CHAPTER VI
Joe Thorne had been fond of telling a story about Lydia in her childhood—in the days before Miss Bennett came to them. After some tremendous scene of naughtiness and punishment, she had come to him and said: "Father, if you're not angry at me any more, I'm not angry at you." It was characteristic of her still. She was not afraid to come forward and make up, but she was shy with the spoken word. She couldn't make an emotional apology, but she managed to convey in all sorts of dumb ways that she wanted to be friends—she contrived to remember some long ungratified wish of Benny's, whether it were a present, or a politeness to some old friend, or sometimes only an errand that Benny had never been able to get her to do. There was always a definite symbol that Lydia was sorry, and she was always forgiven.
Part of Eleanor's sense of her own superiority to the world lay in being more than usually impervious to emotion. Besides she had expressed herself satisfactorily at the time by leaving the house, so that she forgave too. Only of course a scene like that is never without consequences—everybody's endurance had snapped a few more strands like a fraying rope. And there were consequences, too, in Lydia's own nature. She seemed to have become permanently wrong-headed and violent on any subject even remotely connected with the district attorney.
This was evident a few days later when a voice proclaiming itself that of Judge Homans' secretary asked her if she could make it convenient to stop at the judge's chambers that afternoon to give the court some information in regard to a former maid of hers—Evans. Lydia's tone showed that it was not at all convenient. It seemed at one instant as if she were about to refuse point-blank to go. Then she yielded, and from that minute it became clear that her mind was continually occupied with the prospect of the visit.
Late in the afternoon she appeared before the judge's desk in his little room, lined with shelves of calf-bound volumes. It was a chilly November afternoon, and she had just come from tea at the golf club after eighteen holes. She was wrapped in a bright golden-brown coat, and a tomato-colored hat was pulled down over her brows.
The judge, for no reason ascertainable, had imagined Miss Thorne, the landed proprietor, the owner of jewels of value, as a dignified woman of thirty. He looked up in surprise over his spectacles. His first idea—he lived much out of the world—was that a mistake had been made and that an unruly female offender had been brought to him, not a complaining witness.
Even after this initial misunderstanding was explained the interview did not go well. The judge was a man of sixty, clean shaven and of a waxy hue. From his high, narrow brow all his lines flowed outward. His chin was heavy and deeply creased, and he had a way at times of drawing it in to meet his heavy, hunched shoulders. A natural interest in the continuity of his own thought, joined to fifteen years of pronouncements from the bench, rendered him impervious to interruption. He now insisted on reviewing the case of Evans, while Lydia sat tossing back first one side and then the other of her heavy coat and thinking—almost saying, "Oh, the tiresome old man! Why does he tell me all this? Doesn't he know that it was my jewels that were stolen?" She began to tap her foot, a sound which to those who knew Lydia well was regarded almost as the rattle of the rattlesnake. The judge began to draw his monologue to a close.
"The district attorney tells me that you feel that there was some carelessness on your own part which might be considered in a measure as constituting an extenuating circumstance"
He got no further.
"The district attorney says so?" said Lydia, and if he had quoted the authority of the janitor's boy her tone could not have expressed more contemptuous surprise.
His Honor, however, missed it.
"Yes," he went on, "Mr. O'Bannon tells me that the charge of your safe, without supervision"
"Mr. O'Bannon is completely misinformed," said Lydia, shutting her eyes and raising her eyebrows.
The judge turned his head squarely to look at her.
"You mean," he said, "that you do not feel that there was any contributory carelessness which might in part explain, without in any true sense excusing"
"Certainly not," said Lydia. "And I have never said anything to anyone that would make them think so."
"I have been misinformed as to your attitude," said the judge.
"Evidently," said Lydia, and almost at once brought the interview to a close by leaving the room.
As she walked down the path to her car a figure came out of the shadow as if it had been waiting for her. It was the same traffic policeman who had stopped her on her way to Eleanor's. He took off his brown cap. She saw his round, pugnacious head and the uncertain curve of his mouth. He was a nice-looking man, and younger than she had supposed—quite boyish in fact. She caught a glimpse of some sort of ribbon on his breast—the croix de guerre. She looked straight at him with interest, and saw that he was tense with embarrassment.
