CHAPTER XV
In the spring Lydia was transferred from the kitchen to the long, bright workroom. Here the women prisoners hemmed the blankets woven in the men's prison. Here they themselves wove the rag rugs for the floors, made up the house linen and their own clothes—Joseph's too—not only their prison clothes, but the complete outfit with which each prisoner was dismissed.
Lydia was incredibly awkward with the needle. It surprised the tall, thin assistant in charge of the workroom that anyone who had had what she described as advantages could be so grossly ignorant of the art of sewing. Lydia hardly knew on which finger to put her thimble and tied a knot in her thread like a man tying a rope. But it was her very inability that first woke her interest, her will. She did not like to be stupider than anyone else. Suddenly one day her little jaw set and she decided to learn how to sew. From that moment she began to adjust herself to prison life.
Lydia wondered, considering prisoners in the first grade are allowed to receive visits from their families once a week, and from others, with the approval of the warden, once a month, at the small number of visitors who came to the prison. Were all these women cast off by their families? Evans explained the matter to her, and Lydia felt ashamed that she had needed an explanation.
"It takes a man a week's salary—at a good job, too—from New York here and back."
Lydia did what was rare of her—she colored. For the first time in her life she felt ashamed, not so much of the privileges of money but of the ease with which she had always taken them. It came over her that this was one of the objects for which Mrs. Galton had once asked a subscription. A memory rose of the way in which in old days she used to dispose of her morning's mail when it came in on her flowered breakfast tray. Advertisements and financial appeals from unknown sources were twisted together by her vigorous fingers and tossed into the waste-paper basket. Mrs. Galton's might well have been among these.
She was horrified on looking back at her own lack of humanity. She might have guessed without going through the experience that prison life needed some alleviation. It meant a great deal to her to see Benny every week. Benny stood in the place of her family. She longed to hear of the outside world and her old friends. But she did not crave these visits with such passion as the imprisoned mothers craved a sight of their children.
Thought leading quickly to action in Lydia, she arranged through Miss Bennett, allowing it to be supposed to be Miss Bennett's enterprise, to finance the visits of families to the prison. Everyone rejoiced, as if it were a common benefit, over the visit of Muriel's mother and the beautiful auburn-haired daughter of the middle-aged real-estate operator. Lydia felt as if she had been outside the human race all her life and had just been initiated into it. She said something like this to Evans.
"Oh, Louisa, rich people don't know anything, do they?"
Evans tried to console her.
"If they want to they always can."
It was true, Lydia thought; she had not wanted to know. She had not wanted anything but her own way, irrespective of anyone else's. That was being criminal—to want your own way too much. That was all that these people about her had wanted—these forgers and defrauders—their own way, their own way. Though she still held her belief that the killing of Drummond had been an accident, she saw that the bribing of him had been wrong—the same streak in her, the same determination to have her own way. She thought of her father and all their early struggles, and how when she had believed that she was triumphing most over him she had been at her worst.
Her poor father! It was from him she had inherited her will, but he had learned in life, as she was now learning in prison, that the strongest will is the will that knows how to bend.
She thought a great deal about her father. He must have been terribly lonely sometimes. She had never given him anything in the way of affection. She had not really loved him, and yet she loved him now. Her heart ached with a palpable weight of remorse. He had been her only relation, and she had done nothing but fight and oppose and wound him. What a cruel, stupid creature she had been—all her life! And now it was too late. Her father was gone, so long ago she had almost forgotten him in one aspect. And then again it would seem as if he must still be somewhere, waiting to order her upstairs as he had when she was a child.
Only Benny was left—Benny whom she had so despised. Yet Benny would not need to go to prison in order to learn to respect other people's rights. Benny had been born knowing just what everyone else wanted—eager to get all men their hearts' desire.
Lydia was not religious by temperament. She had now none of the joy of a great revelation. But she had the courage, unsupported by any sense of a higher power, to look at herself as she was. She saw now that her relation to life had always been ugly, hostile, violent. Everyone who had ever loved her had been able to love through something beautiful in their own natures—in spite of all the unloveliness of hers. She thought not only of the relations she had missed, like the relation to her father, but of friendships she had lost, which she had deliberately broken in the hideous daily struggle to get her own way. She would never now renew that struggle. She had come in contact with something stronger than herself, of which the impersonal power of the law was only a visible symbol. She was not sure whether it had broken her or remade her, but it had given her peace—happiness she had never had—a peace which she believed she could preserve even when she went out of the sheltering routine of prison. The only feature of life which terrified and revolted her was the persisting individuality of Lydia Thorne. If there were only a charm other than death to free you from yourself! Sometimes she felt like a maniac chained to a mirror. Yet she knew that it was the long months of enforced contemplations that had saved her.
