CHAPTER XVIII
Before the lights went up on the first entr'acte Lydia retreated to the little red-lined box of an anteroom and sank down on the red-silk sofa. She and Miss Bennett had come alone to the opera; but Dorset and Albee, who was committed to some sort of political dinner first, were to join them presently.
Even while the house was still in darkness Lydia had recognized the outline of O'Bannon's head in a box across the house. She had seen it before she had seen Eleanor. Miss Bennett had stayed in the front of the box. Lydia was glad she had. She wanted to be alone while she waited. She could see her between the curtains, sweeping the house with her opera glasses.
The door of the box opened and Albee came in. She did not speak, but looking up at him every muscle in her body grew tense with interest. He smiled at her and began to hang up his hat and take off his coat. She couldn't bear the suspense.
"Well?" she asked sternly.
"It's all right. The governor will sign it. It's only been pressure of business"
She interrupted him.
"And the other thing? Have you failed there?" Somehow she had never thought of his failing. What should she do if he had?
He made a quick pass with his right hand, indicating that O'Bannon had been obliterated.
"Our friend will never be a partner in that firm," he said.
He looked at her eagerly and got his reward. She smiled at him, slowly wagging her head at the same time, as if he were too wonderful for words.
"Stephen, you are superb," she said, and evidently felt it. "Does he know it yet?"
"No, he won't know it until he opens his mail to-morrow morning."
Lydia leaned forward and peered out into the house between the curtains. Then she turned back and smiled again, but this time with amusement.
"He's over there now with Eleanor, pleased to death with himself and thinking the world is his oyster."
Albee had been standing. Now as the lights began to sink for the opening of the second act he gave an exclamation of annoyance.
"I have something to show you," he said. He sat down beside her on the narrow little sofa, and lowering his voice to fit the lowered lights he whispered, "What would you give for a copy of Simpson's letter withdrawing his partnership offer?"
"You have it?" Her voice betrayed that she would give anything.
"What would you give me for it?" he murmured, and in the darkness he put his arms about her and tried to draw her to him.
"I won't give you a thing!" Her voice was like steel, and so was her body.
Albee's heart failed him. It seemed as if his arms were paralyzed. He did not dare do what he had imagined himself doing—crushing her to him whether she consented or not. He suddenly thought to himself that she was capable of making an outcry.
"The inhuman, unfeminine creature!" he thought, even as he still held her.
He felt her put out her hand and quietly take the letter from him. No, that was a little too much! He caught her wrist and held it firmly. Then the door opened, someone came in, Bobby's voice said, "Are you here, Lydia?"
"Yes," said Lydia in her sweetest, most natural tone. "Turn on the light, Bobby, or you'll fall over something. It's just there on your right."
It took Bobby a moment to find the switch. When he turned on the light he saw Lydia and Albee sitting side by side on the sofa. Lydia was holding a folded paper in her hand.
"What's the point of sitting in here when the act is on?" said Bobby. "Let's go in and see her vamp the strong man."
Lydia sprang up, and looking at Albee deliberately tucked away the paper in the front of her low dress.
"Turn out the light again Bobby," she said. "It shines between the curtains and disturbs me."
All three went back to the box, where Miss Bennett had been sitting alone. It was a long time since Lydia had heard any music, and the music of the second act of Samson and Delilah, the long sweeping chords on the harp, began to trouble her, as the coming thunderstorm seemed to be troubling Delilah.
Her long abstraction from any artistic impression made her as susceptible as a child. The moonlight flooded her with a primitive glamour, her nerves crept to the music of the incredibly sweet duet; and when at last Samson followed Delilah into her house Lydia felt as if the soprano's triumph were her own.
As the storm broke Albee rose. He bent over Miss Bennett and then over Lydia.
"Good night, Delilah," he whispered.
She did not answer, but she thought, "Not to your Samson, Stephen Albee."
He was gone and she still had the letter. When the act was over she went back to the anteroom to read it. Yes, there it was on Simpson, Aspinwall & McCarter's heavy, simple stationery—clear and unequivocal. Mr. Simpson regretted so much that conditions had arisen which made it imperative
Lydia glanced across the house and caught O'Bannon laughing at something that Eleanor was saying to him. She smiled. Whatever the joke was, she thought she knew a better one.
"How lovely you look, Lydia," said Bobby, seeing the smile. "Almost like a madonna in that white stuff—like a madonna painted by an Apache Indian."