"I believe I have something of yours," he said. "I want to give it back." He was fumbling in his pocket. She couldn't really permit that.
"Bribed people," she thought, "must be content to remain bribed." She walked rapidly toward her car without answering. The chauffeur opened the door for her.
"Home," she said, and drove away.
An hour or so later the judge was giving a description of the interview to the district attorney. It began as a general indictment of the irresponsibility of the wealthy young people of to-day, touching on their dress, appearance and manners. Then it descended suddenly to the particular case.
"She came into this room in a hat the color of a flamingo"—the judge's color sense was not good—"and her skirts almost to her knees; as bold—well, I wouldn't like to tell you what my first idea was on seeing her. She was as hard as—I could have told her that some of her own father's methods were not strictly legal, only the courts were more lenient in those days. A ruthless fellow—Joe Thorne. Do you know this girl?"
"I've met her," said O'Bannon.
"She made a very unfavorable impression on me," said Judge Homans. "I don't know when a young woman of agreeable appearance—she has considerable beauty—has made such an unfavorable impression." And His Honor added, as if the two remarks had nothing to do with each other, "I shall give this unfortunate maid a very light sentence."
The district attorney bowed. It was exactly what he had always intended.
But a sentence which sounded light to Judge Homans—not less than three and a half nor more than fifteen years—sounded heavy to Lydia. She was horrified. The recent visit which, under Mrs. Galton's auspices, she had paid to a man's prison was in her mind—the darkness, the crowded cells, the pale abnormal-looking prisoners, the smell, the guards, the silence. She simply would not allow Evans to spend fifteen years in such torture. She was all the more determined because she knew, without once admitting it, that she might have prevented it.
She read the sentence in the local newspaper at breakfast—she breakfasted in bed—and the next minute she was up and in Miss Bennett's room.
"This is a little too much," she said, walking in so fast that her silk dressing gown stood out like a rose-colored balloon. "Fifteen years! Those men must be mad! Come, Benny, put on your things. You must go with me to the district attorney's office and have this arranged. Imagine it! After her confessing too! I said she was wrong to confess."
But when she reached the office she found no one there but Miss Finnegan, the stenographer.
"Where's Mr. O'Bannon?" she asked as if she had an engagement with him which he had broken.
Miss Finnegan raised her head from her keys and looked at the unexpected visitor in a tomato-colored hat, whose feet had sounded so sharp and quick on the stairs and who had thrown open the door so violently.
"Mr. O'Bannon's in court," she answered in a tone which seemed to suggest that almost anyone would know that. By this time, mounting the stairs with more dignity, Miss Bennett entered, appealing and conciliatory.
"We want so much to see him," she murmured.
Miss Finnegan softened and said that she'd telephone over to the courthouse. He might be able to get over for a minute. She telephoned and hung up the receiver in silence.
"When will he be here?" demanded Lydia.
"When he's at liberty," Miss Finnegan answered coldly.
Waiting did not calm Lydia nor the atmosphere of the office, which proclaimed O'Bannon's power. People kept coming in with the same question—when could they see the district attorney? An old foreigner was there who kept muttering something to Miss Finnegan in broken English.
"Yes, but then your son ought to plead," Miss Finnegan kept saying over and over again, punctuating her sentence with quick roulades on the typewriter.
There was a thin young man with shifty eyes, and a local lawyer with a strong flavor of the soil about him.
Miss Bennett watched Lydia anxiously. The girl was not accustomed to being kept waiting. Her bank, her dentist, the shops where she dealt had long ago learned that it saved everybody trouble to serve Miss Thorne first.
At last O'Bannon entered. Lydia sprang up.
"Mr. O'Bannon" she began. He held up his hand.
"One minute," he said.
He was listening to the story of the old woman, not even glancing in Lydia's direction; yet something in the bend of his head, in the strain of his effort to keep his eyes on his interlocutor and his mind on what was being told him made Miss Bennett believe he was acutely aware of their presence. Yet Lydia patiently bore even this delay. Miss Bennett drew a breath of relief. The girl had evidently come resolved to show her better side. The impression was strengthened when he approached them. Lydia's manner was gentle and dignified.
"Mr. O'Bannon," said she, "I feel distressed at the sentence of my maid—Evans."
