CHAPTER XVII
It was noticeable—though no one noticed it—that a month after Lydia went to work in Mrs. Galton's organization everyone in her immediate circle was doing something for released convicts. Bobby, Miss Bennett, Eleanor, Wiley, all suddenly began to think that the problem of the criminal was the most important, the most vital, the most interesting problem in the world. The explanation was simple: A will like Lydia's, harnessed to a constructive purpose, was far more irresistible than in the old days when it had been selfish, spasmodic and undisciplined.
She was given a little office, like Miss Galton's, and she was in it every morning at nine o'clock. Miss Bennett, who had worried all her life because Lydia led an irregular, aimless, idle existence, now worried even more because her working hours were long.
"Surely," she protested almost every morning, "Mrs. Galton will not care if you don't get there until half past nine or even ten. These cold days it isn't good for you"
Lydia explained that she was not going to the office early in order to please Mrs. Galton, who, as a matter of fact, did not arrive there until late in the morning. The organization needed money desperately, there was much to be done. But the truth was she loved the routine—the hard impersonal work. It saved her from herself. She was almost happy.
Eleanor had evidently done what she had been asked to do, for O'Bannon seemed to have dropped out of the world. His name was never mentioned, and as week after week went by it seemed to Lydia that she herself was forgetting him. Perhaps a time would come when she could even see him without wrecking her peace of soul. Her only sorrow was the delay in Evans' pardon. It didn't come. Lydia could not enjoy her liberty with Evans in prison. The forms had all been complied with, but the governor did not act. At last Mrs. Galton suggested her going to Albany; or perhaps she knew someone who would have influence with the governor. Yes, Lydia knew someone—Albee.
Albee was now senator from his own state, and a busy session in Washington had kept him there. He had been among the first to telegraph Lydia. She found his message and his flowers in the house when she first came home. The message sounded as if it had come from a friend; but Lydia knew that it had not; that Albee had escaped from her and her influence, or thought he had. She had known it even in the days of her trial, and looking back on the facts and on herself she wondered that she had not resented it. Those were days in which she had awarded punishments readily, and Albee had really behaved badly to her. They had been very nearly engaged and yet the instant she was in trouble he had deserted her. He had gone through all the motions of helping her, but in spirit she knew that Albee the day she killed Drummond had begun to disentangle himself. She felt not the least resentment against him; only she recognized the fact that his remoteness from her made it more difficult to make use of him for Evans, unless—the idea suddenly came to her—it might make it easier. He would avoid seeing her if he could; but if she found her way to him he might be eager to atone, to set himself right by doing her a definite favor.
The evening of the day that she saw this clearly she took a train to Washington. The next morning she was waiting in his outer office before he reached it himself. A new secretary—the old one had been promoted to some position of political prominence at home—did not know her and had not been warned against her by name. So she was sitting there when Albee came in with his old cheerful, dominating, leonine look. Just for the fraction of a second his face fell at seeing her, and then he hurried to her side, as if out of all the world she was the person he most wanted to see.
It must not be supposed that Lydia had become so saintly that she had forgotten her knowledge of men. She knew now that if she were cordial to Albee she could not depend on his doing what she wanted. If on the other hand she withheld her friendship she was sure he would bid high for it. She ignored all his flustered protestations. She smiled at him, a smile a little sad, a little chilly and infinitely remote.
"I want very much to speak to you, Stephen," she said, and her tone told him that whatever she wanted to talk about had nothing whatsoever to do with themselves.
He led her into the inner office. A curious thing was happening to him. He had never been in love with Lydia. He had deliberately allowed her beauty and wealth to dazzle him; he had admired her courage, her sureness of herself, contrasting it with his own terror of giving offense to anyone; but at times he had almost hated her. If she had inspired him with one atom of tenderness he would not have deserted her. She never had. He had cut himself off from her without regret. But now as she sat there, finer and paler and more—much more—than two years older, she did inspire tenderness, tenderness of a most vivid and disturbing sort. He could not take his eyes from her face. He suddenly cut into what she was saying about Evans.
"Lydia, my dear, are you happy? Yes, yes, of course I can get from the governor anything you ask me, but tell me about yourself."
He leaned over, taking her hands in his. She rose, withdrawing them slowly as she did so.
"Not now," she answered, and moved toward the door.
"You mustn't go like that," he protested. "Just think, my dear, I have not seen you for two years—the toughest two years I ever spent! You can't just come and go like this. I must see you, talk to you."