"Have you anything that I could write on Bobby—a scrap of paper?"
Bobby tore out a page from a cherished address book and gave it to her with a gold pencil from his watch chain. She stood under the light, pressing the top of the pencil against her lips. Then she wrote rapidly:
- "I have something of importance to say to you. Will you meet me in the lobby on the Thirty-ninth Street side at the end of the performance and let me drive you home?
She folded it and held it out.
"Will you take that to O'Bannon and get an answer from him?"
"To O'Bannon?" said Bobby. "Has anything happened?"
"Don't bother me now, Bobby, there's a dear. Just take it." She half shoved him out of the box. "And be as quick as you can," she called after him.
He really was quick. In a few seconds she saw the curtain of the opposite box pushed aside and Bobby enter. He spoke a moment to Eleanor, and then when no one else was watching she saw him speak to O'Bannon and give him her note. The two men rose and went together into the back of the box out of her sight. What was happening? Was O'Bannon now on his way to her? There was a long delay. Miss Bennett's voice called, "Is somebody knocking?" The noise was Lydia's restless feet tapping on the floor. Just as the lights began to go down Bobby returned—alone. He handed her a note.
- "Dear Miss Thorne: I cannot drive home with you, but I will stop at your house for a few minutes about half-past eleven or a quarter to twelve, if that is not too late.
Lydia smiled again. This was better still. She would have plenty of time in her own drawing-room to reveal the facts in any way she liked. She hardly heard the music of the next theme, hardly enjoyed the spectacle of Samson's degradation, so absorbed was she in the anticipation of the coming interview.
During the ballet in the last scene she saw Eleanor rise and O'Bannon follow her. She sprang up at once, though Miss Bennett faintly protested.
"Oh, aren't you going to wait to see him pull down the temple? It's such fun." Miss Bennett liked to see masculine strength conquer. Lydia shook her head, but offered no explanation.
It was almost half past eleven when they entered the house. Miss Bennett, who had been yawning on the drive home, walked straight to the staircase. Morson had delegated his duties for the evening to the parlor maid, a young Swede, and she began industriously drawing the bolts of the front door and preparing to put out the lights. Lydia stopped her.
"Get me a glass of water, will you, Frieda?" she said.
"There'll be one in your room, dear," Miss Bennett called back, every inch the housekeeper. She did not stop, however, but went on up and disappeared round the turn in the stairs.
When the girl came back Lydia said, "Frieda, I'm expecting a gentleman in a few minutes. After you've let him in you need not wait up. Is the fire lit in the drawing-room? Then light it, please."
She stood for a moment, sipping at the long, cool glass and listening to hear Miss Bennett's footsteps growing more and more distant; listening, too, for a footstep in the street.
In the drawing-room the firelight was already leaping up, outdoing the light of the shaded lamps. Left alone, Lydia slipped off her opera cloak very softly, as if she did not want to make the smallest noise that would interfere with her listening. The house was quiet, and even the noise of the city was beginning to die down. The steady roar of traffic returning from the theater was almost over. Now and then she could hear a Fifth Avenue bus rolling along on its heavy rubber tires; now and then the slamming of a motor door as some of her neighbors returned from an evening's amusement.
She bent over the fire trying to warm her hands. They were like ice, and it must have been from cold, not excitement, she thought, for her mind felt as calm as a well. She turned the little clock—all lilac enamel and rhinestones—so that she could watch it's tiny face. It was a quarter to twelve. She clenched her hands. Did he intend to keep her waiting?
She started, for the door had softly opened. Miss Bennett entered in one of her gorgeous dressing gowns of crimson satin and bright-blue birds.
"Dear child," she said, "you ought to be in bed."
"I'm waiting for someone who's coming to see me, Benny; and as he may be here at any minute, and I don't suppose you want to be caught in your present costume"
Miss Bennett lifted her shoulders.
"Oh, at my age!" she said. "After all, what is the use of having lovely dressing gowns if no one ever sees them?"
"It's Dan O'Bannon that's coming," said Lydia, "and I want to see him alone."
"O'Bannon coming here! But, Lydia, you can't see him alone—at this hour. Why, it's midnight!"
Miss Bennett's eyes clung to her.
"Eleven minutes to," said Lydia, with her eyes on the clock. "I wish you'd go, Benny."
Miss Bennett hesitated.
"I don't think you ought to see him alone. I don't think it's quite—quite nice."