Miss Bennett looked on like a person seeing a vision—Lydia had never seemed—had never been like this—gentle, feminine, well, there was no other word for it, sweet—poignantly sweet. She did not see how anyone could resist her, and glancing at the district attorney she saw he was not resisting, on the contrary, with bent head, and his queer light eyes fixed softly on Lydia's he was drinking in every tone of her voice. Their voices sank lower and lower until they were almost whispering to each other, so low that Miss Bennett thought fantastically that anybody coming in unexpectedly might have thought they were lovers.
"She isn't a criminal," Lydia was saying. "She was tempted, and she has confessed. Won't you help me to save her?"
"I can't," he whispered back. "It's too late. She's been sentenced."
"Too late, perhaps, by the regular methods—but there are always others. You have so much power—you give people the feeling you can do anything." He shook his head, still gazing at her. "You give me that feeling. Do this for me."
"You could have done it yourself, so easily, before she was sentenced."
"I know, I know. That's why I care so. Oh, Mr. O'Bannon, just for a moment, you and I" Her voice sank so that Miss Bennett could not hear what she said, but she saw her put her hand on his arm like a person taking possession of her own belongings. Then there was no use in listening any more, for a complete silence had fallen between them; they did not even seem to be breathing.
The district attorney suddenly raised his head with a quick shake, like a dog coming out of water, and stepped back.
"It can't be done," he said. "If I were willing to break the law into pieces, I can't do it."
Lydia's brow darkened. "You mean you won't," she said.
"No," he answered quietly. "I mean just what I say. I can't. Remember you have had two chances to help the girl—at the first complaint, and in your conversation with the judge. Why didn't you do it then?"
Why hadn't she? She didn't know, but she answered hastily:
"I did not understand"
"You wouldn't understand," he returned, in that quiet, terrible tone that made her think somehow of Ilseboro. "I tried to tell you and you wouldn't wait to hear, and the judge tried to tell you and you wouldn't listen. People don't often get three chances in this world, Miss Thorne."
His tone maddened her, in combination with her own failure. "Are you taking it upon yourself to reprove me, Mr. O'Bannon?" she asked.
"I'm taking it upon myself to tell you how things are," he answered.
"I don't believe it is the way they are," she said.
Angry as she was, she did not mean the phrase to sound as insulting as it did. She meant that there must be some unsuspected avenue of approach; but her quick tone and insolent manner made the words themselves sound like the final insult.
O'Bannon simply turned from her, and holding up his hand to the shifty-eyed boy said clearly, "I'll see you now, Gray."
There was nothing for Lydia to do but accept her dismissal. She flounced out of the room, and all the way home in the car shocked Miss Bennett by her epithets. "Insolent country lout" was the mildest of them.
A few days afterward Miss Thorne moved back to New York to the house in the East Seventies. Miss Bennett, who hated the country, partly because there she was more under Lydia's thumb, rejoiced at being back in New York. She had many friends—was much more personally popular than her charge—and in town she could see them more easily. Every morning after she had finished her housekeeping she went out and walked round the reservoir. She liked to walk, planting her little feet as precisely as if she were dancing or skating. Then there was usually some necessary shopping for Lydia or the house or herself; then luncheon, and afterward for an hour or two her own work. She was a member of endless committees, entertainments for charitable purposes, hospital boards, reform associations. Then before five she was at home, behind the tea table, waiting on Lydia, engaged in getting rid of people whom Lydia didn't want to see and keeping those whom Lydia would want to see but had forgotten. And then dinner—at home if Lydia was giving a party; but most often both women dined out.
The winter was notable for Lydia's sudden friendship or flirtation, or affair as it was variously described, with Stephen Albee, the ex-governor of a great state. It would have seemed more natural if he had been one of Eleanor's discoveries, but he was not—he was Lydia's own find. Eleanor, with all her airs of a young old maid, had never been known to distinguish any man lacking in the physical attractions of youth. Albee, though he had been a fine-looking man once and still had a certain magnificent leonine appearance, was over fifty and showed his years. He had come to New York to conduct an important Federal investigation, and the masterly manner in which he was doing it led to presidential prophecies. Lydia's friends were beginning to murmur that it would be just like Lydia to end in the White House. Besides, the governor was rich, the owner of silver mines and a widower. It was noticed that Lydia was more respectful to him than she had ever been to anyone, followed his lead intellectually, and quoted him to the verge of being comic.