"When you have got me Evans' pardon, Stephen—if you get it." She still spoke gently, but there was a good deal of intention behind Lydia at her gentlest.
He caught the "if"—almost an insult after his confident assertion, but he did not think of the insult. He was aware of nothing but the desire that she should smile gayly and admiringly at him again as she used to, making him feel Jovian.
"I'm going to New York on Thursday," he said. "On Friday evening you shall have the pardon. Will you be at the opera Friday evening?"
She hesitated. She had not been to the opera yet. She could not bear the publicity of that blazing circle, but she had kept her box. After all, she thought, she could sit in the back of it, and music was one of the greatest of her pleasures.
"Will you join me there?" she said.
"It will be like old times."
"Not quite," she answered.
Still with his hand on the knob of the door, as if he were just going to open it for her, he detained her, trying to make her talk, asking her about her friends, her work, her health; trying to hit upon the master key to her mind, and at last, for he was a man of long experience, he found it.
"And that damned crook who prosecuted your case," he said. "Do you ever see him?"
She shook her head.
"I prefer not even to think of him," she replied, and this time she made a gesture that he should open the door. Instead he stepped in front of it. He had waked her; he had her attention at last.
"Naturally, naturally," he said, "but I wish you would think of him for a minute. I'm in rather a fix about that fellow."
She longed to know what the fix was, but she did not dare hear. She said softly, "Please don't make me think of him, Stephen. I'd really rather not."
"But you must listen, Lydia. Help me. I don't know what I ought to do. I have it in my power to ruin that man. Shall I?"
There was a pause. Albee heard her long breaths trembling as she drew them. He thought to himself that his knowledge of her had not gone astray. She had hated that man, and whatever else had changed in her, that hadn't. She suddenly came to life and tried to open the door for herself.
"I must go," she said. He did not move.
"You know," he said, speaking quickly, "that after your trial he went to pieces, resigned his position, took to drinking again, tried to make his way in New York. He was nearly down and out for a time there."
He watched her. A smile, a terrible smile, began to curve the corners of her mouth. He went on:
"I couldn't be exactly sorry for his bad luck. In fact, to be candid, I gave him a kick or two when I had the chance. But now he's pulled himself out. He's worked like a dog, and I hear that a couple of friends of mine, of the firm of Simpson, Aspinwall & McCarter, are going to offer him a partnership. It's a big firm, particularly in the political world." There was a short silence. "Shall I let him have it, Lydia?"
She raised her shoulders scornfully.
"Could you stop his getting it, Stephen?"
"Do you doubt it?"
She turned on him. Her jaw was set and lifted as in the old days.
"Of course I do! If you could have you certainly would have without consulting me. There is a man who you know lacks all integrity and honor, and who, moreover, goes about saying that you tried to bribe him—and failed. Oh, he makes a great point of that—you failed! Would you let a man like that go into a firm of your friends if you could stop it? No, no! Not unless you have grown a good deal meeker than I remember you, Stephen."
Albee made a sweeping gesture, as expressive as a Roman emperor's thumbs down.
"He shall not have it," and he added with a smile as cruel as Lydia's own: "He believes himself absolutely sure of it."
She smiled straight into his eyes.
"Bring me that Friday night," she said. "It's more important than the pardon."
He opened the door for her and she went out.
This was Wednesday. She could hardly wait for Friday to come. This was the right way—to destroy the man first and then to forget him. She had been silly and sentimental and weak to fancy that she could have real peace in any other way, to imagine that she could go through life skulking, fearing. She was furious at herself when she remembered that she had asked Eleanor to avoid mentioning his name. She could mention his name now herself, and see him too. She would enjoy seeing him. She was hardly aware of the passage of time on her journey back to New York. She was living over a meeting between O'Bannon and herself after the partnership had been withdrawn. He must be made aware that it was her doing.
She reached home just before dinner, and found that Miss Bennett was dining out. Good! Lydia had no objection to being alone. But Benny had arranged otherwise. She had telephoned to Eleanor, and she was coming to dine. Lydia smiled. That was pleasant too.
Eleanor was an intelligent woman but not a mind reader. She saw some change had taken place in Lydia, noticed that she ate no dinner, and came to the conclusion that something had gone wrong about Evans' pardon; that Albee had been, as usual, a weak friend. When they were alone after dinner was over she prepared herself to hear the story. Instead, Lydia said, "I'm going to the opera on Friday, Nell—Samson and Delilah. Will you come with me?"