"Oh, this is going to be very nice!"
"No, I mean I don't think it's safe. Suppose anything should happen."
"Should happen?" said Lydia, and for a moment she looked like the old haughty Lydia. "What could happen?"
Miss Bennett raised both her arms and let them drop with a gesture quite French, expressing that they both knew what men were.
"He might try to make love to you," she said.
The minute she had spoken she wished she had not, for Lydia's fine dark brow contracted.
"What disgusting ideas you do have Benny! That man!" She stopped herself. "I almost wish he would. If he did I think I should kill him."
To Miss Bennett this seemed just an expression; but to Lydia, with her eyes fixed on an enormous pair of steel-and-silver scissors that lay on the writing table, it was something more than a phrase.
Miss Bennett decided to withdraw.
"Stop in my room when you come up," she said. "I shan't close my eyes till you do." Then gathering her shining draperies about her she left the room.
Even after Miss Bennett had gone her suggestion remained with Lydia. Would that man have any such idea? Would he think her sending for him at such an hour had any flattering significance? Or would he see that it was proof of her utter contempt for him—of her belief that she was his superior, the master mind of the two, whatever their situation? As for love-making—let him try it! Her blow would be all the more effective if it could be delivered while he was on his knees.
With an absurd, hurried, tingling stroke the little clock struck midnight. Strange, she thought, that waiting for something certain stretched the nerves more than uncertainty. She knew O'Bannon would come—or did she? Would he dare do that? Leave her sitting waiting for him and never come at all? Undoubtedly he had taken Eleanor back to her hotel. Were they laughing together over her note?
At that instant she heard the distant buzz of the front doorbell. Every nerve in her body vibrated at the sound. Then the drawing-room door opened and closed behind O'Bannon.
The fly had walked into the parlor, she said to herself—a great big immaculately attired fly. Seeing him there before her all her nervousness passed away, and she was conscious of nothing but joy—a joy as inspiring as if it were founded on something holier than hatred; joy that at last her moment had come.
She waited a second for his apology, and then she said quite in the manner of a great lady who without complaining is conscious of what is due to her, "You're late."
"I walked up," he said. "It's a lovely night."
"You have wondered why I sent for you?"
"Of course."
She sank lazily into a chair by the fire.
"Sit down," she said graciously, as if she were according the privilege to an old servant who might hesitate otherwise.
He shook his head.
"No," he answered; "I can't stay but a minute. It's after twelve."
He leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece and took up the jade dog that stood there, examining its polished surfaces. Lydia was well content with this arrangement. It made her feel more at ease. She let a silence fall, and in the silence he raised his eyes from the dog and looked at her as if he were reluctant to do so.
He said, "I'm glad to see you here—back in your normal surroundings."
Thank heaven she did not have to be dovelike any more.
"Oh, are you?" she said derisively. "Didn't you enjoy your little visit to me in prison?"
He shook his head slowly.
"Then may I ask why you came?"
"I don't think I shall tell you that."
"Do you think I don't know?" she asked with a sudden fierceness.
"I really haven't thought whether you knew or not."
"You came to get just what you did get—the full savor of the humiliation of my position."
"My God," he answered coolly, "and they say women have intuition!"
His tone, as much as his words, irritated her, and she did not want to be irritated. She raised her chin.
"It doesn't really matter why you came, at least not to me. Let me tell you why I sent for you to-night."
But he was pursuing his own train of thought and did not seem to hear her.
"Are you able to come back into life again? Are you"—he hesitated—"are you happy?"
"No. But then I never was very happy. I can tell you this: I wouldn't exchange my prison experience for anything in my whole life. You gave me something, Mr. O'Bannon, when you sent me to prison, that no one else was ever able to give me, not even my father, though he tried. I mean a sense of the consequences of my own character. That's the only aspect of punishment that is of use to people."
His eyes lit up.
"You don't mean you're grateful to me!" he said.
"No, not grateful," she answered, and a little smile began to curve the corners of her mouth. "Not grateful to you, because, you see, I am going to return the obligation—to do the same kind deed to you."
"To me? I don't believe I understand."
"I don't believe you do. But be patient. You will. During my trial, I imagine—in fact I was told by your friends—that you took the position that you were treating me as you treated any criminal whose case you prosecuted."
"What other stand could I take?"
"Oh, officially none. But in your mind you must have known you had another motive. Some people think it was a young man's natural thirst for headlines, but I know—and I want you to know I know it—that it was your personal vindictiveness toward me."
