--" She hesitated, obviously between tragic consequences, and
then, to the great dismay of her companions, began to cry, still
standing in the middle of the floor, her glove dangling from her slim,
white wrist.
"Don't Lydia! Oh, don't, dear! You'll make yourself look like a fright
for the luncheon." Mrs. Emery ran to her daughter with a solicitude in
which there was considerable irritation. "You're perfectly exhausting,
taking everything that deadly serious way. Don't be so _morbid_! You
know your Aunt Julia didn't mean anything. She never does!"
Lydia pulled away and threw herself on the bed, still sobbing, and
protesting that she could not go to the luncheon; and in the end Mrs.
Emery was obliged to make the profoundest apologies over the telephone
to a justly indignant hostess.
In the meantime Lydia was undressed and put to bed by Mrs. Sandworth,
who dared not open her mouth. The girl still drew long, sobbing breaths,
but before her aunt left the room she lay quiet, her eyes closed. The
other was struck by the way her pallor brought out the thinness of her
lovely face. She hovered helplessly for a moment over the bed. "Is there
anything I can do for you, dearie?" she asked humbly.
Lydia shook her head. "Just let me be quiet," she murmured.
At this, Mrs. Sandworth retreated to the door, from which she ventured a
last "Lydia darling, you know I'm sorry if I said anything to hurt--"
Lydia raised herself on her elbow and looked at her solemnly. "It wasn't
what you _said_; it was what it _meant_!" she said tragically.
With this cryptic utterance in her ears, Mrs. Sandworth fled downstairs,
to find her sister-in-law turning away from the telephone with a frown.
"Mrs. Hollister was very much provoked about it, and I don't blame her.
It's hard to make her understand we couldn't have given her a _little_
warning. And--that's the most provoking part--I didn't dare say Lydia is
really sick, when, as like as not, she'll be receiving company this
evening."
"You wouldn't want her sick, just so it would be easier to explain,
would you?" asked Mrs. Sandworth with her eternal disconcerting
innocence.
Mrs. Emery relieved her mind by snapping at her sister-in-law with the
violence allowed to an intimate of many years' standing, "Good gracious,
Julia! you're as bad as Lydia! Turning everything people say into
something quite different--"
Mrs. Sandworth interrupted hastily, "Susan, tell me, for mercy's sake,
what did I say? The last thing I remember passing my lips was about her
collar's being a little crooked,--and just now she told me, as though it
was the crack of Doom, that it wasn't what I said, but what it meant,
that was so awful. What in the world does she mean?"
Mrs. Emery sank into a seat with a gesture of utter impatience. "Mean?
Mean nothing! Didn't you ever know an engaged girl before?"
"Well, I'm sure when I was engaged I never--"
"Oh, yes, you did; you _must_ have. They all do. It's nerves."
But a moment later she contradicted her own assurance with a sigh of
unresignation. "Oh, dear! why can't Lydia be just bright and wholesome
and fun-loving and _natural_ like Madeleine Hollister!" She added
darkly, "I just feel in my bones that this has something to do with that
Rankin and his morbid ideas."
Mrs. Sandworth was startled. "Good gracious! You don't suppose she--"
"No; of course I don't! I never thought of such a thing. You ought to
see her when she is with Paul. She's just _fascinated_ by him! But you
know as well as I do that ideas go right on underneath all that!" Her
tone implied a disapproval of their tenacity of life. "And yet, Lydia's
really nothing unusual! Before they get married and into social life,
and settled down and too busy to think, most girls have a queer spell.
Only most of them take it out on religion. Oh, why couldn't she have met
that nice young rector--if she had to meet somebody to put ideas into
her head--instead of an anarchist."
"Well, it's certainly all past now," Mrs. Sandworth reassured her.
"Yes; hasn't it been a lovely winter! Everybody's been so good to Lydia.
Everything's succeeded so! But I suppose Dr. Melton's right. We ought to
call her season over, except for the announcement party--and the
wedding, of course--and oh, dear! There are so many things I'd planned
to do I can't possibly get in now. It seems strange a child of mine
should be so queer and have such notions."
However, after the two had talked over the plans for a great evening
garden-party in the Emery "grounds" and Mrs. Emery's creative eye had
seen the affair in a vista of brilliant pictures, she felt more
composed. She went up quietly to Lydia's door and looked in.
The girl was lying on her back, her wide, dark eyes fixed on the
ceiling. Something in the expression of her face gave her mother a throb
of pain. She yearned over the foolish, unbalanced young thing, and her
heart failed her, in that universal mother's fear for her child of the
roughnesses of life, through which she herself has passed safely and
which have given savor to her existence. In her incapacity to conceive
other roughnesses than those she could feel herself, she was, it is
probable, much like the rest of humankind. She advanced to the bed, her
tenderest mother-look on her face, and cut Lydia off from speech with
gentle wisdom. "No, no, dear; don't try to talk. You're all tired out
and nervous and don't know--"
Lydia had begun excitedly: "I've been feeling it for a long time, but
when Aunt Julia said right out that I didn't know how to do anything
better than--that I was only good to--"
Her mother laid a firm, gentle hand over the quivering mouth, and said
in a soothing murmur, "Hush, hush! darling. It wasn't anything your poor
foolish Aunt Julia said. It isn't anything, anyhow, but being up too
much and having too much excitement. People get to thinking all kinds of
queer things when they're tired. Mother knows. Mother knows best."
She had prepared a glass of bromide, and now, lifting Lydia as though
she were still the child she felt her to be, she held it to her lips.
"Here, Mother's poor, tired little girl--take this and go to sleep;
that's all you need. Just trust Mother now."
Lydia took the draught obediently, but she sighed deeply, and fixed her
mother with eyes that were unrelentingly serious.
When Mrs. Emery looked in after half an hour, she saw that Lydia was
still awake, but later she fell asleep, and slept heavily until late in
the afternoon.
On her appearance at the dinner-table, still languid and heavy-eyed, she
was met with gentle, amused triumph. "There, you dear. Didn't I tell you
what you needed was sleep. There never was a girl who didn't think a
sick headache meant there was something wrong with her soul or
something."
Judge Emery laughed good-naturedly, as he sliced the roast beef, and
said, with admiration for his wife, "It's a good thing my high-strung
little girl has such a levelheaded mother to look after her. Mother
knows all about nerves and things. She's had 'em--all kinds--and come
out on top. Look at her now."
Lydia took him at his word, and bestowed on her mother a long look. She
said nothing, and after a moment dropped her eyes listlessly again to
her plate. It was this occasion which Mrs. Emery chose to present to the
Judge her plans for the expensive garden-party, so that in the animated
and, at times, slightly embittered discussion that followed, Lydia's
silence was overlooked.
For the next few days she stayed quietly indoors, refusing and canceling
engagements. Mrs. Emery said it was "only decent to do that much after
playing Mrs. Hollister such a trick," and Lydia did not seem averse. She
sewed a little, fitfully, tried to play on the piano and turned away
disheartened at the results of the long neglect--there had been no time
in the season for practice--and wandered about the library, taking out
first one book then another, reading a little and then sitting with
brooding eyes, staring unseeingly at the page. Once her mother, finding
her thus, inquired with some sharpness what book she was reading to set
her off like that. "It's a book by Maeterlinck," said Lydia, "that
Godfather gave me ever so long ago, and I've never had time to read it."
"Do you like it? What's it about?" asked her mother, suspiciously.
"I can't understand it," said Lydia, "when I'm reading it. But when I
look away and think, I can, a little bit. I love it. It makes me feel
like crying. It's all about our inner life."
"My dear Lydia, you put your hat right on and go over to have a little
visit with Marietta. What you need is a little fresh air and some
sensible talk. I've been too busy with my invitation list to visit with
you as I ought. Marietta'll be real glad to see you. Here's your hat.
Now, you run right along, and stop at Hallam's on the way and get
yourself an ice-cream soda. It's hot, and that'll do you good."
As Lydia was disappearing docilely out of the door, her mother stopped
before going back to her desk and the list of guests for the
garden-party, which had been torturing her with perplexity, to say, "Oh,
Lydia, don't forget to ask Marietta to order the perforated candles."
"Perforated--!" said Lydia blankly, pausing at the door.
"Yes; don't you remember, the last time Mrs. Hollister called here she
told us all about them."
"No, I don't remember," said Lydia, with no shade of apology in her
tone.
"Why, my dear! You're getting so absent-minded! Do you mean to say you
didn't take in anything of what she was talking about? It's a new kind,
that has holes running through it so the melted wax runs down the
inside! Why, we were talking about them the whole time she was here that
last call."
Lydia opened the door, observing vaguely, "Oh, yes; I do seem to
remember something. It was a very dull visit, anyhow."
Mrs. Emery returned to her list, pursing up her lips and wagging her
head. "You'll have to learn, dearie, that it's little details like that
that make the difference between success and failure."
"We have electric light and gas," said Lydia.
Mrs. Emery looked up in astonishment and a little vexation. She, too,
had nerves these days. "Why, Lydia, what's the matter with you? You know
nobody uses those for table decoration."
"_We_ could," said Lydia.
"Why, my dear child, I never knew before there was a contrary streak in
you, like your father. What in the world possesses you all of a sudden
to object to candles?"
"It's not candles--it's the idea of--Oh, all the fuss and bother, when
everybody's so tired, and the weather's so hot, and it's going to cost
too much anyhow."
"Well, what would you have us fuss and bother about, if not over having
everything nice when we entertain?" Mrs. Emery's air of enforced
patience was strained.
Lydia surveyed her from the hall in silence. "That's just it--that's
just it," she said finally, and went away.
Mrs. Emery laid down her pen to laugh to herself over the queer ways of
children. "They begin to have notions with their first teeth, and I
suppose they don't get over them till _their_ first baby begins to
teethe."
When Lydia arrived at her sister's house, she found that competent
housekeeper engaged in mending the lace curtains of her parlor. She had
about her a battery of little ingenious devices to which she called
Lydia's attention with pride. "I've taught myself lace-mending just by
main strength and awkwardness," she observed, fitting a hoop over a torn
place, "and it's not because I have any natural knack, either. If
there's anything I hate to do, it's to sew. But these curtains do go to
pieces so. I wash them myself, to be careful, but they are so fine.
Still," she cast a calculating eye on the work before her, "I'll be
through by the end of this week, anyhow--if that new Swede will only
stay in the kitchen that long!"
She bent her head over her work again, holding it up to the light from
time to time and straining her eyes to catch the exact thread with her
almost impalpably fine needle. Lydia sat and fanned herself, looking
flushed and tired from the walk in the heat, and listening in silence to
Mrs. Mortimer's account of the various happenings of her household:
"And didn't I find that good-for-nothing negro wench had been having
that man--and goodness knows how many others--right here in the house. I
told Ralph I never would have another nigger--but I shall. You can't get
anything else half the time. I tell you, Lydia, the servant problem is
getting to be something perfectly terrible--it's--"
Lydia broke in to say, "Why don't you buy new ones?"
Mrs. Mortimer paused with uplifted needle to inquire wildly, "New
_what_?"
"New curtains, instead of spending a whole week in hot weather mending
those."
"Good gracious, child! Will you ever learn anything about the cost of
living! I think it's awful, the way Father and Mother have let you grow
up! Why, it would take half a month's salary to reproduce these
curtains. I got them at a great bargain--but even then I couldn't afford
them. Ralph was furious."
"You could buy muslin curtains that would be just as pretty," suggested
Lydia.
"Why, those curtains are the only things with the least distinction in
my whole parlor! They _save_ the room."
"From what?"
"From showing that there's almost nothing in it that cost anything, to
be sure! With them at the window, it would never enter people's heads to
think that I upholstered the furniture myself, or that the pictures
are--"
"Why shouldn't they think so, if you did?" Lydia proffered this
suggestion with an air of fatigued listlessness, which, her sister
thought, showed that she made it "simply to be contrary." Acting on this
theory, she answered it with a dignified silence.
There was a pause. Lydia tilted her head back against the chair, and
looked out of the window at the new green leaves of the piazza vine.
Mrs. Mortimer's thin, white, rather large hands drew the shining little
needle back and forth with a steady, hurrying industry. It came into her
mind that their respective attitudes were symbolical of their lives,
and she thought, glancing at Lydia's drooping depression, that it would
be better for her if she were obliged to work more. "Work," of course,
meant to Marietta those forms of activity which filled her own life.
"_I_ never have any time for notions," she thought, the desperate,
hurrying, straining routine of her days rising before her and moving
her, as always, to rebellion and yet to a martyr's pride.
Lydia stirred from her listless pose and came over to her sister,
sitting down on a stool at her feet. "Marietta, dear, please let me talk
to you. I'm so miserable these days--and Mother won't let me say a word
to her. She says it's spring fever, and being engaged, and the end of
the season, and everything. Please, _please_ be serious, and let me tell
you about it, and see if you can't help me."
Her tone was so broken and imploring that Mrs. Mortimer was startled.
She was, moreover, flattered that Lydia should come to her for advice
rather than to her parents. She put her arm around her sister's
shoulders, and said gently, "Why, yes, dear; of course; anything--"
"Then stop sewing and listen to me--"
"But I can sew and listen, too."
"Oh, Etta, _please_! That's just the kind of thing that gets me so wild.
Just a little while!"
The harassed housekeeper cast an anxious eye on the clock, but loyally
stifled the sigh with which she laid her work aside. Lydia apologized
for interrupting her. "But I do want you to really think of what I am
saying. Everybody's always so busy thinking about _things_! Oh, Etta,
I'm just as unhappy as I can be--and so scared when I think about--about
the future."
Mrs. Mortimer's face softened wonderfully. She stroked Lydia's dark
hair. "Why, poor dear little sister! Yes, yes, darling, I know all about
it. I felt just so myself the month before I was married, and Mother
couldn't help me a bit. Either she had forgotten all about it, or else
she never had the feeling. I just had to struggle along through without
anybody to help me or to say a word. Oh, I'm so glad I can help my
little sister. _Don't_ be afraid, dear! There's nothing so terrible
about it; nothing to be scared of. Why, once you get used to it you find
it doesn't make a bit of difference to you. Everything's just the same
as before."
Lydia lifted a wrinkled brow of perplexity to this soothing view of
matrimony. "I don't know what you're talking about, Etta!" she cried in
a bewilderment that seemed to strike her as tragic.
"Why--why, being married! Wasn't that what you meant?"
"Oh, no! _No!_ Nothing so definite as that! I couldn't be afraid of
Paul--why should I be? I'm just frightened of--everything--what
everybody expects me to do, and to go on doing all my life, and never
have any time but to just hurry faster and faster, so there'll be more
things to hurry about, and never talk about anything but _things_!" She
began to tremble and look white, and stopped with a desperate effort to
control herself, though she burst out at the sight of Mrs. Mortimer's
face of despairing bewilderment, "Oh, don't tell me you don't see at all
what I mean. I can't say it! But you _must_ understand! Can't we somehow
all stop--_now_! And start over again! You get muslin curtains and not
mend your lace ones, and Mother stop fussing about whom to invite to
that party--that's going to cost more than he can afford, Father
says--it makes me _sick_ to be costing him so much. And not fuss about
having clothes just so--and Paul have our house built little and plain,
so it won't be so much work to take care of it and keep it clean. I
would so much rather look after it myself than to have him kill himself
making money so I can hire maids that you _can't_--you say yourself you
can't--and never having any time to see him. Perhaps if we did, other
people might, and we'd all have more time to like things that make us
nicer to like--"
At this perturbing jumble of suggestions, Mrs. Mortimer's head whirled.
She took hold of the arms of her chair as if to steady herself, but,
conscientiously afraid of discouraging the girl's confidence, she nodded
gravely at her, as if she were considering the matter. Lydia sprang up,
her eyes shining. "Oh, you dear! You _do_ see what I mean! You see how
dreadful it is to look forward to just that--being so desperately
troubled over things that don't really matter--and--and perhaps having
children, and bringing them up to the same thing--when there must be so
many things that do matter!"
To each of these impassioned statements her sister had returned an
automatic nod. "I see what you mean," she now put in, a statement which
was the outward expression of a thought running, "Mercy! Dr. Melton's
right! She's perfectly wild with nerves! We must get her married as soon
as ever we can!"
Lydia went over to the window, and stood looking out as she talked, now
with an excited haste, now with a dragging note of fatigue in her voice.
Her need of sympathy was so great that she did a violence to the
reticence she had always kept, even with herself. She wondered aloud if
it were not perhaps Daniel Rankin and his queer ideas that lay at the
bottom of her trouble. She added, whirling about from the window, "For
mercy's sake! don't go and think I am in love with him, or anything! I
haven't so much as thought of him all winter! I see, now that Mother's
pointed it out to me, how domineering he really was to me last autumn.
I'm just crazy about Paul, too! When I'm with him he takes my breath
away! But maybe--maybe I can't forget Mr. Rankin's _ideas_! You know he
talked to me so much when I was first back--and if somebody would just
argue me out of them, the way he did into them! I don't believe I'd ever
have thought it queer to live the way we do, just to have more things
and get ahead of other people--if he hadn't put the idea into my head.
But nobody else will even _talk_ about it! They laugh when I try to."
She came over closer to the matron, and said imploringly, her voice
trembling, "I don't _want_ to be queer, Marietta! What makes me? I
don't like to have queer ideas, different from other people's--but every
once in a while it all comes over me with a rush--what's the _good_ of
all we do?"
Poor Lydia propounded this question as though it were the first time in
the world's history that it had passed the lips of humanity. Her
curious, puzzled distress rose up in a choking flood to her throat, and
she stopped, looking desperately at her sister.
Mrs. Mortimer nodded again, calmly, drew a long breath, and seemed about
to speak. Lydia gazed at her, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright with
unshed tears--all one eager expectancy. The older woman's eyes wandered
suddenly for an instant. She darted forward, clapped her hands together
once, and then in rapid succession three or four times. Then rolling
triumphantly something between her thumb and forefinger, she turned to
Lydia. The little operation had not taken the third of a moment, but the
change in the girl's face was so great that Mrs. Mortimer was moved to
hasty, half-shamefaced, half-defiant apology. "I _was_ listening to you,
Lydia! I _was_ listening! But it's just the time of year when they lay
their eggs, and I have to fight them. Last year my best furs and Ralph's
dress suit were perfectly _riddled_! You know we can't afford new."
Lydia rose in silence and began pinning on her hat. Her sister, for all
her vexation over the ending of the interview, could hardly repress a
smile of superior wisdom at the other's face of tragedy. "Don't go,
Lyddie, don't go!" She tried to put her arms around the flighty young
thing. "Oh, dear Lydia, cultivate your sense of humor! That's all that's
the matter with you. There's nothing else! Look here, dear, there _are_
moths as well as souls in the world. People have to be on the lookout
for them,--for everything, don't you see?"
"They look out for _moths_, all right," said Lydia in a low tone. She
submitted, except for this one speech, in a passive silence to her
sister's combination of petting and exhortation, moving quietly toward
the door, and stepping evenly forward down the walk.
She had gone down to the street, leaving Mrs. Mortimer still calling
remorseful apologies, practical suggestions, and laughing comments on
her "tragedy way of taking the world." At the gate, she paused, and then
came back, her face like a mask under the shadow of her hat.
Marietta stood waiting for her with a quizzical expression. Under her
appearance of lightly estimating Lydia's depression as superficial, she
had been sensible of a not unfamiliar qualm of doubt as to her own
manner of life, an uneasy heaving of a subconscious self not always
possible to ignore; but, as was her resolute custom, she forced to the
front that perception of the ridiculous which she had urged on her
sister. She bit her lips, to conceal a smile at Lydia's mournful
emphasis as she went on: "I forgot to tell you, Marietta, what I was
sent over for. You're to be sure to order the perforated candles. It's
the kind that has holes down the middle, so the wax doesn't look mussy
on the outside, and it's very, very important to have the right kind of
candles."
Mrs. Mortimer, willfully amused, looked with an obstinate smile into her
sister's troubled eyes as Lydia hesitated, waiting, in spite of herself,
for the understanding word.
"You're a darling, Lyddie," said the elder woman, kissing her again;
"but you are certainly _too_ absurd!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BOOK III
A SUITABLE MARRIAGE
CHAPTER XVIII
TWO SIDES TO THE QUESTION
Lydia's unmarried life had given her but few abstract ideas for the
regulation of conduct, and fewer still ideals of self-discipline, but
chief among the small assortment that she took away from her mother's
house had been the high morality of keeping one's husband unworried by
one's domestic difficulties. "Domestic difficulties" meant, apparently,
anything disagreeable that happened to one. Not only her mother, but all
the matrons of her acquaintance had concentrated on the extreme
desirability of this wifely virtue. "It pays! It pays!" Mrs. Emery had
often thus chanted the praises of this quality in her daughter's
presence. "I've noticed ever so many times that men who have to worry
about domestic machinery and their children don't get on so well. Their
minds are distracted. Their thoughts _can't_ be, in the nature of
things, all on their business." She was wont to go on, to whatever
mother she was addressing, "We know, my dear Mrs. Blank, don't we, how
perfectly distracting the problems are in bringing up children--to say
nothing of servants. How much energy would men have for their own
affairs if they had to struggle as we do, I'd like to know! Besides, if
one person's got to be bothered with such things, she might as well do
it all and be done with it. It's easier, besides, to have only one head.
Men that interfere about things in the house are an abomination. You
can't keep from quarreling with them--angels couldn't."
She had once voiced this universally recognized maxim before Dr. Melton,
who had cut in briskly with a warm seconding of her theory. "Yes,
indeed; in the course of my practice I have often thought, as you do,
that it would be easier all around if husbands didn't board with their
wives at all."
Mrs. Emery had stared almost as blankly as Mrs. Sandworth herself might
have done. "I never said such a crazy thing," she protested.
"Didn't you? Perhaps I don't catch your idea then. It seemed to be that
every point of contact was sure to be an occasion for friction between
husband and wife, and so, of course, the fewer they were--"
"Oh, bother take you, Marius Melton!" Mrs. Emery had quite lost patience
with him. "I was just saying something that's so old, and has been said
so often, that it's a bromide, actually. And that is that it's a poor
wife who greets her tired husband in the evening with a long string of
tales about how the children have been naughty and the cook--"
"Oh, yes, yes; now I see. Of course. The happiest ideal of American
life, a peaceful exterior presented to the husband at all costs, and the
real state of things kept from him because it might interfere with his
capacity to pull off a big deal the next day."
Mrs. Emery had boggled suspiciously at this version of her statement,
but finding, on the whole, that it represented fairly enough her idea,
had given a qualified assent in the shape of silence and a turning of
the subject.
Lydia had not happened to hear that conversation, but she heard
innumerable ones like it without Dr. Melton's footnotes. On her wedding
day, therefore, she conceived it an essential feature of her duty toward
Paul to keep entirely to herself all of the dismaying difficulties of
housekeeping and keeping up a social position in America. She knew, as a
matter of course, that they would be dismaying. The talk of all her
married friends was full of the tragedies of domestic life. It had
occurred to her once or twice that it was an odd, almost a pathetic,
convention that they tried to maintain about their social existence--a
picture of their lives as running smoothly with self-adjusting machinery
of long-established servants and old social traditions; when their every
word tragically proclaimed the exhausting and never-ending personal
effort that was required to give even the most temporary appearance of
that kind. "We all know what a fearful time everybody has trying to give
course dinners--why need we pretend we don't?" she had thought on
several painful occasions; but this, like many of her fancies, was a
fleeting one. There had been as little time since her wedding day as
before it for leisurely speculation. The business of being _the_ bride
of a season had been quite as exciting and absorbing as being _the_
débutante.
The first of February, six months after her marriage, found her as thin
and restlessly active as she had been on that date a year before. It was
at that time that she had the first intimation of a great change in her
life, and since the one or two obscure and futile revolts of her
girlhood, nothing had moved her to more rebellious unresignation than
the fact that her life left her no time to take in the significance of
what was coming to her.
"Oh, my dear! Isn't it too good!" said her mother, clasping her for a
moment as they stood, after removing their wraps, in the dressing-room
of a common acquaintance. "Aren't you the lucky, lucky thing!"
"I don't know. I don't know a thing about it," Lydia returned
unexpectedly, though her face had turned a deep rose, and she had smiled
tremulously. "Ever since Dr. Melton told me it was probably so, I've
been trying to get a moment's time to think it over, but you--"
"It's something to _feel_, not to think about!" cried her mother. "You
don't need time to feel."
"But I'd like to think about everything!" cried Lydia, as they moved
down the stairs. "I get things wrong just feeling about them. But I'm
not quick to think, and I never have any time--they're always so many
other things to do and to think about--the dinner, getting Paul off in
time in the morning, how badly the washwoman does up the table linen--"
"Oh, Lydia! Why will you be so contrary? Everybody says _laundress_
now!"
"--And however Paul and I can pay back all the social debts we've
incurred this winter. Everybody's invited us. It makes me wild to think
of how we owe everybody."
"Oh, you can give two or three big receptions this spring and clear
millions off the list. And then a dinner party or two for the more
exclusives. You won't need to be out of things till June--with the
fashion for loose-fitting evening gowns; you're so slender. And you'll
be out again long before Christmas. It's very fortunate having it come
at this time of year."
Lydia looked rather dazed at this brisk and matter-of-fact disposing of
the matter, and seemed about to make a comment, but the bell rang for
card-playing to begin and Mrs. Emery hurried to her table.
Lydia had meant to ask her mother's sympathy about another matter that
for the time was occupying her own thoughts, but there was no other
opportunity for further speech between them during the card party--Mrs.
Emery devoting herself with her usual competent energy to playing a good
game. She played much better bridge than did either of her daughters.
She liked cards, liked to excel and always found easy to accomplish what
seemed to her worth doing. Marietta also felt that to avoid being
"queer" and "different" one had to play a good hand, but, as she herself
confessed, it made her "sick" to give up to it the necessary time and
thought. As for Lydia, she got rid of her cards as fast as possible, as
if with the deluded hope that when they were all played, she might find
time for something else. On the afternoon in question her game was more
unscientific than usual. Criticism was deterred from articulate
expression by the common feeling in regard to her, assiduously fostered
by Flora Burgess' continuous references to her in _Society Notes_ as
the coming social ruler of Endbury's smart set. There was as yet, to be
sure, no visible indication whatever of such a capacity on Lydia's part,
but the printed word--particularly Miss Burgess' printed word--was not
to be doubted. Madeleine Hollister, however (now soon to be Madeleine
Lowdor), was no respecter of personages, past or future. At the
appearance of an especially unexpected and disappointing card from her
sister-in-law's hand, she pounced upon her with: "Lydia, what _are_ you
thinking about?"
"My washwoman's grandson," burst out Lydia, laying down her cards with a
careless negligence, so that everyone could see the contents of her
hand. "Oh, Madeleine! I'm so worried about her, and I wish you'd--"
She got no further. Madeleine's shriek of good-natured laughter cut her
short like a blow in the face. The other ladies were laughing, too.
"Oh, Lydia! You are the most original, unexpected piece in the world!"
cried her sister-in-law. "You'll be the death of me!" She appealed to
the other players at their table: "Did you ever hear anything come out
funnier?"
To the players at the next tables, who were looking with vague,
reflected smiles at this burst of merriment, she called: "Oh, it's too
killing! Lydia Hollister just played a trump on a trick her partner had
already taken, and when I asked what in the world she was thinking
about--meaning, of course--"
Lydia sat silent, looking at her useless cards during the rest of the
narration of her comic speech. She was reflecting rather sadly that she
had been very foolish to think, even in a thoughtless impulse, of
telling Madeleine the story she had so impetuously begun. After a time
it came to her, as a commentary of the little incident, that neither
could she get anything from Marietta in the matter. At the end of the
party, she and her mother walked together to the street-cars, but she
still said nothing of what was in her mind. She would not admit to
herself that her mother would receive it as she felt sure Marietta and
Madeleine would, but--she dared not risk putting her to the test. It was
a period in Lydia's life when she was constantly in fear of tests
applied to the people she loved and longed to admire.
During the half-hour's noisy journey out to Bellevue--the unhackneyed
name that had been selected for the new and fashionable suburb she
inhabited--she had eliminated from this crisis in her mind, one by one,
all the people in her circle. Dr. Melton was out of town. Otherwise she
would have gone to him at once. Mrs. Sandworth without her brother was a
cipher with no figure before it. Her father?--she realized suddenly that
it was the first time she had ever thought of going to her father with a
perplexity. No; she knew too little about his view of things. She had
never talked with him of anything but the happenings of the day. Flora
Burgess--devoted Flora? Lydia smiled ruefully as she thought of the
attitude Flora Burgess would be sure to take.
It finally came to the point where there was no one left but Paul; and
Paul ought not to be worried with domestic questions lest his capacity
for business be impaired. She had a deep inculcated sense of the
necessity and duty of "doing her share," as the phrase had gone in the
various exhortations addressed to her before her marriage. The next few
years would be critical ones in Paul's career, and the road must be
straight and clear before his feet--the road that led to Success. No one
had voiced a doubt that this road was not coincident with all other
desirable ones; no one had suggested that the same years would be
critical in other directions and would be certain to be terribly and
irrevocably determinative of his future relation to his wife.
Lydia, ardently and naïvely anxious to find something "worth doing,"
therefore had settled on this one definite duty. She had wrestled in a
determined silence with the many incompetent and degenerate negresses,
with the few impertinent Americans, with the drunken Irish and insolent
Swedes, who had filed in and out of her kitchen ever since her
marriage. Suburban life was a new thing in Endbury, and "help" could see
no advantages in it. She had strained every nerve to make them appear to
Paul, as well as to the rest of the world, the opposite of what they
were; and to do herself, furtively, when Paul was not there, those of
their tasks they refused or neglected. Every effort was concentrated, as
in her mother's and sister's households, on keeping a maid presentable
to open the door and to wait on the table, rather than to perform the
heavier parts of the daily round. Those Lydia could do herself, or she
could hire an unpresentable older scrubwoman to do them. She often
thought that if she could but employ scrubwomen all the time, the
problem would be half solved. But the achievement of each day was,
according to Endbury standards, to keep or get somebody into the kitchen
who could serve a course dinner, even if the mistress of the house was
obliged to prepare it.
She had never dreamed of feeling herself aggrieved, or even surprised,
by this curious reverse side to her outward brilliant life. All her
married friends went through the same experience. Madeleine, it is true,
announced that she was going to make Lowdor import two Japanese servants
a year, and dismiss them when they began to get American ideas; but
Madeleine was quite openly marrying Lowdor for the sake of this and
similar advantages. Lydia felt that her own problems were only the usual
lot of her kind, and though she was nearly always sick at heart over
them, she did not feel justified in complaining--least of all to Paul.
But this present trouble--this was not just a question of help. For the
last month they had been floating in the most unexpected lull of the
domestic whirlwind. The intelligence office had sent out Ellen--Ellen,
the deft-handed cook, the silent, self-effacing, competent servant of
every housekeeper's dreams. Her good luck seemed incredible. Ellen was
perfection, was middle-aged and settled, never went out in the evenings,
kept her kitchen spotlessly clean, trained the rattle-headed second
girls who came and went, to be good waitresses and made pastry that
moved Paul, usually little preoccupied about his food provided there was
plenty of meat, to lyric raptures. The difference she made in Lydia's
life was inconceivable. It was as though some burdensome law of nature
had been miraculously suspended for her benefit. She gauged her past
discomfort by her present comfort.
And yet--
From the first Lydia had had an uneasy feeling in the presence of her
new servant, a haunting impression when her back was turned to Ellen
that if she could turn quickly enough, she would see her cook with some
sinister aspect quite other than the decent, respectful mask she
presented to her mistress. The second girl of the present was a
fresh-faced, lively young country lass, whom Ellen herself had secured,
and whose rosy child's face had been at first innocence itself; but now
sometimes Lydia overheard them laughing together, a laughter which gave
her the oddest inward revulsion, and when she came into the kitchen
quickly she often found them looking at books which were quickly whisked
out of sight.
And then, a day or so before, old Mrs. O'Hern, her washwoman, had come
directly to her with that revolting revelation of Ellen's influence on
her grandson, little Patsy. At the recollection of the old woman's face
of embittered anguish, Lydia shuddered. Oh, if she could only tell Paul!
He was so loving and caressing to her--perhaps he would not mind being
bothered this once--she did not know what to think of such things--she
did not know what to do, which way to turn. She was startled beyond
measure at having real moral responsibility put on her.
Perhaps Paul could think of something to do.
He was waiting for her when she entered the house, having come in from
an out-of-town trip on an earlier train than he had expected to catch.
He dropped his newspaper and sprang up from his chair to put his arms
about her and gloat over her beauty. "You're getting prettier every day
of your life, Lydia," he told her, ruffling her soft hair, and kissing
her very energetically a great many times. "But pale! I must get some
color into your cheeks, Melton says--how's this for a way?"
He seemed to Lydia very boyish and gay and vital. She caught at him
eagerly--he had been away from home three days--and clung to him. "Oh,
Paul! How much good it does me to have you here, close! You are _so_
much nicer than a room of women playing the same game of cards they
began last September!"
Paul shouted with laughter--his pleasant, hearty mirth. "I'm appreciated
at my full worth," he cried.
"Oh, how I loathe cards!" cried Lydia, taking off her hat.
"It's better than the talk you'd get from most of the people there, I
bet," conjectured Paul, taking up his newspaper again. "Cards are a
blessing _that_ way, compared with conversation."
"Oh, dear, I suppose so!" Lydia stopped a moment in the doorway. "But
doesn't it seem a pity that you never see anybody but people who'd bore
you to death if you didn't stop their mouth with cards?"
"That's the way of the world," remarked Paul comfortably, returning to
the news of the day.
The little friendly chat gave Lydia courage for her plan of asking her
husband's advice about her perplexity, but, mindful of traditional
wisdom, she decided, as she thriftily changed her silk "party dress" for
a house-gown of soft wool, that she would wait until the mollifying
influence of dinner had time to assert itself. She wondered fearfully,
with a quick throb of her heart, how he would receive her confidence.
When she called him to the table she looked searchingly into his strong,
resolute, good-natured face, and then, dropping her eyes, with an
indrawn breath, began her usual fruitless endeavors to learn from him a
little of what had occupied his day--his long, mysterious day, spent in
a world of which he brought back but the scantiest tidings to her.
As usual, to-night he shook his shoulders impatiently at her
questioning. "Oh, Lydia darling, don't talk shop! I'm sick and tired of
it after three days of nothing else. I want to leave all that behind me
when I come home. That's what a home is for!"
Lydia did not openly dissent from this axiom, though she murmured
helplessly: "I feel so awfully shut out. It is what you think about most
of the time, and I do not know enough about it even to imagine--"
Paul leaned across the table to lay an affectionate hand on his wife's
slim fingers. "Count your mercies, my dear. It's all grab, and snap, and
cutting somebody's throat before he has a chance to cut yours. It
wouldn't please you if you did know anything about it--the business
world." He drew a long breath, and went on appreciatively with his
cutlet--Lydia had learned something about meats since the year
before--"You are a very good provider, little girl; do you know it?"
"Oh, I love to," said Lydia. She added reflectively: "Wouldn't it be
nice if things were so I could do the cooking myself and not have to
bother with these horrible creatures that are all you can get usually?"
Paul laughed at the fancy. "That's a high ambition for my wife, I must
say!"
"We'd have better things to eat even than Ellen gives us," said Lydia
pensively. "If I had a little more time to put on it, I could do
wonders, I'm sure of it."
"I don't doubt that," said her husband gallantly; "but did you ever know
anybody who _was_ her own cook?"
"Well, not except in between times, when they couldn't get anybody
else," confessed Lydia. "But lots of people I know who do go through the
motions of keeping one would be better off without one. They can't
afford it, and--Oh, I wish we were poorer!"
Paul was highly amused by this flight of fancy. "But we're as poor as
poverty already," he reminded her.
"We're poor for buying hundred-dollar broadcloth tailor-made suits for
me, and cut glass for the table, but we'd have plenty if I could wear
ready-made serge at--"
Paul laughed outright. "Haven't you ever noticed, my dear, that the
people who wear ready-made serge are the ones who could really
comfortably afford to wear calico wrappers? It goes right up and down
the scale that way. Everybody is trying to sing a note above what he
can."
"I know it does--but does it _have_ to? Wouldn't it be better if
everybody just--why doesn't somebody begin--"
"It's the law of progress, of upward growth," pronounced Paul.