On Friday evening the inmates were allowed to dance in the assembly room—half theater, half chapel. In her effort to escape from herself Lydia went once to watch, and came again and again with increasing interest. It soon began to be rumored that she was a good dancer and knew new steps. The dances became dancing classes. Lydia, except for her natural impatience, was a born teacher, clear in her explanations and willing to work for perfection.
Evans, who had taken Lydia to so many balls in past years, smiled to see her laboring over the steps of some heavy grandmother or light-footed—and perhaps light-fingered—mulatto girl.
An evening suddenly came back to her. It was in New York. She had come downstairs about eleven o'clock with Miss Thorne's opera cloak and fan. There had been people to dinner, but they had all gone except Mr. Dorset, and he was being instructed in some new intricacy of the dance. Miss Bennett, who belonged to a generation that knew something about playing the piano, was making music for them. Evans, if she shut her eyes, could see Lydia as she was then, in a short blue brocade, trying to shove her partner into the correct step and literally shaking him when he failed to catch her rhythm. She was being far more patient with Muriel, holding her pale coffee-colored hands and repeating, "One-two, one-two; one-two-three-four. There, Muriel, you've got it!" Her face lit up with pleasure as she turned to Evans. "Isn't she quick at it, Louisa?"
Lydia's second spring in prison was well advanced when she was sent for by the matron. Such a summons was an event. Lydia racked her brain to think what was coming—for good or evil. The matron's first question was startling. Did she know anything about baseball?
Did she? Yes, something. Her mind went back to a Fourth of July house party she had been to where a baseball game among the guests was a yearly feature. She and the matron discussed the possibilities of getting up two nines among the inmates. She suggested that there were books on the subject. A book would be provided. She felt touched and flattered at the responsibility put upon her, humbly eager to succeed.
The whole question began to absorb her. She studied it in the evening and thought about it during the day, considering the possibilities of her material, the relation of character to skill. Grace, a forger, was actually a better pitcher, but the woman who had killed her husband had infinitely more staying power.
All through that second summer she occupied herself, day and night, with the team, more and more as September drew to a close. For she knew that with the approaching expiration of her minimum sentence the parole board would consider her release. Freedom in all probability was near, and freedom is a disorganizing thought to prisoners. The peace she had gained in prison began to flow away as each day brought her nearer to release. She began to dream that she was already free, and to wake dissatisfied, with a trace of the same restless irritation of her first weeks. Could it be, she thought, that she had learned nothing after all? Could even the idea of returning to the old life change her back into the old detestable thing?
Prison authorities have learned that the last night in prison is more trying to a prisoner's morale than any other, except perhaps the first. Lydia found it so when her last night there came. She knew that she was to be set free early in the morning. Miss Bennett would be there, and they would take an early train to New York together. It was a certainty, she kept telling herself, a certainty on which she could rely, and yet she spent the entire night in an agony of fear and impatience. She would have been calmer if she had been waiting the hour of a prearranged escape. The darkness of night continued so long that it seemed as if some unheralded eclipse had done away with sunrise, and when at last the dawn began to color the window the hour between it and her release was nothing but a fevered anxiety.
She was hardly aware of Miss Bennett waiting for her in the matron's room—hardly aware of the matron herself, imperturbable as ever, bidding her good-by. Only the clang of the gate behind her quieted her. Only from outside the bars did she want to pause and look back at the prison as at an old friend.
It was a bright autumn morning. The wind was chasing immense white clouds across the sky and scattering the leaves of the endless row of trees that stood like sentinels along the high wall.
Miss Bennett wanted to hurry across the street at once to the railroad station, although their train would not start for some time; she wanted to get away from the menace of that dark wall—a very perfect piece of masonry. But Lydia had seen it too long from the inside not to be eager to savor a view of it from without. She stared slowly about her like a tourist before some spectacle of awesome beauty. She looked down the alley between the trees and the wall to where on her left was the sharp clean corner of the stonework. She looked to her right, where as the wall rose higher she could see the little watchtower of the prison guard. Then she turned completely round and looked back through the bars at the prison itself.
"Don't you think it's a pretty old doorway?" she said.
Miss Bennett acknowledged its beauty rather briefly.
"Will you tell me why it has 'State Asylum' on the horse block?" she said.
"That's just what it is," said Lydia—"an asylum, a real asylum to some of us. It used to be for the insane, Benny. That's why."
On the all-day journey to New York Miss Bennett had counted on hearing the full psychological story of the last two years. In her visits to the prison she had found that Lydia wanted to hear of the outside world—not to talk of herself; but now that she was free Miss Bennett hoped this might be changed. She had taken a compartment so they could be by themselves, but the minute the door was shut upon them a funny change came over Lydia. She grew absent and tense, and at last she sprang up and opened it.
