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diff --git a/23768.txt b/23768.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ffc06b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/23768.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13980 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Squirrel-Cage, by Dorothy Canfield + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Squirrel-Cage + +Author: Dorothy Canfield + +Illustrator: John Alanzo Williams + +Release Date: December 8, 2007 [EBook #23768] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SQUIRREL-CAGE *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[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-fete, 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 debutante. + + + + +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 naive 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 role 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 debutante. 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 naive 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, employes, +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 portiere 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 naive, 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 naive +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 naive 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 +aesthetics 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 naively 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, entrees, 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 role 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 mediaeval 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 debutantes 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 matinee 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 debutante's Paris dresses, the debutante 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 role 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 role 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 "soupcon" 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 +soupcon--" + + + + +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 fiance. + +"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 crepe 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 naively 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_ +debutante. + +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 naively 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 fiance, +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 naively 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 debut. 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 aesthetic 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 naivete, 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 Francaise 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 naive, 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 recherche 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 aesthetic +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 + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + ROMAIN ROLLAND'S + JEAN-CHRISTOPHE + DAWN . MORNING . YOUTH . REVOLT + Translated by GILBERT CANNAN. + + 600 pp. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.62. + +It commences with vivid episodes of this musician's childhood, his +fears, fancies, and troubles, and his almost uncanny musical sense. He +plays before the Grand Duke at seven, but he is destined for greater +things. An idol of the hour, in some ways suggesting Richard Strauss, +tries in vain to wreck his faith in his career. Early love episodes +follow, and at the close the hero, like Wagner, has to fly, a hopeful +exile. + +"'Hats off, gentlemen--a genius.' ... Has the time come for the 20th +century to uncover before a master work? A book as big, as elemental, as +original as though the art of fiction began to-day."--Springfield +Republican. (Entire notice on application.) + +"The most momentous novel that has come to us from France, or from any +other European country, in a decade.... Highly commendable and effective +translation ... the story moves at a rapid pace. It never lags."--_E. F. +Edgett in Boston Transcript._ + + JEAN-CHRISTOPHE IN PARIS + THE MARKET-PLACE + ANTOINETTE . THE HOUSE + + 473 pp. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.62. + +A writer in the _London Daily Mail_ comments on the French volumes here +translated as follows:--"In 'The Market-Place,' we are with the hero in +his attempt to earn his living and to conquer Paris. The author +introduces us to the numberless 'society' circles in Paris and all the +cliques of so-called musicians in pages of superb and bitter irony and +poetic fire. Christophe becomes famous. In the next volume, Antoinette +is the sister of Christophe's great friend, Olivier. She loves +Christophe.... This, the best volume of the series, is a flawless gem. +'The House' introduces us to the friends and enemies of the young +musician. They gravitate around Christophe and Olivier, amid the noisy +and enigmatic whirl of Parisian life." + +It is worth adding that toward the close of this book a war-cloud +appears between France and Germany. Christophe, with Olivier, visits his +mother and his Fatherland. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS -- NEW YORK + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S JOSEPH VANCE + +A touching story, yet full of humor, of lifelong love and heroic +sacrifice. While the scene is mostly in and near the London of the +fifties, there are some telling glimpses of Italy, where the author +lives much of the time ($1.75). + +"The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since Mr. +Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first great English +novel that has appeared in the twentieth century."--Lewis Melville in +_New York Times Saturday Review._ + +"If the reader likes both 'David Copperfield' and 'Peter Ibbetson,' he +can find the two books in this one."