Lydia was impressed by the pontifical sound of this, though she ventured
faintly: "Well, but does progress always mean broadcloth and cut glass?"
"_We_ have the wherewithal to cultivate our minds!" said Paul, laughing
again. "Weren't the complete works of the American essayists among our
wedding presents!" He referred to an old joke between them, at which
Lydia laughed loyally, and the talk went on lightly until the meal was
over.
As they walked away from the table together Lydia said to herself,
"Now--now--" but Paul began to laugh as he told an incident of
Madeleine's light-hearted, high-handed tyranny over her elderly fiancé,
and it seemed impossible for Lydia to bring out her story of mean and
ugly tragedy.
As usual the evening was a lively one. Some acquaintances from the
"younger married set" of Bellevue dropped in for a game of cards,
Madeleine and "old Pete" Lowdor came out to talk over the plans for
their new handsome house at the end of the street and at Paul's
suggestion Lydia hastily got together a chafing-dish supper for the
impromptu party which prolonged itself with much laughter and many
friendly wranglings over trumps and "post-mortems" until after midnight.
Paul was in the highest of gay spirits as he stood with his pretty wife
on the porch, calling good-nights to his guests disappearing down the
starlit driveway. He inhaled the odor of success sweet and strong in his
nostrils.
As they looked back into the house, they saw the faithful Ellen clearing
away the soiled dishes, her large, white, disease-scarred face
impassive over her immaculate and correct maid's dress.
"Isn't she a treasure!" cried the master of the house. "To sit up to
this hour!" He started, "What's that?"
From the shadow of the house a slim lad's figure shambled out into the
driveway. As he passed the porch where Paul stood, one strong arm
protectingly about Lydia, he looked up and the light from the open door
struck full on a white, purposeless, vacant smile. The upward glance
lost for him the uncertain balance of his wavering feet. He reeled,
flung up his arms and pitched with drunken soddenness full length upon
the gravel, picking himself up clumsily with a sound of incoherent, weak
lament. "Why, it's a drunken man--in _our driveway_!" cried Paul, with
proprietary indignation. "Get out of here!" he yelled angrily at the
intruder's retreating back. When he turned again to Lydia he saw that
one of her lightning-swift changes of mood had swept over her. He was
startled at her pale face and burning, horrified eyes, and remembering
her condition with apprehension, picked her up bodily and carried her up
the stairs to their bedroom, soothing her with reassuring caresses.
There, sitting on the edge of their bed, her loosened hair falling about
her white face, holding fast to her husband's hands, Lydia told him at
last; hesitating and stumbling because in her blank ignorance she knew
no words even to hint at what she feared--she told him who Patsy was,
the blue-eyed, fifteen-year-old boy, just over from Ireland, ignorant of
the world as a child of five, easily led, easily shamed, by his fear of
appearing rustic, into any excess--and then she told him what the boy's
grandmother had told her about Ellen. It was a milestone in their
married life, her turning to him more intimately than she would have
done to her mother, her breaking down the walls of her lifelong
maiden's reserve and ignorance. She finished with her face hidden in his
breast. What should she do? What _could_ she do?
Paul took her into the closest embrace, kissed her shut eyes in a
passion of regret that she should have learned the evil in the world, of
relieved belittling of the story, Lydia's portentous beginning of which
had quite startled him, and of indignation at "Mrs. O'Hern's foul
mouth--for you can just be sure, darling Lydia, that it's all nothing
but rowings among the servants. Probably Ellen won't let Mrs. O'Hern
take her usual weekly perquisite of sugar and tea. Servants are always
quarreling and the only way to do is to keep out of their lies about
each other and let them fight it out themselves. You never can have any
idea of who's telling the truth if you butt in and try to straighten it,
and the Lord knows that Ellen's too good a cook and too much needed in
this family until the new member arrives safely, to hurt her feelings
with investigating any of Mrs. O'Hern's yarns. Just you refuse to listen
to servants' gossip. If you'd been a little less of a darling,
inexperienced school-girl, you'd have cut off such talk at the first
words. Just you take my word for it, you dear, you sweetheart, you best
of--" he ran on into ardent endearments, forgetting the story himself,
blinding and dazzling Lydia with the excitement which always swept her
away in those moments when Paul was her passionate, youthful lover.
She tried to revert to the question once or twice later, but now Paul
alternated between shaming her laughingly for her gullibility and making
fun of her "countrified" interest in the affairs of her servants. "But,
Paul, Mrs. O'Hern says that Patsy doesn't _want_ to drink and--and go to
those awful houses--his father died of it--only Ellen makes him, by--"
Paul tried to close the discussion with a little impatience at her
attempt to press the matter. "Every Irish boy drinks more or less, you
little goose. That's nothing! Of course it's too bad to have you _see_ a
drunken man, but it's nothing so tragic. If he didn't drink here, he
would somewhere else. The only thing we have to complain about that I
can see, is having the cook's followers drunk--but Ellen's such a
miracle of competence we must overlook that. As for the rest of Mrs.
O'Hern's dirty stories, they're spite work evidently." As Lydia looked
up at him, her face still anxious and drawn, he ended finally, "Good
gracious, Lydia, don't you suppose I know--that my experience of the
world has taught me more about human nature than you know? You act to me
as though you trusted your washwoman's view of things more than your
husband's. And now what you want to do, anyhow, is to get some rest. You
hop into bed, little rabbit, and go to sleep. Don't wait for me; I've
got a lot of figuring to do."
When he went to bed, a couple of hours later, Lydia was lying quietly
with closed eyes, and he did not disturb her; but afterward he woke out
of a sound sleep and sat up with a sense that something was wrong. He
listened. There was not a sound in the room or in the house. Apparently
Lydia was not wakened by his startled movement. She lay in a profound
immobility.
But something about her very motionlessness struck a chill to his heart.
Women in her condition sometimes had seizures in the night, he had
heard. With a shaking hand, he struck a match and leaned over her. He
gave a loud, shocked exclamation to see that her eyes were open, steady
and fixed, like wide, dark pools. He threw the match away, and took her
in his arms with a fond murmur of endearments. "Why, poor little girl!
Do you lie awake and worry about what's to come?"
Lydia drew a painful breath. "Yes," she said; "I worry a great deal
about what's to come."
He kissed her gently, ardently, gently again. "You mustn't do that,
darling! You're all right! Melton said there wasn't one chance in a
thousand of anything but just the most temporary illness, without any
complications. It won't be so bad--it'll be soon over, and think what it
means to us--dearest--dearest--dearest!"
Lydia lay quiet in his arms. She had been still so long that he thought
her asleep, when she said, in a whisper: "I hope it won't be a girl!"
CHAPTER XIX
LYDIA'S NEW MOTTO
Lydia's two or three big receptions, of which her mother had spoken with
so casual a confidence, came off, while not exactly with nonchalant
ease, still, on the whole, creditably. It is true that Dr. Melton had
stormed at Lydia one sunny day in spring, finding her bent over her
desk, addressing invitations.
"It's April, child!" he cried, "April! The crocuses are out and the
violets are almost here--and, what is more important, your day of trial
gets closer with every tick of the clock. Come outdoors and take a walk
with me."
"Oh, I can't!" Lydia was aghast at the idea, looking at a mountain of
envelopes before her.
"Here! I'll help you finish those, and then we'll--"
"No, no, _no_!" In Lydia's negation was a touch of the irritation that
was often during these days in her attitude toward her godfather. "I
can't! Please don't tease me to! The curtains to the spare room have to
be put up, and the bed draperies somehow fixed. A stray dog got in there
when he was wet and muddy and went to sleep on my best lace bedspread."
Dr. Melton had not practiced for years among Endbury ladies without
having some knowledge of them and a corresponding readiness of mind in
meeting the difficulties they declared insurmountable. "I'll buy you a
white marseilles bedspread on our way back from the walk," he offered
gravely.
"Oh, I've got plenty of plain white ones," she admitted incautiously,
"but they don't go with the scheme of the room--and the first
reception's only two days off."
Dr. Melton fixed her with an ironical and melancholy smile: "Now,
Lydia, I did think you had it in you to realize that your health and the
strength of your child are worth more than--"
Lydia sprang up and confronted him with an apparent anger of face and
accent that was contradicted by her trembling chin and suffused eyes.
"Oh, go away!" she commanded him, shaking her head and motioning him
off. "Don't talk so to me! I can't help it--what I do! Everything's a
part of the whole system, and I'm in that up to my neck--you know I am.
If that's right, why, everything's all right, just the way everybody
thinks it is. And if it's wrong--" She caught her breath, and turned
back to her desk. "If it's wrong, what good would be done by little
dribbling compromises of an occasional walk." She sat down wearily, and
leaned her head on her hand. "I just wish you wouldn't keep me so
stirred up--when I'm trying so _hard_ to settle down!"
Dr. Melton seemed to divine perfectly the significance of this
incoherent outbreak. He thrust out his lips in his old grimace that
denoted emotion, and observed the speaker in a frowning silence. When
she finished, he nodded: "You are right, Lydia, I do no good." He
twirled his hat about between his fingers, looking absently into the
crown, and added, "But you must forgive me, I love you very dearly."
Lydia ran over to him, conscience-stricken. He took her embrace and
remorseful kiss quietly. "Don't be sorry, Lydia dear. You have just
shown me, as in a flash of lightning, how much more powerful a grasp on
reality you have than I."
Lydia recoiled from him with an outcry of exasperation. "I! Why, I'm
almost an idiot! I haven't a grasp on anything! I can't see an inch
before my nose. I'm in a perfect nightmare of perplexity all the time
because I can't make out what I'm driving at--or ought to--"
She went on more quietly, with a reasoning air: "Only look here,
Godfather, it came over me the other night, when I couldn't sleep, that
perhaps what's the trouble with me is that I'm _lazy_! I believe that's
it! I don't want to work the way Marietta does, and Mother does, and
even Madeleine does over her dresses and parties and things. It must be
I'm a shirk, and expect to have an easier time than most people. That
_must_ be it. What else can it be?"
The doctor made no protest against this theory, taking himself off in a
silence most unusual with him. Lydia did not notice this; nor did she in
the next two or three months remark that her godfather took quite
literally and obeyed scrupulously her exhortation to leave her in peace.
She was in the grasp of this new idea. It seemed to her that in phrasing
it she had hit upon the explanation of her situation which she had been
so long seeking, and it was with a resolve to scourge this weakness out
of her life that she now faced the future.
She found a satisfaction in the sweeping manner in which this new maxim
could be applied to all the hesitations that had confused her. All her
meditations heretofore had brought her nothing but uncertainty, but this
new catchword of incessant activity drove her forward too resistlessly
to allow any reflections as to whether she were going in the right
direction. She yielded herself absolutely to that ideal of conduct which
had been urged upon her all her life, and she found, as so many others
find, oblivion to the problems of the spirit in this resolute refusal to
recognize the spirit. It was perhaps during these next months of her
life that she most nearly approximated the Endbury notion of what she
should be.
She had yielded to Paul on the subject of the cook not only because of
her timid distrust of her own inexperienced judgment but because of her
intense reaction from the usual Endbury motto of "Husbands, hands off!"
She had wanted Paul to be interested in the details of the house as she
hoped to know and be interested in what concerned him, and when he
showed his interest in a request she could not refuse it. She hoped that
she had made a good beginning for the habit of taking counsel with each
other on all matters. But she thought and hoped and reflected very
little during these days. She was enormously, incredibly busy, and on
the whole, she hoped, successfully so. The receptions, at least, went
off very well, everybody said.
Dr. Melton did not see his goddaughter again until he came with Mrs.
Sandworth to the last of these events. She was looking singularly
handsome at that time, her color high, her eyes very large and dark,
almost black, so dilated were the pupils. With the nicety of observation
of a man who has lived much among women, the doctor noticed that her
costume, while effective, was not adjusted with the exquisite feeling
for finish that always pervaded the toilets of her mother and sister.
Lydia was trying with all her might to make herself over, but with the
best will in the world she could not attain the prayerful concentration
on the process of attiring herself, characteristic of the other women of
her family.
"She forgot to put the barrette in her back hair," murmured Mrs.
Sandworth mournfully, as she and her brother emerged from the hand-shake
of the last of the ladies assisting in receiving, "and there are two
hooks of her cuff unfastened, and her collar's crooked. But I don't dare
breathe a word to her about it. Since that time before her marriage when
she--"
"Yes, yes, yes," her brother cut her short; "don't bring up that tragic
episode again. I'd succeeded in forgetting it."
"You can call it tragic if you like," commented Mrs. Sandworth, looking
about for an escape from the stranded isolation of guests who have just
been passed along from the receiving line; "but what it was all about
was more than I ever could--" Her eyes fell again on Lydia, and she lost
herself in a sweet passion of admiration and pride. "Oh, isn't she the
loveliest thing that ever drew the breath of life! Was there ever
anybody else that could look so as though--as though they still had dew
on them!"
She went on, with her bold inconsequence: "There is a queer streak in
her. Sometimes I think she doesn't care--" She stopped to gaze at a
striking costume just entering the room.
"What doesn't she care about?" asked the doctor.
Mrs. Sandworth was concentrating on sartorial details as much of her
mind as was ever under control at one time, and, called upon for a
development of her theory, was even more vague than usual. "Oh, I don't
know--about what everybody cares about."
"She's likely to learn, if it's at all catching," conjectured the doctor
grimly, looking around the large, handsome room. An impalpable effluvium
was in the air, composed of the scent of flowers, the odor of delicate
food, the sounds of a discreetly small orchestra behind palms in the
hallway, the rustling of silks, and the pleasurable excitement of the
crowd of prosperous-looking women, pleasantly elated by the opportunity
for exhibiting their best toilets.
"To think of its being our little Lydia who's the center of all this!"
murmured Mrs. Sandworth, her loving eyes glistening with affectionate
pride. "It really is a splendid scene, isn't it, Marius?"
"If they were all gagged, it might be. Lord! how they yell!"
"Oh, at a _reception_!" Mrs. Sandworth's accent denoted that the word
was an explanation. "People have to, to make themselves heard."
"And why should they be so eager to accomplish that?" inquired the
doctor. "Listen!"
Standing as they were, tightly pressed in between a number of different
groups, their ears were assaulted by a disjointed mass of stentorian
conversation that gave a singular illusion as if it all came from one
inconceivably voluble source, the individuality of the voices being lost
in the screaming enunciation which, as Mrs. Sandworth had pointed out,
was a prerequisite of self-expression under the circumstances.
They heard: "--_For over a month and the sleeves were too see you again
at Mrs. Elliott's I'm pouring there from four I've got to dismiss one
with little plum-colored bows all along five dollars a week and the
washing out, and still impossible! I was there myself all the time and
they neither of thirty-five cents a pound for the most ordinary ferns
and red carnations was all they had, and we thought it rather skimpy
under the brought up in one big braid and caught down with at the
Peterson's they were pink and white with_--"
"_Oh, no, Madeleine! that was at the Burlingame's_." Mrs. Sandworth took
a running jump into the din and sank from her brother's sight,
vociferating: "_The Petersons had them of old-gold, don't you remember,
with little_--"
The doctor, worming his way desperately through the masses of
femininity, and resisting all attempts to engage him in the vocal fray,
emerged at length into the darkened hall where the air was, as he told
himself in a frenzied flight of the imagination, less like a combination
of a menagerie and a perfume shop. Here, in a quiet corner, sat Lydia's
father, alone. He held in one hand a large platter piled high with
wafer-like sandwiches, which he was consuming at a Gargantuan rate, and
as he ate he smiled to himself.
"Well, Mr. Ogre," said the doctor, sitting down beside him with a gasp
of relief; "let a wave-worn mariner into your den, will you?"
Provided with an auditor, Judge Emery's smile broke into an open laugh.
He waved the platter toward the uproar in the next rooms: "A boiler
factory ain't in it with woman, lovely woman, is it?" he put it to his
old friend.
"Gracious powers! There's nothing to laugh at in that exhibition!" the
doctor reproved him, with an acrimonious savagery. "I don't know which
makes me sicker; to stay in there and listen to them, or come out here
and find you thinking they're _funny_!"
"They _are_ funny!" insisted the Judge tranquilly. "I stood by the door
and listened to the scraps of talk I could catch, till I thought I
should have a fit. I never heard anything funnier on the stage."
"Look-y here, Nat," the doctor stared up at him angrily, "they're not
monkeys in a zoo, to be looked at only on holidays and then laughed at!
They're the other half of a whole that we're half of, and don't you
forget it! Why in the world should you think it funny for them to do
this tomfool trick all winter and have nervous prostration all summer to
pay for it? You'd lock up a _man_ as a dangerous lunatic if he spent his
life so. What they're like, and what they do with their time and
strength concerns us enough sight more than what the tariff is, let me
tell you!"
"I admit that what your wife is like concerns you a whole lot!" The
Judge laughed good-naturedly in the face of the little old bachelor.
"Don't commence jumping on the American woman now! I won't stand it!
She's the noblest of her sex!"
"Do you know why I am bald?" said Dr. Melton, rubbing his hand over his
shining dome.
"If I did, I wouldn't admit it," the Judge put up a cautious guard,
"because I foresee that whatever I say will be used as evidence against
me."
"I've torn out all my hair in desperation at hearing such men as you
claim to admire and respect and wish to advance the American woman. You
don't give enough thought to her--real thought--from one year's end to
another to know whether you think she has an immortal soul or not!"
"Oh, you can't get anywhere, trying to reason about those sort of
things. You have to take souls for granted. Besides, I give her as fair
a deal in that respect as I give myself," protested Lydia's father
reasonably, smiling and eating.
"There's something in _that_, now!" cried his interlocutor, with an odd
Celtic lilt which sometimes invaded his speech; "but she _has_ an
immortal soul, and I'm by no means sure that yours is still inside you."
The Judge stood up, brushed the crumbs of his stolen feast from his
well-fitting broadcloth, and smiled down indulgently at the unquiet
little doctor. "She's all right, Melton, the American woman, and you're
an unconscionably tiresome old fanatic. That's what _you_ are! Come
along and have a glass of punch with me. Lydia's cook has a genius for
punch--and for sandwiches!" he added reflectively, setting down the
empty platter.
Dr. Melton apparently was off on another tangent of excitability. "Did
you ever see her?" he demanded with a fiercely significant accent.
The Judge made a humorous wry mouth. "Yes, I have; but what concern is a
cook's moral character to her employer any more than an engineer's to
the railroad--"
"Well, it mightn't hurt the railroad any if it took more cognizance of
its engineers' morals--" began the doctor dryly.
The Judge cut him short with a great laugh. "Oh, Melton! Melton! You
bilious sophomore! Take a vacation from finding everything so damn
tragic. Take a drink on me. You're all right! Everybody's all right!"
The doctor nodded. "And the reception is the success of the season," he
said.
CHAPTER XX
AN EVENING'S ENTERTAINMENT
The dinner parties, so Paul told Lydia one evening a few days later,
would certainly be as successful and with but little more trouble. "Just
think of the dinners Ellen's been giving us for the last two months! I
don't believe there's another such cook in Ohio--within our purse, of
course."
Lydia did not visibly respond to this enthusiasm. Indeed, she walked
away from the last half of it, and leaned out of a window to look up at
the stars. When she came back to take up the tiny dress on which she was
sewing, she said: "I don't think I can stand more than this one dinner
party, Paul. I'm sorry, but I don't feel at all well, and this dreadful
nausea troubles me a good deal."
"Well, you look lovelier than ever before in your life," Paul reassured
her tenderly, and felt a moment's pique that her face did not entirely
clear at this all-important announcement. "Come, let's go over to the
Derby's for a game of bridge, will you, Lydia?"
This conversation took place on a Tuesday late in May. The dinner party
was set for Thursday. On Wednesday morning, after Paul's usual early
departure, Lydia went to her writing desk to send a note to Madeleine
Hollister. Paul had intimated that she and Madeleine were seeing less of
each other than he had expected from their girlhood acquaintance, and
Lydia, in her anxiety to induce Paul to talk over with her and plan with
her the growth of their home life, was eager to adopt every casual
suggestion he threw out. She began, therefore, a cordial invitation to
Madeleine to spend several days with them. She would try again to be
more intimate with her husband's sister.
She had not inherited her mother's housekeeping eye, and was never
extremely observant of details. Being more than usually preoccupied this
morning, she had no suspicion that someone else had been using the
conveniences for writing on her desk until she turned over the sheet of
paper on which she had begun her note, and saw with surprise that the
other side was already covered with a coarse handwriting, unfamiliar to
her.
As she looked at this in the blankest astonishment, a phrase leaped out
at her comprehension, like a serpent striking. And then another. And
another.
She tried to push back her chair to escape, but she was like a person
paralyzed.
With returning strength to move came an overwhelming wave of nausea. She
crept up to her own room and lay motionless and soundless for hour after
hour, until presently it was noon, and the pleasant tinkling of gongs
announced that lunch was served.
Lydia rose, and made her way down the stairs to the well-ordered table,
set with the daintiest of perfectly prepared food, and stood, holding on
to the back of a chair, while she rang the bell. The little second girl
answered it--one of the flitting, worthless, temporary occupants of that
position.
"Tell Ellen to come here," said her mistress.
At the appearance of the cook, Lydia's white face went a little whiter.
"Did you use my writing desk last evening?" she asked.
Ellen looked up, her large, square-jawed face like a mask through which
her eyes probed her mistress' expression. "Yes, Mrs. Hollister; I did,"
she said in the admirable "servant's manner" she possessed to
perfection. "I ought to ask your pardon for doing it without permission,
but someone was wanting Mr. Hollister on the telephone, and I thought
best to sit within hearing of the bell until you and Mr. Hollister
should return, and as--"
"You left part of your letter to Patsy O'Hern," said Lydia, and sat
down suddenly, as though her strength were spent.
The woman opposite her flushed a purplish red. There was a long silence.
Lydia looked at her servant with a face before which Ellen finally
lowered her eyes.
"I am sure, Mrs. Hollister, if you don't think I'm worth the place, and
if you think you can manage without me to-morrow night, I'll go this
minute," she said coolly.
Lydia did not remove her eyes from the other's flushed face. "You must
go far away from Bellevue," she said. "You must not take a place
anywhere near here."
Ellen looked up quickly, and down again. The color slowly died out of
her face. After a sullen silence, "Yes," she said.
"That is all," said Lydia.
* * * * *
Paul found his wife that evening still very white. She explained Ellen's
disappearance with a dry brevity. "That we should have continued to give
that--that awful--to give her opportunity to work upon a boy of--" she
ended brokenly. "Suppose he had been my brother!"
Paul was aghast. "But, my _dear_! To-morrow is the night of the dinner!
Couldn't you have put off a few days this sudden fit of--"
Lydia broke from her white stillness with a wild outcry. She flung
herself on her husband, pressing her hands on his mouth and crying out
fiercely: "No, no, Paul! Not that! I can't bear to have you say that! I
hoped--I hoped you wouldn't think of--"
Paul was fresh from an interview with Dr. Melton, and in his ears rang
innumerable cautions against excitement or violent emotions. With his
usual competent grasp on the essentials of a situation that he could not
understand at all, he put aside for the time his exasperated
apprehensions about the next day's event, and picking Lydia up bodily he
carried her to a couch, closing her lips with gentle hands and soothing
her with caresses, like a frightened child.
"Oh, you are good to me!" she murmured finally, quieted. "I must try
not to get so excited. But, Paul--I _can't_ tell you--about--about that
letter--and later, when I saw Ellen, it was as though we fought hand to
hand for Patsy, though she never--"
"There, there, dearest! Don't talk about it--just rest. You've worked
yourself into a perfect fever." If there was latent in the indulgent
accent of this speech the coda, "All about nothing," it escaped Lydia's
ear. She only knew that the long nightmare of her lonely, horrified day
was over. She clung to her husband, and thanked heaven for his pure,
clean manliness.
But in a vastly different way the next day was almost as much of a
nightmare. Lydia's father and mother were temporarily out of town and
their at least fairly satisfactory cook was enjoying her vacation at an
undiscoverable address. Lydia was cut off from asking her sister to come
to her aid by the fact that Paul had prevailed upon her to omit Marietta
and her husband from her guests. "If you won't give but one, we've just
_got_ to invite the important ones," he had said. "Your sister can take
dinner with us any day, and you know her husband _isn't_ the most--"
Lydia had picked up in the school of necessity a fair knowledge of
cooking, for which she had discovered in herself quite a liking; but she
had been too constantly in social demand to have the leisure for
advancing far into culinary lore, and she now found herself dismayed
before the elaborate menu that Ellen had planned, for which the
materials were gathered together. She was still shaken with the emotions
of the day before, and subject to sudden giddy, sick turns, which,
although lasting but an instant, left her enormously fatigued.
She went furiously at the task before her, beginning by simplifying the
dinner as much as she dared and could with the materials at hand, and
struggling with the dishes she was obliged to retain. For years
afterward, the sight of chicken salad affected her to acute nausea. The
inexperienced and careless little second girl lost her head in the
crisis, and had to be repeatedly calmed and assured that all that would
be asked of her would be to serve the dinner to the waiters for whom
Lydia had arranged hastily by telephone with Endbury's leading caterer.
Ellen had planned to serve the meal with the help of a waitress friend
or two, without other outside help; a feature of the occasion that had
met with Paul's hearty approval. He told Lydia that those palpably
hired-for-the-occasion nigger waiters were very bad form, and belonged
to a phase of Endbury's social gaucheries as outgrown now as charade
parties. But now, of course, nothing else was possible.
In the intervals of cooking, Lydia left her makeshift help in the
kitchen, to see that nothing burned, and in a frenzy of activity flew at
some of the manifold things to be done to prepare the house for the
festivity. She swept and wiped up herself the expansive floors of the
two large parlors, set the rooms in order, dusted the innumerable
wedding present knickknacks, cleaned the stairs, wiped free from dust
the carved balustrades, ordered the bedrooms that were to serve as
dressing rooms in the evening, answered the 'phone a thousand times,
arranged flowers in the vases, received a reportorial call from Miss
Burgess, gave cut glass and china its final polish, laid out Paul's
evening clothes and arranged her own toilet ready--it was five o'clock!
There were innumerable other tasks to accomplish, but she dared no
longer put off setting the table.
It was to be a large dinner--large, that is, for Endbury--of twenty
covers, and Lydia had never prepared a table for so many guests. The
number of objects necessary for the conventional setting of a dinner
table appalled her. She was so tired, and her attention was so fixed on
the complicated processes going on uncertainly in the kitchen, that her
brain reeled over the vast quantity of knives and forks and plates and
glasses needed to convey food to twenty mouths on a festal occasion.
They persistently eluded her attempts to marshal them into order. She
discovered that she had put forks for the soup--that in some
inexplicable way at the plate destined for an important guest there was
a large kitchen spoon of iron--a wild sort of whimsical humor rose in
her from the ferment of utter fatigue and anxiety. When Paul came in,
looking very grave, she told him with a wavering laugh, "If I tried as
hard for ten minutes to go to Heaven as I've tried all day to have this
dinner right, I'd certainly have a front seat in the angel choir. If
anybody here to-night is not satisfied, it'll be because he's harder to
please than St. Peter himself."
"My Aunt Alexandra will be here," said Paul, the humorous side of her
speech escaping him.
Lydia set down a tray of glasses, and broke into open, shaking,
hysterical laughter. Paul surveyed her grimly. Her excitement had
flushed her cheeks and darkened her eyes, and her sudden, apparently
light-hearted, mirth put the finishing touch to a picture that could
seem to her husband nothing but a care-free, not to say childish,
attitude toward a situation of grave concern to him and his prospects
and ambitions in the world. His inborn and highly cultivated regard for
competence and success in any enterprise undertaken, drowned out, as was
by no means infrequent with him, any judicial inquiry into the innate
importance of the enterprise. He had an instant of bitter impatience
with Lydia. He felt that he had a right to hold her to account for the
outcome of events. If she were well enough to have rosy cheeks and to
laugh at nothing, she was well enough to have satisfactory results
expected from her efforts.
"I hope very much that everything will go well," he said curtly, turning
away. "Our first dinner party means a good deal."
But everything did not go well. Indeed, it is scarcely too much to say
that nothing went well. From the over-peppered soup (Lydia had forgotten
to caution her rattle-brained assistant that she had already seasoned
the bouillon) to the salad which, although excellent, gave out frankly,
beyond any possibility of disguise, while five people were still
unserved, the meal was a long procession of mishaps. Paul took up
sorrily his wife's rather hysterical note of self-mockery, and laughed
and joked over the varied eccentricities of the pretentious menu. But
there was no laughter in his heart.
Never before, in all his life, from babyhood up, had he been forced to
know the acrid taste of failure, and the dose was not sweetened by his
intense consciousness that he was not in any way responsible. No such
fiasco had ever resulted from anything he _had_ been responsible for, he
thought fiercely to himself, leaning forward smilingly to talk to the
president of the street-railway company, who, having nothing in the
shape of silverware left before his place but a knife and spoon, was
eating his salad with the latter implement. "Lydia has no right to act
so," he thought.
The hostess gave the effect of flushed, bright-eyed animation usual with
her on exciting occasions.
"Your wife is a beauty," said the street-railway magnate, looking down
the disorganized table toward her.
Paul received this assurance with the proper enthusiastic assent, but
something else gleamed hotly in his face as he looked at her. "I have
_some_ rights," thought the young husband. "Lydia owes me something!" He
never before had been moved to pity for himself.
Lydia seemed to herself to be in an endless bad dream. The exhausting
efforts of the day had reduced her to a sort of coma of fatigue through
which she felt but dully the successive stabs of the ill-served,
unsuccessful dinner. At times, the table, the guests, the room itself,
wavered before her, and she clutched at her chair to keep her balance.
She did not know that she was laughing and talking gaily and eating
nothing. She was only conscious of an intense longing for the end of
things, and darkness and quiet.
After the meal the company moved into the double parlor. The plan had
been to serve coffee there, but as people stood about waiting and this
did not appear, Paul drew Lydia to one side to ask her about it. She
looked at him with bright, blank eyes, and spoke in an expressionless
voice: "The grocery boy forgot to deliver the coffee," she said. "There
isn't any, I remember now."
He turned away silently, and the later part of the entertainment began.
There was to be music, one of the guests being Endbury's favorite
amateur soprano, another a pianist much thought of. The singer took her
place by the piano, assuming carefully the correct position. Lydia
watched her balance on the balls of her feet, lean forward a little,
throw up her chest and draw in her abdomen. As the preliminary chords of
the accompaniment sounded, she was almost visibly concentrating her
thoughts on the tension of her vocal chords, on the position of the soft
palate and the resonance of the nasal cavities. The thoughts of her
auditors followed her own. It came to Lydia some time after the
performance was over that the words of the song told of love and life
and tragic betrayal.
A near-by guest leaned to her and said, during the hand-clapping: "I
couldn't make out what it was all about--never can understand a
song--but, say! can't she put it all over the soprano that sings in the
First Methodist."
His hostess gave the speaker a rather disconcerting stare, hardly
explained, he thought, by the enigmatical statement that came after it:
"Why, that is how we are living, all of us!"
The pianist was an old German, considered eccentric by Endbury. He had a
social position on account of his son, a prosperous German-American
manufacturer of buggies, and was invited because of his readiness to
play on any occasion. The old man looked about him at the company with a
fatherly smile, and, sitting down to his instrument, waited pointedly
until all the cheerful hum of conversation had died away. The room was
profoundly silent as he brought his hands down on the keys in a
startling, thrilling chord. Lydia's heart began to beat fast. She felt a
chill run among the roots of her hair. She was so moved she could have
wept aloud, and yet, almost at once, as the musician passed on to the
rich elaboration of his theme, she lost herself in a groping
bewilderment. She had heard so little music! Her straining attention
mocked her with its futility.
She and Paul had been married for eight months, but they had found no
time for the serious study of music from which she had hoped so much.
When Paul was at home for an evening he was too tired and worn for
anything very deep, he said, and preferred to anything else the lighter
pieces of Nevin. She now gave ear despairingly to the mighty utterance
of a master, catching only now and then a tantalizing glimpse of what it
might mean to her. At times, there emerged from the glorious tumult of
sound some grave, earnest chord, some quick, piercing melody, some
exquisite sudden cadence, which reached her heart intelligibly; but
through most of it she felt herself to be listening with heartsick
yearning to a lovely message in an unknown tongue. Her feeling of
desolate exile from a realm of beauty she longed to enter, was
intensified, as was natural in so sensitive a nature, by the strange
power of music to heighten in its listeners whatever is, for the time,
their predominant emotion. She felt like crying out, like beating her
hands against the prison bars suddenly revealed to her. She was almost
intolerably affected before the end of the selection.
"That's an awfully long piece for anybody to learn by heart!" commented
her neighbor admiringly, as the old pianist finished, and stood up
wiping his forehead. "Say, Mr. Burkhardt, what's the name of that
selection?" he went on, leaning forward.
The old German turned toward him, and answered gravely: "That is the
feerst mofement of Beethoven's Opus Von Hundred and Elefen."
"Oh, it is, is it?" said Lydia's guest, with a facetious intonation.
"All of that?"
After that the soprano sang again, someone else sang a humorous negro
song, there was more piano music, rendered by the prosperous son of the
old pianist, who played dashingly some bright comic-opera airs. The
furniture was pushed back and a few dancers whirled over the costly,
hardwood waxed floors, which Lydia had cleaned that morning. She felt
vaguely that everyone was being most kind and that her good-natured
guests were trying to make up for the failure of the dinner by unusual
efforts to have the evening pass off well. She was very grateful for
this humane disposition of theirs. It was the bright spot of the
experience.
But Paul, who also saw the kindly efforts of his guests, felt that this
was the last intolerable dagger-thrust. Their amused compassion
suffocated him. He wanted people to envy him, not pity him, he thought
in mortified chagrin.
After an eternity, the hour of departure arrived. As the door shut out
the last of the smiling, lying guests, the host and hostess turned to
face each other.
Paul spoke first, in an even, restrained tone: "You would better go to
bed, Lydia; you must be very tired."
With this, he turned away to shut up the house. He had determined to
preserve at all costs the appearance of the indulgent, non-critical,
over-patient husband that he intensely felt himself to be. No force, he
thought grimly, shutting his jaws hard, should drag from him a word of
his real sentiments. Fanned by the wind of this virtuous resolution, his
sentiments grew hotter and hotter as he walked about, locking doors and
windows, and reviewing bitterly the events of the evening. If he was to
restrain himself from saying anything, he would at least allow himself
the privilege of feeling all that was possible to a man so deeply
injured.
Lydia sat quietly waiting for him to finish, her face in her hands,
conscious of nothing but fatigue, in her ears a wild echo of the
inexplicable, haunting Beethoven chords.
Suddenly she started and raised her head, her face transfigured. Her
eyes shone, a smile was on her lips like that of someone who hears from
afar the sound of a beloved voice. She made a gesture of yearning toward
her husband. "Oh, Paul--Paul!" she cried to him softly, in a tremulous
voice of wonder.
He turned, the light for the first time on his black, loveless face.
"What is it?" he enunciated distinctly, looking at her hard.
Before his eyes Lydia shrank back. She put up her hands instinctively to
hide her face from him. Finally, "Nothing--nothing--" she murmured.
Without comment, Paul went back to his conscientious round of the house.
Lydia had felt for the first time the quickening to life of her child.
And during all that day, until then, she had forgotten that she was to
know motherhood.
CHAPTER XXI
AN ELEMENT OF SOLIDITY
Lydia dated the estrangement from Marietta, which grew so rapidly during
the next year, from the conversation on the day after the dinner party.
She was cruelly wounded by her sister's attack on her, but she could
never remember the scene without one of her involuntary laughs so
disconcerting to Paul, who only laughed when he felt gay, certainly at
nothing which affected him seriously. But Lydia's sense of humor was so
tickled at the grotesque contrast between Marietta's injured conception
of the brilliant social event from which she had been excluded and the
leaden fiasco which it had really been, that even at the time, in the
midst of denying hotly her sister's charges of snobbishness and social
ambition, she was unable to keep back a shaky laugh or two as she cried
out: "Oh, Etta! If you could know how things went, you'd be too thankful
to have escaped it. It was awful beyond words!"
Marietta answered her by handing her with a grim silence a copy of that
morning's paper, open at _Society Notes_. Loyal Flora Burgess had
lavished on "Miss Lydia's" first dinner party her entire vocabulary of
deferential, not to say reverential, encomiums. The "function had
inaugurated a new era of cosmopolitan amplitude of social life in
Endbury," was the ending of the lengthy paragraph that described the
table decorations, the menu, the costume of the hostess, the names of
the music-makers afterward.