"Don't say that!" he interrupted sharply.
"I shall say it," Lydia went on, "and to you, because you are the only person I can say it to. Oh, you knew very well how it would be! I have to sit silent while Eleanor tells me how noble your motives were in prosecuting me. You know—oh, you are so safe in knowing—that I will not tell anyone that your hatred of me goes back to that evening when I did not show myself susceptible to your fascinations when you tried to kiss me, and I"
"I did kiss you," said O'Bannon.
"I believe you did, but"
"You know I did."
She sprang up at this.
"And is that something you're proud of, something it gives you satisfaction to remember?"
"The keenest."
She stamped her foot.
"That you kissed a woman against her will? Held her in your arms because you were physically stronger? You like to remember"
"It was not against your will," he said.
"It was!"
"It was not!" he repeated. "Do you think I haven't been over that moment often enough to be sure of what happened? You were not angry! You were glad I took you in my arms! You would have been glad if I had done it earlier!"
"Liar!" said Lydia. "Liar and cad—to say such a thing!" She was shivering so violently that her teeth chattered like a person in an ague. "If you knew—if you could guess the repugnance, the horror of a woman embraced by a man she loathes and despises! Her flesh creeps! There are no words for it! And then—then to be told by that man's mad vanity that she liked it, that she wanted it, that she brought it on herself"
"Just wait a moment," he said. "I believe that you hate me now all right, whatever you felt then."
"I do, I do hate you," she answered, "and I have the power of proving it. I can do you an injury."
"You will always have the power of injuring me."
"Be sure I will use it."
"I dare say you will."
"I have. I haven't wasted any time at all."
"What is all this about? What have you done?" he asked without much interest.
She drew the letter out of the front of her dress and handed it to him with a hand that trembled so much it made the folded paper rattle. He took it, unfolded it, read it. Watching him, she saw no change in his face until he looked up and smiled.
"Is this it?" he asked. "A lot I care about that—not to go into the Simpson firm! You don't understand your power. The things that would have made me suffer—well, if you had let prison break you, if you had given your love to that crooked politician who came down to bribe me on your behalf Why, when you fell at my feet in the reception room at Auburn I suffered more than in all my life before or since, because I love you."
"Stop!" said Lydia. "Don't dare say that to me!"
"I love you," he said. "You don't have to go about looking for things like this," and he flicked the letter contemptuously into the fire. "You make me suffer just by existing."
"I won't listen to you!" said Lydia, and she moved away.
"Of course you'll listen to me," he answered, standing between her and the door. "There isn't one thing you've done since I first saw you that has given me the slightest pleasure or peace or happiness—nothing but unrest and pain. When you're hard and bitter I suffer, and when you're gentle and kind"
She gave a sort of laugh at this.
"When have you ever seen me gentle and kind?" she asked.
"Oh, I know how wonderfully you could give yourself to a man if you loved him."
"Don't say such things!" she said, actually shuddering. "It sickens me! Don't even think them!"
"Think! Good God, the things I think!"
"Don't even think of me at all except as your relentless enemy. If it were true what you just said now, that you love me"
"It is true."
"I hope it is. It gives me more power to hurt you. It must make it worse for you to know how I hate, how I despise you, everything about you; your using your looks and your fine figure to hypnotize simple people like Eleanor and Miss Bennett and poor Evans; the vanity that makes you hate me for being free of your charms; and all the petty, underhanded things you did in the trial; all your sentimental buncombe with the poor little Wooley girl; and your twisting the law—the law that you are supposed to uphold—in order to get that bracelet before the jury; your mouthing and your cheap arts with the jury; and most of all your coming to Auburn to feast your eyes on my humiliation. Oh, if I could forgive all the rest I could never forgive you that!"
"I'm not particularly eager that you should forgive me," he said.
To her horror she found that the breaking down of the barriers which had kept her all these months from rehearsing her grievances to anyone was breaking down her self-control. She knew she was going to cry.
"You can go now," she said. She made a sweeping gesture toward the door. Already the muscles in her throat were beginning to contract. He stood looking into the fire as if he had not heard her. She stamped her foot. "Don't you understand me?" she said. "I want you to go."
"I'm going, but there's something I want to say to you." He was evidently trying to think something out in words.
"I shall never have anything more to say to you," she replied.