--The _Independent._ + + WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S ALICE-FOR-SHORT + +This might paradoxically be called a genial ghost-and-murder story, yet +humor and humanity again dominate, and the most striking element is the +touching love story of an unsuccessful man. The reappearance in +Nineteenth Century London of the long-buried past, and a remarkable case +of suspended memory, give the dramatic background ($1.75). + +"Really worth reading and praising ... will be hailed as a masterpiece. +If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter +century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan."--_Boston +Transcript._ + +"It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in those rich, interesting, +over-crowded books.... Will be remembered as Dickens' novels are +remembered."--_Springfield Republican._ + + WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S SOMEHOW GOOD + +The purpose and feeling of this novel are intense, yet it is all +mellowed by humor, and it contains perhaps the author's freshest and +most sympathetic story of young love. Throughout its pages the "God be +praised evil has turned to good" of the old Major rings like a trumpet +call of hope. This story of to-day tells of a triumph of courage and +devotion ($1.75). + +"A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range +of fiction."--_The Nation._ + +"Our older novelists (Dickens and Thackeray) will have to look to their +laurels, for the new one is fast proving himself their equal. A higher +quality of enjoyment than is derivable from the work of any other +novelist now living and active in either England or America."--_The +Dial._ + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 34 WEST 33D STREET NEW YORK + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN + +This novel turns on a strange marital complication. The beautiful Judith +Arkroyd, with her stage ambitions, the pathetic Lizarann and her father, +Blind Jim, are striking figures. There are strong dramatic episodes +($1.75). + +"De Morgan at his very best, and how much better his best is than the +work of any novelist of the past thirty years."--_The Independent._ + +"There has been nothing at all like it in our day. The best of our +contemporary novelists ... do not so come home to our business and our +bosoms ... most enchanting ... infinitely lovable and pathetic."--_The +Nation._ + + WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S AN AFFAIR OF DISHONOR + +A dramatic story of England in the time of the Restoration. It commences +with a fatal duel, and shows a new phase of its remarkable author +($1.75). + +"An artistic triumph.... He is a persistent humorist."--_Boston +Transcript._ + +"A better story than any of the others, so far as sustained interest is +concerned.... The rich, suggestive, highly metaphorical the M. I. +style.... A marvelous example of Mr. De Morgan's inexhaustible fecundity +of invention.... Shines as a romance quite as much as 'Joseph Vance' +does among realistic novels."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ + + WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S A LIKELY STORY + $1.35 net. + +"Begins comfortably enough with a little domestic quarrel in a +studio.... The story shifts suddenly, however, to a brilliantly told +tragedy of the Italian Renaissance embodied in a girl's portrait ... +which speaks and affects the life of the modern people who hear it.... +The many readers who like Mr. De Morgan will enjoy this charming fancy +greatly."--_New York Sun._ + +"In the forefront of English fiction.... Both ingenious and amusing.... +All in his highly personal and individual manner, the result of which is +a novel with an emphatic difference from all other works of contemporary +fiction."--_Boston Transcript._ + +"One sparkling stream, where realism in its sweeter, human and humorous +aspects shall appear at its best.... Humor, wisdom, artists' jargon from +the studios, psychic phenomena.... All in Mr. De Morgan's best vein.... +The advancing chapters ... how realistically modern they are, with the +exactness of finish, appositeness of delineation, humor in dialog, and +condensed dramatic action!"--_The Independent._ + +A thirty-two page illustrated leaflet about Mr. De Morgan, with complete +reviews of his first four books, sent on request. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS -- NEW YORK + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE'S JANEY + Illustrated by Ada C. Williamson. $1.25 net. + +"Being the record of a short interval in the journey thru life and the +struggle with society of a little girl of nine, in which she repudiates +her duties as an amateur mother, snares the most blundering of birds, +successfully invades Grub Street, peers behind the veil of the seen into +the unseen, interprets the great bard, grubs at the root of all evil, +faces the three great problems--Birth--Death--Time--and finally, in +passing thru the laborious process of becoming ten, discovers the great +illusion," says the descriptive title. + +"Our hearts were captive to 'Phoebe and Ernest,' and now accept 'Janey.' +... She is so engaging.... Told so vivaciously and with such +good-natured and pungent asides for grown people."--_Outlook._ + +"Janey's naturalness in quest of the whys of life is the naturalness of +the child who lives in the world instead of between the covers of a +delightfully written book."--_Washington Evening Star._ + +"Depicts youthful human nature as one who knows and loves it. Her +'Phoebe and Ernest' studies are deservedly popular, and now, in 'Janey,' +this clever writer has accomplished an equally charming +portrait."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ + + INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE'S PHOEBE AND ERNEST + With 30 illustrations by R. F. Schabelitz. $1.50. + +Parents will recognize themselves in the story, and laugh +understandingly with, and sometimes at, Mr. and Mrs. Martin and their +children. + +Youths and maidens will understand Phoebe and Ernest's experiences and +problems. + +"Attracted delighted attention in the course of its serial publication. +Sentiment and humor are deftly mingled in this clever book."