"It is painful to me," Eleanor said, "to watch the process of Lydia's discovering politics. Last Monday the existence of the Federal constitution dawned upon her, and next week states' rights may emerge."
It was equally painful to the governor's old friends to watch the even less graceful process of his discovery of social life. The two friends adventured mutually. If Lydia sat all day listening to his investigation, he appeared hardly less regularly in her opera box.
Oddly enough, they had met at a prison-reform luncheon given by the same noble women whose presence at her house had so much irritated Lydia. The object of the luncheon was to advertise the cause, to inspire workers, to raise money. Albee was the principal speaker, not because he had any special interest in prison reform, but because he was the most conspicuous public figure in New York at the moment, and as he was known not to be an orator, everyone was eager to hear him speak. Mrs. Galton, the chairman of the meeting, was shocked by his reactionary views on prisons when he expounded them to her in an attempt to evade her invitation; but with the sound worldliness which every reformer must acquire she knew that his name was far more important to her cause than his views, and with a little judicious flattery she roped him into promising he would come and say a few words—not, he specially insisted, a speech. Mrs. Galton agreed, knowing that no speaker in the world, certainly no masculine speaker, could resist the appeal of a large, warm, admiring audience when once he got to his feet. "The only difficulty will be stopping him," she thought rather sadly. It would be wise, too, she thought, to put someone next to him at luncheon who would please him. Flattery from an ugly old woman like herself wouldn't be enough. Then she remembered Lydia, whom, after their unfortunate meeting at luncheon in the autumn, she had taken through one of the men's prisons in an effort to enlist the girl's coöperation. They had had conferences over Evans too, for Lydia had not remained utterly indifferent to Evans' situation, had indeed permitted, even urged, Miss Bennett to go to visit the girl and see what could be done for her.
Miss Thorne accepted the invitation to attend the luncheon; and then, as cold-bloodedly as a diplomat might make use of a lovely courtesan, Mrs. Galton put her next to the great man at the speakers' table, where of course so young, idle and useless a person had no right to be.
The governor arrived very late, with his fingers in his waistcoat pocket to indicate to all who saw him hurrying in between the crowded tables that he had been unavoidably detained and had spent the last half hour in agonized contemplation of his watch. As a matter of fact, he had been reading the papers at his club, wishing to cut down the hour of too much food and too much noise which he knew would precede the hour of too much speaking. He knew he would sit next to Mrs. Galton, whom he esteemed as a wise and good philanthropist but dreaded as a companion.
Everything began as he feared. He took his place on Mrs. Galton's right, with an apology for having been detained—unavoidably. It had looked at one time as if he could not get there, but of course his feeling for the great work
Mrs. Galton, who had been through all this hundreds of times and knew he had never intended to arrive a minute earlier than he did, smiled warmly, and said how fortunate they counted themselves in having obtained an hour of the time of a man whom all the world
On the contrary, the governor esteemed it a privilege to speak on behalf of a cause which commanded the sympathy
It was a turning point, indeed, in the history of any cause, when a man like the governor
They would have gone on like this through luncheon, but at this moment a sudden rustling at his side made the governor turn, and there—later a good deal than he had contrived to be—was Lydia, Lydia in a tight plain dress and a small plumed hat that made her look like a crested serpent. Mrs. Galton introduced them, and with a sigh of relief settled back to eating her lunch and running over her own introductory remarks in the comfortable certainty that the governor would give her no more trouble.
He didn't. He looked at Lydia, and all his heavy politeness dropped from him. His eyes twinkled, and he said, "Come, my dear young lady, let us save time by your telling me who you are and what you do and why you are here."
This amused Lydia.
"I think," she said, "that that is the best conversational opening I ever heard. Well, I suppose I ought to say that I am here to listen to you."
"Yes, yes—perhaps," answered Albee, with a somewhat political wave of his hand, "in the same sense in which I came here to meet you—because fate, luck, divine interposition arranged it so. But why, according to your own limited views, are you here?"
"Oh, in response to a noble impulse. Don't you ever have them?"