Lydia burst into a hysterical laugh. "Flora Burgess is too killing!" she
cried. "She was here in the afternoon to get details, and I just let her
wander around and see what she could make out. I was too busy to pay any
attention to her--Oh, Etta! I was dead and buried with fatigue before
the people even began to come. I can't even remember much about it
except that every single thing was wrong. That about 'cosmopolitan
amplitude--' Oh, isn't Flora too funny!--means having music after
dinner, I suppose. I don't know what else."
"Of course," said Marietta, rising to go, "it doesn't make any
difference what it was really like! Only the people that were there know
that. The report in the paper--"
"Oh, Marietta, what a thing to say--that it's all pretense, every
bit--and not--"
Marietta went on steadily and mordantly: "I don't know how you feel
about it, but _I_ shouldn't be very easy in my mind to have my only
sister's name not on the list of guests at my most exclusive social
function."
Dr. Melton, who made Lydia a professional call that morning, found her
with reddened eyes, slowly washing and putting away innumerable dirty
dishes. She told him that the second girl, apparently overcome by the
events of the day before, had disappeared during the night. Dr. Melton
thrust out his lips and said nothing, but he took off his coat, put on
an apron, and, pushing his patient away from the dishpan, attacked a
huge pile of sticky plates. He worked rapidly and silently, with a
surgeon's deftness. Lydia sat quiet for some time, looking at him.
Finally, "I hadn't been crying because of dirty dishes," she told him;
"I'm not such a child as that. Marietta has been here. She said some
things pretty hard to bear about her not having been invited to that
awful dinner party. I didn't know what she was talking about a good deal
of the time--it was all about what a snob and traitor to my family I was
growing to be."
"You mustn't blame Marietta too much," said the doctor, rinsing and
beginning to dry the plates with what seemed to Lydia's fatigued languor
really miraculous speed. "It's true that she watches your social advance
with the calm disinterestedness of a cat watching somebody pour cream
out of a jug. She wants her saucerful. But look here. Did I ever tell
you about the man Montaigne speaks of who spent all his life to acquire
the skill necessary to throw a grain of millet through the eye of a
needle? Well, that man was proud of it, but poor Marietta's haunted by
doubts as to whether in her case it's been worth while. It makes her
naturally inclined to be snappy."
He was so used to delighting in Lydia's understanding of his perversely
obscure figures of speech that he turned about, surprised to hear no
appreciative comment. She was looking away with troubled eyes.
"Paul will think I ought not to have let Marietta talk to me like
that--that I ought to have resented it. I never can remember to resent
things."
The doctor began setting out polished water glasses on a tray. "It is
the glory of a man to pass by an offense," he quoted. "Ah, don't you
suppose if we knew all about things we'd feel as relieved at not having
resented an injury as if we had held our hands from striking a blind man
who had inadvertently run against us?"
There was no response. It was the second time that one of his metaphors,
far-fetched as he loved them, but usually intelligible to Lydia, had
missed fire. He turned on her sharply. "What are you thinking about?" he
asked.
She raised her tragic eyes to his. "About the mashed potatoes last
night--they didn't have a bit of salt in them--they were too nasty
for--"
"Oh, pshaw! It makes no difference whether your dinner party was a
success or not! You know that as well as I do. A dinner party is a relic
of the Dark Ages, anyhow--if not of the Stone Age! As a physician, I
shudder to see people sitting down to gorge themselves on the richest
possible food, all carefully rendered extra palatable in order that they
may put upon their bodies the burden of throwing off an enormous amount
of superfluous food. A hundred years from now people will be as ashamed
of us for our piggishness as we are of our eighteenth-century forbears
for their wine-swilling to the detriment of their descendants. A dinner
party of to-day bears no more relation to a rational gathering of
rational people for the purpose of rational social intercourse than--"
He had run on with his usual astonishing loquacity without drawing
breath, overwhelming Lydia with a fresh flood of words when she tried to
break in; but she now sprang up and motioned him peremptorily to
silence.
"Please, please, Godfather, don't! I asked you not to unsettle
me--you're not kind to do it! You're not kind! I must think it's
important and, and--the necessary thing to do. I _must_!" She put her
hands over her eyes as she spoke. She was trying to shut out a vision of
Paul's embittered face of wrathful chagrin. "That's the trouble with
me," she went on. "Something in me makes it hard for me to think it
important enough to give up everything else for it--and I--"
"Why '_must_' you?" asked the doctor bluntly, crumpling his damp
dishcloth into a ball.
Lydia looked at him and saw Paul so evidently that the doctor saw with
her. "I must! I _must_!" she only repeated.
Dr. Melton opened his mouth wide, closed it again with a snap, and threw
the tightly wadded ball in his hand passionately upon the floor with the
gesture of an angry child. Lydia was standing now, looking down at the
red-faced little man as he peered up at her after his silent outbreak.
His attitude of fury so contrasted with the pacific white apron which
enveloped him, that she broke out into a laugh. Even as she laughed and
turned away to answer a knock at the door, she was acutely thankful that
it was not with Paul that she had been set upon by that swiftly mobile
change of humor, that it was not at Paul that she had launched that
disrespectful mirth.
The person who knocked proved to be a very large, rosy-cheeked female,
who might be a big, overgrown child or a preposterously immature woman
for all Lydia, looking at her in perplexity, could make out. She felt no
thrill of premonition as this individual advanced into the kitchen, a
pair of immense red hands folded before her.
"I'm Anastasia O'Hern, ma'am," she announced with a thick accent of
County Clare and a self-confident, good-humored smile, "though mostly
I'm called 'Stashie--and I'm just over from th' old country to my Aunt
Bridgie that washed for you till the rheumatism got her, and when she
told me about what you'd done for her and Patsy--how you'd sent off that
ould divil where she couldn't torment Patsy no more, and him as glad of
it as Aunt Bridgie herself, just like she knew he would be, and what an
awful time you do be havin' with gurrls, and a baby comin', I says to
myself and to Aunt Bridgie, 'There's the lady I'm goin' to worrk for if
she'll lave me do ut,' and Aunt Bridgie was readin' to me in the paper
about your gran' dinner party last night and I says to her and to
myself, 'There'll be a main lot of dishes to be washed th' day and I'd
better step over and begin.'"
She pulled off the shawl that had covered her head of flaming hair, and
smiled broadly at her two interlocutors, who remained motionless,
staring at her in an ecstasy of astonishment.
As she looked into Lydia's pale face and reddened eyes, the smile died
away. She clasped her big hands with a pitying gesture, and cried out a
Gaelic exclamation of compassion with a much-moved accent; then, "It's
time I was here," she told herself. She wiped her eyes, passed the back
of her hand over her nose with a sniff, picked up the dishcloth from the
floor, and advanced upon a pile of dirty silver. Her massive bulk shook
the floor.
"I don't know no more about housework than Casey's pig," she told them
cheerfully, "but Aunt Bridgie says in America they don't none of the
gurrls know nothing. They just hold their jobs because their ladies know
they couldn't do no better to change, and maybe I can learn. I want to
help."
She emptied the silver into the dishwater with a splash, and set to
work, turning her broad face to them to say familiarly over her
shoulder to Lydia, "Now, just you go and lie down and send the little
ould gentleman about his business. You need to be quiet--for the sake of
the one that's coming; and don't you forget I'm here. I'm--_here_!"
Dr. Melton drew Lydia away silently, and not until they had put two
rooms between them and the kitchen did they dare face each other. With
that first interchange of looks came peals of laughter--Lydia's light,
ringing laughter--to hear which the doctor offered up heartfelt
thanksgivings.
"That is your fate, Lydia," he said finally, wiping his eyes.
"Don't you just love her?" Lydia cried. "Isn't she the most _human_
thing!"
"Do you remember Maeterlinck's theory that every soul summons--"
Lydia interrupted to say with a wry, humorous mouth, "You know I don't
know anything. Don't ask me if I remember things."
"Well, Maeterlinck has one of his fanciful theories that everybody calls
to him from the unknown those elements that he most needs, which are
most in harmony with--"
"I caught a good solid element that time," cried Lydia, laughing again.
"She's embodied Loyalty," said the doctor. "It breathes from every
pore."
"She's going to smash my cut glass and china something awful," Lydia
foretold.
Dr. Melton took his godchild by the shoulders and shook her. "Now, Lydia
Emery, you listen to me! I don't often issue an absolute command, if I
am your physician, but I do now. You _let_ her smash your china and cut
glass, and all the rest of your devastating trash she can lay her hands
on, rather than lose her--until after September, anyhow! It's a direct
reward of virtue for your having shipped the 'ould divil'!"
Lydia's face clouded. "I'm afraid Paul won't think her much of a
substitute for Ellen," she murmured, "and we'll have to find a cook
somehow even if this one learns enough to be second girl."
"Second girl!" ejaculated the doctor. "She's a human being with a
capacity for loyalty."
"She's evidently awfully incompetent--"
The doctor snorted. "Competence--I loathe the word! It's used now to
cover all imaginable sins, as folks used to excuse all manner of
rascality in a good swordsman. We're beyond the frontier period now when
competence was a matter of life and death. We ought to begin to have
some glimmering realization that there are other--"
"_Oh_, what a hand for talk!" said Lydia.
The doctor rejoiced at her laughing impatience. He thought to himself,
as he looked at her standing in the doorway and waving good-by to him,
that she seemed a very different creature from the drooping and
tearful--he interrupted his chain of thought as he boarded his car, to
exclaim, "May she live long, that heavy-handed, vivifying Celt!"
CHAPTER XXII
THE VOICES IN THE WOOD
Lydia had not been mistaken in her premonition of Paul's attitude toward
the new maid. He found her quite unendurable, but the direful stories
told by their Bellevue acquaintances about the literal impossibility of
keeping servants during the hot season induced him to postpone his wrath
against the awkward, irreverent, too familiar Irishwoman until after
Lydia should feel more herself. Paul's wrath lost nothing by keeping.
To Lydia, on the contrary, Anastasia's loyalty and devotion were
inexpressibly comforting during the trying days of that summer. Her
servant's loving heart radiated warmth and cheer throughout all her
life. One day, when her mother protested against 'Stashie's habit of
familiar conversation with the family (they had all soon adopted the
Irish diminutive of her name), Lydia said: "I can not be too thankful
for 'Stashie's love and kindness."
Mrs. Emery was outraged. "Good gracious, Lydia! What things you do say."
"Why not? Because she hasn't been to college? Neither have I. She's as
well educated as I am, and a great deal better woman."
"Why, what are you talking about? She can't read!"
"I don't," said Lydia. "That's worse."
Her mother turned the conversation, thinking she would be glad when this
period of high-strung nerves and fancies should be over. She told Dr.
Melton that it seemed to her that "Lydia took it very hard," and she
supposed they couldn't expect her to be herself until after September.
The doctor answered: "Oh, there's a great deal of nonsense about that
kind of talk. A normal woman--and, thank Heaven, Lydia's that to the
last degree--has the whole universe back of her. Lydia's always balanced
on a hair trigger, it's true, but she _is_ balanced! And now all nature
is rallying to her like an army with banners."
"Ah, you never went through it yourself!" Mrs. Emery retreated to the
safe stronghold of matronhood. "You don't know! I had strange fancies,
like Lydia's. Women always do."
Another one of Lydia's fancies of that summer drove her to a strange
disregard of caste rules. It came through a sudden impulse of compassion
one hot midsummer day when Miss Burgess hobbled up the driveway in the
hope of gleaning some Bellevue society notes.
"It's a terrible time of year, Miss Lydia," she said, sinking into a
chair with a long, quavering sigh. "One drops from thirty and sometimes
forty dollars a week to twenty or less; and it's so hard on one's feet,
being on them in hot weather. I assure you mine ache like the toothache.
And expenses are as high as in winter, or worse, when you have an
invalid to look out for. Out here in breezy Bellevue you've no
conception how hot it is on Main Street. And Mother _feels_ the heat!"
All this she said, not complainingly, but in her usual twittering manner
of imparting information, as though it were an incident of a
five-o'clock tea, but Lydia felt a pang of remorse for her usual
thoughtless attitude of exasperated hilarity over Miss Burgess'
peculiarities. She noticed that the kind, vacuous face was beginning to
look more than middle-aged, and that the scanty hair above it was
whitening rapidly.
"Why, bring your mother out here for the day, why don't you, any time!"
she said impulsively. "I can't have any social engagements, you know,
the way I am, and Paul's away a good deal of the time, and 'Stashie and
I can get you tea and eggs and toast, at least. I'd love to have her.
Now, any morning that threatens heat, just you telephone you're both
coming to spend the day."
She felt quite strange at the thought that she had never seen the
mother of this devoted, unselfish, affectionate, lifelong acquaintance.
But Miss Burgess, though moved almost to tears at Lydia's "kind
thoughtfulness," clung steadfastly to her standards. She had always
known that she must not presume on her "exceptional opportunities for
acquaintance with Endbury's social leaders," she told Lydia, nor take
advantage of any inadvertent kindness of theirs. Her mother would be the
first one to blame her if she did; her mother knew the world very well.
She went away, murmuring broken thanks and protestations of devotion.
Lydia looked after her, disappointed. She had been quite stirred by the
hope of giving some pleasure. There was little to break the long,
lonely, monotonous expectancy of her life. And yet nothing surprised
those who knew her better than her equable physical poise during this
time of trial and discomfort. Everyone had expected so high-strung a
creature to be "half-wild with nerves." But Lydia, although she
continued to say occasional disconcerting things, seemed on the whole to
be gaining maturity and firmness of purpose. Paul was away a great deal
that summer and she had many long, solitary hours to pass--a singular
contrast to the feverish hurry of the winter "season." Her old habit of
involuntary questioning scrutiny came back and it is possible that her
motto of "action at all costs" was passed under a closer mental review
than during the winter; but though she went frequently to see her
godfather and Mrs. Sandworth, she did not break her silence on whatever
thoughts were occupying her mind, except in one brief, questioning
explosion. This was on the occasion of her last visit to Endbury before
her confinement, a few days after her call from Flora Burgess. It had
occurred to her that they might know something about the reporter's
family and she stopped in after her shopping to inquire.
She found her aunt and her godfather sitting in the deeply shaded, old
grape arbor in their back yard; Dr. Melton with a book, as always, Mrs.
Sandworth ungirdled and expansive, tinkling an ice-filled cup and crying
out upon the weather.
"Sit down, Lydia, for mercy's sake, and cool off. Yes; we know all about
her; she's a patient of Marius'. Have some lemonade! Isn't it fearful!
And Marius keeps reading improving books! It makes me so much hotter!
She's English, you know."
Dr. Melton looked up from his book to remark, with his usual judicial
moderation, "I could strangle that old harridan with joy. She has been
one of the most pernicious influences the women of this town have ever
had."
"Flora Burgess' mother? Why, I never heard of her in the world until the
other day."
"You can't smell sewer gas," said the doctor briefly.
Mrs. Sandworth laughed. "Marius almost killed himself last winter to
pull her through pneumonia. He worked over her night and day. Oh, Marius
is a great deal better than he talks--strangle--!"
"I'm a fool, if that's what you mean," said the doctor.
"What is the matter with Flora Burgess' mother?" asked Lydia.
"She's been a plague spot in this town for years--that
lower-middle-class old Briton, with her beastly ideas of caste--ever
since she began sending out her daughter to preach her damnable gospel
to defenseless Endbury homes."
"Marius--my _dear_!" chided Mrs. Sandworth--"The Gospel--damnable! You
forget yourself!"
The doctor did not laugh. "They're the ones," he went on, "who first
started this idiotic idea of there being a social stigma attached to
living in any but just such parts of town."
"You live in just such a part of town yourself," said Lydia.
"My good-for-nothing, pretentious, fashionable patients wouldn't come to
me if I didn't."
"Why do you have to have that kind of patients?"
Occasionally, of late, with her godfather, Lydia had displayed a
certain uncompromising directness, rather out of character with her
usual gentleness, which the doctor found very disconcerting. He was
silent now.
Mrs. Sandworth's greater simplicity saw no difficulties in the way of an
answer. "Because, Lydia, he's one of the Kentucky Meltons, and because,
as I said, he talks a great deal worse than he is."
"Because I am a fool," said the doctor again. This time he flushed as he
spoke.
"He doesn't like things common around him," went on Mrs. Sandworth, "any
more than any gentleman does. And as for strangling old Mrs. Burgess,
what good would that do? It can't be she who's influencing Endbury,
because all it's trying to do is to be just like every other town in
Ohio."
"In the Union!" amended Dr. Melton grimly. He subsided after this into
one of his fidgety, grimacing, finger-nail-gnawing reveries. He was
wondering whether he dared tell Lydia of a talk he had had that morning
with her father. After a look at Lydia's flushed, tired face, he decided
that he would better not; but as the two women fell into a discussion of
the layette, the conversation, Mr. Emery's nervous voice, his sharp,
impatient gestures, came back to him vividly. He looked graver and
graver, as he did after each visit to his old friend, and after each
fruitless exhortation to "go slow and rest more." Mr. Emery was in the
midst of a very important trial and, as he had very reasonably reminded
his physician, this was not a good time to relax his grasp on things.
"Now I'm back in practice, in competition with younger men, I _can't_
sag back! It's absurd to ask it of me."
"You were a fool to go back into practice at your age."
"A fool! I've doubled my income."
"Yes; and your arteries--look here, suppose you were dead. The bar would
get along without you, wouldn't it?"
"But I'm not dead," the other truthfully opposed to this fallacious
supposition, and turned again to his papers.
The doctor shut his medicine case with a spiteful snap. "Don't fool
yourself that it's devotion to the common weal that drives you ahead!
Don't make a pretty picture of yourself as working to the last in heroic
service of your fellow-man! You know, as I know, that if you dropped out
this minute, American jurisprudence would continue on its triumphant,
misguided way quite as energetically as now."
Mr. Emery looked up, dropping for once the mask of humorous tolerance
with which he was accustomed to hide any real preoccupation of his own.
"Look here, Melton, I'm too nervous to stand much fooling these days. If
you want to know the reason why I'm going on, I'll tell you. I've got
to. I need the money."
"Gracious powers! Did you get caught in that B. and R. slump?"
The Judge smiled a little bitterly. "No; I haven't lost any money--for a
very good reason. I never was ahead enough to have any to lose. Haven't
you any idea of what the cost of living the way we do--"
Dr. Melton interrupted him, wild-eyed: "Why, Nat Emery! You have
yourself and your wife to feed and clothe and shelter--and you tell me
that costs so much that you can't stop working when there's--"
"Oh, go away, Melton; you make me tired!" The Judge made a weary gesture
of dismissal. "You're always talking like a child, or a preacher, about
how things _might_ be! You know what an establishment like ours costs to
keep up, as well as I do. I'm in it--we've sort of gradually got in
deeper and deeper, the way folks do--and it would take a thousand times
more out of me to break loose than to go on. You're an old fuss, anyhow.
I'm all right. Only for the Lord's sake leave me quiet now."
The doctor shivered and put his hand over his eyes as he remembered how,
to his physician's eye, the increasing ill health of his old friend
gleamed lividly from his white face.
Mrs. Sandworth brought him back to the present with an astonished "Good
gracious! how anybody can even _pretend_ to shiver on a day like this!"
She added: "Look here, Marius, are you going to sit there and moon all
the afternoon? Here's Lydia going already."
Seasoned to his eccentricities as she was, she was startled by his
answer. "Julia," he said solemnly, "did you ever consider how many kinds
of murder aren't mentioned in the statute books?"
"Marius! What ideas! Remember Lydia!"
"Oh, I remember Lydia!" he said soberly. He went to lay a hand fondly on
her shoulder. "Are you really going, my dear? I'll walk along to the
waiting-room with you."
"Don't talk her to death!" cried Mrs. Sandworth after them.
"I won't say a word," he answered.
It was a promise that he almost literally kept. He was in one of the
exaggeratedly humble moods which alternated with his florid, talkative,
cock-sure periods.
Lydia, too, was quite thoughtful and subdued. They descended in a
complete silence the dusty street, blazing in the late afternoon sun,
and passed into the inferno of a crowded city square in midsummer. As
they stood before the waiting-room, Lydia asked suddenly: "Godfather,
how can we, any of us, do any better?"
"God knows!" he said, with a gesture of impotence, and went his way.
Lydia entered the waiting-room and went to ask a man in uniform when the
next car left for Bellevue.
"There's been an accident in the power-house, lady," he told her, "and
that line ain't runnin'."
Lydia gave an exclamation of dismay. "But I must get back to Bellevue
to-night!"
Paul was out of town, but she knew the agonies of anxiety 'Stashie would
suffer if she did not appear. "Oh, but I can telephone," she reminded
herself.
"You kin get out there if you don't mind takin' the long way around,"
the man explained with a friendly interest. "If you take the Garfield
line and change at Ironton to the Onteora branch, it'll bring you back
on the other side of Bellevue, and Bellevue ain't so big but what it
won't be a very long walk to where you live."
Lydia thanked him, touched, as she so often was, with the kind and, to
her, welcome absence of impersonality in working people; and, assuring
herself that she had time enough to eat something before her car's
departure, betook herself to a dairy lunch-room where she ate a
conscientiously substantial supper. The heat of the day had left her
little appetite; but to "take care of herself" now seemed at last one of
the worth-while things to do which she had always had so eager a
longing.
At seven o'clock she took the trolley pointed out to her by her friend,
the starter, who noticed and remembered her when she returned to the
waiting-room. The evening rush was over, and for some time she was the
only passenger. Then a very tired-looking, middle-aged man, an
accountant perhaps, in a shabby alpaca coat, boarded the car and sank at
once into a restless doze, his heat-paled face nodding about like a
broken-necked doll's. Lydia herself felt heavy on her the death-like
fatigue which the last weeks had brought to her, but she was not sleepy.
She looked out intently at the flat, fertile, kindly country, gradually
darkening in the summer twilight. She was very fond of her home
landscape. She had not taken so considerable a journey on a trolley for
a long time--perhaps not since the trip to the Mallory house-party. That
was a long time ago.
At the edge of thick woods the car came to a sudden stop. The lights
went out. The conductor disappeared, twitched at the trolley, and went
around for a consultation with the motorman, who had at once
philosophically pulled off his worn glove and sat down on the step.
"Power's off!" he called back casually into the car to the accountant,
who had started up wildly, with the idea, apparently, that he had been
carried past his station. "We've got to wait till they turn her on
again."
"How long'll that be?"
"Oh, I don't know. The whole system is on the bum to-day. Maybe half an
hour; maybe more. Better take another nap."
The accountant looked around the car, encountered Lydia's eyes, and
smiled sheepishly. After a time of silent waiting, enlivened only by the
murmur of the conversation between the motorman and the conductor
outside, the gray-haired man suggested to Lydia that it would be cooler
out under the trees, and if she would like to go he would be glad to
help her. When he had her established on a grassy bank he forbore
further talk, and sat so still that, as the quiet moments slipped by,
Lydia almost forgot him.
It was singularly pleasant there, with the rustling blackness of the
wood behind them, and before them the sweep of the open farming country,
shimmering faintly in the light of the stars now beginning to show in
the great unbroken arch of the heavens.
Here the talk of the two men on the steps of the car was distinctly
audible, and Lydia, with much interest, pieced together a character and
life-history for each out of their desultory, friendly chat; but
presently they too fell silent, listening to the stir of the night
breezes in the forest. Lydia leaned her head against a tree and closed
her eyes.
She never knew if it were from a doze, or but from a reverie that she
was aroused by a sudden thrilling sound back of her--the clear, deep
voice of a distant 'cello. Her heart began to beat faster, as it always
did at the sound of music, and she sat up amazed, looking back into the
intense blackness of the wood. And then, like a waking dream, came a
flood of melody from what seemed to her an angel choir--fresh young
voices, throbbing and proclaiming through the summer night some joyous,
ever-ascending message. Lydia felt her pulses loud at her temples.
Almost a faintness of pleasure came over her. There was something
ineffably sweet about the disembodied voices sending their triumphant
chant up to the stars.
The sound stopped as suddenly as it began. The motorman stirred and
drew a long breath. "They do fine, don't they?" he said. "My oldest
girl's learning to sing alto with them."
"He ain't musical himself, is he?" asked the conductor.
"No; _he_ ain't. It's some Dutch friends that does the playing. But he
got the whole thing up, and runs the children. It's a nawful good thing
for _them_, let me tell you."
"What'd he do it for, I wonder," queried the conductor idly.
"Aw, I don't know. He's kind o' funny, anyhow. Said he wanted to teach
young folks how to enjoy 'emselves without spending money. That kind of
talk hits their _folks_ in the right spot, you bet. He owns a slice of
this farm, you know, and he's given some of the younger kids pieces of
ground for gardens, and he's got up a night class in carpentering for
young fellows that work in town all day. He's a crack-a-jack of a
carpenter himself."
"He'll run into the unions if he don't look out," prophesied the
conductor.
"I guess likely," assented the motorman. "They got after Dielman the
other day, did you hear, because he--" The talk drifted to gossip of the
world of work-people.
It stopped short as the 'cello again sent out its rich, vibrant
introduction to the peal of full-throated joy. There seemed to be no
other sound in all the enchanted, starlit world than this fervid
harmony.
This time it did not stop, but went on and on, swelling and dying away
and bursting out again into new ecstasies. In one of the pauses, when
nothing but the 'cello's chant came to her ears, Lydia suddenly heard
mingling with it the sweet, faint voice of a little stream whispering
vaguely, near her. It sounded almost like rain on autumn leaves. The
lights in the car flared up, blinding white, but the two men on the step
did not stir. The conductor sat with his arms folded on his knees, his
head on his arms. The motorman leaned against the end of the car. When
the music finally died, after one long, ringing, exultant shout, no one
moved for a time.
Then the motorman stood up, drawing on his glove.
"Quite a concert!" said the conductor, starting for the back platform.
"They do _fine_!" repeated the motorman.
The accountant came forward from the shadow and helped Lydia up the
steps. There were traces of tears on his tired face.
* * * * *
In September, when her mother leaned over her to say in a joyful,
trembling voice, "Oh, Lydia, it's a girl, a darling little girl!" Lydia
opened her white lips to say, "She is Ariadne."
"What did you say?" asked her mother.
"We must see that she has the clue," said Lydia faintly.
Mrs. Emery tiptoed to the doctor. "Keep her very quiet," she whispered;
"she is a little out of her head."
CHAPTER XXIII
FOR ARIADNE'S SAKE
Little Ariadne was six months old before Lydia could begin to make the
slightest effort to resume the social routine of her life. This was not
at all on account of ill health, for she had recovered her strength
rapidly and completely, and, like a good many normal women, had found
maternity a solvent of various slight physical disorders of her
girlhood. She felt now a more assured physical poise than ever before,
and could not attribute her disappearance from Endbury social life to
weakness. The fact was that Dr. Melton had upheld her in her wish to
nurse her baby herself, which limited her to very short absences from
the house and to a very quiet life within doors. She also discovered
that the servant problem was by no means simplified by the new member of
the family. "Girls" had always been unwilling to come out to Bellevue
because of the distance from their friends and followers, and they now
put forth another universally recognized obstacle in the phrase, "I
never work out where there is a baby. They make so much dirt." Anastasia
O'Hern was there, to be sure--heavy-handed, warm-hearted 'Stashie, who
took the new little girl to her loyal spinster heart and wept tears of
joy over her safe arrival; but 'Stashie had proved, as Paul predicted
from the first time he saw her, incorrigibly rattle-headed and
loose-ended. She had learned to prepare a number of simple, homely
dishes, quite enough to supply the actual needs of the everyday
household, and what she cooked was unusually palatable. She had the
Celtic feeling for savoriness. She had also managed, under Lydia's
zealous tuition, to overcome the Celtic tolerance for dirt, and thanks
to her square, powerful body, as strong as a ditch-digger's, she made
light work of keeping the house in a most gratifying state of
cleanliness.
But there were gaps in her equipment that were not to be filled by any
amount of tuition. In the first place, as Paul said of her, she was as
much like the traditional trim maid as a hippopotamus is like a gazelle.
Furthermore, as Dr. Melton summed up the matter in answer to one of
Paul's outbreaks against her, she was utterly incapable of comprehending
that satisfied vanity is the vital element in human life. For anything
that pertained to the appearance of things, 'Stashie was deaf, dumb and
blind. She would as soon as not put one of her savory stews on the table
in an earthen crock, and she never could be trusted to set the table
properly. There were always some kitchen spoons among the silver, and
the dishes looked, as Paul said, "as though she had stood off and thrown
them at a bull's-eye in the middle of the table." Moreover, she herself
could not emancipate herself from the ideas of toilet gleaned in the
little one-room cabin in County Clare. She was passionately devoted to
Lydia, and took with the humblest gratitude any hints about the care of
her person, but it was like trying to make a color-blind person into a
painter! Anastasia could only love on her knees, and serve, and
sympathize and cherish; she could not remember to comb her hair, or to
put on a clean apron when she opened the door, even if it were Madame
Hollister herself who rang. She had once opened to that important
personage attired in a calico wrapper, a sweater, and a pair of rubber
boots, having just come in from emptying the ashes--one of the heavy
tasks, outside her regular work, which she took upon her strong, willing
self. "But I was clane, and I got her into the house in two minutes from
the time she rang, the poor old soul!" she protested to Lydia, who, at
Paul's instance, had taken her to task.
Lydia explained, "But Mr. Hollister's aunt is a person who would rather
wait half an hour in the cold than see you without an apron."
To which 'Stashie exclaimed, in awestruck wonder before the mysteries of
creation, "Folks do be the beatin'est, don't they now, Mis' Hollister!"
"And you must not speak of Mr. Hollister's aunt as a 'poor old soul,'"
explained Lydia, apprehensive of Paul's wrath if he ever chanced to hear
such a characterization.
"But she is that," protested 'Stashie. "Anybody that's her age and
hobbles around so crippled up with the rheumatism--my heart bleeds for
'em."
"She is very rich--" began Lydia, but after a moment's hesitation she
had not continued her lesson in social value. She often found that
'Stashie's questions brought her to a standstill.
There was something lacking in the Irishwoman's mental outfit, namely,
the capacity even to conceive that ideal of impersonal self-effacement,
which, as Paul said truthfully, is the everywhere accepted standard for
servants. Her loquacity was a never-ending joke to Madeleine Lowder and
her husband, who were exulting in a couple of deft, silent, expensive
Japanese "boys" and who, since Madeleine frankly expressed her horror at
the bother of having children, seemed likely to continue ignorant,
except at comfortable second-hand, of harassing domestic difficulties.
If Lydia had not been in such dire need of another pair of hands than
her own slender ones, or if the supply from Endbury intelligence offices
had been a whit less unreliable and uncertain, she would not have felt
justified in retaining the burly, uncouth Celt, in spite of her own
affection, so intensely did Paul dislike her. As it was, she felt guilty
for her presence and miserably responsible for her homeliness of
conduct. 'Stashie was a constant point of friction between husband and
wife, and Lydia was trying with desperate ingenuity to avoid points of
friction by some other method than the usual Endbury one of divided
interests. Many times she lay awake at night, convinced that her duty
was to dismiss Anastasia; only to rise in the morning equally convinced
that things without her would be in the long run even harder and more
disagreeable for Paul than they were now. The upshot of the matter was
that she herself was a very incompetent person, she was remorsefully
sure of that; although her mother and Marietta and Paul's aunt all told
her that she need expect nothing during the first year of a baby's life
but one wretched round of domestic confusion.
Lydia did not find it so. She was immensely occupied, it is true, for
though Ariadne was a strong, healthy child, who spent most of her time,
her grandmother complained, in sleeping, to Lydia's more intimate
contact with the situation there seemed to be more things to be done for
the baby, in addition to the usual cares of housekeeping, than could
possibly be crowded into twenty-four hours. And yet she was happier
during those six months than ever before in her life; happier than she
had ever dreamed anyone could be. She stepped about incessantly from one
task to another and was very tired at night, but there was no nervous
strain on her, and she had no moments of blasting skepticism as to the
value of her labors.
Everything she did, even the most menial tasks connected with the baby,
was dignified, to her mind, by its usefulness; and she so systematized
and organized her busy days that she was always ahead of her work. Paul
was obliged to alter his judgment of her as impractical and
incapable--although of course the dearest and sweetest of little
wives--for nothing could have been more competent than the way she
managed her baby and her simple housekeeping. Indeed, there came to the
young husband's mind not infrequently, and always with a slight aroma of
bitterness, the conviction that Lydia was perfectly able to do whatever
she really wished to do and considered important; and that previous
conditions must have been due to her unwillingness to set herself
seriously at the problems before her. It was a new theory about his
wife's character, which the intelligent young man laid by on a mental
shelf for future use after this period of intense domesticity should be
past.
At present, he accepted thankfully his clean house and his savory food,
was not too much put out by 'Stashie's eccentricities, since there was
no one but the immediate families to see them, and rejoiced with a
whimsical tenderness in Lydia's passion of satisfaction with her baby.
He saw so little of the droll, sleeping, eating little mite that he
could not as yet take it very seriously as his baby. But it was, on the
whole, a happy half-year for him too. He was much moved and pleased by
Lydia's joy. He had meant to make his wife happy.
Lydia herself was transported by the mere physical intoxication of new
motherhood, a potion more exciting, so her much experienced physician
said, than any wine ever fermented. She hung over her sleeping baby,
poring upon the exquisite fineness of the skin, upon the rosy little
mouth, still sucking comically at an imaginary meal, upon the dimpled,
fragile hands, upon the peaceful relaxation of the body, till the very
trusting, appealing essence of babyhood flooded her senses like a strong
drug; and when the child was awake, and she could bathe the much creased
little body, and handle the soft arms, and drop passionate kisses on the
satin-smooth skin, and rub her cheek on the downy head, she found
herself sometimes trembling and dizzy with emotion. She felt constantly
buoyed up by a deep trust and belief in life which she had not known
before. The huge and steadying continuity of existence was revealed to
her in those days. It was a revelation that was never to leave her. She
outgrew definitely the sense of the fragmentary futility of living which
had always been, inarticulate, unvoiced, but intensely felt, the torment
of her earlier life.
It grieved her generous heart and her aspiration to share all with her
husband that the exigences of his busy life deprived him of any
knowledge of this newly-opened well of sweet waters, that he had
nothing from his parenthood but an amused, half shame-faced pride in
points about the baby which, he was informed, were creditable.
At a faint hint of this feeling on Lydia's part, her sister-in-law broke
into her good-natured laughter at Lydia's notions. "What can a man know
about a baby?" she cried conclusively.
"Why, I didn't know about one till Ariadne came. I learned on her.
What's to hinder a man's doing the same thing?"
Madeleine was so much amused by this fantastic idea that she repeated it
to Dr. Melton, who came in just then.
"Don't it take _Lydia_!" she appealed to him.
The doctor considered the lovely, fair-haired creature in silence for a
moment before answering. Then, "Yes; of course you're right," he
assented. "It's a strictly feminine monopoly. It's as true that all men
are incapable of understanding the significance of a baby in the
universe and in their own lives, as it is true that all women love
babies and desire them." His tone was full of a heavy significance. He
could never keep his temper with Paul's sister.
Madeleine received this without a quiver. She neither blushed nor looked
in the least abashed, but there was an unnecessary firmness in her voice
as she answered, looking him steadily in the eye: "Exactly! That's just
what I've been telling Lydia." She often said that she was the only
woman in Endbury who wasn't afraid of that impertinent little doctor.
After Madeleine had gone away, Lydia looked at her godfather with
shining eyes. "I am living! I am living!" she told him, holding up the
baby to him with a gesture infinitely significant; "and I like it as
well as I thought I should!"
"Most people do," he informed her, "when they get a peck at it. It
generally takes something cataclysmic, too, to tear them loose from
their squirrel-cages--like babies, or getting converted."
If he thought that early married life could also be classed among these
beneficently uprooting agencies, he kept his thoughts to himself.
Lydia's marriage had been eminently free from disagreeable shocks or
surprises, and amply deserved to be called successful in the usual
reasonable and moderate application of that adjective to matrimony; but
there had been nothing in it, certainly, to destroy even temporarily
anyone's grasp on what are known as the realities of life.
The doctor considered, and added to his last speech: "Getting converted
is surer. Babies grow up!"