She sank down on the sofa and leaned her head back among the cushions. She closed her eyes to keep back her tears, and sat rigid with the struggle. If she did not speak again—and she wouldn't—she might get rid of him before the storm broke. He took a cigarette and lit it. Even New York was silent for a minute, and the little clock on the table succeeded in making audible its faint, quick ticking. Lydia became aware that tears were slowly forcing their way under her lids, that she was swallowing audibly. She put her hands against her mouth in the effort to keep back a sob. And O'Bannon began to speak, without looking at her.
"I don't know whether I can make you understand," he said. "I don't know that it matters whether you understand or not, but in your whole case I did exactly what a district attorney ought to do, only it is true that behind my doing it"
He was stopped by a sob.
"Yes, yes!" she said fiercely, her whole face distorted with emotion, "it's true I'm crying, but if you come near me I'll kill you."
"I won't," he answered. "Cry in peace."
She took him at his word. She cried, not peacefully but wildly. She flung herself face downward on the sofa and sobbed, with her head buried in the cushions, while her whole body shook. She had not cried like this since she was a little child. It was a wild luxurious abandonment of all self-control. Once she heard O'Bannon move.
She flung herself face downward on the sofa and sobbed.
"Don't touch me!" she repeated without raising her head.
"I'm not going to," he answered.
He began to walk up and down the room—up and down the room she could hear him going. Once he went to the mantelpiece, and leaning his elbows on the shelf he put his hands over his ears. And then without warning he came and sat down beside her on the sofa and gathered her into his arms like a child.
"No, no!" she said with what little was left of her voice.
"Oh, what difference does it make?" he answered.
She made no reply. She seemed hardly aware that he had drawn her head and shoulders across his upright body so that her face was hidden in the crook of his arm. He put his hand on her heaving shoulder, looking down at the disordered knot of her black hair. A few minutes before he would have said that he could not have touched her hand without setting fire to his strong desire for her. And here she was, softly in his arms, and his only emotion was a tenderness so comprehensive that all desires beyond that moment were swallowed up in it.
He almost smiled to remember the futility of the explanation he had been attempting. This was the real explanation between them. How little difference words made, he thought, and yet how we all cling to them! He took his free hand from her shoulder, and like a careful nurse he slid back a hair-pin, just poised to fall from the crisp mass of her hair.
Gradually her sobs stopped, she gave a long deep breath, and presently he saw she had fallen asleep.
There never was an hour in O'Bannon's life that he set beside that hour. He sat like a man in a trance, and yet acutely aware of everything about him; of the logs in the fire that, burning through, fell apart like a blazing drawbridge across the andirons; of an occasional footstep in the street; and finally of the inevitable approach of the rattling milk wagon, of its stopping at the door, of the wire trays, of the raising of the Thorne basement window and the slow thump of the delivery of the allotted number of bottles.
After a long time a little frightened face stared at him round the door. Turning his head slowly, he saw Miss Bennett, her gray hair brushed straight back from her face and her eyes large and staring.
"Is she dead?" she whispered.
O'Bannon shook his head, and hardly making a sound, his lips formed the words, "Go away."
Miss Bennett really couldn't do that.
"It's almost five o'clock," she said reproachfully.
He nodded.
"Go away," he said.
In her bright satin dressing gown she sat down, but he could see that she was nervous and uncertain. He summoned all the powers of will that he possessed; he fixed his eyes on her, compelling her to look at him; and when he felt he had gathered her in he raised his right hand and gently but decisively pointed to the door. She got up and went out.
The fire had burned itself completely out now, and the cold of the hours before dawn began to penetrate the room. O'Bannon began to apprehend the fact that this night must some time end—that Lydia must presently wake up. He dreaded the moment there would be more anger, more repudiation of the obvious bond between them, more torture and separation. He shivered, and leaning forward he softly drew her cloak from a neighboring chair and laid it over her, tucking it in about her shoulders. He was afraid the movement might have waked her, but she seemed to sleep on.
Again the minutes began to slip enchantedly away, and then far away in the house, in some remote upper story, he heard a footstep. Housemaids. Inwardly be called down the curse of heaven upon them. He glanced down at Lydia, and suddenly knew—how he knew it he could not say—that she had heard it too; that she had been awake a long time, since he put the cloak over her—perhaps since Miss Bennett had left the room.
Awake and content! His heart began to beat loudly, violently.
"Lydia," he said.
She did not move or answer, only he felt that her head pressed more closely into the hollow of his arm.
THE END