"I did—I did when I was your age," said the governor, and he leaned back and studied her with open admiration, which somehow in a man of his reputation was not offensive.
"Why are you here yourself?" said Lydia, giving him a gentle look to convey that she was very grateful to him for thinking her so handsome.
"Why, I just told you," answered the governor, "because Fate said to herself: 'Now here's poor old Stephen Albee's been having a dull hard time of it. Let's have something pleasant happen to him. Let's have him meet Miss Thorne.'"
A lady on Lydia's other side, who gave her life to the reform of criminals and particularly hated those who remained outside of penal institutions, was horrified by what she considered the flirtatious tone of the conversation. She could hear—in fact she listened—that several meetings had been arranged before the governor's time came to speak.
Everything worked out exactly as Mrs. Galton had intended. The governor—who had expected to say that he was heart and soul with this great cause, to rehearse a few historic examples of prison mismanagement, to confide to his audience that a man of national reputation was at that moment waiting to see him about something of international importance, and then to get away in time to play a few holes of golf before dark—rose to his feet, fired with the determination to make a good speech, good enough to impress Lydia; and he did. He had a simple direct manner of speaking, so that no one noticed that his sentences themselves were rather oratorical and emotional. Most speakers, too many at least, have just the opposite technic—an oratorical manner and no matter behind it. He gave the impression, without actually saying so, that the only reason he had not given his life to prison reform was that the larger duty of the public service called him, and the only reason why he did not swamp his audience with the technical details of the subject was that it was too painful, too shocking.
There was great and sincere applause as he sat down. Workers were inspired, subscriptions did flow in. Before the next speaker rose, Lydia, in sight of the whole room, walked out, followed by the great man, who had explained hastily to Mrs. Galton that he was already late for an engagement with a man of national reputation who was waiting to discuss a matter of international importance. Mrs. Galton nodded amiably. She had little further use for the governor.
The next day Lydia went downtown to hear him conducting his investigation, and was impressed by the spectacle of his dominating will and crystalline mind in action. She came every day. Her life heretofore had not stimulated her to intellectual endeavor, but now she discovered that she had a good, keen mind. She learned the procedure of the investigation, remembered the evidence, read books—Wellman on Cross-Examination and the Adventures of Sergeant Ballentine. She enjoyed herself immensely. It was the best game she had ever played. The vision of a vicarious career as the wife of a great politician was now always in the back of her mind.
Eleanor, with her superior intellectual equipment, might laugh at Lydia's late discovery of the political field; but Lydia's knowledge was not theoretical and remote, like Eleanor's. It was alive, vivified by her energy and coined into the daily action of her life. With half Eleanor's brains she was twice as effective.
She admired Albee deeply, almost dangerously, and she wanted to admire him more. She enjoyed all the symbols of his power. She liked the older, more important men of her acquaintance to come suing to her for an opportunity of meeting Albee socially. She liked to watch other women trying to draw him away from her. She even liked the way the traffic policemen would let her car through when he was in it. She liked all these things, not from vanity, as many girls would have liked them, but because they constantly held before her eyes the picture of Albee as a superman. And if Albee were a superman the problem of her life was solved. Then everything would be simple—to give her youth and beauty and money, her courage and knowledge of the world to making him supreme. It was true that he had not as yet asked her to marry him—had not even made love to her, unless admiration is love-making—but to Lydia that was a secondary consideration. The first thing was to make up her own mind.
She had two great problems to face. At first he did not want to go out at all—did not want to enter her field. He appeared to think, as so many Americans do, that there was something trivial, almost immoral, in meeting your fellow creatures except in professional relations. The second problem was worse, that having overcome his reluctance, he began to like it too much, to take it too seriously. He had never had time for it before, he said, but actually he must have felt excluded from it, either at college, or as a young man in the legislature of his state.
The first time he went to the opera with her—he was genuinely fond of music—she noticed this. Lydia's box was next to Mrs. Little's. The newspapers made her name impressive, but her slim white-haired presence made her more so. Lydia herself admired her, and if ever she thought of her own old age she thought she would like to be like Mrs. Little—a wish very unlikely of realization, for Mrs. Little had been molded by traditional obligations and sacrifices to duties which Lydia had never acknowledged.