Lydia felt that her godfather was right, and that babies gave one only a
short respite, when, toward spring, she observed in all the inhabitants
of her world repeated signs of uneasy dissatisfaction with her
"submergence in domesticity," as Mrs. Emery put it in a family council.
Her father inquired mildly, one day in March, with the touchingly vague
interest he took in his children's affairs, if it weren't about time she
returned a few calls and accepted some invitations, and began "to live
_like_ folks again." "Ariadne isn't the first baby in the world," he
concluded.
"She's the first one _I_ ever had," Lydia reminded him, with the
humorous smile that was so like his own.
"Well, you mustn't forget, as so many young mothers do, that you're a
member of society and a wife, as well as a wet-nurse," he said.
Marietta had never resumed an easy or genial intercourse with the
Hollisters since the affair of the dinner party, but she came to call at
not infrequent intervals, and Paul's sister dropped in often, to "keep
an eye on Lydia," as she told her husband. She had an affection for her
sister-in-law, in spite of an exasperated amusement over her liability
to break out with new ideas at unexpected moments. Both these ladies
were loud in their exhortations to Lydia not to let maternity be in her
life the encumbering, unbeautifying, too lengthy episode it was to women
with less force of character than their own. "You do get so _out_ of
things," Madeleine told her with her usual breathless italicizing, "if
you stay away too long. You just never can catch up! There's a
behind-the-timesy _smell_ about your clothes--honest, there is--if you
let them go too long."
Marietta added her quota of experienced wisdom to the discussion. "If
you just hang over a baby all the time, you get morbid, and queer, and
different."
Madeleine had laughed, and summed up the matter with a terse, "Worse
than that! You get left!"
Lydia's elder brother, George, the rich one, who lived in Cleveland and
manufactured rakes and hoes, wrote her one of his rare letters to the
same effect. Lydia thought it likely that he had been moved to this
unusual show of interest in her affairs by proddings from her mother and
Marietta. If this surmise was correct, and if a similar request had been
sent to Henry, the other member of the Emery family, the one who had
married the grocer's daughter, the appeal had a strikingly different
effect. From Oregon came an impetuous, slangily-worded exhortation to
Lydia not to make a fool of herself and miss the best of life to live up
to the tommyrot standard of old dry-as-dust Endbury. The Emerys heard
but seldom from this erring son, and Lydia, who had been but a child
when he left home, had never before received a letter from him. He wrote
from a fruit farm in Oregon, the description of which, on the
grandiloquent letter-head, gave an impression of ampleness and
prosperity which was not contradicted by the full-blooded satisfaction
in life which breathed from every line of the breezy, good-natured
letter.
The incident stirred Lydia's imagination. It spoke of a wider
horizon--of a fresher air than that about her. She tried to remember the
loud-talking, much-laughing, easy-going young man as she had seen him
last. They were too far apart in years to have had much companionship,
but there had been between them an unspoken affection which had never
died. People always said that George and Marietta were alike and Lydia
and Harry. To this Mrs. Emery always protested that Lydia wasn't in the
_least_ like Henry, and she didn't know what people were talking about;
but the remark gave a secret pleasure to Lydia. She, too, was very fond
of laughing, and her brother's vein of light-hearted nonsense had been a
great delight to her. It was not present in any of the rest of the
family, and certainly did not show itself in her at this period of her
life.
During this time Paul's attention was concentrated on bringing about a
reallotment of American Electric territory in the Middle West, an
arrangement that would add several busy cities to his district and make
a decided difference in his salary and commissions. He worked early and
late in the Endbury office, and made many trips into all parts of the
field, to gather data conclusive of the value of his scheme. Lydia had
tried hard to get from him information enough to understand what it was
all about, but he put her off with vague, fatigued assurances that it
was too complicated for her to grasp, or for him to go over without his
papers; that it would take him too long to explain, and that, anyhow,
she could be sure of one thing--it was all straight, clean business,
designed entirely to give the public better service and more work from
everybody all 'round. Lydia did not doubt this. It was always a great
source of satisfaction to her to feel secure and unshaken trust in her
father's and her husband's business integrity, and she was sorry for
Marietta, who could not, she feared, count among her spiritual
possessions any such faith in Ralph. It was, on the other hand, one of
her most unresigned regrets, that she was not allowed to share in these
ideals for public service of her husband and father--these ideals so
distantly glimpsed by her, and perhaps not very consciously felt by
them. It was not that they refused to answer any one of her questions,
but they were so little in the habit of articulating this phase of their
activities that their tongues balked stubbornly before her ignorant and
fumbling attempts to enter this inner chamber.
"Oh, it's all right, Lydia! Just you trust me!" Paul would cry, with a
hint of vexation in his voice, as if he felt that questions could mean
only suspicion.
Lydia's tentative efforts to construct a bridge between her world and
his met constantly with this ill success. She had had so little training
in bridge-building, she thought sadly.
One evening that spring, such a futile attempt of hers was interrupted
by the son of one of their neighbors, a lad of eighteen, who had just
been given a subordinate position in his father's business. As he
strolled up to their veranda steps, Lydia looked up from the dress she
was enlarging for the rapidly growing baby and reflected that
astonishingly rapid growth is the law of all healthy youth. The tall boy
looked almost ludicrous to her in his ultra-correct man's outfit, so
vividly did she recall him, three or four years before, in short
trousers and round-collared shirt-waist. His smooth, rosy face had still
the downy bloom of adolescence.
"Howd' do, Walter!" said Paul, glancing up from a pile of blue-prints
over which he had been straining his eyes in the fading evening light.
"Evening," answered the boy, nodding and sitting down on the top step
with one knee up. "D'you mind if I smoke, Mrs. Hollister?"
"Not at all," she answered gravely, tickled by the elaborate
carelessness with which he handled his new pipe.
"What you working on, Hollister?" he went on with the manner of one old
business man to another.
Lydia hid a smile. She found him delicious. She began to think how she
could make Dr. Melton laugh with her account of Walter the Man.
"The lay-out of the new power-house--Elliott-Gridley works in Urbana,"
answered Paul, in a straightforward, reasonable tone, a little absent.
Lydia stopped smiling. It was a tone he had never used to answer any
business question she had ever put to him. "I'm figuring on their
generators," he went on in explanation.
"Big contract?" asked Walter.
"Two thousand kilowatt turbo generator," answered Paul.
The other whistled. "Whew! I didn't know they had the cash!"
"They haven't," said Paul briefly.
"Oh, chattel-mortgage?" surmised the other.
"Lease-contract," Paul corrected. "That doesn't have to be recorded."
"What's the matter with recording it?"
"Afraid of their credit. They don't want Dunn's sending all over
creation that they've put chattel-mortgages on their equipment, do
they?"
"No; sure! I see." The boy grasped instantly, with a quick nod, the
other's meaning. "Well, that's _one_ way of gettin' 'round it!" he added
admiringly after an instant's pause.
Lydia had laid down her work and was looking intently at her two
companions. At this she gave a stifled exclamation which made the boy
turn his head. "Say, Mrs. Hollister, aren't you looking kind of pale
this evening?" he asked. "These first hot nights do take it out of a
person, don't they? Mr. Hollister ought to take you to Put-in-Bay for a
holiday. Momma'd take care of the baby for you and welcome. She's crazy
about babies." He was again the overgrown school-boy that Lydia knew.
The conversation drifted to indifferent topics. Lydia did not take her
usual share in it, and when their caller had gone Paul inquired if she
really were exhausted by the heat.
"Oh, no," she said; "you know I don't mind the heat."
"You didn't say much when Walter was here, and I--"
"I was thinking," Lydia broke in. "I was thinking that I couldn't
understand a word you and Walter were saying any more than if you were
talking Hebrew. I was thinking that that little boy knows more about
your business than I do."
Paul did not attempt to deny this, but he laughed at her dramatic
accent. "Sure, he does! And about how to tie a four-in-hand, and what's
the best stud to wear at the back of a collar, and where to buy socks.
What's that to you?"
Lydia looked at him with quivering, silent lips.
He answered, with a little heat: "Why, look-y here, Lydia, suppose I
were a doctor. You wouldn't expect to know how many grains of morphine
or what d'you call 'em I was going to use in--"
"But Dr. Melton _is_ a doctor, and I know lots about what he thinks of
as he lives day after day--there are other things besides technical
details and grains of morphine--other problems--human things--Why, for
instance, there's one question that torments him all the time--how much
it's right to humor people who aren't sick but think they are. He talks
to me a great deal about such--"
Paul laughed, rising and gathering up his blue-prints. "Well, I can't
think of any problem that torments me but the everlasting one of how to
sell more generators and motors than my competitors. Come on indoors,
Honey; I've got to have some light if I finish going over these
to-night."
His accent was evidently intended to end the discussion, and Lydia
allowed it to do so, although the incident was one she could not put out
of her mind. She watched Walter going back and forth to Endbury with a
jealousy the absurdity of which she herself realized, and she listened
with a painful intentness to the boy's talk during his occasional idle
sojourns on their veranda steps. Yet she had been used to hearing Paul
talk unintelligibly to the business associates whom, from time to time,
he brought out to the house to dine and to talk business afterward.
Somehow, she said to herself, it's being just _Walter_ seemed to bring
it home to her. To have that boy--and yet she liked him, too, she
thought. She looked sometimes into his fresh, innocently keen face with
a yearning apprehension. Paul was amused at his precocious airs, and yet
was not without respect for his rapidly developing business capacity. He
said once, "Walter's a real nice boy. I shouldn't mind having a son like
that myself!"
The remark startled Lydia. If she were to have a son he _would_ be like
that, she realized. And he would grow up and marry some--she sprang up
and caught Ariadne to her in a sudden fierce embrace.
"You'll break your back lifting that heavy baby 'round so," Paul
remonstrated with justice.
For all her aversion to the set forms of "society" as understood by
Endbury, Lydia was fond of having people about her, "to try to get
really acquainted with them" she said, and during that summer the
Hollister veranda in the evening became a rendezvous for their Bellevue
neighbors. Paul rather deplored the time wasted in this unprofitable
variety of informal social life which, in his phrase, "counted for
nothing" but he was always glad to see Walter. "At the rate he's going
and the way he's taking hold, he'll be a valuable business friend in a
few years," he said prophetically to Lydia, and he assumed more and more
the airs of a comrade with the lad.
One evening when Walter came lounging over to the veranda, Lydia was
busy indoors, but later she stepped to the door in time to hear Paul
say, laughing: "Well, for all that, he's not so good as Wellman Phelps'
stenographer."
"How so?" asked the boy, alert for a pleasantry from his elder.
"Why, Phelps carries this fellow 'round with him everywhere he goes, has
had him for years, and twice a week all he has to do is to say: 'Say,
Fred; write my wife, will you?'"
His listener broke out into a peal of boyish laughter. "Pretty good!" he
applauded the joke.
"It's a fact," Paul went on. "Fred writes it and signs it and sends it
off, and Phelps never has to trouble his head about it."
Lydia stepped back into the darkness of the hall.
When she came out later, a misty figure in white, Paul rose, saying,
"Well, Walter, I'll leave you to Mrs. Hollister now. I've got some work
to do before I get to bed."
Lydia sat silent, looking at the boy's face, clear and untarnished in
the moonlight. He was looking dreamily away at the lawn, dappled with
the shadow of the slender young trees. They seemed creatures scarcely
more sylvan than he, sprawled, like a loitering faun with his hands
clasped behind his head. His mouth had the pure, full outlines of a
child's.
"What are you thinking about, Walter?" Lydia asked him suddenly.
He started, and brought his limpid gaze to hers. "About how to
cross-index our follow-up letter catalogue better," he answered
promptly.
"Really? Really?" She leaned toward him, urging him to frankness.
He was surprised at her tone. "Why, sure!" he told her. "Why not? What
else?"
Lydia said no more.
She had never felt more helplessly her remoteness from her husband's
world than during that spring. It was a sentiment that Paul, apparently,
did not reciprocate. In spite of his frequent absences from home and his
detached manner about most domestic questions, he had as definite ideas
about his wife's resumption of her social duties as had everyone else.
"It made him uneasy," as he put it, "to be losing so many points in the
game."
"Look here, my dear," he said one evening in spring when the question
came up; "summer's almost here, and this winter's been as good as
dropped right out. Can't you just pick up a few threads and make a
beginning? It'll make it easier in the fall." He added, uneasily, "We
don't want old Lowder and Madeleine to get ahead of us entirely, you
know. You can leave the kid with 'Stashie, can't you, once in a while?
She ought to be able to do _that_ much, I should think." He spoke as
though he had assigned to her the simplest possible of all domestic
undertakings. As Lydia made no response, he said finally, before
attacking a pile of papers, "If I'm going to earn a lot more money, what
good'll it do us if you don't do your share? Besides, we owe it to the
kid. You want to do your best by your little girl, don't you?"
As always, Lydia responded with a helpless alacrity to that appeal.
"Oh, yes! Oh, yes! We must do our best for her." This phrase summed up
the religion she had at last found after so much fervent, undirected
search. The church, as she knew it, was chiefly the social center of
various fashionable activities which differed from ordinary fashionable
enterprises only in being used to bring in money, which money, handed
over to the rector, disappeared into the maw of some unknown, voracious,
charitable institution. And beyond the church there had been no element
in the life she knew, that was not frankly materialistic. But now, as
the miracle of awakening consciousness took place daily in her very
sight, and as the first dawnings of a personality began to look out of
her child's eyes, all Lydia's vague spiritual cravings, all the groping
tendrils of her aspirations, clung about the conviction more and more
summing up her inner life, that she must do her best for Ariadne, must
make the world, into which that little new soul had come, a better place
than she herself had found it. She felt as naïvely and passionately that
her child must be saved the mistakes that she had made, as though she
were the first mother who ever sent up over her baby's head that
pitiful, universal prayer.
The matter of the social duty of the young Hollisters was finally
compromised by Lydia's accepting a number of invitations for the latter
part of the season, and giving a series of big receptions in May. They
were not by a hair nor a jot nor a tittle to be distinguished from their
predecessors of the year before. As they seemed hardly adequate, Lydia
suggested half-heartedly that they give a dinner party, but Paul
replied, "With 'Stashie to pour soup down people's backs and ask them
how their baby's whooping cough is, as she passes the potatoes?"
The hot weather came with the rush that was always so unexpected and so
invariable, and another season was over. It was a busy, silent,
thoughtful summer for Lydia. Of course (much to Lydia's distress),
Ariadne had been weaned when her mother had been forced to leave her to
"go out" again, and this necessitated such anxious attention to her
diet and general regimen during the hot weather that Lydia was very
grateful to have little to interfere with her.
The General Office had accepted provisionally Paul's redistributing
plan, and in his anxiety to prove its value he was away from home more
even than usual. The heat was terrible, but Lydia and he both knew no
other climate, and Lydia loved the summer as the time of year when the
fierceness of Nature forced on all her world a reluctant adjournment of
their usual methods of spending their lives. She was absorbed in
Ariadne, and the slow, blazing summer days were none too long for her.
The child began to develop an individuality. She was a sensitive,
quickly-responsive little thing; exactly, so Mrs. Emery said, like Lydia
at her age, except that she seemed to have none of Lydia's native mirth,
but, rather, a little pensive air that made her singularly appealing to
all who saw her, and that pierced her mother's heart with an anguish of
protecting love.
Lydia said to her godfather one day, suddenly, "I wonder if people can
be taught how to fight?"
He had one of his flashes of intuition. "The baby, you mean?"
Lydia evaded the directness of this. "Oh, in general, aren't folks
better off if they like to fight for themselves? Don't they _have_ to?"
He considered the question in one of his frowning silences, so long that
Lydia started when he spoke again. "They don't need to fight with claws
for their food, as they used to do. Things are arranged now so that the
physically strong, who like such a life, are the ones who choose it.
They get food for the others. Why shouldn't the morally strong fight for
the weaker ones and make it possible for everyone to have a chance at
developing the best of himself without having to battle with others to
do it?"
"That's pretty vague," said Lydia.
"Why, look here," said the doctor. "You don't plow the field to plant
the wheat that makes your bread. That's a man of a coarser physical
fiber than yours, who is strengthened by the effort, and not exhausted
as you would be. Why shouldn't the world be so organized that somebody
of coarser moral texture than yours should do battle with the forces of
materialism and tragic triviality that--"
"But Ariadne's growing up! She will need all that so _soon_-- and the
world won't be organized then, you know it won't--and she's no fighter
by instinct, any more than--" She was silent. The doctor filled in her
incomplete sentence mentally, and found no answer to make.
CHAPTER XXIV
"THROUGH PITY AND TERROR EFFECTING A PURIFICATION OF THE HEART"
One hot day in August, Ariadne slept later than usual and when she woke
was quite unlike her usual romping, active self. Her round face was
deeply flushed, and she lay listlessly in her little bed, repulsing with
a feeble fretfulness every attempt to give her food. Lydia's heart
swelled so that she was choked with its palpitations. Paul was out of
town. She was alone in the house except for her servant. To that
ignorant warm heart she turned with an inexpressible thankfulness. "Oh,
'Stashie! Stashie!" she called in a voice that brought the other
clattering breathlessly up the stairs. "The baby! Look at the baby! And
she won't touch her bottle."
The tragic change in the Irishwoman's face as she looked at their
darling, their anguished community of feeling--there was instantly a
bond for the two women which wonderfully ignored all the dividing
differences between them. Lydia felt herself--as she rarely did--not
alone. It brought a wild comfort into her tumult. "'Stashie, you
don't--you don't think she's--_sick?_" She brought the word out with
horrified difficulty.
'Stashie was running down the back stairs. "I'm 'phonin' to th' little
ould doctor," she called over her shoulder.
Lydia ran to catch up Ariadne. The child turned from her mother with a
moan and closed her eyes heavily. A moment later, to Lydia's terror, she
had sunk into a stupor.
The doctor found mistress and maid hanging over the baby's bed with
white faces and trembling lips, hand in hand, like sisters. He examined
the child silently, swiftly, looking with a face of inscrutable
blankness at the clinical thermometer with which he had taken her
temperature. "Just turn her so she'll lie comfortably," he told
'Stashie, "and then you stay with her a moment. I want a talk with your
mistress."
In the hall, he cast at Lydia a glance of almost angry exhortation to
summon her strength. "Are you fit to be a mother?" he asked harshly.
"Wait a minute," said Lydia; she drew a long breath and took hold of the
balustrade. "Yes," she answered.
"Ariadne's very sick. I oughtn't to have allowed you to wean her with
hot weather coming on. You'd better wire Paul."
"Yes," she said, not blenching. "What else can I do?"
"'Phone to the hospital for a trained nurse, start some water boiling to
sterilize things, and get somebody here in a hurry to go to the nearest
drug store for me. I'll go back to her now."
"Is she--is she--dangerously--?" asked Lydia in a low, steady voice.
"Yes; she is," he said unsparingly.
The telegram Lydia sent her husband read: "Ariadne suddenly taken very
sick. Dr. Melton says dangerously. He thinks she does not suffer much,
though she seems to. When shall I expect you?"
The answer she received in a few hours read: "Have two nurses. Get
Jones, Cleveland, consultation. Impossible to leave."
It was handed her as she was running up the stairs with a pitcher of hot
water. She read it, as she did everything that day, in a dreamlike
rapidity and quietness, and showed it to Dr. Melton without comment. He
handed it back without a word. Later, he turned for an instant from the
little bed to say, irrelevantly, "Peterson, of Toledo, would be better
than Jones, if I have to have anybody. But so far, it's simple
enough--damnably simple."
He was obliged to leave for a time after this, called by a patient at
the point of death. That seemed quite natural to Lydia. Death was thick
in the air. He left the baby to a clear-eyed, deft-handed, impersonal
trained nurse, on whom Lydia waited slavishly, sitting motionless in a
corner of the room until she was sent for something, then flying
noiselessly upon her errand.
Her mother and father were out of town, and Marietta limited herself to
telephoning frequent inquiries. She told 'Stashie to tell her sister she
knew she would be only in the way, with two nurses in the house. Lydia
made 'Stashie answer all the telephone calls. She felt that if she broke
her silence, if she tried to speak--and then she could not bear to be
out of the sight of the little figure with the flushed cheeks, moving
her head back and forth on the pillow and gazing about with bright,
unseeing eyes. As night came on, she began to give, in a voice not her
own, little piteous cries of suffering, or strange delirious mockeries
of her pretty laughter and quaint, unintelligible, prattling talk. Once,
as the long, hot night stood still, the baby called out, quite clearly:
"Mamma! Mamma!" It was the first time she had ever said it.
Lydia sprang up and rushed toward the bed like an insane person, her
arms outstretched, her eyes glittering. Dr. Melton did not forbid her to
take up her child, but he said in a neutral tone, "It would be better
for her to lie perfectly quiet."
Lydia stopped short, shuddering. The doctor did not take his eyes from
his little patient. After a moment the mother went slowly back to her
seat. "Hand me the thermometer," said the doctor to the nurse.
In the early morning came a telegram from Paul. "Wire me frequently
baby's condition. Spare no expense in treatment."
Lydia answered: "Ariadne slightly worse. Doctor says crisis in three
days."
This time she put in no extra information as to the baby's suffering,
and her message was under ten words, like his own. She despatched him
thereafter a bulletin every four or five hours. They ran mostly to the
effect that Ariadne was about the same.
The doctor came and went, the nurses relieved each other, the telephone
rang for Marietta's inquiries, Flora Burgess called once a day to get
the news from 'Stashie. Lydia was slave to the nurses, alert for the
slightest service she could render them, divining, with a desperate
intuition, their needs before they were formulated. 'Stashie was the
only person who paid the least attention to her, 'Stashie the only
phenomena to break in on the solitude that surrounded her like an
illimitable plain. 'Stashie made her eat. 'Stashie saw to it that once
or twice she lay down. 'Stashie combed her hair, and bathed her white
face--most of all, 'Stashie went about with eyes that reflected
faithfully the suffering in Lydia's own. She said very little, but as
they passed, the two women sometimes exchanged brief words: "Niver you
think it possible, Mis' Hollister!"
"No," Lydia would answer resolutely; "it's not possible."
But as the hours slowly filed past the doctor assured her bluntly that
it would be quite possible. "There's a fighting chance," he said, "and
nothing more." He added relentlessly, "If I hadn't been such a fool as
to let you wean her--"
There was in his manner none of his usual tenderness to his godchild.
One would have thought he scarcely saw her. He was the physician wholly.
Lydia was grateful to him for this. She could not have borne his
tenderness then, but his professional concentration left her horribly
alone.
No, not alone! There was always 'Stashie--silent 'Stashie, with red
eyes, her heart bleeding. But even 'Stashie's loyal heart could not know
all the bitterness of Lydia's. 'Stashie's breasts did not swell and
throb, as if in mockery. 'Stashie did not hear, over and over, "If she
had not been weaned--"
On the night and near the hour when the crisis was expected, Lydia was
at the end of the hall, where she had installed an oil-stove. She was
heating water needed for some of the processes of the sick room. It had
begun to steam up in the thick, hot night air, was singing loudly, and
would boil in an instant. She sat looking at it in her tense, trembling
quiet. There was no light but the blue flame of the stove.
Suddenly there rang loudly in her ears the question to which she had
deafened herself with such crucifying effort--"What if Ariadne should
die?" It was as though someone had called to her. She looked down into
the black abyss from which she had willfully turned away her eyes, and
saw that it was fathomless. A throe of revolt and hatred shook her. She
bowed her head to her knees, racked by an anguish compared with which
the torture of childbirth was nothing; and out of this deadly pain came
forth, as in childbirth, something alive--a vision as swift, as passing
as a glimpse into the gates of Paradise; a blinding certainty of
immensity, of the hugeness of the whole of which she and Ariadne were a
part; of the sacredness of life, which was to be lived sacredly, even
if-- She raised her head, living a more exalted instant than she had
ever dreamed she would know.
The water broke into quick, dancing bubbles. In a period of time
incalculably short, transfiguration had come to her.
The door at the other end of the hall opened and Dr. Melton's light,
uneven footstep echoed back of her. She did not turn. He laid a hand on
her shoulder. It was trembling, and with a wonderful consciousness of
endless courage she turned to comfort him. His lips were twitching so
that for an instant he could not speak. Then, "She'll pull through. I'm
pretty sure now, she'll--" he got out and leaned against the wall.
Lydia took him into a protecting embrace as though it were his baby who
had turned back from the gates of death. She had come into a larger
heritage. She was mother to all that suffered. Looking down on the head
which, for an instant, lay on her bosom, she noticed how white the hair
was. He was an old man, her godfather, he had been on a long strain--.
He looked up at her. And then in an instant it was over. He had mastered
himself and had grasped the handle of the basin.
"How long has this been boiling?" he asked.
Lydia pointed to her watch, hanging on the wall. "Three minutes by
that," she said. "May I leave to tell 'Stashie?"
The doctor nodded absently.
Neither spoke of Paul.
Lydia hurried across the dark, silent house with swift sureness. The
happiness she was about to confer cast a radiance upon her. She touched
the door to the servant's room, and ran her fingers lightly over it to
find the knob. Faint as the noise was, it was answered instantly by a
stir inside. There was a thud of bare feet and a quick rush. Lydia felt
the door swing open before her in the darkness and spoke quickly to the
trembling, breathing form she divined there, "The doctor says she's
safe."
Strong arms were about her, hot tears not her own rained down on her
face. Before she knew it, she was swept to her knees, where, locked in
the other's close embrace, she felt the big heart thump loud against her
own and heard go up above her head a wild "Oh, God! Oh, Mary Mother! Oh,
Christ! Oh, Mary Mother! Glory be to God! Hail, Mary, Mother of God!
Thanks be to God! Thanks be--"
Kneeling there in the blackness, with her servant's arms around her,
Lydia thought it the first prayer she had ever heard.
* * * * *
Ariadne grew well with the miraculous rapidity of children, and when
Paul came back was almost herself again, if a little thinner.
It was upon Lydia that Paul's eyes fastened, Lydia very white, her face
almost translucent, her starry eyes contradicting the tremor of her
lips. He drew her to him, crying out: "Why, Lydia darling, you look as
though you'd been drawn through a knot-hole! This has been enough sight
harder on you than on the baby! What in the world wore _you_ out so? I
thought you had two nurses!"
He looked closely into her face, seeing more changes: "Why, you poor,
poor, poor thing!" he said compassionately. "You look positively years
older."
"Oh, I am that," she told him, seeming to speak, oddly enough, he
thought, exultantly.
"You just shouldn't allow yourself to get so wrought up over Ariadne,"
he expostulated affectionately. "You'll wear yourself out! What earthly
good did it do the baby? Sickness is a matter for professionals, I tell
you what! You had the two nurses and your precious old Dr. Melton that
you swear by! What more could be done? That's the reason I didn't come
back. I knew well enough that there wasn't an earthly thing I could do
to help."
Lydia looked at him so strangely that he noticed it. "Oh, of course I
could have been company for you. But that was the _only_ thing! Getting
the baby well was the business of the hour, _wasn't_ it now? And the
doctor and nurses were looking out for that. Besides, you had 'Stashie
to wait on you."
"Yes; I had 'Stashie," admitted Lydia.
Paul perceived uneasily some enigmatic quality in her quiet answer, and
went on reasonably: "Now, Lydia, don't go making yourself out a martyr
because I didn't come back. You know I'd have come if there was anything
to be done! I'd have come from the ends of the earth to help you nurse
her if we'd had to do that! But, thank the Lord, I make enough money so
we could do better by the little tad than that!"
"Suppose I had gone to the theater that night," asked Lydia slowly.
"There was nothing I could do here."
Paul was justifiably aggrieved. "Good Lord, Lydia! I wasn't off amusing
myself! I was doing _business!_"
His special accent for the word was never more pronounced.
"Making money to pay for the trained nurses that saved her life," he
ended. His conviction of the unanswerable force of this statement put
him again in good humor. "Now, little madame, you listen to me. You're
going to take a junketing honeymoon off with me, or I'll know the reason
why! I'm going to take you up to Put-in-Bay for a vacation! Pretty near
all our card-club gang are there now, and we'll have a gay old time and
cheer you up! I bet you just let yourself go, and worried yourself into
a fever, didn't you?"
During this speech Lydia stood leaning against him, feeling the cloth of
his sleeve rough on her bare forearm, feeling the stir and life of his
body, the warmth of his breath on her face. She had an impulse to scream
wildly to him, as though to make him hear and stop and turn, before he
finally disappeared from her sight; and she faced him dumbly. There were
no words to tell him--she tried to speak, but before his absent, kind,
wandering eyes, a foreknowledge of her own inarticulateness closed her
lips. He had not been there, and so he would never know. She stirred,
moved away, and rearranged the flowers in a vase. "Oh, yes; I worried,
of course," she said. "The baby was awfully sick for three days."
She felt desperately that she was failing in the most obvious duty not
to try to make him understand what had happened in his absence. She
bethought herself of one fact, the mere statement of which should tell
him a thousand times more eloquently than words, something of what she
had suffered. "The doctor told me twice that she wouldn't have been sick
if she hadn't been weaned." She said this with an accent of immense
significance, clasping her hands together hard.
Paul was unpacking his suit-case. "Great Scott! You nursed her six
months!" he said conclusively, over his shoulder. "Besides, you _had_ to
wean her--don't you remember?"
"Oh, yes; I remember," said Lydia. Her hands dropped to her sides.
"Don't they get over things quickly?" commented Paul, looking around at
the baby. "To see her creeping around like a little hop-toad and
squeaking that rubber bunny--why, I declare, I don't believe that
anything's been the matter with her at all. You and the doctor lost your
nerve, I guess."
Three or four days later he was called away again. Their regular routine
began. The long, slow days, slid past the house in Bellevue in endless,
dreamy procession. Ariadne grew fast, developing constantly new
faculties, new powers. By the end of the summer she was no longer a
baby, but a person. The young mother felt the same mysterious forces of
change and growth working irresistibly in herself. The long summer,
thoughtful and solitary, marked the end of one period in her life.
She looked forward shrinkingly to the winter. What would happen to this
new self whose growth in her was keeping pace with her child's? What
would happen next?
CHAPTER XXV
A BLACK MILESTONE
What happened was, in the first week of October, the sudden death of her
father. It was sudden only to his wife and daughter, whom, as always,
the Judge had tried to spare, at all costs, the knowledge of anything
unpleasant. Dr. Melton thought that perhaps the strong man's incredulity
of anything for him to fear had a good deal to do with his repeated
refusals to allow his wife or daughter to be warned of the danger of
apoplexy. Without that hypothesis, it seemed incredible, he told Mrs.
Sandworth, that so kind a man could be so cruel.
"Everything's incredible," murmured Mrs. Sandworth, her handkerchief at
her eyes, her loving heart aching for the newly-made widow, her lifelong
friend.
Her brother did not answer. He sat, gnawing savagely on his finger
nails, his thoughts centered, as always, on his darling
Lydia--fatherless.
He had prided himself on his acute insight into human nature in general,
and upon his specialized, intensified knowledge of those two women whom
he had known so long and studied so minutely; but "I've been a conceited
blockhead, and vanity's treacherous as well as damnable," he cried out
to his sister some days later, amazed beyond expression at the way in
which their loss affected Lydia and her mother.
Mrs. Emery's attitude was a revelation to him, a revelation that left
him almost as angrily full of grief as she herself. He had thought best
on the whole not to disclose to her the substance of the several
conversations he had had with his dead friend on the subject of
finances. With two prosperous sons, the widow would be well taken care
of, he thought, perhaps adding with a little acridity, "just as she
always has been, without a thought on her part." But when Mrs. Emery,
divining the truth with an awful intuition, came flying to him after the
settlement, he was not proof against the fury of her interrogations. If
she wanted to know, he would tell her, he thought grimly to himself.
"There is nothing left," she began, bursting into his office, "but the
house, which has a mortgage, and the insurance--nothing! Nothing!"
It was rather soon for her to be resentful, the doctor thought bitterly,
misreading the misery on her face. "No," he said.
"Had the Judge lost any money--do you know?"
"No; I think not."
"But where--what--we had at one time five thousand dollars at least in
the savings bank. I happened to know of that small account. I supposed
of course there was more. There is no trace of even that, the
administrator says."
"That went into the extra expenses of the year Lydia made her début. And
her wedding cost a great deal, he told me one day--and her
trousseau--and other expenses at that time."
Used as the doctor was to the universal custom of divided interests
among his well-to-do patients, it did not seem too strange to him to be
giving information about her own affairs to this gray-haired matron. She
was not the first widow to whom he had been forced to break bad news of
her husband's business.
Mrs. Emery stared at him, her dry lips apart, a glaze over her eyes. He
thought her expression strange. As she said nothing, he added, with a
little sour pleasure in defending his dead friend, even if it should
give a prick to a survivor, "The Judge was so scrupulously honest, you
know." The widow sat down and laid her arms across the table, still
staring hard at the doctor. It came to him that she was not looking at
him at all, but at some devastating inner sight, which seared her
heart, but from which she could not turn away her eyes. He himself
turned away, beginning to be aware of some passion within her beyond his
divination. There was a long silence.
Finally, "That was the reason he would not stop working," said the woman
in a voice which made the physician whirl about. He looked sharply into
her face, and what he saw there took him in one stride to her side. She
kept her stony eyes still on the place where he had been--eyes that saw
only, as though for the first time, some long procession of past events.
"I see everything now," she went on with the same flat intonation. "He
_could_ not stop. That was the reason why he would never rest."
She got slowly to her feet, smoothing over and over one side of her
skirt with a strange automatic gesture. She was looking full into the
doctor's face now. "I have killed him," she said quietly, and fell as
though struck down by a blow from behind.
Her long, long illness was spent in the Melton's home, with the doctor
in attendance and Julia Sandworth, utterly devoted, constantly at hand.
The old Emery house, the outward symbol of her married life, was sold,
and the big "yard" cut up into building lots long before she was able to
sit up. Lydia came frequently, but, acting on the doctor's express
command, never brought Ariadne. The outbreaks of self-reproach and
embittered grief that were likely to burst upon the widow, even in the
midst of one of her quiet, listless days, were not, he said, for a child
to see or hear, especially such a sensitive little thing as Ariadne.
Those wild bursts of remorse were delirious, he told Lydia, but to his
sister he said he wished they were. "I imagine they are the only times
when she comes really to herself," he added sadly.
[Illustration: "I see everything now," she went on. "He could not
stop."]
The especial agony for the sick woman was that nothing of what had
happened seemed to her now in the least necessary. "Why, if I had only
known--if I had only dreamed how things were--" she cried incessantly to
those about her. "What did I care about anything compared with Nat! I
loved my husband! What did I care--if I had only dreamed that--if I had
only known what I was doing!"
Dr. Melton labored in heartsick pity to remove her fixed idea, which
soon became a monomania, that she alone was to blame for the Judge's
death. It now seemed to him, in his sympathy with her grief, that she
had been like a child entrusted with some frail, priceless object and
not warned of its fragility. She herself cried out constantly with
astonished hatred upon a world that had left her so.
"If anyone had warned me--had given me the least idea that it was so
serious--I could have lived in three rooms--we had been poor--what did I
care for anything but Nathaniel! I only did all those things
because--because there was nothing else to do!"
Lydia tried to break the current with a reminder of the sweet memories
of the past. "Father loved you so! He loved to give you what you wanted,
Mother dear."
"What I wanted! I wanted my husband. I want my husband!" the widow
screamed like a person on the rack.
The doctor sent Lydia away with a hasty gesture. "You must not see her
when she is violent," he said. "You would never forget it."
It was something he himself never forgot, used as he was to pitiful
scenes in the life of suffering humanity. He was almost like a sick
person himself, going about his practice with sunken eyes and gray face.
His need for sympathy was so great that he abandoned the tacit silence
about the Emerys which had existed between him and Rankin ever since
Lydia's marriage, and, going out to the house in the Black Rock woods,
unburdened to the younger man the horror of his heart.
"She's suffering," he cried. "She's literally heartbroken! She is! It's
real! And what has she had to make up for it? Oh, it's monstrous! One
thing she says keeps ringing in my ears. That gray-haired woman, a human
being my own age--the silly, tragic, childish thing she keeps
saying--'I only did all those things--I only wanted all those
things--because there was nothing else!' _Nothing else!_" He turned on
his host with a fierce "Good God! She's right. What else was there ever
for--for any woman of her class--"
Rankin pushed his shivering, fidgeting visitor into a chair and, laying
a big hand on his shoulder, said with a faint smile: "Maybe I can divert
your mind for an instant with a story--another one of my great-aunt's,
only it's an old one this time; you've probably heard it--about the old
man who said to his wife on his death-bed, 'I've tried to be a good
husband to you, dear. It's been hard on my teeth sometimes, but I've
always eaten the crusts and let you have the soft bread.' You remember
what the wife's answer was?"
