CHAPTER XVI
The next morning at the regular prison hour Lydia woke with a start. She had been aware for some time of a strange unaccountable roaring in her ears. She looked about her, surprised to see that the light of dawn was not falling through a tall barred aperture at the head of her bed, but was coming across a wide carpeted room from two chintz-curtained windows. Then she remembered she was at home; the roaring was the habitual sound of a great city; the room was the room she had had since she was a child. It seemed less familiar to her, less homelike, than her cell. She put out her hand to the satin coverlet and the sheets, softer than satin. The physical sensation of the contact was delicious, and yet there was something sad about it too. It was the thought of her late companions that made her sad, as if she had deserted them in trouble.
It would be two hours or more before Eleanor and Benny would be awake. She flung her arms above her head and lay back, thinking. She mustn't let them cherish her as if she were a wounded, stricken creature. She was more to be envied now than in the old fighting days, when all her inner life had been a sort of poisoned turmoil. No one had pitied her then.
Her plan had been not to be too hasty in arranging her new life, which she knew must include work—work in connection with prisoners. But now she saw she mustn't waste a minute. She must have work at once to take her away from herself. She could hardly face the coming day—everyone considering her and that detestable ego of hers, asking her what she wanted to do. She must have a routine immediately. She was not strong enough yet to live without one. Only one thing must take precedence of everything else—a pardon for Evans. She could not bear to remain at liberty with Evans still serving a sentence. With that accomplished, she could go forward in peace. In peace? As she thought of it she knew that there was one corner of her mind where there was not and never would be peace. Only last evening, in the first happiness of being at home, the mention of O'Bannon's name had threatened to destroy it.
And now he was in her mind, holding it without rivals. The moment had come when her hatred of him could find expression. It needn't be a secret dream, like a child's fairy story. She needn't suppress it—she could act. If she had not been such a coward last evening she would have named him and gone boldly on and found out from Eleanor where he was, what he was doing, what was his heart's desire. Perhaps if she had put her questions frankly Eleanor would not have told her; but it would not be difficult to deceive so doting a friend of his. Eleanor could easily be persuaded that his victim had been so tamed and crushed in prison that she had come to admire him, to look differently on the world.
Suddenly Lydia sat straight up in her bed. And hadn't she changed? In the old days she had never felt with more bitter violence than she was feeling now. The excitement of her revenge had wiped out every other interest. The flame of her hatred had destroyed the whole structure of her new philosophy. She sat up in her bed and wrung her hands. What could she do? What could she do? The mere thought of that man changed her back into being the woman she hated to be. She would rather die than live as her old self, but how could she help thinking of him when the idea of injuring him was more vivid, more exciting, than any other idea in the world? She had come out of prison resolved that her first action would be to get a pardon for Evans, and here she was forgetting her obligations and her remorse, forgetting everything but a desire to wound and destroy. He had the power to make her what she loathed to be.
Her room was at the back of the house, and the sun, finding some chink between the houses behind the Thorne house, crept in under the shades and began moving slowly across the plain, dark, velvet carpet. It had time to move some distance while she sat there immovable, unaware of her surroundings.
Gradually she came to see that she must choose between the two. Either she must give up forever the idea of revenging herself on O'Bannon or she must give up all the peace and wisdom that she had so painfully learned—she had almost lost it already, and she had not been twenty-four hours out of prison.
An hour later Eleanor was wakened by the opening of her door. Lydia was standing at the foot of her bed, grasping the edge of it in her two white hands. It was Eleanor's first good look at her in the light of day. She was startled by Lydia's beauty—a kind of beauty she had never had before. No one could now have likened her to a picture by Cabanel of the Star of the Harem. Everything sleek and hard and smooth had gone. She looked more like the picture of some ravaged, pale Spanish saint, still so young that the inner struggle had molded without lining her face. She stood staring at Eleanor, her dark hair standing out about her face, and her pale dressing gown defining the beautiful line of her shoulders, as she raised them, pressing her hands down on the foot of the bed.
"Well, my dear, good morning," was Eleanor's greeting, though she was not unaware that something emotional was in the air.
"Eleanor," began the other, her enormous tragic eyes fixed now, not on her friend's, but on a spot on the pillow about five inches away, "there is something I want to say to you." The best agreement was silence, and Lydia went on, "I want you never to talk to me about that man—your friend—I mean O'Bannon."
"Talk of him!" exclaimed Eleanor, her first thought being, "Am I always talking of him?"
"I don't want to hear of him or think of him or speak of him."
This time Eleanor's hesitation was not entirely acquiescent.
"I can understand," she said, "that you might not want to see him, but to speak of him I have been thinking, Lydia, that that is one of the subjects that you and I ought to talk over—to talk out."
"No, no!" returned Lydia quickly, and Eleanor saw with surprise that it was only by leaning on her hands that she kept them from trembling. "I can't explain it to you—I don't want to go into it—but I don't want to remember that he exists. If you would just accept it as a fact, and tell other people—Benny and Bobby. If you would do that for me, Eleanor"
"Of course I'll do it," answered Eleanor. There really was not anything else to say. The next instant Lydia was gone.