--_N. Y. +Tribune._ + +"We must go back to Louisa Alcott for their equals."--_Boston +Advertiser._ + +"For young and old alike we know of no more refreshing story."--_New +York Evening Post._ + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS -- NEW YORK + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + HENRY WILLIAMS'S THE UNITED STATES NAVY + A Handbook. + +By Henry Williams, Naval Constructor, U. S. Navy. With 32 full-page +illustrations and a number in the text. 12mo. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.67. + +This is a neat, crisp, matter-of-fact account of our Navy, with an +occasional illuminating anecdote of famous court-martials and such. It +has been passed by high authorities and its publication officially +sanctioned. The _Contents_ includes: Naval History--The Navy's +Organization--The Navy's Personnel--Man-of-War in Commission--Classes of +Ships in the Navy--Description--High Explosives; Torpedoes; Mines; +Aeroplanes--Designing and Building a Warship; Dry Docks--The National +Defense. + + THOMAS LEAMING'S + A PHILADELPHIA LAWYER IN THE LONDON COURTS + +Illustrated by the Author. 8vo. $2.00 net; by mail, $2.15. (Circular on +application.) + +A trained observer's graphic description of the English Law Courts, of +their ancient customs yet up-to-date methods; of the lives and +activities of the modern barrister and solicitor--the "K. C.," the +"Junior," the "Devil"--and of the elaborate etiquette, perpetuated by +the Inns of Court, which still inflexibly rules them, despite the +tendencies of the times and growth of socialism. + +_Nation_:--"The style of narrative, the conciseness of statement, and +the wealth of allusion make this book one which certainly the lawyer, +and probably many laymen, will wish to finish at one sitting, and not +hurriedly.... We hope to see the author appear again, and as a +Philadelphia Lawyer at Home." + +_Bookman_:--"This quiet recital of facts ought of itself to create a +revolution in this country.... He disclaims any intention of entering +upon odious comparisons.... When the Bar of America is aroused to the +necessity of reform it will find these observations ... a mine of +well-digested information and helpful suggestions." + +_Dial_:--"His interesting account of the trial and conviction of Madar +La Dhingra." + +_New York Evening Sun_:--"A suitable mixture of anecdote and +generalization to give the reader a pleasant and clear idea of English +courts, their ways and plan.... One of the most valuable chapters +relates to the discipline of the bar." + +_Philadelphia Press_:--"A vast deal of useful and often fascinating +information.... An eminently readable volume, which, although designed +primarily for the lay reader, has already elicited hearty commendation +from not a few leaders of the profession.... American lawyers are +beginning to see that much may be learned from modern English +practice.... On the subject of the ethics of the English bar Mr. Leaming +has much to say that is worth careful perusal." + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 34 WEST 33D STREET NEW YORK + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + SIXTH EDITION, ENLARGED AND WITH PORTRAITS + + HALE'S DRAMATISTS OF TO-DAY + + ROSTAND, HAUPTMANN, SUDERMANN, + PINERO, SHAW, PHILLIPS, MAETERLINCK + +By Prof. Edward Everett Hale, Jr., of Union College. With gilt top, +$1.50 net; by mail, $1.60. + +Since this work first appeared in 1905, Maeterlinck's SISTER BEATRICE, +THE BLUE BIRD and MARY MAGDALENE, Rostand's CHANTECLER and Pinero's +MID-CHANNEL and THE THUNDERBOLT--among the notable plays by some of Dr. +Hale's dramatists--have been acted here. Discussions of them are added +to this new edition, as are considerations of Bernard Shaw's and Stephen +Phillips' latest plays. The author's papers on Hauptmann and Sudermann, +with slight additions, with his "Note on Standards of Criticism," "Our +Idea of Tragedy," and an appendix of all the plays of each author, with +dates of their first performance or publication, complete the volume. + +_Bookman_: "He writes in a pleasant, free-and-easy way.... He accepts +things chiefly at their face value, but he describes them so accurately +and agreeably that he recalls vividly to mind the plays we have seen and +the pleasure we have found in them." + +_New York Evening Post_: "It is not often nowadays that a theatrical +book can be met with so free from gush and mere eulogy, or so weighted +by common sense ... an excellent chronological appendix and full index +... uncommonly useful for reference." + +_Dial_: "Noteworthy example of literary criticism in one of the most +interesting of literary fields.... Provides a varied menu of the most +interesting character.... Prof. Hale establishes confidential relations +with the reader from the start.... Very definite opinions, clearly +reasoned and amply fortified by example.... Well worth reading a second +time." + +_New York Tribune_: "Both instructive and entertaining." + +_Brooklyn Eagle_: "A dramatic critic who is not just 'busting' himself +with Titanic intellectualities, but who is a readable dramatic +critic.... Mr. Hale is a modest and sensible, as well as an acute and +sound critic.... Most people will be surprised and delighted with Mr. +Hale's simplicity, perspicuity and ingenuousness." + +_The Theatre_: "A pleasing lightness of touch.... Very readable book." + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS -- NEW YORK + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Squirrel-Cage, by Dorothy Canfield + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SQUIRREL-CAGE *** + +***** This file should be named 23768.txt or 23768.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/7/6/23768/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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