"No," said the doctor frowning.
"It's the epitome of tragedy. She said, 'Oh, my dear, and I like crusts
so!'"
The doctor stared into the fire. "Do you mean--there's work for them?"
"I mean work for them," repeated the younger man.
The word echoed in a long silence.
"It's the most precious possession we have," said Rankin finally. "We
ought to share more evenly."
The doctor rose to go. "Generally I forget that we're of different
generations," he said with apparent irrelevance, "but there are times
when I feel it keenly."
"Why now especially?" Rankin wondered. "I've stated a doctrine that is
yours, too."
"No; you wouldn't see, of course. Yes; it's my doctrine--in theory. I
believe it, as people believe in Christianity. I should be equally loath
to see anybody doubt it, or practice it. Ah, I'm a fool! Besides, I was
born in Kentucky. And I'm sixty-seven years old."
He shut the door behind him with emphasis.
He was on his way to Bellevue to see Lydia. Knowing her tender heart, he
had expected to see her drowned in grief over her father's death. Her
dry-eyed quiet made him uneasy. That morning, he found her holding
Ariadne on her knees and telling her in a self-possessed, low tone,
which did not tremble, some stories of "when grandfather was a little
boy."
"I don't want her to grow up without knowing something of my father,"
she explained to the doctor.
Her godfather laid a hand on her arm. "Don't keep the tears back so,
Lydia," he implored.
She gave him as great a shock of surprise as her mother had done.
"If I could cry," she said quietly, "it would be because I feel so
little sorrow. I do not miss my father at all--or hardly at all."
The doctor caught at his chair and stared.
"How should I?" she went on drearily. "I almost never saw him. I never
spoke to him about anything that really mattered. I never let him know
me--or anything I really felt."
"What are you talking about?" cried the doctor. "You always lived at
home."
"I never lived with my father. He was always away in the morning before
I was up. I was away, or busy, in the evening when he was there. On
Sundays he never went to church as Mother and I did--I suppose now
because he had some other religion of his own. But if he had I never
knew what it was--or anything else that was in his mind or heart. It
never occurred to me that I could. He tried to love me--I remember so
many times now--and _that_ makes me cry!--how he tried to love me! He
was so glad to see me when I got home from Europe--but he never knew
anything that happened to me. I told you once before that when I had
pneumonia and nearly died Mother kept it from him because he was on a
big case. It was all like that--always. He never knew."
Dr. Melton broke in, his voice uncertain, his face horrified: "Lydia, I
cannot let you go on! you are unfair--you shock me. You are morbid! I
knew your father intimately. He loved you beyond expression. He would
have done anything for you. But his profession is an exacting one. Put
yourself in his place a little. It is all or nothing in the law--as in
business."
"When you bring children into the world, you expect to have them cost
you some money, don't you? You know you mustn't let them die of
starvation. Why oughtn't you to expect to have them cost you thought,
and some sharing of your life with them, and some time--real time, not
just scraps that you can't use for business?"
As the doctor faced her, open-mouthed and silent, she went on, still
dry-eyed, but with a quaver in her voice that was like a sob: "But, oh,
the worst of my blame is for myself! I was a blind, selfish,
self-centered egotist. I could have changed things if I had only tried
harder. I am paying for it now. I am paying for it!"
She took her child up in her arms and bent over the dark silky hair. She
whispered, "It's not that I have lost my father. I never had a
father--but you!" She put out her hand and pressed the doctor's hard.
"And my poor father had no daughter."
She set the child on the floor with a gesture almost violent, and cried
out loudly, breaking for the first time her cheerless calm, "And now it
is too late!"
Ariadne turned her rosy round face to her mother's, startled, almost
frightened. Lydia knelt down and put her arms about the child. She
looked solemnly into her godfather's eyes, and, as though she were
taking a great and resolute oath, she said, "But it is not too late for
Ariadne."
CHAPTER XXVI
A HINT FROM CHILDHOOD
As the spring advanced and Judge Emery's widow recovered a little
strength, it became apparent that life in Endbury, with its
heartbreaking associations, would be intolerable to her. In anxious
family councils many futile plans were suggested, but they were all
brushed decisively away by the unexpected arrival from Oregon of the
younger son of the family.
One day in May, a throbbingly sunshiny day, full of a fierce hot vigor
of vitality, Lydia was with her mother in the Melton's darkened parlor.
As so often, the two women had been crying and now sat in a weary
lethargy, hand in hand. There came a step on the porch, in the hall, and
in the doorway stood a tall stranger. Lydia looked at him blankly, but
her mother gave a cry and flung herself into his arms.
"I've come to take you home with me, Momma dear," he said quietly, using
the old name for her, which had been banished from the Emery household
since Lydia's early childhood. The sound of it went to her heart.
The newcomer smiled at her over his mother's head. It was her father's
smile, the quaint, half-wistful, humorous smile, which had seemed so
incongruous on the Judge's powerful face. "I'm your brother Harry,
little Lyddie," he said, "and I've come to take care of poor Momma."
During all that summer it was a bitter regret to Lydia that she had seen
her brother so short a time. He had decreed that the sooner his mother
was taken away from Endbury, the better for her, and Mrs. Emery had
clung to him, assenting passively to all he said, and peering
constantly, with tear-blurred eyes, into his face to see again his
astonishing resemblance to his father. They had left the day after his
arrival.
He had found time, however, to go out to Bellevue for a brief visit, to
see Lydia's home and her little daughter--Paul was away on a business
trip--and the half-hour he spent there was one that Lydia never forgot.
The tall, sunburned Westerner, with his kind, humorous eyes, his
affectionate smile, his quaint, homely phrases, haunted the house for
the rest of the summer. The time of his stay had been too breathlessly
short for any serious talk. He had looked about at the big, handsome
house with a half-mocking awe, inspected the "grounds" with a lively
interest in the small horticultural beginnings Lydia had been able to
achieve, told her she ought to see his two hundred acres of apple-trees;
and for the time that was left before his trolley-car was due he played
with his little niece and talked over her head to his sister.
"She's a dandy, Lyddie! She's a jim-dandy of a little girl! She ought to
come out and learn to ride straddle with her cousins. I got a boy about
her age--say, they'd look fine together! He's a towhead, like all the
rest of 'em--like their mother."
For months afterward Lydia could close her eyes and see again the
transfigured expression that had come over his face at the mention of
his wife. "Talk about luck!" he said, after a moment's pause, "there
never was such luck as my getting Annie. Say, I wish you could know her,
Lyddie. I tell you what--shoulder to shoulder, every minute, she's stood
up to things right there beside me for twelve years--Lord! It don't seem
more than six months when I stop to think about it. We had some hard
sledding along at the first, but with the two of us pulling together--.
She's laughed at sickness and drought and bugs and floods. We're all
through that now, we're doing fine; but, honest, it was worth it, to
know Annie through and through as I do. There isn't a thing about the
business she doesn't know as well as I do, and good reason why, too.
We've worked it all out together. We've stuck close, we have. I've
helped in the house and with the kids, and she's come right out into the
orchards with me. Share and share alike--that's our motto."
He was silent a moment, caressing Ariadne's dark hair gently, and
reviewing the past with shining eyes. "Lord! Lord! It's been a good
life!" He turned to his sister with a smile. "Well, Lyddie, I expect you
know something about it, too. You certainly are fixed fine, and
everybody says you've married a splendid fellow."
Lydia leaned forward eagerly, the impulse to unburden herself
overwhelming. "Oh, Paul is the best man--" she began, "so true and kind
and--and--pure--but Harry, we don't--we can't--his business--" She
turned away from her brother's too keen eyes and stared blindly at the
wall, conscious of an ache in her heart like a physical hurt.
Later, as they were talking of old memories, of Lydia's childhood, Harry
asked suddenly: "How'd you happen to give your little girl such a funny
name?"
It was a question that had not been put to Lydia before. Her family had
taken for granted that it was a feverish fancy of her sick-bed. She
gazed at her brother earnestly, and was about to speak when he looked at
his watch and stood up, glancing uneasily down toward the trolley track.
It was too late--he would be gone so soon--like something she had
dreamed. "Oh, I liked the name," she said vaguely; adding, "Harry! I
wish you could stay longer! There's so much I should like to talk over
with you. Oh, how I wish you'd never gone away."
"You come out and see us," he urged. "It'd do you good to get away from
this old hole-in-the-ground! We live six miles from a neighbor, so you'd
have to get along without tea-parties, but I bet Annie and the kids
would give you a good time all right."
He kissed Lydia good-by, tossed Ariadne high in the air, and as he
hurried down the driveway he called back over his shoulder: "Take good
care of my little niece for me! I tell you it's the kids that count the
most!" It was a saying that filled ringingly for Lydia the long, hot
days of the quiet summer that ensued. As for Ariadne, she did not for
months stop talking of "nice, laughy, Unkie Hawy." Her fluency of speech
was increasing out of all proportion to her age.
Whatever slow changes might be taking place in Lydia, went on silently
and obscurely during that summer; but in the fall a new moral horizon
burst upon her with the realization that she was again to become a
mother. Another life was to be entrusted to her hands, to hers and
Paul's, and with the knowledge came the certainty that she must now
begin to take some action to place her outer life more in accord with
her new inner self. It would be the worst moral cowardice longer to
evade the issue.
Thus bravely did she exhort herself, and, though shrinking with
apprehension at the very thought of entering upon a combat, attempted to
shame herself into a little courage.
When Paul heard of his wife's hopes, he was enchanted. He cried out
jubilantly: "I bet you it'll be a boy this time!" and caught her to him
in an embrace of affection so ardent that for a moment she glowed like a
bride. She clung to him, happy in the warmth of feeling that,
responsive, as always, to his touch, sprang up in her; and when in his
good-natured, half-laughing, dictatorial way he made her lie down at
once and promise to rest and be quiet, the boyish absurdity of his
solicitude was sweet to her.
He disappeared in answer to a telephone call, and she closed her eyes,
savoring the pleasure of the little scene. How she needed Paul to
reconcile her to life! How kind he really was! How good! His was the
clean, honorable affection he had promised her on their wedding day. If
she were to have any faith in the novels she read (like most American
women of the leisure class, her education after her marriage consisted
principally in reading the novels people talked about), if there was any
truth in what she read in these stories, she felt she was blest far
above most women in that there had come to her since her marriage no
revelation of a hidden, unclean side to her husband's nature.
But Lydia had never felt herself closely touched by reading; it all
seemed remote from her own life and problems. The sexual questions on
which the plots invariably turned, which formed the very core and center
of the lives of the various female characters, had, as a matter of fact,
according to her honest observation of her acquaintances, a very
subordinate place in the average American life about her. The marital
unhappiness, estrangement, and fragmentary incompleteness in the circle
she knew, over which she had grieved and puzzled, had nothing to do with
what novels mean by "unfaithfulness." The women of Endbury, unlike the
heroines of fiction, did not fear that their husbands would fall in love
with other women. The men of Endbury spent as little time in
sentimentalizing over other men's wives as they did over their own.
She often wondered why writers did not treat of the other problems that
beset her class--for instance, why it was only women in frontier
conditions, like Harry's wife, who could share in their husband's lives;
why nobody tried to change things so that they could do more of their
part in the work of the world; why they could not have a share in the
activities that gave other men, even little boys like Walter, so much
closer knowledge of their husbands' characters than they, their wives,
had. She had a dim notion, caught from stray indications in the
magazines, that writers were considering such questions in books other
than novels, but she had no idea how to search them out. The woman's
club to which she belonged was occupied with the art of Masaccio, who
was, so a visitor from Chicago's æsthetic circles informed them, the
"latest thing" in art interests.
She decided to ask Paul if he had heard of such books. She would ask him
so many such questions in the new life that was to begin. They had been
married more than three years and, so far as their relations to each
other went, they were by no means inharmonious; but of the close-knit,
deep-rooted intimacy of soul and mind that had been her dream of
married life, there had not been even a beginning. Well, she told
herself bravely, four years were but a short period in a lifetime. They
were both so young yet. They could begin now.
Paul came back from the telephone, note-book in hand, jotting down some
figures. He smiled at her over the top of the book, and before he sat
down to his desk he covered her carefully with a shawl, stroked her
hair, and closed her eyes, saying with an absent tenderness: "There!
take a nap, dear, while I finish these notes."
He looked supremely satisfied with himself in the instant before he
plunged into his calculations, and Lydia guessed that he was
congratulating himself on having remembered her in the midst of
absorbing business cares. She lay looking at him as he worked, her mind
full of busy thoughts.
Chiefly, as she went over their situation, she felt guilty to think how
entirely apart from him all her real life was passed. The doubts, the
racking spiritual changes, that had come to her, she had kept all to
herself; and yet she could say honestly that her silence had been
involuntary, instinctive, she fancied whimsically, like the reticence as
to emotions that one keeps in the hurly-burly of a railway station. With
tickets to be bought and trunks to be checked and time-tables to be
consulted, it is absurd to try to communicate to a busy and preoccupied
companion inexplicable qualms of soul-sickness. Any sensible woman--and
Lydia, like most American women, had been trained by precept and example
to desire above all things to be sensible and not emotionally
troublesome to the men of her family--any sensible woman kept her
thoughts to herself till the time came when she could talk them over
without interfering with the business on hand.
As she lay on the sofa and watched Paul's face sharpen in his
concentration, it occurred to her that the point of the whole matter was
that for her and Paul the suitable and leisurely time for mutual
discussion had never come. That was all! That was the whole trouble! It
was not any inherent lack of common feeling between them. Simply, there
was always business on hand with which she must not interfere.
Paul lifted his head, his eyes half closed in a narrowed, speculative
gaze upon some knotty point in his calculation. This long, sideways look
happened to fall upon Lydia, and she turned cold before the profound
unconsciousness of her existence in those eyes apparently fixed so
piercingly upon her. She had a quick fancy that the blank wall of
abstraction at which that vacant stare was directed really and palpably
separated her husband from her.
For a moment she wondered if she were growing like the women she had
heard her father so unsparingly condemn--silly, childish, egotistic
women who could not bear to have their husbands think of anything but
themselves, who were jealous of the very business which earned them and
their children a living. She acquitted herself of this charge proudly.
She did not want all of Paul's time; she wanted only some of it. And
then, it was not to have him thinking of her, but with her about the
common problems of their life; it was to think with him about the
problems of his life; it was to have him help her by his sound,
well-balanced, well-trained mind, which, so everyone said, worked such
miracles in business; to have him help her through the thicket of
confusion into which she was plunged by her inability to accept the
plainly-marked road over which all of her world was pressing forward.
Perhaps it was all right, she thought, the way Endbury people "did." She
asked nothing better than to be convinced that it was; she longed for a
satisfying answer. But Paul did not even know she had doubts! How could
he, she asked herself, exonerating him from blame. He was away so many
hours of the day and days of the year; and when he came home he was so
tired!
It was characteristic of her temper that she had learned quickly and
without bitterness the lesson every wife must learn, that neither
tenderness nor delicate perceptions of shades of feeling can be extorted
from a very tired or very preoccupied man. Masculine fatigue brings with
it a healthy bluntness as to what is being expected in the way of
emotional responsiveness, and men will not allow their sense of duty to
spur their jaded affection to the point of exhaustion. Lydia noted this,
felt that she could not with any show of reason resent it, since it
showed a state of things as hard for Paul as for her; but she could not
blind herself to the fact that the inevitable result was Paul's complete
ignorance of her real life. She felt herself to be so different from the
girl he had married as scarcely to be recognizable, and yet there was no
way by which he could have caught even a glimpse of the changes that had
made her so. The short periods they spent with each other were
necessarily more than filled by consultations about matters of household
administration and plans for their social life, and about the way to
spend the money that Paul earned. Paul was a very good-natured and
consciously indulgent husband, but Lydia seldom emerged from an hour's
conversation with him without an uneasy feeling that she was not by any
means getting out of the money he furnished her the largest amount
possible of what he wanted; and this sensation was scarcely conducive to
an expression of what was, after all, on her part nothing but a vague
aspiration toward an ideal--an aspiration that came to her clearly only
at times of great tranquillity and peace, when her mind was quite at
rest.
She was going around and around the treadmill of her familiar
perplexities when a trifling incident, so small, so dependent on its
framing of situation, accent, expression and gesture as scarcely to be
recordable, gave her a sudden glimpse of quite another side to the
matter. She was shocked into realizing that just as their way of life
hid from Paul what was going on in her mind, so he also, in all
probability, was rapidly changing without her knowledge.
Paul finished his figuring, pushed the papers to one side with a sigh of
fatigue, and turned his eyes thoughtfully on his wife. "That's very good
news of yours, Lydia dear, about the expected son and heir. But it's
rather a pity it didn't come last winter, isn't it?"
"How so?" she asked.
"Why, you had to be out of things on account of being in mourning,
anyhow. If this had happened the year your father died, you could have
killed two birds with one stone, don't you see?"
Lydia's perception of a thousand reasonable explanations and excuses for
this speech was so quick that it was upon her almost before she was
aware of her resentment. She hurried to shut the door on a blighting new
vision of her husband, by telling herself loudly that it was to be
expected Paul should feel so; but, rapid as her loyal, wifely movement
had been, she had felt a gust of hot revulsion against something in her
husband which her affection for him forbade her to name.
She could not put out of her mind, his look, his accent, his air of
taking for granted that the speech was a natural one. The knowledge that
Marietta would be too bewildered by her dwelling on the incident even to
laugh at her, did not avail to free her of the heavy doubts that filled
her. Was she mistaken in feeling that it indicated an alarming increase
of materialism in Paul? She was really too fanciful, she told herself
many times a day, surprised to find herself going over it again. Was it
a mere chance remark--a little stone in the garden path--or was it the
first visible outcropping of a stratum of unconquerable granite which
grimly underlay all the flower beds of his good nature?
The final impression on her mind was of a new motive for coming to a
better, closer understanding with Paul about the fundamentals of their
life. It had not occurred to her before, in spite of all her struggles
"to be good," as she put it to herself with her childlike naïveté, that
Paul might be needing her as much as she needed him! Spurred on by this
new reason for breaking through the impalpable wall that separated their
inner lives, she resolved that she would no longer let herself be
dominated by the inconsequent multiplicity of the trifling incidents
that filled their days.
If she could only get close to Paul she was sure that all would be well.
She made herself hope, with a brave belittling of the tangle that
baffled her, that perhaps just one long, serious talk with Paul would
be all that was needed. If she could just make Paul see what she saw, he
could tell her how to set to work to remedy things. Paul was so clever.
Paul was always so kind--when he saw!
She began watching for a favorable opportunity for this long, serious
talk, and as day after day fled past with only a glimpse of Paul
desperately in a hurry in the morning and desperately tired at night,
she was aware that her idea of the shape their life was taking had not
exaggerated the extent of the broad flood of trivialities that separated
them. Although the light laugh of her girlhood was rarer than before her
marriage, life had not proved it to be the result of mere animal
spirits. She still saw a great deal to laugh at, though sometimes it was
tremulous laughter, carrying her to the edge of tears. And she often
laughed to herself during these days at the absurd incongruity of what
her heart was swelling to utter and the occasions on which she would
have to speak.
'Stashie was away, tending her aunt who was ill, away for an indefinite
period, for Patsy's steady wages quite sufficed to keep his cousin at
home to care for his grandmother. Lydia sometimes feared the
satisfaction she took in Patsy's exemplary career was tinctured with
vainglory for her own share in it, but, if so, she was punished for it
now, since it was his very prosperity that took away from her the only
steady domestic help she had ever been able to keep. She had now only a
cook, a slatternly negress, with a gift for frying chicken and making
beaten biscuit, and a total incapacity to conceive of any other activity
as possible for her. Lydia had telephoned to the two employment agencies
in Endbury and had been informed, by no means for the first time, that
the supply of girls willing to work in the suburbs had entirely given
out. For the time being there was simply not one to be had, so for the
next few days Lydia, as well as Paul, was more than usually occupied;
but her fixed intention to "talk things over with him" was not shaken.
And yet--day after day went by with the routine unvaried--there was no
time in the morning; in the evening Paul was too tired, and on Sundays
there was always "Company," it being practically their only time for
daylight entertainment. Often Paul brought a business associate home for
dinner; his family or hers came in; there were always callers in the
afternoon; and they were usually invited out to supper or had guests
themselves. It was the busiest day of the week.
Ever since her father's death she had been reviving in her mind, shocked
to find them so few, her positive, personal recollections of him, and
one of them now came back to her with a symbolic meaning. It had been a
not uncommon occurrence in her childhood--a school picnic in the Black
Rock woods; but this one stood out from all the others because, by what
freak of chance she never knew, her father had gone with her instead of
her mother. How proud she had been to have him there! How eagerly she
had done the honors of the "entertainment"! How anxiously she had hoped
that he would be pleased with the recitations, the songs, the May-day
dance!
One of the events of the day was to be the recitation of a fairy poem by
a boy in one of the upper grades. He was to step out of the bushes in
the character of a Brownie. The child had but just thrust his head
through the leaves and begun, "I come to tell ye of a world ye mortals
wot not of," when a terrific clap of thunder overhead, followed by
lightning, and rain in torrents, broke up the picnic and sent everyone
flying for shelter to a near-by barn. Lydia had been very much afraid of
thunderstorms, and she could still remember how, through all her
confusion and terror, she had admired the fixity of purpose of the
little Brownie, piteous in his drenched fairy costume, gasping out, as
they ran along: "I come to tell ye--I come to tell ye, mortals--" to his
scurrying audience.
When they reached the barn and were huddled in the hay, wet and forlorn,
and deafened by the peals of thunder, the determined little boy had
stood up on a farm wagon on the barn floor, and the instant the storm
abated began again with his insistent tidings of a world they wot not
of. With her father's death fresh in her mind, Lydia could not without
a throb of pain recall his rare outburst of hearty laughter at the
child's perseverance. "I bet on that kid!" he had cried out, applauding
vigorously at the end. "Who _is_ he?"
"Paul Hollister," she had told him, proud to know the bigger children.
"He's a very especial friend of mine."
"Well, you can bet he'll get on," her father had assured her.
The opening of the Brownie's speech had come to be one of the humorous
catchwords of the Emery household, to express firmness of purpose, and
it was now with a mixture of laughter and tears that Lydia recalled the
scene--the dusky interior of the barn, the sweet, strong scent of the
hay, the absurd little figure grimacing and squeaking on the farm wagon,
and her big, little-known, all-powerful father, one strong arm around
her, protecting her from all she feared, as nothing in the world could
protect her now.
She was grown up now, and must learn how to protect her own children
against dangers less obvious than thunderstorms. It was her turn now to
insist on making herself heard above uproar and confusion. Her little
Brownie playmate shamed her into action. She would not wait for a pause
in the clatter of small events about Paul and herself; she would raise
her voice and shout to him, if necessary, overcoming the shy reluctance
of the spirit to speak aloud of its life.
CHAPTER XXVII
LYDIA REACHES HER GOAL AND HAS HER TALK WITH HER HUSBAND
Paul was still asleep when Lydia opened her eyes one morning and said to
herself with a little laugh, but quite resolutely: "I come to tell ye of
a world ye mortals wot not of."
As she dressed noiselessly, she fortified herself with the thought that
she had, in her nervousness, greatly overestimated the seriousness of
her undertaking. There was nothing so formidable in what she meant to
do, after all. She only wished to talk reasonably with her husband about
how to avoid having their life degenerate into a mere campaign for
material advancement. She did not use this phrase in her thoughts about
the matter. She thought more deeply, and perhaps more clearly, than
during her confused girlhood, but she had no learned or dignified
expressions for the new ideas dawning in her. As she coiled her dark
hair above her face, rather pale these days, like a white flower instead
of the glowing rose it had been, she said to herself, like a child:
"Now, I mustn't get excited. I must remember that all I want is a chance
for all of us, Paul and the children and me, to grow up as good as we
can, and loving one another the most for the nicest things in us and not
because we're handy stepping-stones to help one another get on. And we
can't do that if we don't really put our minds to it and make that the
thing we're trying hardest to do. The other things--the parties and
making money and dressing better than we can really afford to--they're
only all right if they don't get to seeming the things to look out for
first. We must find out how to keep them second."
A golden shaft of winter sunshine fell on Paul's face. He opened his
eyes and yawned, smiling good-naturedly at his wife. Lydia summoned her
courage and fairly ran to the bed, sitting down by him and taking his
strong hand in hers.
"Oh, you india-rubber ball!" he cried in humorous despair at her. "Don't
you know a woman with your expectations oughtn't to go hurling herself
around that way?"
"I know--I'm too eager always," she apologized. "But, Paul, I've been
waiting for a nice quiet time to have a long talk with you about
something that's troubling me, and I just decided I wouldn't wait
another minute."
Paul patted her cheek. He was feeling very much refreshed by his night's
sleep. He smiled at his young wife again. "Why, fire away, Lydia dear.
I'm no ogre. You don't have to wait till I'm in a good temper, do you?
What is it? More money?"
"Oh, no, _no_!" She repudiated the idea so hotly that he laughed, "Well,
you can't scare me with anything else. What's up?"
Lydia hesitated, distracted, now that her chance had come, with the
desire to speak clearly. "Paul dear, it's very serious, and I want you
to take it seriously. It may take a great effort to change things, too.
I'm very unhappy about the way we are--"
A wail from Ariadne's room gave warning that the child had wakened, as
she not infrequently did, terrified by a bad dream. Lydia fled in to
comfort her, and later, when she came back, leading the droll little
figure in its pink sleeping-drawers, Paul was dressing with his usual
careful haste. He stopped an instant to laugh at Ariadne's face of
determined woe and tossed her up until an unwilling smile broke through
her pouting gloom. Then he turned to Lydia, as to another child, and
rubbed his cheek on hers with a boyish gesture. "Now, you other little
forlornity, what's the matter with you?"
Lydia warmed, as always, at the tenderness of his tone, though she
noticed with an inward laugh that he continued buttoning his vest as he
caressed her and that his eyes wandered to the clock with a wary
alertness. "Perhaps you'd better wait and tell me at the table," he went
on briskly. "I'm all ready to go down." He pulled his coat on with his
astonishing quickness, and ran downstairs.
Lydia put Ariadne into her own bed, telling the docile little thing to
stay there till Mother came back for her, and followed Paul, huddling
together the remnants of her resolution which looked very wan in the
morning light. Breakfast was not ready; the table was not even set, and
when she went out into the kitchen she was met by a heavy-eyed cook,
moving futilely about among dirty pots and pans and murmuring something
about a headache. Lydia could not stop then to investigate further, but,
hurrying about, managed to get a breakfast ready for Paul before his
first interest in the morning paper had evaporated enough to make him
impatient of the delay.
He fell to with a hearty appetite as soon as the food was set before
him, not noticing for several moments that Lydia's breakfast was not yet
ready. When he did so, he spoke with a solicitous sharpness: "Lydia, you
need a guardian! You ought to eat as a matter of duty! I bet half your
queer notions come from your just pecking around at any old thing when
I'm not here to keep track of you."
He poured out another cup of coffee for himself as he spoke.
"Yes, dear; I know, I do. I will," Lydia assured him, with her quick
acquiescence to his wishes. "But this morning Mary is sick, or
something, and I got yours first."
Paul spoke briefly, with his mouth full of toast: "If you were more
regular in the way you run the house, and insisted on never varying
the--"
"But I was afraid you would be late," said Lydia. It was the daily
terror of her life.
"I _am_ late now," he told her, with his good-humored insistence on
facts. "I've missed the 7:40, and I've just time to catch the next one
if I hurry. Do you happen to know, dear, where I put that catalogue
from Elberstrom and Company? The big red book with the picture of a
dynamo on the cover. I was looking over it last night, and Heaven knows
where I may have dropped it."
The opinion as to the proper answer to a speech like this was one of the
sharply marked lines of divergence between Madeleine Lowder and her
brother's wife. "Soak him one when you get a chance, Lydia," she was
wont to urge facetiously, and her advice in the present case would
unhesitatingly have been to answer as acrimoniously as possible that if
he were more regular in the way he handled such things his wife would
have to spend less time ransacking the house looking for them. But in
spite of such practical and experienced counsel, Lydia was scarcely
conscious of refraining from the entirely justifiable and entirely
futile customary recriminations, and she was as unaware as Paul of the
vast amount of embittering domestic friction which was spared them by
her silence. She had some great natural advantages for the task of
creating a better domestic life at which she was now so eagerly setting
herself, and one of them was this incapacity to resent petty injustices
done to herself. She was handicapped in any effort by her utter lack of
intellectual training and by a natural tendency to mental confusion, but
her lack of small vanities not only spared her untold suffering, but
added much to her singleness of aim.
She now went about searching for the catalogue, finally finding it in
the library under the couch. When she came back to the dining-room she
saw Paul standing up by the table, wiping his mouth. Evidently he was
ready to start. How absurd she had been to think of talking seriously to
him in the morning!
"Mary brought your breakfast in," he said nodding toward an untidy tray.
"I hate to seem to be finding fault all the time, but really her breath
was enough to set the house on fire! Can't you keep her down to moderate
drinking?"
"I'll try," said Lydia.
Paul took the catalogue from her hand and reached for his hat. They
were in the hall now. "Good-by, Honey," he said, kissing her hastily and
darting out of the house.
Lydia had but just turned back to the dining-room when he opened the
door and came in again, bringing a gust of fresh winter air with him.
"Say, dear, you forgot about something you wanted to tell me about. I've
got eight minutes before the trolley, so now's your chance. What is it?
Something about the plumbing?"
In the dusky hall Lydia faced him for a moment in silence, with so
singular an expression on her face that he looked apprehensive of some
sort of scene. Then she broke out into breathless, quavering laughter,
whose uncertainty did not prevent Paul from great relief at her apparent
change of mood. "Never mind," she said, leaning against the newel-post,
"I'll tell you--I'll tell you some other time."
He kissed her again, and she felt that it was with a greater tenderness
now that he no longer feared a possibly disagreeable communication from
her.
After he had gone, she thought loyally, putting things in the order of
importance she had been taught all her life, "Well, it _is_ hard for him
to have perplexities at home and not to be able to give the freshest and
best of himself to business." It was not until later, as she was
dressing Ariadne, that she swung slowly back to her new doubt of that
view of the problem.
Ariadne was in one of her most talkative moods, and was describing at
great length the dream that had frightened her so. There was a hen with
six little chickens, she told her mother, and one of them was as big--as
big--
"Yes, dear; and what did the big little chicken do?" Lydia laced up the
little shoes, on her knees before the small figure, her mind whirling.
"That was just the trouble, she couldn't make it seem right any more,
that Paul's best and freshest should _all_ go to making money and none
to a consideration of why he wished to make it."
"Yes, Ariadne, and it flew over the house, and then?"
She began buttoning the child's dress, and lost herself in ecstasy over
the wisps of soft curls at the back of the rosy neck. She dropped a
sudden kiss on the spot, in the midst of Ariadne's narrative, and the
child squealed in delighted surprise. Lydia was carried away by one of
her own childlike impulses of gayety, and burrowed bear-like, growling
savagely, in the soft flesh. Ariadne doubled up, shrieking with
laughter, the irresistible laughter of childhood. Lydia laughed in
response, and the two were off for one of their rollicking frolics. They
were like a couple of kittens together. Finally, "Come, dear; we must
get our breakfasts," said Lydia, leading along the little girl, still
flushed and smiling from her play.
Her passion for the child grew with Ariadne's growth, and there were
times when she was tempted to agree in the unspoken axiom of those about
her, that all she needed was enough children to fill her heart and hands
too full for thought; but sometimes at night, when Paul was away and she
had the little crib moved close to her bed, very different ideas came to
her in the silent hours when she lay listening to the child's quick,
regular breathing. At such times, when her mind grew very clear in the
long pause between the hurry of one day and the next, she had rather a
sort of horror in bringing any more lives into a world which she could
do so little to make ready for them. Ariadne was here, and, oh! She must
do something to make it better for her! Her desire that Ariadne should
find it easier than she to know how to live well, rose to a fervor that
was a prayer emanating from all her being. Perhaps she was not clever or
strong enough to know how to make her own life and Paul's anything but a
dreary struggle to get ahead of other people, but somehow--somehow,
Ariadne must have a better chance.
Something of all this came to her mind in the reaction from her frolic,
as she established the child in her high-chair and sat down to her own
cold breakfast; but she soon fell, instead, to pondering the question of
Mary in the kitchen. She had not now that terror of a violent scene
which had embittered the first year of her housekeeping, but she felt a
qualm of revulsion from the dirty negress who, as she entered the
kitchen, turned to face her with insolent eyes. It seemed a plague-spot
in her life that in the center of her home, otherwise so carefully
guarded, there should be this presence, come from she shuddered to think
what evil haunts of that part of Endbury known as the "Black Hole." She
thought, as so many women have thought, that there must be something
wrong in a system that made her husband spend all his strength laboring
to make money so much of which was paid, in one form or another, to this
black incubus. She thought, as so many other women have thought, that
there must be something wrong with a system of life that meant that,
with rare exceptions, such help was all that could be coaxed into doing
housework; but Lydia, unlike the other women she knew, did not--could
not--stop at the realization that something was wrong. Some irresistible
impulse moved her to try at least to set it right.
On this occasion, however, as she faced the concrete result of the
system, she was too languid, and felt too acutely the need for sparing
her strength, to do more than tell her cook briefly that if she did not
stop drinking she would be dismissed. Mary made no reply, looking down
at her torn apron, her face heavy and sullen. She prepared some sort of
luncheon, however, and by night had recovered enough so that with
Lydia's help the dinner was eatable.
Paul was late to dinner, and when he sat down heavily at the table
Lydia's heart failed her at the sight of his face, fairly haggard with
fatigue. She kept Ariadne quiet, the child having already learned that
when Daddy came home from the city there must be no more noisy play; and
she served Paul with a quickness that outstripped words. She longed
unspeakably to put on one side forever all her vexing questions and
simply to cherish and care for her husband physically. He had so much to
burden him already--all he could carry. But she had been so long
bringing herself to the point of resolution in the matter, she had so
firmly convinced herself that her duty lay along that dark and obscure
path, that she clung to her purpose.
After dinner, when she came downstairs from putting Ariadne to bed, she
found him already bent over the writing-table, covering a sheet of paper
with figures. "You remember, Paul, I have something to talk over with
you," she began, her mouth twitching in a nervous smile.
He pushed the papers aside, and looked up at her with a weary
tenderness. "Oh, yes; I do remember. We might as well have it over now,
I suppose. Wait a minute, though." He went to the couch, piled the
pillows at one end, and lay down, his hands clasped under his head. "I
might as well rest myself while we talk, mightn't I?"
"Oh, yes, yes, poor dear!" cried Lydia remorsefully. "I wish I didn't
_have_ to bother you!"
"I wish so, too," he said whimsically. "Sure it's nothing you can't
settle yourself?" He closed his eyes and yawned.
"I don't _want_ to settle it myself!" cried Lydia with a rush, seeing an
opening ready-made. "That's the point. I want you to be in it! I want
you to help me! Paul, I'm sure there's something the matter with the way
we live--I don't like it! I don't see that it helps us a bit--or anyone
else--you're just killing yourself to make money that goes to get us
things we don't need nearly as much as we need more of each other! We're
not getting a bit nearer to each other--actually further away, for we're
both getting different from what we were without the other's knowing
how! And we're not getting nicer--and what's the use of living if we
don't do that? We're just getting more and more set on scrambling along
ahead of other people. And we're not even having a good time out of it!
And here is Ariadne--and another one coming--and we've nothing to give
them but just this--this--this--"
She had poured out her accumulated, pent-up convictions with passion,
feeling an immense relief that she had at last expressed herself--that
at last she had made a breach in the wall that separated her from Paul.
At the end, as she hesitated for a phrase to sum up her indictment of
their life, her eyes fell on Paul's face. Its expression turned her
cold. She stopped short. He did not open his eyes, and the ensuing
silence was filled with his regular, heavy breathing. He had fallen
asleep.
Lydia folded her hands in her lap and sat looking at him intently. In
the tumult of her emotions there was neither bitterness nor resentment.