"It's pleasanter open," she said haughtily, and then she suddenly laughed. "Oh, Benny, to be able to open a closed door!"
Miss Bennett began to cry softly. All these months she had been trying to persuade herself that the change in Lydia was due to prison clothes; but now, seeing her dressed as she used to dress, the change was still there. She was thinner, finer—shaped, as it were, by a sharper mold. All her reactions were slower. It took her longer to answer, longer to smile. This gave her—what Lydia had never had before—a touch of mystery, as if her real life were going on somewhere else, below the surface, remote from companionship.
She wiped her eyes, thinking that she must not let Lydia guess she thought her changed. Their eyes met. Lydia was discovering a curious fact, which she in her turn thought it better to conceal. It was this: That the figures of her prison life had a depth and reality that made all the rest of the world seem like shadows. Even while she questioned Miss Bennett about her friends she felt as if she were asking about characters in a book which she had not had time to finish. Would Bobby be sure to be at the station? Was Eleanor coming to town that night to see her? Where was Albee?
Miss Bennett did not know where Albee was, and her tone indicated that she did not greatly care. She did not intend to stir Lydia up against anyone but she could not help wishing Lydia would punish Albee. He had not been really loyal, and he was the only one of the intimate circle who had not been. A man with red blood in his veins, Miss Bennett thought, would have married Lydia the day before she went to prison or would at least be waiting, hat in hand, the day she came out.
Bobby, gay and affectionate as ever, met them at the station and drove with them to the town house. Morson opened the front door and ran down the steps with a blank face and a brisk manner, as if she had been returning from a week-end; but as she stepped out of the motor he attempted a sentence.
"Glad to see you back, miss," he said, and then his self-control gave way. He turned aside with one hand over his eyes and the other feeling wildly in his tail pocket for a handkerchief.
Lydia began to cry too. She put her hand on Morson's shoulder and said, "I'm so glad to see you, Morson. You're almost the oldest friend I have in the world," and she added, without shame, to Miss Bennett, "Isn't it awful the way I cry at anything nowadays?"
She went into the house, blowing her nose.
The house was full of telegrams and flowers. Lydia did not open the telegrams, but the flowers seemed to give her pleasure. She went about breathing in long whiffs of them and touching their petals. Morson, in perfect control of himself, but with his eyes as red as fire, came to ask at what hour she would dine.
Lydia had a great deal to do before dinner. She produced a dirty paper from her pocketbook and began studying it.
"Is there anything special you'd like to order?" said Miss Bennett.
Lydia did not look up but answered that Morson remembered what she liked, which drove him out of the room again. Her telephoning, it appeared, was to the families and friends of her fellow prisoners. She was very conscientious about it, and very patient, even with those who, unaccustomed to the telephone or unwilling to lose touch with a voice so recently come from their loved ones, would ask the same question over and over again.
But finally it was over, and Lydia free to bathe and dress and finally to sit down in her own dining room to a wonderful little meal that was the symbol of her freedom. Yet all she could think of was the smell of the freshly baked dinner rolls that brought back the large, low kitchen and the revolving oven—revolving at that very moment, perhaps—so far away.
"Oh, my dear," said Miss Bennett, "I've found the nicest little maid for you—a Swiss girl who can sew—really make your things if you want her to, and"
Lydia felt embarrassed. She turned her head from side to side as Miss Bennett ran on describing the discovery. She simply could never have a maid again. How was she to explain? She did not understand it thoroughly herself, only she knew that she could never again demand that another woman—as young, perhaps, and as fond of amusement as herself—should give a lifetime to taking care of her wardrobe. Personal service like that would annoy and embarrass her now. The first thing to do was to make her life less complex in such matters. She put her hand over Miss Bennett's as it lay on the table.
"Shouldn't you think she'd wish me back at hard labor?" she said to Bobby. "She takes such a lot of trouble for me."
Miss Bennett, emotionally susceptible to praise, wiped her eyes, and presently went away, leaving Bobby and Lydia alone. She wondered if perhaps that would be the best thing for Lydia to do—to rebuild her life on Bobby's gay but unwavering devotion.
Lydia, leaning her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands, listened while Bobby gossiped over the empty coffee cups. Did Lydia know about this Western coal man that May Swayne was going to marry? Bobby set him before her in an instant—"A round-faced man, Lydia, with $30,000,000, and such a vocabulary! He never thinks; he presumes. He doesn't come into a room; he ventures to intrude. May has quite a lot of alterations to do on him."
And the Piers—had Lydia heard about them? Fanny had fallen in love with the prophet of a new religion and had made all her arrangements to divorce Noel, but before she left him, as a proof of her new powers, she thought she'd cure him of drinking. Well, my dear, she did. And the result was she found she liked a nonalcoholic Noel better than ever—and she chucked the seer. Can you beat it?