There was a little pause, a slight constraint. Then Eleanor answered that she couldn't; that she had a box of her own that someone had sent her. Lydia sprang up with a sudden, short, wild laugh.
"That man's going with you!" she said.
"Mr. O'Bannon? Yes, he is." Eleanor thought a second. "I'll put him off, Lydia. I'll tell him not to come."
"You'll do nothing of the kind. It's perfect. I don't know what got into me the other day, Eleanor. You must have despised me for such pitiful cowardice."
"No, my dear," said Eleanor slowly, but obviously relieved that the question had come up again. "But I did feel that you weren't going to work the best way to get the poison of the whole thing out of your soul."
Lydia laughed the same way again.
"Oh, don't worry about that! I shall get rid of the poison."
"How?"
"I shall make him suffer. I shall revenge myself, and then forget he exists. You can tell him so if you want."
Eleanor stared in front of her, blank and serious. Then she said, "I don't have many opportunities any more. I seldom see him."
Lydia's eyes brightened.
"Ah, you've found him out!"
"On the contrary, the longer I know him the more highly I think of him. I don't see him because he's busy. He has been having a difficult time—in business. He decided to get out of politics and go into straight law. New York is like a ferocious monster to a man beginning any profession. Dan—but it doesn't matter. His troubles are over now."
"Are they indeed?" said Lydia.
"Yes, he's had a wonderful offer of a partnership from an older man who Oh, Lydia, you ought to try to see that your point of view about him is a prejudiced—a natural one, but still"
"Is it a definite offer, Eleanor?"
"Yes, absolutely, though the papers are not to be signed for a day or so."
Lydia breathed in thoughtfully "A day or so," and Eleanor pressed on.
"It isn't that I care what you think of him or he of you. I'm past that with my friends, and, as I say, I don't see nearly as much of him as I used to; but"
"Of course you don't," answered Lydia. "He's ashamed—or, no, it's more that he can't bear to see himself in contrast with your perfect integrity, Eleanor. Did you know that he came to prison to see me, to gloat over me? Sent in for me to come to him in my prison clothes"
Lydia's breath quickened as she spoke of the outrage.
"He didn't come to gloat over you."
"What did he come for then?"
To her own surprise Eleanor heard her own voice saying, as if unaided it tapped some source of knowledge never before open to her, "Because you know very well, Lydia, the man's in love with you."
Lydia sprang forward like a cat.
"Never say such a thing as that again!" she said. "You don't understand, but it degrades me, it pollutes me! Love me! That man! I'd kill him if I thought he dared!"
Nothing rendered Eleanor so calm as excitement in others.
"Well," she said, "perhaps I'm mistaken," and appeared to let the matter drop; but the other would not have it.
"Of course you're mistaken! But you must have had some reason for saying such a thing. You're not the kind of person, Eleanor, who goes about having disgusting suspicions like that without a reason."
"Do you really want me to give you a reason or are you only waiting to tear me to pieces, whatever I say?"
Lydia sat down and caught her hands between her knees, determined to be good.
"I want your reason," she said.
Reasons were not so easy, Eleanor found. She spoke slowly.
"I saw all through your trial that Dan was not like himself, that he was struggling with something stronger than he. He is a man who has always had terrible weaknesses, temptations"
"He drinks," said Lydia, and there was a note of almost boastful triumph in her tone.
"No"—Eleanor was very firm about it—"in recent years only once."
"More than once, Eleanor."
"Only once, in a time of emotional strain. What was the emotion? You had just been sentenced. It came to me suddenly that if he were in love with you—it would explain everything."
"If he hated me—that would explain it too."
"The two emotions are pretty close, Lydia."
"Close?" Lydia exclaimed violently. "It shows that you have never felt either."
"Have you?"
"Yes, I've felt hate. It's poisoned and withered me for over two years now, and I don't mean to bear it any more. I mean to get rid of it this way—to hurt that man enough to satisfy myself."
Eleanor rose slowly, and the two women stood a little apart, looking at each other. Then Eleanor said, "You'll never get rid of it that way. Don't do it, Lydia, whatever you mean to do."
"You're pleading for that man, Nell. Don't! It's ignominious."
"I'm pleading for you, my dear."
"Don't! It's impertinent."
Worse than either, Eleanor knew it was useless. Her motor was waiting for her and she went away. For the first time she understood something that Dorset had once said to her—that Lydia in her evil moods was the most pathetic figure in the world.