But a cloud had passed between her and the sun. She sat there a long
time, her face very pale and grave. After a time she laid her hand on
her husband's shoulder. She felt an intolerable need to feel him at
least physically near.
The telephone bell rang distinctly in the hall. Paul bounded to his
feet, wide awake.
"I bet that's the Washburn superintendent!" he cried. "He said they
might call me up here if they came to a decision." He had apparently
forgotten Lydia's presence, or else the fact that she knew nothing of
his affairs. He disappeared into the hall, his long, springy, active
step resounding quickly as he hurried to the instrument. Lydia heard his
voice, decisive, masterful, quiet, evidently dictating terms of some
bargain that had been hanging in the balance. When he came back, his
head was up, like a conqueror's. "I've got their contract!" he told her,
and then, snatching her up, he whirled her about, shouting out a "yip!
yip! yip!" of triumph.
In spite of herself Lydia's chin began to tremble. She felt a stinging
in her eyes. Paul saw these signs of emotion and was
conscience-stricken. "Oh, I'm a black-hearted monster!" he cried, in
burlesque contrition. "I must have dropped off just as you began your
spiel. But, Lydia, if _you'd_ taken that West Virginia trip, you'd go to
sleep if the Angel Gabriel were blowing his horn! I was gone three days,
you know, and, honest, I didn't have three hours' consecutive sleep!
Don't be too mad at me. Start over again. I'll listen to every word,
honest to gracious I will. I feel as waked up as a fighting cock,
anyhow, by this Washburn business! To think I've pulled that off at
last!"
"I'm not mad at _you_, Paul," said Lydia, trying to speak steadily, and
holding with desperate resolution to her purpose of communicating with
her husband. "I'm mad at the conditions that made you so sleepy you
couldn't keep awake! All I had to say is that I don't like our way of
life--I don't see that it's making us any better, and I want Ariadne--I
want our children to have a better one. I want you to help me make it
so."
Paul stared at her, stupefied by this attack on axioms. "Good gracious,
my dear! What are you talking about? 'Our way of life!' What do you
mean? There's nothing peculiar about the way we live. Our life is just
like everybody else's."
Lydia burned with impatience at the appearance of this argument, beyond
which she had never been able to induce her mother or Marietta to
advance a step. She cried out passionately: "What if it is! If it's not
the right kind of life, what difference does it make if everybody's life
_is_ like it!"
The idea which her excitement instantly suggested to Paul was
reassuring. Before Ariadne came, he remembered, Lydia had had queer
spells of nervous tension. He patted her on the shoulder and spoke in
the tone used to soothe a nervous horse. "There, Lydia! There, dear!
Don't get so wrought up! Remember you're not yourself. You do too much
thinking. Come, now, just curl up here and put your head on my--"
Lydia feared greatly the relaxing influence of his caressing touch. If
once he put forth his personal magnetism, it would be so hard to go on.
She drew away gently. "_Can_ anybody do too much thinking, Paul? The
trouble must be that I'm not thinking right. And, oh, I want to, so!
_Please_ help me! Everybody says you have such a wonderful head for
organization and for science--if I were a dynamo that wasn't working,
you could set me right!"
Paul laughed, and made another attempt to divert her. "I couldn't if
the dynamo looked as pretty and kissable as you do!" He was paying very
little attention to what she said. He was only uncomfortable and uneasy
to see her so white and trembling. He wished he had proposed taking her
out for the evening. She had been having too dull a time. He ought to
see that she got more amusement. They said that comic opera now running
in town was very funny.
"Paul, listen to me!" she was crying desperately as these thoughts went
through his head. "Listen to me, and look honestly at the way we've been
living since we were married, and you _must_ see that something's all
wrong. I never see you--never, never, do you realize that? except when
you're in a raging hurry in the morning or tired to death at night, and
when I'm just as tired as you are, so all we can do is to go to bed so
we can get up in the morning and begin it all over again. Or else we
tire ourselves out one degree more by entertaining people we don't
really like--or rather people about whose real selves we don't know
enough to know whether we like them or not--we have them because they're
influential, or because everybody else entertains them, or because they
can help us to get on--or can be smoothed over so they won't hinder our
getting on. And there's no prospect of doing anything different from
this all the days of our life--"
"But, look-y here, Lydia, that's the way things _are_ in this world! The
men have to go away the first thing in the morning--and all the rest of
what you say! _I_ can't help it! What do you come to me about it for?
You might as well break out crying because I can't give you eyes in the
back of your head. That's the way things are!"
Lydia made a violent gesture of unbelief. "That's what everybody's been
telling me all my life--but now I'm a grown woman, with eyes to see, and
something inside me that won't let me say I see what I don't--_and I
don't see that_! I don't _believe_ it has to be so. I can't believe it!"
Paul laughed a little impatiently, irritated and uneasy, as he always
was, at any attempt to examine too closely the foundations of existing
ideas. "Why, Lydia, what's the matter with you? You sound as though
you'd been reading some fool socialist literature or something."
"You know I don't read anything, Paul. I never hear about anything but
novels. I never have time for anything else, and very likely I couldn't
understand it if I read it, not having any education. That's one thing I
want you to help me with. All I want is a chance for us to live together
a little more, to have a few more thoughts in common, and, oh! to be
trying to be making something better out of ourselves for our children's
sake. I can't see that we're learning to be anything but--you, to be an
efficient machine for making money, I to think of how to entertain as
though we had more money than we really have. I don't seem really to
know you or live with you any more than if we were two guests stopping
at the same hotel. If socialists are trying to fix things better, why
shouldn't we have time--both of us--to read their books; and you could
help me know what they mean?"
Paul laughed again, a scornful, hateful laugh, which brought the color
up to Lydia's pale face like a blow. "I gather, then, Lydia, that what
you're asking me to do is to neglect my business in order to read
socialist literature with you?"
His wife's rare resentment rose. She spoke with dignity: "I begged you
to be serious, Paul, and to try to understand what I mean, although I'm
so fumbling, and say it so badly. As for its being impossible to change
things, I've heard you say a great many times that there are no
conditions that can't be changed if people would really try--"
"Good heavens! I said that of _business_ conditions!" shouted Paul,
outraged at being so misquoted.
"Well, if it's true of them--No; I feel that things are the way they are
because we don't really care enough to have them some other way. If you
really cared as much about sharing a part of your life with me--really
sharing--as you do about getting the Washburn contract--"
Her indignant and angry tone, so entirely unusual, moved Paul, more than
her words, to shocked protest. He looked deeply wounded, and his accent
was that of a man righteously aggrieved. "Lydia, I lay most of this
absurd outbreak to your nervous condition, and so I can't blame you for
it. But I can't help pointing out to you that it is entirely uncalled
for. There are few women who have a husband as absolutely devoted as
yours. You grumble about my not sharing my life with you--why, I _give_
it to you entire!" His astonished bitterness grew as he voiced it. "What
am I working so hard for if not to provide for you and our child--our
children! Good Heavens! What more _can_ I do for you than to keep my
nose on the grindstone every minute. There are limits to even a
husband's time and endurance and capacity for work."
Lydia heard a frightened roaring in her ears at this unexpected turn to
the conversation. Paul had never spoken so to her before. This was a
very different tone from his irritation over defective housekeeping. She
was as horrified as he over the picture that he held up with such
apparently justified indignation, the picture of her as a querulous and
ungrateful wife. Why, Paul was looking at her as though he hated her!
For the first time in her married life, she conceived the possibility
that she and Paul might quarrel, really seriously quarrel, about
fundamental things. The idea terrified her beyond words. Her mind,
undisciplined and never very clear, became quite confused, and only her
long preparation and expectation of this talk enabled her to keep on at
all, although now she could but falter ahead blindly. "Why, Paul
dear--don't look at me so! I never dreamed of _blaming_ you for it! It's
just because I want things better for you that I'm so anxious to--"
"You haven't noticed me complaining any, have you?" put in Paul grimly,
still looking at her coldly.
"--It's because I can't bear to see you work so hard to get me things
I'd ever so much rather go without than have you grow so you can't see
anything but business--it seems all twisted! I'd rather you'd pay an
assistant to go off on these out-of-town trips, and we'd get along on
less money--live in a smaller house, and not entertain."
"Oh, Lydia, you talk like a child! How can I talk business with you when
you have such crazy, impractical ideas? It's not just the money an
assistant would cost! Either he'd not be so good as I, and then I'd lose
my reputation for efficiency and my chance for promotion, or else he
_would_ be as good and he'd get the job permanently and divide the field
with me. A man has to look a long way ahead in business!"
"But, Paul, what if he _did_ divide the field with you? What if you
don't get ahead of everybody else, if you'd have time and strength to
think of other things more--you said the other day that you weren't
sleeping well any more, and you're losing your taste for books and music
and outdoors--why, I'd rather live in four rooms right over your office,
so that you wouldn't have that hour lost going and coming--"
Paul broke in with a curt scorn: "Oh, Lydia! What nonsense! Why don't
you propose living in a tent, to save rent?"
"Why I would--I would in a minute if I thought it would make things any
better!" Lydia cried with a desperate simplicity.
At this crowning absurdity, Paul began to laugh, his ill-humor actually
swept away by his amusement at Lydia's preposterous fancies. It was too
foolish to try to reason seriously with her. He put his hand on her
shining dark hair, ruffling it up like a teasing boy. "I guess you'd
better leave the economic status of society alone, Lydia. You might
break something if you go charging around it so fierce."
A call came from the darkness of the hall: "Mis' Hollister!"
"It's Mary," said Paul; "probably you forgot to give her any
instructions about breakfast, in your anxiety about the future of the
world. If you can calm down enough for such prosaic details, do tell her
for the Lord's sake not to put so much salt in the oatmeal as there was
this morning."
Lydia found the negress with her wraps on, glooming darkly, "Mis'
Hollister, I'm gwine to leave," she announced briefly.
Lydia felt for a chair. Mary had promised faithfully to stay through the
winter, until after her confinement. "What's the matter, Mary?"
"I cyant stay in no house wheah de lady says I drinks."
"You will stay until--until I am able to be about, won't you?"
"My things is gone aready," said Mary, moving heavily toward the door,
"and I'm gwine now." As she disappeared, she remarked casually, "I
didn't have no time to wash the supper dishes. Good-by."
"What's the matter with Mary?" called Paul.
Lydia went back to him, trying to smile. "She's gone--left," she
announced.
Paul opened his eyes with a look of keen annoyance. "You can't break in
a new cook _now_!" he said. "She can't go now!"
"She's gone," repeated Lydia wearily. "I don't know how anybody could
make her stay."
Paul got up from the couch with his lips closed tightly together, and,
sitting down in a straight chair, took Lydia on his knee as though she
were a child. "Now, see here, my wife, you mustn't get your feelings
hurt if I do some plain talking for a minute. You've been telling me
what you think about things, and now it's my turn. And what _I_ think is
that if my dear young wife would spend more time looking after her own
business she'd have fewer complaints to make about my doing the same.
The thing for you to do is to accept conditions as they are and do your
best in them--and, really, Lydia, make your best a little better."
Lydia was on the point of nervous tears from sheer fatigue, but she
clung to her point with a tenacity which in so yielding a nature was
profoundly eloquent. "But, Paul, if everybody had always settled down
and accepted conditions, and never tried to make them better--"
"There's a difference between conditions that have to be accepted and
those that can be changed," said Paul sententiously.
Lydia tore herself away from him and stood up, trembling with
excitement. She felt that they had stumbled upon the very root of the
matter. "But who's to decide which our conditions are?"
Paul caught at her, laughing. "I am, of course, you firebrand! Didn't
you promise to honor and obey?" He went on with more seriousness, a
tender, impatient, condescending seriousness: "Now, Lydia, just stop and
think! Do you, can you, consider this a good time for you to try to
settle the affairs of the universe--still all upset about your father's
death, and goodness knows what crazy ideas it started in your head--and
with an addition to the family expected! _And_ the cook just left!"
"But that's the way things always are!" she protested. "That's life.
There's never a time when something important hasn't just happened or
isn't just going to happen, you have to go right ahead, or you
never--why, Paul, I've waited for two years for a really good chance for
this talk with you--"
"Thank the Lord!" he ejaculated. "I hope it'll be another two before you
treat me to another evening like this. Oh, pshaw, Lydia! You're morbid,
moping around the house too much--and your condition and all. Wait till
you've got another baby to play with--I don't remember you had any
doubts of anything the first six months of Ariadne's life. You ought to
have a baby a year to keep you out of mischief! Just you wait till you
can entertain and live like folks again. In the meantime you hustle
around and keep busy and you won't be so bothered with thinking and
worrying."
Unknowingly, they had drawn again near to the heart of their
discussion. Unknowingly Lydia stood before the answer from her husband,
the final statement that she wished to hear.
"But to hustle and keep busy--that's good only so long as you keep at
it. The minute you stop--"
Paul's answer was an epoch in her thought.
"_Don't stop!_" he cried, surprised at her overlooking so obvious a
solution.
At this bullet-like retort, Lydia shivered as though she had been
struck. She turned away with a blind impulse for flight. Her gesture
brought her husband flying to her. He took her forcibly in his arms.
"What the devil--what is the matter _now_?" he asked, praying for
patience. She hung unresponsive in his grasp. "What's the matter?" he
repeated.
"You've just told me a horrible thing," she whispered; "that life is so
dreadful that the only way we can get through it at all is by never
looking at--"
Paul actually shook her in his exasperation. "Gee whiz, Lydia! you're
enough to drive a man to drink! I never told you any such melodramatic
nonsense. I told you straight horse sense, which is that if you took
more interest in your work, in the work that every woman of your class
and position has to do, you'd have less time to think foolishness--and
your husband would have an easier life."
Her trembling lips opened to speak again, but he closed them with a firm
hand. "And now, as your natural guardian, I'm not going to let you say
another word about it. You dear little silly! However did you get us so
wound up! Blessed if I have any idea what it's all been about!"
He was determined to end the discussion. He was relieved beyond
expression that he had been able to get through it without saying
anything unkind to his wife. He never meant to do that. He now went on,
shaking a finger at her:
"You listen to me, Lydia-Emery-that-was! Do you know what we are going
to do? We're going out into that howling desolation that Mary has
probably left in the kitchen, and we're going to see if we can find a
couple of clean glasses, and we're going to have a glass of beer apiece
and a ham sandwich and a piece of the pie that's left over from dinner.
You don't know what's the matter with you, but I do! You're starved!
You're as hungry as you can be, aren't you now?"
Lydia had sunk into a chair during this speech and was now regarding him
fixedly, her hands clasped between her knees. At his final appeal to
her, she closed her eyes. "Yes," she said with a long breath; "yes, I
am."
CHAPTER XXVIII
"THE AMERICAN MAN"
A ripple from the surging wave of culture which, for some years, had
been sweeping over the women's clubs of the Middle West, began to
agitate the extremely stationary waters of Endbury social life. The
Women's Literary Club felt that, as the long-established intellectual
authority of the town, it should somehow join in the new movement. The
organization of this club dated back to a period now comparatively
remote. Mrs. Emery, who had been a charter member, had never been more
genuinely puzzled by Dr. Melton's eccentricities than when he had
received with a yell of laughter her announcement that she had just
helped to form a "literary club," which would be the "most exclusive
social organization" in Endbury. It had lived up to this expectation. To
belong to it meant much, and both Paul and Flora Burgess had been
gratified when, on her mother's resignation, Lydia had been elected to
the vacant place.
This close corporation, composed of ladies in the very inner circle,
felt keenly the stimulating consciousness of its importance in the
higher life of the town, and had too much civic pride to allow Endbury
to lag behind the other towns in Ohio. Columbus women, owing to the
large German population of the city, were getting a reputation for being
musical; Cincinnati had always been artistic; Toledo had literary
aspirations; Cleveland went in for civic improvement. The leading
spirits of the Woman's Literary Club of Endbury cast about for some
other sphere of interest to annex as their very own property.
They were hesitating whether to undertake a campaign of municipal
house-cleaning, or to devote themselves to the study of the sonnet form
in English verse, when an unusual opportunity for distinction opened
before them. The daughter of the club's president was married to a
professor in the State University of Michigan, and on one of her visits
home she suggested that her mother's club invite to address it the
Alliance Française lecturer of that year. He had to come out to Ann
Arbor, anyhow--Ann Arbor was not very far from Endbury--not far, that
is, as compared with the journey the lecturer would have made from
Columbia and Harvard to "Michigan State." One of the club husbands was a
railroad man and, maybe, could give them transportation. Frenchmen were
always anxious to make all the money they could--she was sure that M.
Buisine could be induced to come for a not extravagant honorarium. Why
should not Endbury go in for cosmopolitanism? That certainly would be
something new in Ohio.
And so it was arranged for an afternoon for the first week in December,
a very grand "house-darkened-and-candle-lighted performance," as
Madeleine Lowder labeled this last degree of Endbury ceremonious
elaboration. It was held at the house of Paul's aunt, so that,
naturally, Lydia could by no means absent herself. Madeleine came for
her, and together they took Ariadne to Marietta's house and left her
there for safe-keeping. Lydia was intensely conscious, under her
sister's forbearing silence, that Marietta had never been asked to join
the Woman's Literary Club. Even the jaunty Madeleine was aware of a
tension in the brief conversation over the child's head, and remarked as
she and Lydia walked away from the house: "Well, really now, _was_ that
the most tactful thing in the world?"
"What else could I do?" asked Lydia, at her wit's end. "I don't dare
leave Ariadne with those awful things from the employment agencies, and
'Stashie's not coming back till next week."
"Oh, _she's_ coming again, is she?" commented her companion. "Well,
that'll mean lots of fun watching Paul squirm. But don't mind him,
Lydia." Madeleine was one of the women who prided herself on her loyal
sense of solidarity among her sex. "If he says a word, you poke him one
in the eye. Keep her till after your confinement, anyhow. A woman ought
to be allowed to run her house without any man butting in. We let them
alone; they ought to let us."
There never was a person in the world, Lydia thought, in whom marriage
had made less difference than in Paul's sister. She was exactly the same
as in her girlhood. Lydia wondered at her with an ever-growing
amazement. The enormous significance of the marriage service, the
mysteries of the dual existence, her new responsibilities,--they all
seemed non-existent. Paul said approvingly that Madeleine knew how to
get along with less fuss than any woman he ever saw. Her breezy high
spirits were much admired in Endbury, and her good humor and prodigious
satisfaction with life were considered very cheerfully infectious.
The two women had reached Madame Hollister's house while Madeleine was
expounding her theory of matrimony, and now took their places in the
throng of extremely well-dressed women sitting on camp chairs, the rows
of which filled the two parlors. The lecturer with the president of the
club, occupied a dais at the other end of the room. He was a tall, ugly
man, with prominent blue eyes, gray hair upstanding in close-cropped
military stiffness, and a two-pronged grizzled beard. He was looking
over his audience with a leisurely smiling scrutiny that roused in Lydia
a secret resentment.
"He's very distinguished looking, isn't he?" whispered Madeleine. "So
different! And _cool_! I'd like to see Pete Lowder sit up there to be
stared at by all this gang of women."
"Oh, he's probably used to it," said her neighbor on the other side.
"They say he's spoken before any number of women's clubs. He does two a
day sometimes. He's seen lots of American society women before now."
Madeleine stared at him curiously. "I wonder what he thinks of us! I
wonder! I'd give anything to know!" she said. She repeated this
sentiment in varying forms several times.
Lydia wondered why Madeleine should care so acutely about the opinion of
a stranger and a foreigner, and finally, in her naïve, straightforward
way, she put this question to her. Madeleine was not one of the many who
evaded Lydia's questions, or answered them only with a laugh at their
oddity. She was very straightforward herself and generally had a very
clear idea of what underlay any action or feeling on her part. But this
time her usual rough-and-ready methods of analysis seemed at fault.
"Oh, because," she said indefinitely. "Don't you always want to know
what men are thinking of you?"
"Men that know something about me, maybe," Lydia amended.
Madeleine laughed. "_They're_ the ones that don't think at all, one way
or the other," she reminded her sister-in-law.
The president of the club rose. Her introduction of the speaker was
greeted with cordial, muted applause from gloved hands. There was a
scraping of chairs, a stir of draperies, and little gusts of delicate
perfumes floated out, as the hundred or more women settled themselves at
the right angle, all their keen, handsome, nervous faces lifted to the
speaker in a pleasant expectancy. Not only were they agreeably aware
that they were forming part of one of the most recherché events of
Endbury's social life, but they were remembering piquant rumors of M.
Buisine's sensational attacks on American materialism. The afternoon
promised something more interesting than their usual programme of
home-made essays and papers.
Their expectation was not disappointed. In fluent English, apparently
smooth with long practice on the same theme, he wove felicitous and
forceful elaborations on the proverb relating to people who are absent
and the estimation in which they are held by those present. He had seen
in America, he said, everything but the American man. He had seen
hundreds and thousands of women as well-dressed as Parisiennes (and, as
a rule, much more expensively), as self-possessed as English great
ladies, as cultivated as Russian princesses, as universally and
variously handsome as visions in a painter's dream--("He's not afraid of
laying it on thick, is he?" whispered Madeleine with an appreciative
laugh)--but, except for a few professors in college, he had seen no men.
He had inquired for them everywhere and was told that he did not see
them because he was a man of letters. If he had been the inventor of a
new variety of railroad brake he would have seen millions. He was told
that the men, unlike their wives, had no intellectual interests, had no
clubs with any serious purposes, had no artistic aims, had no home life,
no knowledge of their children, no interest in education--that, in
short, they left the whole business of worthy living to their wives, and
devoted themselves exclusively to the wild-beast joys of tearing and
rending their business competitors.
He gave many picturesque instances of his contention, he sketched
several lively and amusing portraits of the one or two business men he
had succeeded in running down; their tongue-tied stupefaction before the
ordinary topics of civilization, their scorn of all æsthetic
considerations; their incapacity to conceive of an intellectual life as
worthy a grown man; the Stone-age simplicity with which they referred
everything to savage cunning; their oblivion to any other standard than
"success," by which they meant possessing something that they had taken
away by force from somebody else.
It was indeed a very entertaining lecture, a most stimulating,
interesting experience to the crowd of well-dressed women; although
perhaps some of them found it a little long after the dining-room across
the hall began to be filled with waiters preparing the refreshments and
an appetizing smell of freshly-made coffee filled the air. Still, it was
a lecture they had paid for, and it was gratifying to have it so full
and conscientiously elaborated.
The ideas promulgated were not startlingly new to them, since they had
read magazine articles on "Why American Women Marry Foreigners" and
similar analyses of the society in which they lived; but to have it said
to one's face, by a living man, a tall, ugly, distinguished foreigner,
with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole,--that brought
it home to one! They nodded their beautifully-hatted heads at the truth
of his well-chosen, significant anecdotes, they laughed at his sallies,
they applauded heartily at the end when the lecturer sat down, the
little smile, that Lydia found so teasing, still on his bearded lips.
"Well, he hit things off pretty close, for a foreigner, didn't he?"
commented Madeleine cheerfully, gathering her white furs up to the
whiter skin of her long, fair throat and preparing for a rush on the
refreshment room. "He must have kept his eyes open pretty wide since he
landed."
Lydia did not answer, nor did she join in the stampede to the
dining-room. She sat still, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her
eyes very bright and dark in her pale face. She was left quite alone in
the deserted room. Across the hall was the loud, incessant uproar of
feminine conversation released from the imprisonment of an hour's
silence. From the scraps of talk that were intelligible, it might have
been one of her own receptions. Lydia heard not a mention of the
opinions to which they had been listening. Apparently, they were
regarded as an entertaining episode in a social afternoon. She listened
intently. She looked across at the crowd of her acquaintances as though
she were seeing them for the first time. In their midst was the tall
foreigner, smiling, talking, bowing, drinking tea. He was being
introduced in succession to all of his admiring auditors.
Lydia rose to go and made her way to the dressing-room on the second
floor for her wraps. As she returned toward the head of the stairs she
saw a man's figure ascending, and stood aside to let him pass. He bowed
with an unconscious assurance unlike that of any man Lydia had ever
seen, and looked at her pale face and burning eyes with some curiosity.
A faint aroma of delicate food and fading flowers and woman's
sachet-powder hung about him. It was the lecturer, fresh from his throng
of admirers. Lydia's heart leaped to a sudden valiant impulse,
astonishing to her usual shyness, and she spoke out boldly, hastily:
"Why did you tell us all that about our men? Didn't you think any of us
would realize that they are good--our men are--good and pure and kind!
Didn't you think we'd know that anything that's the matter with them
must be the matter with us, too? They had mothers as well as fathers!
It's not fair to blame everything on the men! It's not fair, and it
can't be true! We're all in together, men and women. One can't be
anything the other isn't!"
She spoke with a swift, grave directness, looking squarely into the
man's eyes, for she was as tall as he. They were quite alone in the
upper hall. From below came the clatter of the talking, eating women.
The Frenchman did not speak for a moment. For the first time the faint
smile on his lips died away. He paid to Lydia the tribute of a look as
grave as her own. Finally, "Madame, you should be French," he told her.
The remark was so unexpected an answer to her attack that Lydia's eyes
wavered. "I mean," he went on in explanation, "that you are acting as my
wife would act if she heard the men of her nation abused in their
absence. I mean also that I have delivered practically this same lecture
over thirty times in America before audiences of women, and you are the
first to--Madame, I should like to know your husband!" he exclaimed with
another bow.
"My husband is like all other American men," cried Lydia sharply,
touched to the quick by this reference. "It is because he is that I--"
She broke off with her gesture of passionate unresignation to her lack
of fluency. Already the heat of the impulse that had carried her into
speech was dying away. She began to hesitate for words.
"Oh, I can't say what I mean--you must know it, anyhow! You blame the
fathers for leaving all the bringing-up of the children to their wives,
and yet you point out that the sons keep growing up all the time to
be--to be--to be all you blame their fathers for being! If we women were
half so--fine--as you tell us, why haven't we changed things?"
The foreigner made a vivid, surprised, affirmatory gesture. "Exactly!
exactly! exactly, Madame!" he cried. "It is the question I have asked
myself a thousand times: Why is it--why is it that women so
strong-willed, so unyielding in the seeking what they desire, why is it
that apparently they have no influence on the general fabric of the
society in--"
"Perhaps it is," said Lydia unsparingly, her latent anger coming to the
surface again and furnishing her fluency, "perhaps it is because people
who see our faults don't help us to correct them, but flatter us by
telling us we haven't any, and all the time think ill of us behind our
backs."
The lecturer began to answer with aplomb and an attempt at graceful
cynicism: "Ah, Madame, put yourself in my place! I am addressing
audiences of women. Would it be tactful to--" but under Lydia's honest
eyes he faltered, stopped, flushed darkly under his heavy beard, up over
his high, narrow forehead to the roots of his gray hair. He swallowed
hard. "Madame," he said, "you have rebuked me--deservedly. I--I demand
your pardon."
"Oh, you needn't mind me," said Lydia humbly; "my opinion doesn't amount
to anything. I oughtn't to talk, either. I don't _do_ anything different
from the rest--the women downstairs, I mean. I can only see there's
something wrong--" She found the other's gaze into her troubled eyes so
friendly that she was moved to cry out to him, all her hostility gone:
"What _is_ the trouble, anyhow?"
The lecturer flushed again, this time touched by her appeal. "I proudly
put at your service any reflections I have made--as though you were my
daughter. I have a daughter about your age, who is also married--who
faces your problems. Madame, you look fatigued--will you not sit down?"
He led her to a sofa on one side of the hall and took a seat beside her.
"Is not the trouble," he began, "that the women have too much leisure
and the men too little--the women too little work, the men too much?"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" Lydia's meditations had long ago carried her past
that point; she was impatient at his taking time to state it. "But how
can we change it?"
"You cannot change it in a day. It has taken many years to grow. It has
seemed to me that one way to change it is by using your leisure
differently. Even those women who use their leisure for the best
self-improvement have not used it well. Many of my countrymen say that
the culture of American women is like a child's idea of
ornamentation--the hanging on the outside of all odd bits of broken
finery. I have not found it always so. I have met many learned women
here, many women more cultivated than my own wife. But listen, Madame,
to the words of an old man. Culture is dust and ashes if the spiritual
foundations of life are not well laid; and, believe me, it takes two, a
man and a woman, to lay those foundations. It can not be done alone."
"But how, how--" began Lydia impatiently.
"In the only way that anything can be accomplished in this world, by
working! Your women have not worked patiently, resolutely, against the
desertion of their men. Worse--they have encouraged it! Have you never
heard an American, woman say: 'Oh, I can't bear a man around the house!
They are so in the way!' Or, 'I let my husband's business alone. I want
him to let--'"
He imitated an accent so familiar to Lydia that she winced. "Oh, don't!"
she said. "I see all that."
"You must find few to see with you."
"But how to change it?" She leaned toward him as though he could impart
some magic formula to her.
"With the men, work to have them share your problems--work to share
theirs. Do not be discouraged by repeated failure. Defeat should not
exist for the spirit. And, oh, the true way--you pointed it out in your
first words. You have the training of the children. Their ideals are
yours to make. A generation is a short--"
His face answered more and more the eager intentness of her own. He
raised his hand with a gesture that underlined his next words: "But
remember always, always, what Amiel says, that a child will divine what
we really worship, and that no teaching will avail with him if we
_teach_ in contradiction to what we _are_."
They were interrupted by a loud hail from the stairs. Madeleine Lowder's
handsome head showed through the balustrade, and back of her were other
amused faces.
"I started to look you up, Lydia," she said, advancing upon them
hilariously, "I thought maybe you weren't feeling well, and then I saw
you monopolizing the lion so that everybody was wondering where in the
world he was, and you were so wrapped up that you never even noticed me,
so I motioned the others to see what a demure little cat of a sister I
have."
She stood before them at the end of this facetious explanation,
laughing, frank, sure of herself, and as beautiful as a great rosy
flower.
"Your _sister_," said the lecturer incredulously to Lydia.
"My husband's sister," Lydia corrected him, and presented the newcomer
in one phrase.
"Isn't she a sly, designing creature, Mr. Buisine?" cried Madeleine, in
her usual state of hearty enjoyment of her situation. "You haven't met
many as up-and-coming, have you now?"
"I do not know the meaning of your adjective, Mademoiselle; but it is
true that I have met few like your brother's wife."
"I'm not Mademoiselle!" Madeleine was greatly amused at the idea.
The lecturer looked at her with a return to his enigmatic smile of the
earlier afternoon. "I never saw a person who looked more unmarried than
yourself, Mademoiselle," he persisted.
"Oh, we American women know the secret of not looking married," said
Madeleine proudly.
"You do indeed," said the Frenchman with the manner of gallantry. "All
of you look unmarried."
Lydia rose to go. The lecturer looked at her, his eyes softening, and
made a silent gesture of farewell.
He turned back to Madeleine. "But I _am_," she assured him, pleased and
flattered with the centering of their persiflage on herself. She made a
gesture toward Lydia, disappearing down the stairs. "I'm as much married
as _she_ is!"
M. Buisine continued smiling. "That is quite, quite incredible," he told
her.
CHAPTER XXIX
"... in tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be. Passions spin the plot."
"Say, Lydia," said Madeleine with her bluff good humor, coming into the
house a few days after the French lecture, "say, I'm awfully sorry I
told Paul! I never supposed he'd go and get mad. It was just my fool
notion of being funny."
Lydia was dusting the balustrade, her back to her visitor. She tingled
all through at this speech, and for an instant went on with her work,
trying to decide if she should betray the fact that she knew nothing of
the incident to which Madeleine's remark seemed to refer, or if she
should, as she had done so many times already, conceal under a silence
her ignorance of what her husband told other people. She never learned
of matters pertaining to Paul's profession except from chance remarks of
his business associates. He had not even told her, until questioned,
about his great inspiration for rearranging the territory covered in
that region by his company; a plan that must have engrossed his thoughts
and fired his enthusiasm during months of apparently common life with
his wife. And Paul had been genuinely surprised, and a little put out at
her desire to know of it.
She decided that she dared not in this instance keep silent. She was too
entirely in the dark as to what Madeleine had done. "I don't know what
you're talking about, Madeleine," she said, turning around, dust-cloth
in hand, trying to speak casually.
Her sister-in-law stared. "Didn't Paul come home and give it to you? He
looked as though he were going to."
Lydia's heart sank in a vague premonition of evil. "Paul hasn't said
anything to me. Why in the world should he? Is it about 'Stashie? She's
been back several days now, but I thought he hadn't noticed her much."
"Well, he _hasn't_ said anything, that's a fact!" exclaimed Madeleine,
with the frank implication in her voice that she had not before believed
Lydia's statement. "My, no! It's not about 'Stashie. It's about the
French lecturer."
Lydia's astonishment at this unexpected answer quite took away her
breath. "_About the_--" she began.
"Why, look-y here, it was this way," explained Madeleine rapidly. "I
told you I was only joking. I thought it would be fun to tease Paul
about the mash you made on old What's-his-name--about your sitting off
on a sofa with him, and being so wrapped up you didn't even notice when
the whole gang of us came to look at you--and maybe I stretched it some
about how you looked leaning forward and gazing into his eyes--" She
broke off with a laugh, cheerfully unable to continue a serious attitude
toward life. "Oh, never you mind! It does a married man good to make him
jealous once in a while. Keeps 'em from getting too stodgy and
husbandy."
"Jealous!" cried Lydia. "Paul jealous! Of me! Never!" Her certainty on
the point was instant and fixed.
"Well, you'd ha' thought he was, if you'd seen him. I was jollying him
along--we were in the trolley, going to Endbury. I had to take that
early car so's to keep a date with Briggs, and, oh, Lydia! that brown
suit he's making for me is a _dream_, simply a dream! He's put a little
braid, just the least little bit, along--"
"What did Paul say?"
"Paul? Oh, yes--How'd I get switched off onto Briggs? Why, Paul didn't
say _anything_; that was what made me see he wasn't taking it right. He
just sat still and listened and listened till it made me feel foolish. I
thought he'd jolly me back, you know. He's usually a great hand for
that. And then when I looked at him I saw he looked as black as a
thundercloud--that nasty look he has when he's real mad. When we were
children and he'd look that way, I'd grab up any old thing and hit him
quick, so's to get it in before he hit me. Well, I was awfully sorry,
and I said, 'Why, hold on a minute, Paul, let me tell you--' but he said
he guessed I'd told him about enough, and before I could open my mouth
he dropped off the car. We'd got in as far as Hayes Avenue. I wanted to
explain, you know, that the Frenchman was old enough to be our
_grandfather_!"
"When did this happen?"
"Oh, I don't know; three or four days ago--why, Thursday, it must have
been, for after I got through with Briggs I went on to that--"
"And this is Monday," said Lydia; "four days."
At the sight of her sister-in-law's troubled eyes, Madeleine was again
overcome with facile remorse. She clapped her on the shoulder
hearteningly. "I'm awfully sorry, Lyd, but don't you go being afraid of
Paul. You're too gentle with him, anyhow. A married woman can't afford
to be. You have to keep the men in their places, and you can't do that
if you don't knock 'em the side of the head once in so often. It's good
for 'em. Honest! And about this, don't you worry your head a minute.
Like as not Paul's forgot everything about it. He'd forget anything, you
know he would, if an interesting job came up in business. And if he ever
does say anything, you just laugh and tell him about old Thingamajig's
white hair and pop eyes, and he'll laugh at the joke on himself."
Lydia drew back with a gesture of extreme repugnance. "Don't talk so--as
though Paul could be so--so vulgar."
Madeleine laughed. "I guess you won't find a man in _this_ world that
isn't 'vulgar' that way."
"Why, I've been _married_ to Paul for years--he wouldn't think I--no
matter what you told him, he couldn't conceive of my--"
Mrs. Lowder, as usual, found her brother's wife very diverting. "Of your
doing a little hand-holding on the side? Oh, go on! Flirting's no
crime! And you did--honest to goodness, you did, turn that old fellow's
head. You ought to have seen the way he looked after you."
Lydia cut her off with a sharp "Oh, _don't_!" She was now sitting, still
absently grasping the dust-cloth.
Madeleine stood for a moment looking at her in a meditative silence
rather unusual for her. "Lydia, you don't look a bit well," she said
kindly. "Are you still bothered with that nausea?" She sat down by her
sister-in-law and put her arms around her with an impulse of
affectionate pity that almost undid Lydia, always so helplessly
responsive to tenderness. "What's the matter, Lyd?" Madeleine went on.