Shadows—they did seem like shadows to Lydia. Staring before her, she fell into meditation, remembering Evans and the pale coffee-colored Muriel and the matron—the small, placid-browed matron who knew not fear.
Suddenly she came back to realize that Bobby was asking her to marry him.
Most of their acquaintances believed that he never did anything else; but as a matter of fact, it was the first time he had ever put it into words. He wasn't sure it was a tactful thing to do now. She might think—Bobby was always terribly aware of what people might think—that his suggesting such a mediocre future for her was to admit that he thought her beaten. Whereas to him she was as triumphant and desirable as ever. On the other hand, it might be just the right thing to do. With men like Albee getting to cover and some people bound to be hateful, she could say to herself, "Well, I can always marry Bobby and go to live in Italy."
He put it to her.
"Lydia, wouldn't you consider marrying me to-morrow and sailing for Greece or Sicily or Grenada—that's a heavenly place. I should be so wildly happy, dear, that I think you'd be pleased in a mild sort of way, too."
Go away? It was the last thing she wanted to do.
"No, no!" she said quickly. "I must stay here!"
"Well, marry me and stay here."
She shook her head, trying to explain to him—she wouldn't ever marry. She had found a new clew to life and wanted to follow it alone. She had interest, intense, vital interest, to give to life and affairs—yes, and even people; but she had not love. Human relationships couldn't make or mar life for her any more. She wanted to work—nothing else.
She paused, and in the pause the dining-room door opened and Eleanor came in. Eleanor had been up at dawn to get a train from the Adirondacks in time to meet Lydia at the station, and of course the train had been late. Would Lydia put her up for the night?
Lydia's cry of welcome did not sound like a person to whom all human relationships had become indifferent. Indeed Eleanor was the person she wanted most to see. Eleanor was not emotional, or rather she expressed her emotion by a heightened intellectual sensitiveness. She wouldn't cry, she wouldn't regard Lydia as a shorn lamb the way Miss Bennett did, nor yet would she assume that she was utterly unchanged, as all the rest of her friends might. Eleanor's manner was almost commonplace. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that she left the introduction of anything dramatic to Lydia's choice.
Bobby soon went away and left the two women together. They went upstairs to Lydia's bedroom, and in their dressing gowns, with chairs drawn to the fire, they talked. They talked with long pauses between them. No one but Eleanor would have allowed those long silences to pass uninterrupted, but she was wise enough to know they were the very essence of companionship.
Though Eleanor asked several questions about the details of prison life, she was too wise to ask anything about the fundamental change which she felt had taken place in Lydia. She did not betray that she felt there was a change. She wondered whether Lydia knew it herself. It was hard to say, for the girl, always inexpert with verbal expressions, had become more so in the two years of solitude and contemplation. Whatever spontaneity of speech she had had was gone. She was, Eleanor thought, like a person using an unfamiliar tongue, aware of the difficulty of putting thought into words.
She could not help being touched—and a little amused—at the seriousness with which Lydia mentioned her late companions; Lydia, who had always been so selective about her own friends and so scornful about everybody else's. She spoke of Evans, the pallid little thief, as if light had flowed from her as from an incarnation of the Buddha. Seeing that Lydia had caught some reflection of the thought, Eleanor thought it better to put it into words.
"Now, don't tell me, my dear," she said, "that you, too, have discovered that all criminals are pure white souls."
"Just the opposite. All pure white souls are criminals—all of us are criminals at heart. The only way not to be is to recognize the fact that you are. It's a terrible idea at first—at least it was to me. It was like going through death and coming out alive." Lydia paused, staring before her, and anyone in the world except Eleanor would have thought she had finished; but Eleanor's fine ear caught the beat of an approaching idea. "But it's such a comfort, Nell, to belong to the tribe—such a relief. And I should never have had it if it had not been"—she hesitated, and Eleanor's heart contracted with a sudden fear that the name of O'Bannon was about to enter—"if it had not been for my accident."
Eleanor was not sure that Lydia had deliberately avoided the name. What, she wondered, was left of that unjust and bitter hatred? She could not detect a trace of bitterness anywhere in Lydia's nature to-night. But then she had always had those moments of gentleness.
Presently Miss Bennett came in to say in her old, timid, suggestive manner that it was late—she hated to interrupt them, but she really did think that Lydia ought to go to bed. Lydia got up at once.
"I suppose I ought," she said. "It's been an exciting day for me."
Eleanor noted that such a suggestion from Miss Bennett in old days would have meant that Lydia would have felt it her duty to stay up another hour.
"I have to, my dear," she would have said, "or else Benny would be trying to coerce me in every detail of my life."