As they were waiting in the crowded lobby of the Thirty-ninth Street entrance—all the faces above velvets and furs peering out and all the footmen's faces peering in and everyone chattering and shouting and so little apparently accomplished in the way of clearing the crowd—Albee said: "Mrs. Little has asked me to dine on the sixteenth."
Lydia caught something complaisant in the tone. The idea that he could be flattered by such an invitation was distasteful to her.
"Did you accept?" she asked in a cold tone that she tried to make noncommittal.
Fortunately politics had taught Albee caution. He had not accepted. He had said that he would let the great lady know in the morning.
"Do you think that sort of thing will amuse you?"
He answered that it would amuse him if she were going, and against her better judgment she allowed herself to believe that the eagerness in his voice had been occasioned by the promised opportunity of seeing her.
The fancy ball was more serious. The Pulsifers were giving it in their great ballroom just before Lent. Lydia and Miss Bennett were discussing costumes one afternoon at tea time when Albee was announced. Lydia had been at his investigation that morning, and had never admired him more.
"It's the Pulsifers we're talking about," said Miss Bennett as he entered. "Lydia wants to be a Japanese, but there'll be lots of them. I want her to go as an American Indian."
With a vivid recollection of him deciding a struggle that morning between two lawyers, Lydia felt ashamed, humbled, that she should be presented to him as occupied with such a subject as a fancy costume. His voice cut in.
"Oh, yes, the Pulsifers! I had a card this morning." It was the same complaisant tone—as if it mattered whether he had or not.
"Oh, do go!" cried Miss Bennett. She meant to be helpful, and added the first thing that came into her head. "You would make a wonderful Roman senator. I'll arrange your costume for you."
In a flash Lydia saw him before her, bare legged, bare armed, bare throated. She recoiled, though of course it was not his fault. If Benny had said a doge or a cardinal; but glancing at her friend she saw he was not suited to either rôle. He was not fine and thin and subtle. He was the type of a Roman senator.
"It would be a great temptation to go—to see Miss Thorne as an Indian," he answered, smiling his admiration at her.
"I don't think I shall go," said Lydia, waving her head slightly. "I don't think it's dignified—dressing up like monkeys."
Miss Bennett looked up surprised. Lydia had been so interested in the whole subject a few minutes before. She thought the girl was growing uncommonly capricious. Albee caught the note at once.
"If they would let me go as a spectator" he began.
"That spoils it, you know," Miss Bennett answered, but Lydia interrupted:
"Of course, they'd be glad to get the governor on any terms."
But the question was more simply settled. Albee was summoned to Washington to testify before a committee of the Senate which under the guise of helping him was actually trying to steal the political thunder of his investigation and Lydia, with her Indian costume just completed—and Benny's, too, from a Longhi picture—abandoned the whole thing and went off to Washington to hear the great man testify carrying the reluctant Miss Bennett with her.
Bobby Dorset, who had said immediately just what Lydia had longed to hear Albee say—that parties like that were more trouble than they were worth—had been coerced by Lydia into going. She had made him get a Greek warrior's costume, in which he was very splendid. He was left with his costume and his party, and no Lydia to make it pleasant.
He had come in late one afternoon and had stayed on, as he often did to dinner. In the middle of the meal Lydia was called away—Governor Albee wanted to speak to her on the telephone. She sprang up from the table and left the room. Miss Bennett looked pathetically at Bobby.
"It's to decide whether we go to Washington to-morrow," she said.
"To Washington?"
"The governor is going to testify before a Senate committee and has invited us to come. It will be very interesting," Miss Bennett added loyally.
"But the Pulsifers?"
"Oh, I'm surprised Lydia cares so little for that. Of course, at my age, I'm grateful to escape it."
"Oh, Benny," said Bobby, "you're not a bit! You'd much rather go to it than to any old Senate committee. You love parties for the same reason that the lamb loved Mary."
"You make me seem very frivolous—at fifty-five," said Miss Bennett.
Then Lydia came back from the pantry, her eyes bright, and laid her hand on her companion's shoulder, a rare caress, as she passed.
"We're going, Benny. It isn't closed to the public." Her whole face was softened and lit by her pleasure.
Bobby thought, "Can it be she really cares for that old war horse?"