"Something's not going just right. Are you scared about this second
confinement? Is Paul being horrid about something? You just take my
advice, and if you want anything out of him, you fight for it. Nobody
gets anything in this world if they don't put up a fight for it."
Lydia began to say that there were some things which lost their value if
obtained by fighting, but suddenly she stopped her faltering words, drew
a long breath, and laid her head on the other's shoulder. More than
wifely loyalty kept her silent. All her lifelong experience of Madeleine
crystallized into a certainty of her limitations, and with this
certainty came the realization that Madeleine stood for all the circle
of people about her. Lydia had learned one lesson of life. She knew, she
now knew intensely, that there was no cry by which she could reach the
spiritual ear of the warm human beings so close to her in the body. She
knew there was no language in which she could make intelligible her
travail of soul. In the moment the two women sat thus, she renounced,
once for all, any hope of outside aid in her perplexities. They lay
between herself and Paul. She could hope to find expression and relief
for them only through that unique privilege of marriage, utter intimacy.
She kissed her husband's sister gently, comforted somewhat by the mere
fact of her presence. "You're good to bother about me, Maddely," she
said, using a pet name of their common childhood. "I guess I'm not
feeling very well these days. But that's to be expected."
"Well, I tell you what, I wouldn't be so patient about it as _you_ are!"
cried the other wife. "It's simply horrid to have all this a second
time, and Ariadne so little yet. It's _mean_ of Paul."
She continued voicing an indignant sympathy with her usual energy. Lydia
looked at her with a vague smile. At the first words of the childless
woman, she had been filled with the mother-hunger which gave savor to
her life during those days. As Madeleine went on, she sat unheeding,
lost in a fond impatience to feel the tiny body on her knees, the downy
head against her cheek. Her arms ached with emptiness. For an instant,
so vivid was her sense of it, the child seemed to be there, in her arms.
She felt the eager tug of the soft lips at her breast. She looked
down--"Well, anyhow, you poor, dear thing! I hope you will bottle-feed
this one! It would be just a little _too_ much if they made you nurse
it!"
Lydia did not even attempt a protest. Her submissive, entire acceptance
of spiritual isolation seemed an answer to many of the conflicting
impulses which had hitherto distracted her. She wished that she could
reassure Madeleine by telling her that she would never again make
another "odd" speech to her. She renounced all common life except the
childlike, harmless, animal-like one of mutual material wants, and this
renunciation brought her already a peace which, though barren, was
infinitely calming after her former struggling uncertainties. "How did
those waists come out that you sent to the cleaner's, Madeleine?" she
asked, in a bright, natural tone of interest. "I hope the blue one
_didn't_ fade."
Madeleine reported to her husband that Lydia had seemed in one of her
queer notional moods at first, but cheered up afterward and talked more
"like folks," and seemed more like herself than she had since her father
died. They had a real good visit together she said, and she began to
think she could get some good satisfaction out of having Lydia for a
neighbor, after all.
But after Lydia was alone, there sprang upon her the terror of living on
such terms with Paul. No, no! Never that! It would be dying by inches!
Beaten back to this last inner stronghold of the dismantled castle of
her ideals of life, she prepared to defend it with the energy of
desperation.
She did not believe Madeleine's story, or, at least, not her
interpretation of Paul's attitude, but she felt a dreary chill at his
silence toward her. It seemed to her that their marriage ought to have
brought her husband an irresistible impulse to have in all their
relations with each other a perfect openness. She resolved that she
would begin to help him to that impulse that very day; now, at once.
When Paul came in, he seemed abstracted, and went directly upstairs to
pack a satchel, stating with his usual absence of explanatory comment
that he was called to Evanston on business. He ate his dinner rather
silently, glancing furtively at the paper. Only at the
breakfast-table--such was their convention--did he allow himself to
become absorbed in the news.
Ariadne prattled to her mother of her adventures in the kitchen, where
Patsy O'Hern, 'Stashie's cousin Patsy, was visiting her, and he made
Ariadne a "horse out of a potato and toothpicks for legs, and a little
wagon out of a matchbox, and a paper doll to sit and drive, and Patsy
was perfectly loverly, anyhow, and he was making such a lot of money
every day, and, oh, he made the wheels out of potato, too, as round as
could be he cut it, and he gave every cent of it to his grandmother and
she loved him as much as she did 'Stashie, and wasn't it good to have
'Stashie back, and--"
Paul frowned silently over his pie.
"Come, dear; it's seven o'clock and bedtime," said Lydia, leading the
little girl away.
When she came back she noticed by the clock that she had been gone
almost half an hour. She was surprised to see Paul still in the
dining-room, as though he had not stirred since she left him. He was
sitting in an attitude of moody idleness, singular with him, his elbows
on the table, his chin in his hands. He looked desperately, tragically
tired.
No inward monitor gave any warning to Lydia of what the next few moments
were to be in her life. She crossed the room quickly to her husband,
feeling a great longing to be close to him.
As she did so, a rattling clatter of tin was heard from the kitchen,
followed by a shout of roaring laughter. Something in Paul's tense face
snapped. He started up, overturning his chair. "Oh, _damn_ that idiot!"
he cried.
The door opened behind them. 'Stashie stood there, her red hair hidden
in a mass of soft dough that was beginning to ooze down over her
perspiring, laughing face. "I just wanted to show you what a comycal
thing happened, Mis' Hollister," she began, in her familiar way.
"'Twould make a pig laugh, now! I'd begun my bread dough, and put it on
a shelf, an'--"
"Oh, get out of here!" Paul yelled at her furiously. "And less noise out
of you in the kitchen!"
He slammed the door shut on her retreat, and turned to Lydia with a face
she did not recognize. The room grew black before her eyes.
"I suppose you still prefer that dirty Irish slut to my wishes," he
said.
His words, his accent, the quality of his voice, were the zigzag of
lightning to his wife. The storm burst over her head like thunder.
She was amazed to feel a great wave of anger surge up in her, responsive
to his own. She cried, in outraged resentment at his injustice: "You
know very well--" and stopped, horrified at the passion which rose
clamoring to her lips.
"I know very well that my home is the last place where my wishes are
consulted," said Paul, catching her up.
"I will dismiss 'Stashie to-morrow," returned Lydia with a bitter,
proud brevity.
"You're rather slow to take a hint. How long has she been with us? As
for your saying that you can't get anyone else, and can't keep house
decently as other decent people do, there isn't a word of truth in it!
You can do whatever you care enough about to try to do. You didn't make
an incompetent mess of taking care of the baby as you did out of that
disgusting dinner party!"
It was the first time he had ever spoken outright to her of that
experience. Lydia was transfixed to hear the poison of the memory as
fresh in his voice as though it had happened yesterday.
"I'm simply not worth putting yourself out for," went on Paul, turning
away and picking up his overcoat. "I'm only a common, ignorant,
materialistic beast of an American husband!" He added in an insulting
tone: "I suppose you'd like two husbands; one to earn your living for
you, and one to talk to about your soul and to exchange near-culture
with!"
He had not looked at Lydia as he poured out this sudden flood of
acrimony, but at her quick, fierce reply, he faced her.
"I'd like _one_ husband," she cried white with indignation.
"And I'd like a wife!" Paul flashed back at her hotly. "A wife that'd be
a help and not a hindrance to everything I want to do--a wife that'd be
loyal to me behind my back, and not listen to sneaking foreigners
telling her that she's a misunderstood martyr--_martyr_!" His sense of
injury exalted him. "Yes; all you American wives are martyrs, all right,
I must say. While your husbands are working like dogs to make you money,
you're sitting around with nothing to do but drink tea and listen to a
foreigner who tells you--in summer time, while you're enjoying the cool
breeze out here on a--maybe you think a dynamo-room's a funny place to
be, with the thermometer standing at--what am I _doing_ when I'm away
from you? Enjoying myself, no doubt. Maybe you think it's enjoyment to
travel all night on a--maybe you think it's nice to make yourself
conspicuous with another man that's been abusing your--"
Lydia could hear no more for a loud roaring in her ears. She knew then
the blackest moment of her life--a sickening scorn for the man before
her. Madeleine had been right, then. They were of the same blood. His
sister knew him better than--she, his wife, his wedded wife, was not to
be spared the pollution of having her husband--
"I didn't take any stock in Madeleine's nasty insinuations about your
flirting with him, of course, but it showed me what you've been thinking
about me all this time I've been working like a--"
Lydia drew the first conscious breath since the beginning of this
nightmare. The earth was still under her feet, struck down to it though
she was. The roaring in her ears stopped. She heard Paul say:
"Maybe you think I'm made of iron! I tell you I'm right on my nerves
every minute! Dr. Melton threatens me with a breakdown every time I see
him!" There was a sort of angry pride in this statement. "I can't sleep!
I'm doing ten men's work! And what do I get from you? Any rest? Any
quiet? Why, these first years, when you might have made things easier
for me by taking all other cares off my mind and leaving me free for
business--they've actually been harder because of you!"
He thrust his arms into his overcoat and caught up his satchel. "I
haven't wanted anything so hard to give! Good Lord! All I asked for was
a well-kept house where I could invite my friends without being ashamed
of it, and to live like other decent people!" He moved to the door, and
put one hand, one strong, thin hand, on the knob. With the unearthly
clearness of one in a terrible accident, Lydia noticed every detail of
his appearance. He was flushed, a purple, congested color, singularly
unlike his usual indoor pallor; hurried pulses throbbed visibly, almost
audibly, at his temples; one eyelid twitched rapidly and steadily, like
a clock ticking. With a gesture as automatic as drawing breath, he
jerked out his watch and looked at it, apparently to make sure of
catching his trolley, although his valedictory was poured out with such
a passionate unpremeditation that the action must have been involuntary
and unconscious. "But I don't even ask that now--since it doesn't suit
you to bother to give it! All I ask now ought to be easy enough for any
woman to do--not to _bother_ me! Leave me alone! Keep your everlasting
stewing and fussing and hysterical putting-on to yourself! I don't
bother you with my affairs--I haven't, and I never will--why, for God's
sake, can't you-- Some men marry women who help them, and pull with them
loyally, instead of pulling the other way all the time! Such a woman
would have made me a thousand times more successful than I--"
Lydia broke in with a loud voice of anguished questioning: "Do they make
them better men?" she asked piercingly.
Her husband looked at her over his shoulder. "Oh, you and your
goody-goody cant!" he said, and going out without further speech, closed
the door behind him.
The clock struck the half-hour. Their conversation had lasted less than
five minutes.
CHAPTER XXX
TRIBUTE TO THE MINOTAUR
The scene of Paul's departure was no worse than many an outbreak in the
ordinary married life of ordinary, quick-tempered, over-tired married
people, for whom an open quarrel brings relief like the clearing of the
air after an electric storm, but to Lydia it was no such surface
manifestation of nerves. The impulse that had made them both break out
into the cruel words came from some long-gathering bitterness, the very
existence of which was like the end of all things to her. A single flash
of lightning had showed her to the edge of what a terrifying precipice
they had strayed, and then had left her in darkness.
That was how it seemed to her; she was in the most impenetrable
blackness, though the little girl played on beside her with a child's
cheerful blindness to its elder's emotion, and Anastasia detected
nothing but that her mistress had a better color than before and stepped
about quite briskly.
It was the restless activity of a tortured animal which drove Lydia from
one household task to another, hurrying her into a trembling physical
exhaustion, which, however, brought with it no instant's cessation of
the tumult in her heart. The night after Paul's departure was like a
black eternity to her turning wildly on her bed, or rising to walk as
wildly about the silent house. "But I can't stand this!--to hate and be
hated! I can not bear it! I must do something--but what? but what?" Once
she feared she had screamed out these ever-recurring words, so audibly
like a cry of agony did they ring in her ears; but, forcing herself to
an instant's immobility, she heard Ariadne's light, regular breathing
continue undisturbed.
She sat down on her bed and told herself that she would go out of her
mind if she could not think something different from this chaos of angry
misery. She fell on her knees, she sent her soul out in a supreme appeal
for help and, still kneeling, she felt the intolerable tension within
her loosen. She began to cry softly. The unnatural strength which had
sustained her gave way; she sank together in a heap, her head leaning
against the bed, her arms thrown out across it. Here Anastasia found her
the next morning, apparently asleep, although upon being called she
seemed to come to herself from a deeper unconsciousness.
Whatever it had been, the hour or two of oblivion that lay back of her
was like a wall between her soul and the worst phase of her suffering.
In answer to her cry for help, perhaps an appeal to the best in her own
nature, there had come a cessation of what was to her the only
unbearable pain--the bitter, blaming anger which had flared up in her,
answering her husband's anger like the reflection of a torch in a
mirror. In that silent hour before dawn, she had seen Paul suddenly as a
victim to forces outside himself quite as much as she was; poor, tired
Paul, with his haggard face, flushed with a wrath that was not his own,
but an involuntary expression of suffering, the scream of a man caught
in the cogs of a great machine. She hung before her mental vision now,
constantly, the picture of Paul as she had seen him when she came
downstairs; Paul leaning his chin on his hands, his jaded face white and
drawn under his thinning, graying hair.
The alleviation which came through this conception of her husband was
tempered by the final disappearance of her old feeling that Paul was
stronger, clearer-headed, than she, and that if she could but once make
him stop and understand the forces in their life which she feared, he
could conquer them as easily as he conquered obstacles in the way of
their material success. She now felt that he was not even as strong as
she, since he could not get even her faint glimpse of their common
enemy, this Minotaur of futile materialism which had devoured the young
years of their marriage and was now threatening to destroy the
possibility of a great, strongly-rooted affection which had lain so
clearly before them. She felt staggered by the responsibility of having
to be strong enough for two; and as another day wore on this new
preoccupation became almost as absorbing an obsession as her anger of
the night before.
But this was steadying in the very velocity with which her mind swept
around the circle of possible courses of action. Her thoughts hummed
with a steady, dizzy speed around and around the central idea that
something must be done and that she was now the only one to do it.
'Stashie thought to herself that she had never seen Mrs. Hollister look
so well, her eyes were so bright, her cheeks so pink.
Lydia had set herself the task of getting down and sorting the curtains
in the house, preparatory to sending them to the cleaner. Above the
piles of dingy drapery, her face shone, as 'Stashie had noted, with a
strange, feverish brightness. Her knees shook under her, but she walked
about quickly. Ariadne ran in and out of the house, chirping away to her
mother of various wonderful discoveries in the world of outdoors. Lydia
heard her as from a distance, although she gave relevant answers to the
child's talk.
"It has come down," she was saying to herself, "to a life-and-death
struggle. It isn't a question now of how much of the best in Paul, in
me, in our life, we can save. It's whether we can save _any_! How dirty
lace curtains get! It must be the soft coal--yes, it is a life and death
struggle--I must see to Ariadne's underwear. It is too warm for these
sunny days.--Oh! Oh! Paul and I have quarreled! And what about! About
such sickeningly trivial things--how badly 'Stashie dusts! There are
rolls of dust under the piano--but I thought people only
quarreled--quarreled terribly--over great things: unfaithfulness,
cruelty, differences in religion! Oh, if I only now had a religion, a
religion which would--Yes, Ariadne; but only to the edge of the driveway
and back. How muddy the driveway is! Paul said it should have more
gravel--_Paul!_ How _can_ he come back to me after such--Madeleine says
married people always quarrel--how can they look into each other's eyes
again! We must escape that sort of life! We must! We _must_!"
The thought of what she had hoped from her marriage and of what she had,
filled her with the most passionate self-reproach. It must be at least
half her fault, since she and Paul made up but one whole. As she helped
'Stashie sort the dingy curtains, she was saying over and over to
herself that she was responsible, responsible as much as for Ariadne's
health. This conception so possessed her now that she felt herself able
to accomplish anything, even the miracle needed.
To have achieved this state of passionate resolution gave her for a
moment the sense of having started upon the straight road to escape from
her nightmare; and for the first time since the door had slammed behind
Paul she drew a long breath and was able to give more than a blind gaze
to the world about her.
She noticed that, though it was after twelve o'clock, Ariadne had not
been told to come to luncheon. When the little girl came running at her
mother's call, her vivid face flushed with happy play, Lydia knew a
throb of that exquisite, unreasoning parent's joy, lying too near the
very springs of life for any sickness of the spirit to affect it. Like
everything else, however, the touch of the child's tight-clinging arms
about her neck brought her back to her preoccupation. Ariadne must not
be allowed to grow up to such a regret as she felt, that she had never
known her father. There were moments, she saw them clearly, when Paul
realized with difficulty the fact of his daughter's existence, and he
never realized it as a fact involving any need for a new attitude on his
part.
"When is Daddy coming back to us _vis_ time?" asked Ariadne over her
egg.
Anastasia paused furtively at the door. She had had a divination of
trouble in the last talk between her master and mistress. The door had
slammed. Mr. Hollister had not called for the tie she was pressing for
him in the kitchen--'Stashie told herself fiercely that "killing wud be
too good for her, makin' trouble like the divil's own!" She listened
anxious for Lydia's answer.
"Daddy's coming back to us as soon as his business is done," said Paul's
wife. At the turn of her phrase she turned cold, and added with a quick
vehemence: "No, no! before that! Long before that!" She went on, to
cover her agitation and get the maid out of the room, "'Stashie, get the
baby a glass of milk."
"The front door bell's ringin'," said 'Stashie, departing in that
direction, with the assurance of her own ability to choose the proper
task for herself, so exasperating to her master.
She came back bringing Miss Burgess in her wake, Miss Burgess
apologizing for "coming right _in_, that way," exclaiming effusively at
the pretty picture made by mother and child,--"She must be such company
for you, Miss Lydia"--Miss Burgess, deferential, sure of her own
position and her hostess', and determinedly pleased with the general
state of things. Lydia repressed a sigh of impatience, but, noting the
tired lines in the little woman's face, told Anastasia to make another
cup of tea for Miss Burgess and cook her an egg.
"Oh, delighted, I'm sure! Quite an honor to have the same lunch with
little Miss Hollister."
Ariadne did not smile at this remark, though from the speaker's accent
it was meant as a pleasantry.
Miss Burgess cast about in her mind for another bit of suitable
badinage, but finding none, she began at once on the object of her
visit.
"Now, my dear, I want you to listen to all I have to say before you make
one objection. It's an idea of my very own. You'll let me get through
without interruption?"
"Yes, oh, yes," murmured Lydia, lifting Ariadne down from her high-chair
and untying the napkin from about her thin little neck.
The introduction of a new element in her surroundings had for a moment
broken the thread of her exalted resolutions. She wondered with a sore
heart, as though it had been a common lovers' quarrel, how she and Paul
could ever get over the first sight of each other again. She was
wondering how, with the most passionate resolve in the world, she could
do anything at all under the leaden garment of physical fatigue which
would weigh her down in the months to come.
Miss Burgess began in her best style, which she so evidently considered
very good indeed, that she could not doubt Lydia's attention. It was all
about a home for working-women she explained; a new charity which had
come from the East, had caught on like anything among the Smart Set of
Columbus, and was about to be introduced into Endbury. The most
exclusive young people in Columbus--the East End Set (Miss Burgess had a
genius for achieving oral capitalization) gave a parlor play for the
first benefit there, in one of the Old Broad Street Homes, and they were
willing to repeat it in Endbury to introduce it there. A Perfectly
splendid crowd was sure to come, tickets could be Any Price, and the
hostess who lent her house to it could have the glory of a most unique
affair. Mrs. Lowder would be overwhelmed with delight to have the pick
of the Society of the Capital at her house, but Miss Burgess had thought
it such an opportunity for Miss Lydia to come out of mourning with,
since it was for charity. She motioned Lydia, about to speak, sternly to
silence: "You said you wouldn't interrupt! And you haven't let me say
_half_ yet! That's your side of it--the side your dear mother would
think of if she were only here; but there's another side that you can't,
you _oughtn't_ to resist!" She finished her tea with a hasty swallow
and, going around the table, sat down by Lydia, laying her hand
impressively on the young matron's slim arm. "You're the sweetest thing
in the world, of course, but, like other people of your fortunate class,
you can't realize how perfectly awfully lucky you are, nor how unlucky
_poor_ people are! Of course it stands to reason that you can't even
imagine the life of a working-woman--you, a woman of entire leisure,
with every want supplied before you speak of it by a husband who adores
you! Why, Miss Lydia, to give you some idea let me tell you just one
little thing. Lots and lots of the working-women of Endbury live with
their families in two or three rooms right on that horrid Main Street
near their work because they can't afford _carfares_!"
Lydia looked at her without speaking. She remembered her futile,
desperate, foolish proposition to Paul to get more time together by
living near his work. With a roar, the flood of her bewilderment,
diverted for a time, broke over her again. She braced herself against
it. Through her companion's dimly-heard exhortations that, from her high
heaven of self-indulgence, she stoop to lend a hand to her less favored
sisters, she repeated to herself, clinging to the phrase as though it
were a magic formula: "If I can only wish hard enough to make things
better, nothing can prevent me."
The telephone bell rang, and Miss Burgess interrupted herself to say:
"It's for me, I know. I told them at the office to call me up here." She
got herself out of the room in her busy way, her voice soon coming in a
faint murmur from the far end of the hall.
Lydia walked to the window to call Ariadne in to put on a wrap, the
thought and action automatic. She had buttoned the garment about the
child's slender body before she responded again to the little living
presence. Then she took her in a close embrace. With the child's breath
on her face, with her curls exhaling the fresh outdoor air, there came
to pass for poor Lydia one of the strange, happy mysteries of the
contradictory tangle that is human nature. She had felt it often with
Paul after one of their long separations--how mere physical presence can
sometimes bring a consolation to the distressed spirit.
As she held her child to her heart, things seemed for a moment quite
plain and possible. Why, Paul was Ariadne's father! As soon as he was
with her again, all would be well. It must be. Nothing could separate
her from the father of her baby! They were one flesh now. There was
still all their lifetime to grow to be one in spirit. She had only to
try harder. They had simply started on a false track. They were so
young. So many years lay before them. There was plenty of time to turn
back and start all over again--there was plenty of time to--
"Oh, my dear! my dear!" Miss Burgess faltered weakly into the room and
sank upon a chair.
Lydia sprang up, Ariadne still in her arms, and faced her for a long
silent instant, searching her face with passion. Then she set the little
girl down gently. "Run out and play, dear," she said, and until the door
had shut on the child she did not stir. Her hand at her throat, "Well?"
she asked.
Miss Burgess began to cry into her handkerchief.
"It's Paul!" said Lydia with certainty. She sat down.
The weeping woman nodded.
"He has left me," Lydia continued in the same dry tone of affirmation.
"I know. We had a quarrel, and he has left me."
Miss Burgess looked up, quite wild with surprise, her sobs cut short,
her face twisted. "Oh, no--no--no!" she cried, running across the room
and putting her arms about the other. "No; it's not that! He--he--the
man who telephoned said they were testing the dynamo, and your husband
insisted on--"
Lydia came to life like a swimmer emerging into the air after a long
dive. "Oh, he's hurt! He's hurt!" she cried, bounding to her feet. "I
must go to him. I must go to him!"
She tore herself away from the reporter and darted toward the door. The
older woman ran after her, stumbling, sobbing, putting hands of
imploring pity on her.
Although no word was spoken, Lydia suddenly screamed out as though she
had been stabbed. "_NO! Not that!_" she cried.
"Yes, yes, my poor darling!" said the other.
Lydia turned slowly around. "Then it is too late. We never can do
better," she said.
Miss Burgess tried helplessly to unburden her kind heart of its aching
sympathy. "You spoke of a little disagreement, but, oh, my dear, don't
let that be the last thought. Think of the years of perfect love and
knowledge you had together."
"We never knew each other," said Lydia. Her voice did not tremble.
"Oh, don't! don't!" pleaded Miss Burgess, alarmed. "You mustn't let it
unhinge you so! Such a perfect marriage!"
"We were never married," said Lydia. She leaned against the wall and
closed her eyes.
"Oh, help! Someone!" called the poor reporter. "Somebody come quick."
Lydia opened her eyes. She spoke still in a low, steady voice, but in it
now was a shocking quality from which the other shrank back terrified.
"_I could have loved him!_" she said.
"Quick--'Stashie--hurry--keep the baby out of the room! Your mistress
has fainted!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BOOK IV
"BUT IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR ARIADNE"
CHAPTER XXXI
PROTECTION FROM THE MINOTAUR
Dr. Melton burst open the door of the house in the Black Rock woods, and
running to the owner caught hold of his bared brown arm. "Paul Hollister
is dead!" he cried.
"I read the papers," said Rankin, looking down at him without stirring.
"The damn fool!" cried the doctor, his face working. "Just now! There's
another child expected."
Rankin's inscrutable gravity did not waver at this speech. He felt the
hand that rested on his arm tremble, and he was thinking, as Judge Emery
had so often thought, that perhaps one reason for the doctor's success
in treating women was a certain community of too-responsive nerves. "You
can hardly blame a man because the date of his death is inconvenient,"
he said reasonably. He drew up one of his deep chairs and pushed the
doctor into it. "Sit down and get your breath. You look sick. How do you
happen to be up so early? It's hardly daylight."
"Up! You don't suppose I've been to bed! Lydia--" His voice halted.
Rankin's quiet face stirred. "She feels it--terribly?"
"I can't make her out! I can't make her out!" The doctor flung this
confession of failure before him excitedly. "I don't know what's in her
mind, but she's evidently dangerously near--women in her condition
never have a very settled mental poise, anyhow, and this sudden
shock--they _telephoned_ it--and there was nobody there but that fool
Flora--"
"Do you mean that Mrs. Hollister is out of her mind?" asked Rankin
squarely.
"I don't know! I don't know, I tell you! She says strange
things--strange things. When I got there yesterday afternoon, she was
holding Ariadne--you knew, didn't you? that she called their little girl
Ariadne--?"
Rankin sat down, white to the lips. "No," he said, "I didn't know that.
I never heard anything about--about her married life."
"Well, she was holding Ariadne as close as though she was expecting
kidnapers. I came in and she looked up--God! Rankin, with what a face of
fear! It wasn't grief. It was terror! She said: 'I must save the
children--I mustn't let it get the children, too.' I asked her what she
meant, and she went on in a whisper that fairly turned the blood
backward in my veins, 'The Minotaur! He got Paul--I must hide the
children from him!' And that's all she would say. I managed to put
Ariadne to bed, though Lydia screamed at the idea of having her out of
her sight, and I gave Lydia a bromide and made her lie down. I think she
knew me--oh, yes, I'm sure she did--why, she seemed like herself in
every way but that one--but all night long she has wakened at intervals
with a shriek and would not be quieted until she had felt of Ariadne.
Nothing I said has had the slightest effect. I'm at my wits' end! If she
doesn't get quieted soon--I finally gave her an opiate--enough to drug
her senseless for a time--I don't know what to do! I don't know what to
do!" He dropped his head into his hands and sat silent, shivering.
Rankin was looking at him, motionless, his powerful hands gripping his
knees. He did not seem to breathe at all.
The doctor sprang up and began to trot about, kicking at the legs of
the furniture and biting his nails. "Yes, I can, too! I do blame him for
the date of his death!" He went back angrily to an earlier remark.
"Hollister killed himself as gratuitously as if he had taken a pistol!
And he did it out of sheer, devilish vanity--ambition! He had worked
himself almost insane, anyhow. I'd warned him that he must take it easy,
get all the rest he could. His nerves were like fiddle-strings. And what
did he do? Made a night trip to Evanston to superintend a job entirely
outside his work. The inspector gave the machines the regular test; but
Paul wasn't satisfied. Said they hadn't come up to what he'd guaranteed
to get the contract; took charge of the test himself, ran the speed up
goodness knows how high. The inspector said he warned him, but Paul had
got going and nothing could stop
him--speed-mad--efficiency-mad--whatever you call it. And at last the
fly-wheel on the engine couldn't stand it. It went through four floors
and tore a hole in the roof--they say, in their ghastly phrase, there
isn't enough left of him for a funeral! The other men left widows and
children, too, I suppose--Oh, damn! damn! damn!" He stopped short in the
middle of the floor, his teeth chattering, his hand at his mouth.
Rankin's face showed that he was making a great effort to speak. "Would
I be allowed to see her?" he asked finally.
The doctor spun round on him, amazed. "You? Lydia? Why in the world?"
"Perhaps I could quiet her. I have been able to quiet several delirious
sick people when others couldn't."
"I don't even know she's delirious--that's what puzzles me. She seems--"
"Will you let me try?" asked Rankin again.
* * * * *
When they reached the house in Bellevue, Lydia was still in a heavy
stupor, so Mrs. Sandworth told them, showing no surprise at Rankin's
appearance. The two men sat down outside the door of her room to wait.
It was a long hour they passed there. Rankin sat silent, holding on his
knee little Ariadne, who amused herself quietly with his watch and the
leather strap that held it. He took the back off, and let her see the
little wheel whirring back and forth. His eyes never left the child's
serious, rosy face. Once or twice he laid his large, work-roughened hand
gently on her dark hair.
Dr. Melton fidgeted about, making excursions into the sick room and
downstairs to look after his business by telephone, and, when he sat by
the door, relieving his overburdened heart from time to time in some
sudden exclamation. "Paul hasn't left a penny, of course," one of these
ran, "and he hadn't finished paying for the house. But she'll come
naturally to live with Julia and me." At these last words, in spite of
his painful preoccupation, a tender look of anticipation lighted his
face.
Again, he said: "What crazy notion can it be about the whatever-it-was
getting Paul?" Later, "Was there ever such a characteristic death?"
Finally, with a long sigh: "Poor Paul! Poor Paul! It doesn't seem more
than yesterday that he was a little boy. He was a brave little boy!"
Mrs. Sandworth came to the door. "She's beginning to come to herself, I
think. She stirs, and moves her hands about."
As she spoke, there was a scream from the bedroom: "My baby! My baby!"
Rankin sprang to his feet, holding Ariadne on one arm, and stepped
quickly inside. "Here is the baby," he said in a quiet voice. "I was
holding her all the time you slept. I will not let the Minotaur come
near her."
Lydia looked at him long, with no sign of recognition. The room was
intensely silent. A drop of blood showed on Dr. Melton's lower lip where
his teeth gripped it.
"Nobody else sees it," said Lydia in a hurried, frightened tone. "They
won't believe me when I say it is there. They won't take care of
Ariadne. They can't--"
"I see it," Rankin broke in. He went on steadily: "I will take care
that it does not hurt Ariadne."
"Do you promise?" asked Lydia solemnly.
"I promise," said Rankin.
Lydia looked about her wonderingly, with blank eyes. "I think, then, I
will lie down and rest a little," she said, in a thin, weak voice. "I
feel very tired. I can't seem to remember what makes me so tired." She
sank back on the pillows and closed her eyes. Her face was like a sick
child's in its appealing, patient look of suffering. She looked up at
Rankin again. "You will not go far?" she asked.
"I shall be close at hand," he answered.
"You are very kind," murmured Lydia, closing her eyes again. "I am sorry
to be so much trouble to you--but it is so important about Ariadne. I am
sorry to be so--you are--very--"
Melton touched the other man's arm and motioned him to the door.
CHAPTER XXXII
AS ARIADNE SAW IT
All that day, the tall, ruddy-haired man in working clothes sat in the
hall, within sight, though not within hearing, of the sick room, playing
with the rosy child, and exerting all his ingenuity to invent quiet
games that they could play there "where Muvver tan see us"; Ariadne soon
learned the reason for staying in one place so constantly. She was very
happy that day. Never in her life had she had so enchanting a
playfellow. He showed her a game to play with clothespins and tin plates
from the kitchen--why, it was so much fun that 'Stashie herself had to
join in as she went past. And he told one story after another without a
sign of the usual grown-up fatigue. They had their lunch there at the
end of the hall, on the little sewing-table with two dolls beside them
and the new man made Ariadne laugh by making believe feed the dolls out
of her doll's tea-set.
It was a little queer, of course, to stay right there all the time, and
to have Muvver staring at them from the bedroom at the other end of the
hall, and not to be allowed to do more than tiptoe in once or twice and
kiss her without saying a word; but when Ariadne grew confused with
trying to think this out, and the little eyes drooped heavily, the new
man picked her up and tucked her away in his arms so comfortably that,
though she meant to reach up and feel if his beard felt as red as it
looked, she fell asleep before she could raise her hand.
When she woke up it was twilight, but she was still in his arms. She
stirred sleepily, and he looked down and smiled at her. His face looked
like an old friend's--as though she had always known it. He had a
friendly smile. She was very happy. Uncle Marius came toward them,
teetering on his toes, the way he always did. "I think it's safe to
leave now, Rankin," he said. "She has fallen into a natural sleep."
The new man stood up, still holding Ariadne. How tall he was! She kept
going up and up, and when she peered over his shoulder she found herself
looking down on Uncle Marius' white head.
"How about to-morrow?" asked the new man.
"We'll see. We'll see," said Dr. Melton; and then they all went
downstairs and had toast and boiled eggs for supper. Ariadne informed
her companions, looking up from her egg with a yolky smile, "Daddy told
Muvver the other day that 'Stashie had certainly learned to boil eggs
something _fine_! And he laughed, but Muvver didn't. Was it a joke?"
"They are very good eggs indeed, and well boiled," the new man answered.
She loved the way in which he conversed with her.
"Ought we to give her some idea?" asked the doctor in a low voice.
"I would wait until she asks," said the other.
But Paul's child never asked. Once or twice she remarked that Daddy was
away longer than usual "_vis_ time," but he had never been a very
steadily recurrent phenomenon in her life, and soon her little brain,
filled with new impressions, had forgotten that he ever used to come
back.
There were many new impressions. A great deal was happening nowadays.
Every morning something different, every day new people going and
coming. Aunt Marietta, Auntie Madeleine, Uncle George from Cleveland,
whom she'd seen only once or twice before, and Great-Aunt Hollister,
whom she knew very well and feared as well as she knew her. After a time
even the husbands began to appear, the husbands she had seen so rarely;
Aunt Marietta's husband, and Aunt Madeleine's--fat, bald Mr. Lowder, who
smelled of tobacco and soap and took her up on his lap--as much as he
had--and gave her a big round dollar and kissed her behind her ear and
smiled at her very kindly and held her very close. He said he liked
little girls, and he wished Auntie Madeleine would get him one some day
for a Christmas present. She informed him, filled with admiration at the
extent of her own knowledge, that he couldn't get a Christmas present
some day, but only just Christmas Day.
Mostly, however, they paid no attention to her, these many aunts and
uncles who came and went. And, oddly enough, Uncle Marius always shut
the door to Muvver's room when they came, and wouldn't let them, no
matter how much they wanted to, go in and see Muvver, who was, she
gathered, very sick. Ariadne didn't see, really, why they came at all,
since they couldn't see Muvver and they certainly never so much as
looked at 'Stashie, dear darling 'Stashie--more of a comfort these queer
days than ever before--and they never, never spoke to the new man, who
came and went as though nobody knew he was there. They would look right
at him and never see him. Everything was very hard for a little girl to
understand, and she dared ask no questions.
Everybody seemed to be very angry, and yet not at her. Indeed, she took
the most prodigious care to avoid doing anything naughty lest she
concentrate on herself this now widely diffused disapprobation. Never in
her life had she tried so hard to be good, but nobody paid the least
attention to her--nobody but the new man and 'Stashie, and they weren't
the angry ones. The others stood about in groups in corners, talking in
voices that started in to be low and always got loud before they
stopped. Ariadne added several new words to her vocabulary at this time,
from hearing them so constantly repeated. When her dolls were bad now,
she shook them and called them "Indecent! indecent!" and asked them,
with as close an imitation as she could manage, of Great-Aunt
Hollister's tone, "What _do_ you suppose people are thinking! What _do_
you suppose people are thinking!" Or she knocked them into a corner and
said "Shocking! Shocking!"
One day she stopped Uncle Marius, hurrying past her up the stairs, and
asked him: "What are you thinking of, Uncle Marius?"
"What am I thinking of? What do you mean?" he repeated, his face and
eyes twitching the way they did when he couldn't understand something
right off.
"Why, Auntie Madeleine keeps asking everybody all the time, 'What _can_
the doctor be thinking of?' I just wondered."
He bent to kiss her raspingly--there were stiff little stubby white
hairs coming out all over his face--and he said, as he trotted on up the
stairs, "I am thinking of making sure that you have a mother, my poor
dear."