Eleanor lay quite still, trying to understand the meaning of the scene. She was often accused by her friends of coldness, of lack of human imagination, of attempting to substitute mental for emotional processes. Aware of a certain amount of justice in these accusations, she tried to atone by putting her reasoning faculty most patiently and gently at work upon the problems of those she loved. Her nature was not capable of really understanding turgidity, but she did better than most people inasmuch as she avoided forming wrong judgments about it. She felt about Lydia now as she had once felt when O'Bannon had described to her his struggle against drinking—wonder that a person so much braver and stronger than she, Eleanor, was, could be content to avoid temptation instead of fighting it.
At breakfast, which the three women had together, Eleanor saw that Lydia had regained her calm of the evening before. While they were still at table Wiley was shown in. He felt obviously a certain constraint, an embarrassment to know what to say, which he concealed under a formal professional manner. Lydia put a stop to this simply enough by getting up and putting her arms round his neck.
"I've thought so much of all you've been doing for me since I was a child," she said.
He was associated in her mind with her father. Wiley felt his eyelids stinging.
"Why, my dear child, my dear child!" he said. And he held her off to look at her as if uncertain that it was the same girl. "Well, I must say prison doesn't seem to have done you much harm."
"It's done me good, I hope," said Lydia.
She made him sit down and drink an extra cup of coffee. There was something quite like a festival in the comradeship that developed among the four of them. She began to question her visitor about the method of getting a pardon for Evans. He advised her to go and see Mrs. Galton. At the name she and Benny glanced at each other and smiled. They were both thinking of the day when Lydia had so resented the presence of the old lady in her house.
She went to Mrs. Galton's office that same morning. It occupied the second floor of an old building that looked out over Union Square. Lydia had not thought of making an appointment, and when she reached the outer office she was told that Mrs. Galton was engaged—would be engaged for some time—a member of the parole board was in conference. Would Miss Thorne wait?
Yes, Lydia would wait. She sat down on a hard bench and watched the work of the society go on before her eyes. She had some knowledge of business and finance, and she knew very soon that she was in the presence of an efficient organization; but it was not only the efficiency that charmed her—it was partly the mere business routine, which made her feel like coming home after she had been at sea. The clear impersonal purpose of it all promised forgetfulness of self. At the end of half an hour of waiting she was possessed with the desire to become part of this work. Here was the solution of her problem. When at last she was shown into Mrs. Galton's bleak little office—not half the size of Lydia's cell—her first words were not of Evans, after all.
"Mrs. Galton," she said, "can you use me in this organization?"
Without intending the smallest disrespect to Mrs. Galton, it must be admitted that this question was like asking a lion if it could use a lamb. The organization, like all others of its type, needed devotion, needed workers, needed money, and was not averse to a little discreet publicity. All these Lydia offered. Mrs. Galton smiled.
"Yes," she said. The monosyllable was expressive.
The older woman, with forty years of executive work behind her, divided all workers roughly into two classes: The amiable idealists who created no antagonism and accomplished nothing, and the effective workers who accomplished marvels and stirred up endless quarrels. She—except in her very weakest moments—preferred the latter, though they disrupted her office force and gave her nervous indigestion. She recognized Lydia as belonging to this class.
And presently, being a wise and experienced woman, she recognized another fact: That she was probably in the presence of her successor. A pang shot through her. She was seventy and keener than ever about the work to which she had given all her life. If she kept this girl out she would hold office longer than if she let her in. If she let her in it would vivify the whole organization. She might become the ideal leader; at least she could be made so—youth, beauty, money, experience of prison conditions and the romance of her story to capture public imagination.
Lydia, with her acute sense of her own unworthiness, was dimly aware of some hesitation, and supposed that she was being weighed in the balance. She had no suspicion that a struggle, somewhat like her own struggle, was going on in the honest, philanthropic breast before her. A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Galton offered her the treasurership. Lydia was overcome by the honor.
"But I thought you had a treasurer, already," she murmured. "If I could be her assistant"
"Oh, no doubt she will be glad to resign," said the president with a calmness that suggested that glad or not the resignation would be forthcoming.
The two women went out to lunch together. More and more, as they talked, Lydia saw that this was just what she wanted. This would be her salvation. After they were back in the office again she spoke of Evans. What could she do? What must be done?
"Let me see," said Mrs. Galton. "You were the complaining witness against her, I suppose. Well, you must see the judge and the district attorney who tried the case."
Lydia gave a funny little sound, half exclamation, half moan.
"O'Bannon!" she said.
No, Mrs. Galton thought that wasn't the name of the district attorney of Princess County. She rang her bell and told her secretary to look it up, while she went on calmly discussing the details of the procedure. Presently the secretary returned with a book. John J. Hillyer was district attorney.
"Are you sure?" Lydia asked. "I thought Mr. O'Bannon was."
The secretary said, consulting her book, that he had resigned almost two years before.