And then there was a bigger change one day. She went to bed in her own
little crib, and when she woke up she wasn't there at all, but in a big
bed in a room at Aunt Julia's; and Aunt Julia was smiling at her, and
hugging her, and saying she was so glad she had come to live with her
and Uncle Marius for a while. Ariadne found out that Uncle Marius had
brought her and Muvver the night before in a carriage all the way from
Bellevue. She regretted excessively that she had not been awake to enjoy
the adventure.
At Aunt Julia's, things were quieter. All at once the other people, the
other uncles and aunts, had disappeared. That, of course, was because
she and Muvver were at Aunt Julia's. She conceived of the house in
Bellevue as still filled with their angry faces and voices, still
echoing to "Indecent! indecent!" and "What _do_ you suppose people
are saying?"
There was a long, long time after this when nothing special happened.
The new man continued to come here, and his visits were the only events
in Ariadne's quiet days. Apparently he came to see Ariadne, for he never
went to see Muvver at all, as he used to do in Bellevue. He took Ariadne
out in the back yard as the weather began to get warmer, and showed her
lots of outdoor plays. He was as nice as ever, only a good deal whiter;
and that was odd, for they were now in May, and from playing outdoors
all the time Ariadne herself was as brown as a berry. At least, that was
what Aunt Julia said. Ariadne accepted it with her usual patient
indulgence of grown-ups' mistakes. There was not, of course, a single
berry that was anything but red or black, or at least a sort of blue,
like huckleberries in milk. She and 'Stashie had gone over them, one by
one; they knew.
Uncle Marius remembered to shave himself nowadays. In fact, everything
was more normal. Ariadne began to forget about the exciting time in
Bellevue. Muvver wasn't in bed all the time now, but sat up in a chair
for part of the day and even, if one were ever so quiet, could listen to
accounts of what happened in Ariadne's world and could be told how Aunt
Julia said that 'Stashie was quite a help as second girl if you just
remembered to put away the best china, and that they had had eight new
cooks since Ariadne had been there, but the second _would_ have stayed,
only her mother got sick. The others just left. But Aunt Julia didn't
mind. When there wasn't any cook, if it happened to be 'Stashie's day
off, they all had bread and milk for supper, just as she had, and they
let her set the table, and she could do it ever so well only she forgot
_some_ things, of course, and Uncle Marius never got mad. He just said
he hoped eating bread and milk like her would make him as good as she
was--and she _was_ good--oh, Muvver, she was trying ever so hard to be
good--
"Come, dear," said Aunt Julia, "Mother's getting tired. We'd better go."
It was only after she went away, sometimes only when she lay awake in
her strange big bed, that Ariadne remembered that Muvver never said a
word, but only smoothed her hair and kissed her.
She and the new man used to play out in the old grape-arbor in the back
yard, and it was there, one day in mid-May, that Uncle Marius came
teetering out and called the new man to one side, only Ariadne could
hear what they said. Uncle Marius said: "It's no use, Rankin. It's a
fixed idea with her. She isn't violent any more, but she hasn't changed.
She is certainly a little deranged, but not enough for legal restraint.
She could take Ariadne and disappear any day. I'm in terror lest she do
that. I've no authority to prevent her. She won't talk to me freely
about what she is afraid of. She doesn't seem to trust me--_me_!"
Ariadne found the conversation as dull as all overheard grown-ups' talk,
and tried to busy herself with a corn-cob house the new man had been
showing her how to build. Two or three times lately he had taken her out
to his little house in the woods and showed her a lot of tools, and told
her what they were for, and said if she were older he would teach her
how to use them. Ariadne's head was full of the happy excitement of
those visits. Corn-cob houses were for babies, she thought now.
After a time, Uncle Marius went away, slamming the front gate after him
and stamping away up the street as though he were angry, only he did all
kinds of queer things without being angry. In fact, she had never seen
him angry. Perhaps he and Muvver were different from other people and
never were.
She looked up with a start. The new man had come back to the arbor, but
he did not look like play. He looked queer, so queer that Ariadne's
sensitive lower lip began to tremble and the corners of her mouth to
draw down. She could _not_ remember having done anything naughty. She
was frightened by the way he looked. And yet, he picked her up quite
gently, and held her on his knee, and asked her if Muvver could walk
about the house yet.
"Oh, yes," she told him, "and came down to dinner last night."
The new man put her down, and asked her with a "please" and "I'd be much
obliged" as though she were a grown-up herself, if she would do
something for him--go to Muvver and ask her if she felt strong enough to
come down into the grape-arbor to see him. Tell her he had something
very special to say to her.
Ariadne went, skipping and hopping in pleasurable excitement at her own
importance, and returned triumphantly to say that Muvver said she would
come. She wondered if he felt too grown-up for cob houses himself. He
hadn't built it any higher when she was gone. He looked as if he hadn't
even winked. While she stood wondering at his silence, his face got very
white. He stood up looking toward the house. Muvver was coming out, very
slowly, leaning on the railing to the steps--Muvver in the nightgowny
dress Aunt Julia had made her, only it wasn't really nightgowny, because
it was all over lace--Muvver with her hair in two braids over her
shoulders and all mussed up where she'd been lying down. Ariadne
wondered that she hadn't smoothed it a little. She knew what people
would say to _her_ if she came around with her hair looking like that.
The man went forward to meet Muvver, and gave her his hand, and they
neither of them smiled or said how do you do, but came back together
toward the arbor. And when they got there Muvver sat down quick, as
though she were tired, and laid her head back against the chair. The man
lifted Ariadne up and kissed her--he had never done that before. Now she
knew how his beard felt--very soft. She felt it against her face for a
long time. And he told her to go into the house to 'Stashie.
So she went. Ariadne always did as she was told. 'Stashie was trying to
make some ginger cookies, and the oven "jist would _not_ bake thim," she
said. They were all doughy when they came out, very much as they were
when they went in; but the dough was deliciously sweet and spicy.
'Stashie and Ariadne ate a great deal of it, because 'Stashie knew very
well from experience that the grown-ups have an ineradicable prejudice
against food that comes out of the oven "prezackly" the way it went in.
After that they had to wash their hands, all sticky with dough, and
after that 'Stashie took Ariadne on her lap and told her Irish fairy
stories, all about Cap O'Rushes and the Leprechaun, till they were
startled by the boiling over of the milk 'Stashie had put on the stove
to start a pudding. 'Stashie certainly did have bad luck with her
cooking, as she herself frequently sadly admitted.
But, oh! wasn't she darling to Ariadne! It made the lonely little girl
warm all over to be loved the way 'Stashie loved her. Sometimes when
Ariadne woke up with a bad dream it was 'Stashie who came to quiet her,
and she just hugged her up close, close, so that she could feel her
heart go thump, thump, thump. And she always, always had time to explain
things. It was wonderful how much time 'Stashie had for that--or
anything else Ariadne needed.
She was putting more milk on the stove when in dashed Uncle Marius, his
mouth wide open and his hands jumping around. "Where's your mother?
Where's Mrs. Hollister?" he cried.
"Out in the arbor," said Ariadne.
"Alone?"
"Oh, no--" Ariadne began to explain, but the doctor had darted to the
window. You could see the grape-arbor plainly from there--Muvver sitting
with her hair all mussed up around her face, listening to the new man,
who sat across the table from her and talked and talked and talked, and
never moved a finger. Uncle Marius put his hand up quick to his side and
said something Ariadne couldn't catch. She looked up, saw his face, and
ran away, terrified, to hide her face in 'Stashie's dirty apron. Now she
knew how Uncle Marius looked when he was angry. She heard him go out and
down the steps, and went fearfully to watch him. He went across the
grass to the arbor. The others looked toward him without moving, and
when he came close and leaned against the table, Muvver looked up at him
and said something, and then leaned back again, her head resting against
the chair, her eyes closed, her hands dropped down. How tired Muvver
always looked!
And just then 'Stashie spilled all the cocoa she was going to use to
flavor the pudding with. She spilled it on the stove, and it smoked and
stinked--there was nobody nowadays to forbid Ariadne to use 'Stashie's
words--and 'Stashie said there wasn't any more and they'd have to go off
to the grocery-store to get some, and if Ariadne knew where that nickel
was Mis' Sandworth give her, they could get a soda-water on the way, and
with two straws it would do for both.
CHAPTER XXXIII
WHAT IS BEST FOR THE CHILDREN?
Lydia lifted her face, white under the shadow of her disordered hair,
and said: "It is Mr. Rankin who must take care of the children--Ariadne,
and the baby if it lives."
She spoke in a low, expressionless voice, as though she had no strength
to spare. Dr. Melton's hand on the table began to shake. He answered: "I
have told you before, my dear, that there is no reason for your fixed
belief that you will not live after the baby's birth. You must not dwell
on that so steadily."
Lydia raised her heavy eyes once more to his. "I want him to have the
children," she said.
The doctor took a step or two away from the table. He was now shaking
from head to foot, and when he came back to the silent couple and took a
chair between them he made two or three attempts at speech before he
could command his voice. "It is very hard on me, Lydia, to--to have you
turn from me to a--to a stranger." His voice had grotesque quavers.
Lydia raised a thin, trembling hand, and laid it on her godfather's
sinewy fingers. She tried to smile into his face. "Dear Godfather," she
said wistfully, "if it were only myself--but the children--"
"What do you mean, Lydia? What do you mean?" he demanded with tremulous
indignation.
She dropped her eyes again and drew a long, sighing breath. "I haven't
strength to explain to you all I mean," she said gently, "and I think
you know without my telling you. You have always known what is in my
heart."
"I had thought there was some affection for me in your heart," said the
doctor, thrusting out his lips to keep them from trembling.
Lydia's drooping position changed slightly. She lifted her hands and
folded them together on the table, leaning forward, and bending full on
the doctor the somber intensity of her dark, deep-sunken eyes. "Dear
Godfather, I have no time or strength to waste." The slowness with which
she chose her words gave them a solemn weight. "I cannot choose. If it
hurts you to have me speak truth, you must be hurt. You know what a
failure I have made of my life, how I have missed everything worth
having--"
Dr. Melton, driven hard by some overmastering emotion, drew back, and
threw aside precipitately the tacit understanding he and Lydia had
always kept. "Lydia, what are you talking about! You have been more than
usually favored--you have been loved and cherished as few women--" His
voice died away under Lydia's honest, tragic eyes.
She went on as though he had not spoken. "My children must know
something different. My children must have a chance at the real things.
If I die, who can give it to them? Even if I live, shall I be wise
enough to give them what I had not wisdom or strength enough to get for
myself?"
"You speak as though I were not in the world, Lydia," the doctor broke
in bitterly, "or as though you hated and mistrusted me. Why do you look
to a stranger to--"
"Could you do for my children what you have not done for yourself?" she
asked him earnestly. "How much would you see of them? How much would you
know of them? How much of your time would you be willing to sacrifice to
learn patiently the inner lives of two little children? You would be
busy all day, like the other people I know, making money for them to
dress like other well-to-do children, for them to live in this fine, big
house, for them to go to expensive private schools with the children of
the people you know socially--for them to be as much as possible like
the fatherless child I was."
Lydia clenched her thin hands and went on passionately: "I would rather
my children went ragged and hungry than to be starved of real
companionship."
The doctor made a shocked gesture. "But, Lydia, someone must earn the
livings. You are--"
Lydia broke in fiercely: "They are not earning livings--they are earning
more dresses and furniture and delicate food than their families need.
They are earning a satisfaction for their own ambitions. They are
willing to give their families anything but time and themselves."
"Lydia! Lydia! I never knew you to be cruel before! They can not help
it--the way their lives are run. It's not that they wish to--they can
not help it! It is against an economic law you are protesting."
"That economic law has been broken by _one_ person I know," said Lydia,
"and that is the reason I--"
The doctor flushed darkly. The tears rose to his eyes. "Lydia, oh, my
dear! trust me--trust me! I, too, will--I swear I will do all that you
wish--don't turn away from me--trust me--!"
Lydia's mouth began to quiver. "Ah! don't make me say what must sound so
cruel!"
The doctor stared at her hard. "Make you say, you mean, that you _don't_
trust me."
She drew a little, pitiful breath, and turned away her head. "Yes; that
is what I mean," she said. She went on hurriedly, putting up appealing
hands to soften her words, "You see--it's the children--I _must_ do what
is best for them. It must be done once for all. Suppose you found you
couldn't now, after all these years, turn about and be different?
Suppose you found you couldn't arrange a life that the children could be
a part of, and help in, and really do their share and live with you. You
_mean_ to--I'm sure you mean to! But you never _have_ yet! How dare I
let you try if you are not sure? I can't come back if I am dead, you
know, and make a new arrangement. Mr. Rankin has proved that he can--"
At the name, the doctor's face darkened. He shot a black look at the
younger man sitting beside him in his strange silence. "What has Rankin
done?" he asked bitterly. "I should say the very point about him is that
he has done nothing."
"He has tried, he has tried, he is trying," cried Lydia, beating her
hands on the table. "Think! Of all the people I know, he is the only one
who is even trying. That was all I wanted myself. That is all I dare ask
for my children--a chance to try."
"To try what?" asked the doctor challengingly.
"To try not to have life make them worse instead of better. That's not
much to ask--but nobody I know, but one only has--"
"Simplicity and right living don't come from camping out in a shed,"
said the doctor angrily. "Externals are nothing. If the heart is right
and simple--"
"If the heart is right and simple, nothing else matters. That is what I
say," answered Lydia.
Dr. Melton gave a gesture of cutting the question short. "Well, of
course it's quite impossible! Rankin can't possibly have any claim on
your children in the event of your death. Think of all your family, who
would be--"
"_I think of them_," said Lydia with an accent so strange that the
doctor was halted. "Oh, I have thought of them!" she said again. She put
her hands over her eyes. "Could I not make a will, and appoint as
guardian--" she began to ask.
Dr. Melton cut her short with a sound like a laugh, although his face
was savage. "Did you never hear of wills being contested? How long do
you suppose a will you make under the present circumstances would stand
against an attack on it by your family and the Hollisters, with their
money and influence!"
"Oh! Oh!" moaned Lydia, "and I shall not be here to--"
Rankin stirred throughout all his great height and broke his silence.
He said to Lydia: "There is some way--there must be some way. I will
find it."
Lydia took down her hands and showed a face so ravaged by the emotions
of the colloquy that the physician in her godfather sprang up through
the wounded jealousy of the man. "Lydia, my dear, you must stop--this is
idiotic of me to allow you--not another word. You must go into the house
this instant and lie down and rest--"
He bent over her with his old, anxious, exasperated, protecting air.
Lydia seized his hands. Her own were hot and burning. "Rest! I can't
rest with all this unsettled! I go over and over it--how can I sleep!
How can you think that your little opiates will make me forget that my
children may be helpless, with no one to protect them--" She looked
about her wildly. "Why, little Ariadne may be given to _Madeleine_!" Her
horrified eyes rested again on her godfather. She drew him to her. "Oh,
help me! You've always been kind to me. Help me now!"
There was a silence, the two exchanging a long gaze. The man's forehead
was glistening wet. Finally, his breath coming short, he said: "Yes; I
will help you," and, his eyes still on hers, put out a hand toward
Rankin.
The younger man was beside them in a stride. He took the hand offered
him, but his gaze also was on the white face of the woman between them.
"We will do it together," he told her. "Rest assured. It shall be done."
The corners of Lydia's mouth twitched nervously. "You are a good man,"
she said to her godfather. She looked at Rankin for a moment without
speaking, and then turned toward the house, wavering. "Will you help me
back?" she said to the doctor, her voice quite flat and toneless; "I am
horribly tired."
* * * * *
When the doctor came back again to the arbor, Mrs. Sandworth was with
him, her bearing, like his, that of a person in the midst of some
cataclysmic upheaval. It was evident that her brother had told her.
Without greeting Rankin, she sat down and fixed her eyes on his face.
She did not remove them during the talk that followed.
The doctor stood by the table, drumming with his fingers and grimacing.
"You must know," he finally made a beginning with difficulty, "I don't
know whether you realize, not being a physician, that she is really not
herself. She has for the present a mania for providing as she thinks
best for her children's future. Of course no one not a monomaniac would
so entirely ignore your side, would conceive so strange an idea. She is
so absorbed in her own need that she does not realize what an unheard-of
request she is making. To burden yourself with two young children--to
mortgage all your future--"
Rankin broke in with a shaking voice and a face of exultation: "Good
God, Doctor! Don't grudge me this one chance of my life!"
The doctor stared, bewildered. "What are you talking about?" he asked.
"About myself. I don't do it often--let me now. Do you think I haven't
realized all along that what you said of me is true--that I have done
nothing? Done nothing but succeed smugly in keeping myself in comfort
outside the modern economic treadmill! What else could I do? I'm no
orator, to convince other people. I haven't any universal panacea to
offer! I'm only an inarticulate countryman, a farmer's son, with the
education the state gives everyone--who am I, to try to lead? Apparently
there was nothing for me to do but ignobly to take care of myself--but
now, God be thanked! I have my chance. Someone has been hurt in their
infernal squirrel-cage, and I can help--"
The older man was looking at him piercingly, as though struck by a
sudden thought. He now cut him short with, "You're not deceiving
yourself with any notion that she--"
The other answered quickly, with a smile of bitter humility: "You have
seen her look at me. She does not know whether I am a human being or
not--I am to her any strong animal, a horse, an ox--any force that can
carry Ariadne safely!" He added, in another tone, his infinitely gentle
tone: "I see in that the extremity of her anxiety."
The doctor put his hand on the other man's powerful arm. "Do you realize
what you are proposing to yourself? You are human. You are a young man.
Are you strong enough to keep to it?"
Rankin looked at him. Mrs. Sandworth leaned forward.
"I am," said Rankin finally.
The words echoed in a long silence.
The younger man stood up. "I am going to see a lawyer," he announced in
a quiet voice of return to an everyday level. "Until then, we have all
more to think over than to talk about, it seems to me."
* * * * *
After he had left them the brother and sister did not speak for a time.
Then the doctor said, irritably: "Julia, say something, for Heaven's
sake. What did you think of what he said?"
"I didn't hear what he said," answered Mrs. Sandworth; "I was looking at
him."
"Well?" urged her brother.
"He is a good man," she said.
A sense that she was holding something in reserve kept him silent,
gazing expectantly at her.
"How awfully he's in love with her!" she brought out finally. "That's
the whole point. He's in love with her! All this talk about 'ways of
living' and theories and things that they make so much of--it just
amounts to nothing but that he's in love with her."
"Oh, you sentimental idiot!" cried the doctor. "I hoped to get some
sense out of you."
"That's sense," said Mrs. Sandworth.
"It hasn't anything to do with the point! Why, as for that, Paul was in
love with--"
"He was _not_!" cried Mrs. Sandworth, with a sudden loud certainty.
The doctor caught her meaning and considered it frowningly. When he
spoke, it was to burst out pathetically: "_I_ have loved her all her
life."
"Oh, you!" retorted his sister, with a sad conclusiveness.
Ariadne came running out to them. "I just went to look into Muvver's
room, and she was sound asleep! Honest! She was!"
The child had heard enough of the doctor's long futile struggles with
the horrors of Lydia's sleepless nights to divine that her news was
important. She was rewarded with a startled look from her elders.
"Come!" said the doctor.
They went into the house, and silently to Lydia's half-open door. She
lay across the bed as she had dropped down when she came in, one long
dark braid hanging to the floor. They stood looking at her almost with
awe, as though they were observing for the first time the merciful
miracle of sleep. Her bosom rose and fell in long, regular breaths. The
drawn, haggard mask that had overlain her face so many months was
dissolved away in an utter unconsciousness. Her eyelashes lay on a cheek
like a child's; her mouth, relaxed and drooping, fell again into the
lines they had loved in her when she was a little girl. She looked like
a little girl again to them.
Mrs. Sandworth's hand went to her throat. She looked at her brother
through misty eyes. He closed the door gently, and drew her away, making
the gesture of a man who admits his own ignorance of a mystery.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT
"They must have gone crazy, simply crazy!" said Madeleine, making quick,
excited gestures. "Mrs. Sandworth, of course--a person can hardly blame
her for anything! She's a cipher with the rim off when the doctor has
made up his mind. But, even so, shouldn't you think in common decency
she'd have let us know what they were up to in time to prevent it? _I_
never heard a word of this sickening business of Ariadne's adoption till
day before yesterday. Did _you_?" she ended half-suspiciously.
Mrs. Mortimer stopped her restless pace up and down the old-fashioned,
high-ceilinged room, and made a gesture for silence. "I thought I heard
something--up there," she explained, motioning to the upper part of the
house. "I wonder what made Lydia so sure beforehand that she wouldn't
live through this?"
"Well, I guess from what the nurse told me there _isn't_ much chance for
her," said Madeleine in a hard voice. Her color was not so high as
usual, her beautiful face looked grim, and she spoke in a bitter tone of
seriousness that made her seem quite another person. Marietta's thin,
dark countenance gave less indication of her mood, whatever it was. She
looked sallow and worn, and only her black eyes, hot and gloomy, showed
emotion.
Both women were silent a moment, listening to the sound of footsteps
overhead. "It seems as though it _must_ be over soon now!" cried the
childless one of the two, drawing in her breath sharply. "It makes me
furious to think of women suffering so. Bertha Williamson was telling me
the other day about when her little Walter was born--it made me _sick_!"
The matron looked at her and shivered a little, but made no response.
"The nurse says Lydia is mostly unconscious now. Perhaps the worst is
over for her! Poor Lyd! What do you suppose made her act so?" went on
Madeleine, moving about restlessly, her voice uncertain. She went to the
window, and drew aside the shade to look out into the blackness. "Oh, I
wish the men would come! What time is it, do you suppose? Yes, I see;
half-past three. Oh, it _must_ be over soon! I wish they'd come! You
telegraphed George, didn't you? Heavens! how it rains!"
"He was to come on the midnight train. Is your husband--"
"Oh, he was horrid about it--wanted me to do it all myself. He's in the
midst of some big deal or other. But I told him he'd _have_ to come and
help out, or I'd--I'd _kill_ him! He'll bring the lawyer."
"Where do you suppose?" began Marietta, looking over her shoulder.
"Out in his shanty in the Black Rock woods," said Madeleine harshly,
"with no idea of what's going on. Just before you came, the doctor sent
out for a messenger to take him word, and you'd better believe I got
hold of that messenger!"
"Of course that'll make things easier," said Marietta.
"Oh, it won't be hard at all," Madeleine assured her; "the lawyer'll be
right at hand; it'll be over in a minute."
Marietta's face altered. She drew back from the other woman. "Oh,
Madeleine! you act as though--you were counting on Lydia's--"
"No; I'm not. I used to think a lot of Lydia before she disgraced poor
Paul's memory in this way! But you see it'll be easy to do, one way or
the other. If she--if she doesn't--why, Marietta, you know Lydia! She
never can hold out against you and George, the nearest she has in the
world. I should think you'd feel awfully about what people are
saying--her letting Ariadne be adopted in that scandalous way when she
had brothers and sisters. I should think you'd feel like asserting
yourselves. _I_ do, certainly! I'm just as near to Ariadne as you are!
And I know George is perfectly furious about the whole business!"
"But maybe the doctor won't let us go in, right in to her--"
A long-cherished grudge rose to the surface in Mrs. Lowder's energetic
reply: "Well, I guess this is one time when the high-and-mighty Dr.
Melton'll have to be shoved on one side, and if necessary I'll do the
shoving!"
"You feel justified?"
"Justified! I should think I do! Justified in keeping my brother's child
out of the clutches of that--and if my husband and your brother together
can't raise the cash and the pull to get Ariadne away from him, too, I
miss my guess. They will; of course they will, or what's the use of
having money when you go to law!"
Marietta was silent. Madeleine took her lack of responsiveness as due to
the resentment of a poor person to her remarks as to the value of wealth
in a democracy. She frowned, regretting a false step, and went on
conciliatorily: "Of course we're only doing what any decent family is
bound to do--protecting the children. It's what Lydia herself would want
if she were in her right mind."
She fell silent now, restless, fidgeting about, picking up small objects
and setting them down unseeingly, and occasionally going to the window
to look out at the hot, rainy night. She was in mourning for Paul, and
above her black draperies her face was now like marble.
Mrs. Mortimer, also in black, sat in a determinedly passive silence.
Finally, the younger woman broke out: "Oh, I'll go crazy if I just stay
here! I'm going upstairs to see the nurse again."
In an instant she was back, her face whiter than before.
"It's a boy--alive, all right--half an hour ago. Would you think they'd
let us sit here and never tell us--" Her voice changed. "A little boy--"
She sat down.
"How is Lydia?" asked Lydia's sister.
"--a little boy," said Madeleine. She addressed the other woman
peremptorily. "I want him! You can have Ariadne!" She flushed as she
spoke, and added defiantly: "I know I always said I didn't want
children!"
"How is Lydia?" Marietta broke in with an angry impatience.
"Very low, the nurse said; Dr. Melton wouldn't give any hope."
Marietta's face twitched. Her large white hands clasped each other hard.
"I'm going into the doctor's office to telephone my husband," went on
Madeleine; "there's not a minute to lose."
After she was alone, Mrs. Mortimer's thin, dark face settled into tragic
repose. She leaned back her head and closed her eyes, from which a slow
tear ran down over her sallow cheeks. There was no sound but the patter
of summer rain on the porch roof outside.
Firm, light steps came hastily to the outer door, the door clicked open
and shut, the steps came down the hall. Mrs. Mortimer sat up and opened
her eyes. She saw a tall man in rough clothes, hatless, with raindrops
glistening on his bright, close-cropped hair and beard. He was
hesitating at the foot of the stairs, but at her slight movement he
caught sight of her and rushed toward her. "Has she--is there--" he
began.
Mrs. Mortimer gazed intently into his quivering face. "My sister has
given birth to a son, and lies at the point of death," she said with her
unsparing conciseness, but not harshly.
The man she addressed threw up one hand as though she had struck him,
and took an aimless, unsteady step. Mrs. Mortimer did not turn away her
eyes from the revelation of his face. Her own grew sterner. She was
trying to bring herself to speak again. She put her hand on his arm to
attract his attention, and looked with a fierce earnestness into his
face. "Listen," she said. "We were wrong, all of us, about Lydia. We
were wrong about everything. You were right. I wanted to tell you. If my
sister had lived--she is so young--I hoped--" She turned away to hide
the sudden break-up of her rigid calm. "Little Lydia!" she cried. "Oh,
misery! misery!"
Behind them was the sound of a shutting door and a key turned in the
lock. They both spun about and saw Mrs. Lowder slip the key into the
bosom of her dress. Her aspect of white determination suited this
theatrical gesture, as she placed herself quickly before the door. "If
you will promise me solemnly that you will leave the house at once, I
will let you out," she said, in a high, shaking voice.
Rankin did not answer. He looked at her as though he did not see her.
"What business have you here, anyhow?" she went on fiercely.
"I am here to adopt Mrs. Hollister's second child," stated Rankin,
collecting himself with an effort.
Mrs. Lowder's pale face flushed. "You'll do nothing of the sort. I shall
adopt my brother's child myself! How _dare_ you--a perfect stranger--"
"Mrs. Hollister wishes it," said Rankin.
"Lydia is out of her mind--if she is alive!" said Madeleine, trembling
excitedly, "and the child's own relatives are the proper--you needn't
think you are going to keep Ariadne, either! It can be proved in any
court that Lydia was crazy, and that her family are the ones that ought
to--"
"That will be decided in the future," said Rankin. "For the present I
have a legal right to Ariadne, and I shall have to the boy!"
"Do you mean you would dare to lay hands on a woman?" cried Madeleine,
extending her arms across the door.
Rankin turned, and in one stride had reached the window, which stood
open to the hot, rainy summer night. He was gone in an instant.
"Quick! quick! Lock the front door!" cried Madeleine, fumbling with the
key. She turned it and darted into the hallway, and fell back, crying
angrily: "Oh, no! there's the back door--and the doctor's office and all
the windows. It's no use! It's no use!" She broke into a storm of sobs.
"You didn't help a bit!" she cried furiously to the other woman. "You
didn't even try to help!"
It was an accusation against which Marietta did not attempt to defend
herself.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE SWAYING BALANCE
Dr. Melton was at the top of the stairs as the other man came bounding
up. "Where in God's name have you been?" he demanded. "Did you start as
soon as my messenger--"
"No messenger came--only 'Stashie just now. I started the instant she--"
"Have you the paper--the contract--whatever it--"
Rankin showed a flash of white in his pocket. "Is she able to sign it?"
"Oh, she _must_! She won't have an instant's peace until she does. She
has been wild because you were so late in--"
Their hurried, broken colloquy was cut short by a nurse who came to Dr.
Melton, saying, "The patient is always asking if the gentleman who is
to--"
"Yes, yes; he is here." The doctor motioned her to precede them. "Go in;
you're needed as a witness."
He held Rankin back an instant at the door. "Remember! No heroics! Just
have the signing done as quickly as possible and get out!" His little
wizened face looked ghastly in the dim light of the hall, but his voice
was firm, and his hand did not tremble.
Rankin followed him into the bedroom, which was filled with a strong
odor of antiseptics. The nurse turned on the electric light, shading it
with her hand so that the light fell only on the lower part of the bed,
leaving Lydia's head in the shadow.
She lay very straight and stark, as though, thought Rankin despairingly,
she were already dead. Her right arm was out over the sheet, her thin
hand nerveless. Her face was very white, her lips swollen and bleeding
as though she had bitten them repeatedly. She was absolutely motionless,
lying on her back with closed eyes. At the slight sound made by the men
in entering, she opened her eyes and looked at them. Every vestige of
color dropped out of Rankin's face. Her eyes were alive, sane,
exalted--Lydia's own eyes again.
He was holding the paper open in his hand, and without a word knelt down
by the bed, offering it to her mutely. Their eyes met in a long gaze.
The doctor and nurse looked away from this mute communion. Rankin put a
pen in Lydia's fingers and held up the paper. With, a faint, sighing
breath, loud in the silent room, she raised her hand. It fell to the bed
again. Dr. Melton then knelt beside her, put his own sinewy, corded
fingers around it and guided it to the paper. The few lines were traced.
Lydia's hand dropped and her eyes closed. Rankin stood up to go.
The nurse turned off the light and the room was again in a half
obscurity, the deep, steady voice of the rain coming in through the open
windows, the sweet summer-night smells mingling with the acrid odor of
chemicals, Lydia lying straight and stark under the sheet--but now her
eyes were open, shining, fixed on Rankin. Their light was the last he
saw as he closed the door behind him.
After a time the doctor came out and joined Rankin waiting at the head
of the stairs. He looked very old and tired, but the ghastly expression
of strain was replaced with a flickering restlessness. He came up to
Rankin, blinking rapidly, and touched him on the arm. "Look here!" he
whispered. "Her pulse has gone down from a hundred and fifty to a
hundred and thirty."
He sat down on the top step, clasped his hands about his knees, and
leaned his white head against the balustrade. He looked like some small,
weary, excited old child. "Lord, Rankin! Sit down when you get a
chance!" he whispered. "If you'd been through what I have! And you
needn't try to get me to add another word to what I've just told you. I
don't dare! It may mean nothing, you know. It may very likely mean
nothing. Good Heavens! The mental sensitiveness of women at this time!
It's beyond belief. I never get used to the miracle of it. Everything
turns on it--everything! If the pulse should go down ten more now, I
should--Oh, Heaven bless that crazy Celt for getting you here! Good
Lord! If you hadn't come when you did! I don't see what could have
become of the messenger I sent--why, hours ago--I knew that nothing
could go right if you weren't--is that the door?" He sprang up and sank
back again--"I told the nurse to report as soon as there was any
change--I was afraid if I stayed in the room she would feel the
twitching of my damned nerves--yes, really--it's so--she's in a state
when a feather's weight--suppose 'Stashie hadn't brought you! I couldn't
have kept Madeleine off much longer--God! if _Madeleine_ had gone into
that room, I--Lydia--but nobody told 'Stashie to go! It must have been
an inspiration. I thought of course my messenger--I was expecting you
every instant. She's been crouching out here in the hall all night, not
venturing even to ask a question, until I caught sight of her eyes--she
loves Lydia too! I told her then the baby had come and that her mistress
had no chance unless you were here. She must have--when did she--"
Rankin gave a sound like a sob, and leaned against the wall. He had not
stirred before since the doctor's first words. "You don't mean there's
_hope_?" he whispered, "any hope at all?"
The doctor sprang at him and clapped his hand over his mouth. "I didn't
say it! I didn't say it!"
The door behind them opened, and the nurse stepped out with a noiseless
briskness. The doctor walked toward her steadily and listened to her
quick, low-toned report. Then he nodded, and she stepped back into the
bedroom and shut the door. He stood staring at the floor, one hand at
his lips.
Rankin made an inarticulate murmur of appeal. His face glared white
through the obscurity of the hall.
The older man went back to him, and looked up earnestly into his eyes.
"Yes; there's every hope," he said. He added, with a brave smile: "For
you and Lydia there's every hope in the world. For me, there's the usual
lot of fathers."
CHAPTER XXXVI
ANOTHER DAY BEGINS
They started. From below came a wail of fright. As they listened the
sound came nearer and nearer. "That's Ariadne--a bad dream--get her
quiet, for the Lord's sake."
"Where is she sleeping?"
"In the room next the parlor."
Rankin gave an exclamation, and leaped down the stairs. At the foot he
was met by a little figure in sleeping-drawers. "Favver! Favver!" she
sobbed, holding up her arms.
Rankin caught her up and held her close. "You promised you wouldn't get
so afraid of dreams, little daughter," he said in a low, tender voice of
reproach.
"But this was a nawful one!" wept Ariadne. "I fought I heard a lot of
voices, men's and ladies' as mad--Oh! awful mad--and loud!" She went on
incoherently that she had been too frightened to stir, even though after
a while she dreamed that the front door slammed and they all went away.
But then she was _too_ frightened, and came out to find Favver.
Rankin took her back to her bed, and sat down beside it, keeping one big
hand about the trembling child's cold little fingers. "It was only a bad
dream, Ariadne. Just go to sleep now. Father'll sit here till you do."
"You won't let them come back?" asked the child, drawing long, shaken
breaths.
"No," he said quietly.
"You'll always be close, to take care of me?"
"Yes, dear."
"And of Muvver and 'Stashie?"
There was a pause.
Ariadne spoke in grieved astonishment. "Why, of _course_ of Muvver and
'Stashie, Favver."
Rankin took a sudden great breath. "I hope so, Ariadne."
"Well, you _can_ if you want to," the child gravely gave her assent.
She said no more for a time, clutching tightly to his hand. Then,
"Favver."
"Yes, dear."
"I fink I could go to sleep better if I had my bunny."
"Yes, dear," said the man patiently; "where is he?"
"I fink he's under ve chair where my clothes are--ve _big_ chair.
'Stashie lets me put my clothes on ve biggest chair."
The man fumbled about in the dark. Then, "Here's your bunny, Ariadne."
The child murmured something drowsily unintelligible. The man took his
seat again by the bed. There was a pause. The child's breathing grew
long and regular. The rain sounded loud in the silence.
In the distance a street-car rattled noisily by. Ariadne started up with
a scream: "Favver! Favver!"
"Right here, dear. Just the trolley-car."
"It 'minded me of ve mad ladies' voices," explained Ariadne
apologetically, breathing quickly. She added: "Vat was such a _nawful_
dream, Favver. I wonder could I have your watch to hear tick in my hand
to go me to sleep."
"Yes, dear; but only for to-night because of the bad dream."
There were little nestling noises, gradually quieting down. Then,
sleepily:
"Favver, please."
"Yes, dear."
"I fink I could go _all_ to sleep if you'd pit your head down on my
pillow next my bunny."
A stir in the darkness, and an instant's quiet, followed by, "Why,
Favver, what makes your face all over water?"
There was no answer.
"And your beard is as wet as--" She broke off to explain to herself:
"Oh, it's rain, of tourse. I forgot it's raining. _Now_ I remember how
to _really_ go all to sleep. I did before. I listen to it going patter,
patter, patter, patter--" The little voice died away.
There was no sound at all in the room but the swift, light voice of the
watch calling out that Time, Time, Time can cure all, can cure all, can
cure all--and outside the brooding murmur of the rain.
A faint, clear gray began to show at the windows.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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SIXTH EDITION, ENLARGED AND WITH PORTRAITS
HALE'S DRAMATISTS OF TO-DAY
ROSTAND, HAUPTMANN, SUDERMANN,
PINERO, SHAW, PHILLIPS, MAETERLINCK
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