"But we'd have to have his signature, wouldn't we?" said Mrs. Galton.
She and the secretary talked of it, back and forth, not knowing that they were setting an impossible condition for Lydia. She couldn't ask O'Bannon. All her interest in the prospect of this new work had withered at the name. She felt a profound discouragement. It was terrible to find she would rather leave Evans in prison than ask O'Bannon to help get her out; terrible to find that man like a barrier across every path she tried to follow in order to escape from him. She thanked them for the trouble they had taken and rose to go. It was arranged that she was to come and begin work on the following Monday.
It was almost tea time when she reached home. Bobby was there, and the Piers, and presently May Swayne came in with her coal baron. Lydia's first emotion on seeing them was a warm, welcoming gladness, but she soon found to her surprise that she had very little to say to them.
The truth was that she had lost the trick of meeting her fellow beings in a purely social relation, and the conscious effort to adapt herself, her words, her attention to them exhausted her. She looked back with wonder to the old days, when she had done nothing else all day long.
Miss Bennett soon began to notice that she was looking like a little piece of carved ivory, with eyes of the blackest jet. When at last her visitors had all gone she went straight to bed.
The next day she had herself driven down to Wide Plains, so that she could see Judge Homans. Court was still in session when she got there, and she was shown to the judge's little book-lined room and left to wait. She had expected her first view of the wide main street, of Mr. Wooley's shop, of the columned courthouse to be intensely painful to her, but it wasn't. The tall attendant who ushered her in greeted her warmly. She remembered him clearly leaning against the double doors of the court room to prevent anyone leaving during the judge's charge.
Presently the judge came in, just as he had come in every day to her trial, his hands folded, his robes flowing about him. Lydia rose. Her name apparently had not been given to him, for he looked at her in surprise. Then his face lit up.
"My dear Miss Thorne," he said, "when did you get out?"
It was the first perfectly natural, spontaneous reference to her imprisonment that she had heard since she left prison. It did away with all constraint and awkwardness, to be taken as a matter of course. Criminals were no novelty in the judge's life. He sat down, waved her into a chair opposite, put his elbows on the arms of his swinging chair and locked his knuckles together.
"I'm very glad to see you—very glad indeed," he said.
But he wasn't at all surprised that she had come. It was not unusual, evidently, for the first visit of a released convict to be paid to the judge. He began to question her rather as if she were a child home for the holidays.
"And what did you learn? Baking? Now that's interesting, isn't it? And sewing? Well, well!"
He treated her so simply that Lydia found herself speaking to him with more freedom about the whole experience of prison than she had been able to speak to anyone. The reason was, she thought, that she did not need to explain to him that she was not a tragic exception, a special case. To him she was just one of a long series of lawbreakers.
They talked for an hour. She noted that the judge still enjoyed talking, still insisted on rounding out his sentences; but she felt now no impatience. His reminiscences interested her. Before long she found herself consulting him about a subject that had long preyed on her mind—Alma Wooley. She wanted to do something for Alma Wooley, yet she supposed the girl would utterly reject anything coming from the woman who had
The judge put his hand on her arm.
"Now don't you worry a mite about Alma," he said. "Alma married a nice young fellow out of the district attorney's office—named Foster—and now they have a baby, a nice little baby. I was saying to her father only yesterday that Foster is a much better man for her"
While the judge was launched on his speech to Mr. Wooley, Lydia's mind went back to Foster—Foster waiting and watching for O'Bannon like a puppy for its supper. Well, she could forgive him even his admiration for that man since he had made Alma Wooley happy. A weight was lifted from her conscience.
Finally, with some embarrassment, she told the judge the object of her visit—a pardon for Evans. She was prepared to have him remind her, as O'Bannon had once done, that it was a matter which had been in her own hands, in that in this very room in which she was now sitting she had virtually refused to help Evans. But Judge Homans, if he remembered, made no reference to the past.
"Yes, yes," he said. "Now let me see. It must have been O'Bannon tried that case, wasn't it?" Lydia nodded, and he went on, "Poor O'Bannon! I miss him very much. He resigned, you know, about the time Mrs. O'Bannon died."
"He was married?" asked Lydia, and even in her own ears her voice sounded unnaturally loud.
No, the judge said, it was the old lady, his mother; and he went on telling Lydia what a fine fellow the former district attorney had been—a good man and a good lawyer.
"The two are not always combined," the judge said with a chuckle, feeling something cold in his auditor's attention.
Lydia rose to her feet. She was sorry, she said, that she really must be going home. The judge found his soft black hat and accompanied her to her car.
"Don't drive yourself?" he asked.
She shook her head. She would never drive a car again. The judge patted her hand—told her to come and see him again—let him know how she was getting on. She promised. She saw that in some way an unbreakable human bond had been established between them by the fact that she had committed a crime and he had sentenced her to state's prison for it.
She went home feeling encouraged. Not only had she managed to get him to agree to enlist O'Bannon's help in the matter of Evans' pardon, but she herself had supported the mention of O'Bannon's name with something that was almost calm.