CHAPTER VII
It was great fun traveling with Albee. He had engaged a drawing-room on the Congressional Limited, and with a forethought, old-fashioned but agreeable, had provided newspapers and magazines and a box of candy. His secretary was hovering near with letters to be signed. The conductor came and asked whether everything was all right, governor, and people passed the door deliberately, staring in to get a glimpse of the great man; and Lydia could see that they were murmuring, "That's Albee, you know, he's going down to testify."
Lydia did not know Washington at all. She had been taken there once as a child by one of the energetic young American governesses—had gone to Mt. Vernon by boat and home by trolley, had whispered in the rotunda and looked at the statues and seen the House and been secretly glad that the Senate was in secret session so that she couldn't see that, and there would be time to go up the monument—something that she really had enjoyed—not only on account of the view, but because her governess was afraid of elevators and was terrified in the slow, jerky ascent. Then during the period of her engagement to Ilseboro she had been at one or two dinners at the British embassy. But that had been long ago, before the days of her discovery of the Federal Constitution. Of governmental Washington she knew nothing.
The Senate committee met at ten the next morning. There was a good deal of interest in the hearing, and the corridors were full of people waiting for the doors to open. Miss Bennett and Lydia were taken in first through a private room to assure their having good seats. Lydia found the committee room beautiful—more like a gentleman's library than an office—wide, high windows looking out on the Capitol grounds, tall bookcases with glass doors and blue-silk curtains, a huge polished-wood table in the center; with chairs about it for the senators.
She recognized them as they came in from Albee's description—the neat blue-eyed senator who looked like a little white fox, his enemy; the fat blond young man, full of words and smiles, who was a most ineffective friend; and the large suave chairman, in a tightly fitting plum-colored suit, with a grace of manner that kept you from knowing whether he were friend or foe.
Not that you would have suspected from anyone's manner that there was such a thing as enmity in the world—they were all so quiet and friendly. Indeed, when Albee came in he was talking—"chatting" would be a better word—with the little fox-faced senator against whom he had so specially warned Lydia. The whole tone was as if eight or ten hard-working men had called in a friend to help them out on the facts.
Lydia thought it very exciting, knowing as she did how much of hate and party politics lay behind the hearing. She was only dimly aware that her own future depended on the impression Albee might now make upon her. In his own investigation in New York he was the chief, but here he would be attacked, ruled against, tripped up if possible. There he was a general, here he was a duelist. She saw several senators glancing at her, asking who she was, and guessed that the answer was that she was the girl Albee was in love with, engaged to, making a fool of himself over—something like that. She didn't mind. She felt proud to be identified with him. She looked at him as he sat down at the chairman's right, and tried to think how she would feel if she were saying to herself, "There's my husband." Could you marry a man for whom you felt an immovable physical coldness? She thought of Dan O'Bannon's kiss, and the continuity of her thought broke up in a tangle of emotion—even there in the white morning light of that remote committee room.
The hearing was beginning; it was beginning with phrases like, "The committee would be glad, governor, if you would tell us in your own words"
"If I might be permitted, Mister Senator, my understanding is"
Again and again she saw the trap laid for him and thought with alarm that there was no escape, and then saw that with no effort, with just a turn of his easy wrist, he escaped, and what was more remarkable, had told the truth—yes, as she thought it over, it was nearly the truth. He was particularly successful with the fox-faced senator, whose only interest seemed to be to get the governor to say something that would look badly in newspaper headlines. She grasped Albee's method after a few instances. It was to make the senator define and redefine his question until whatever odium attached to the subject would fall on the questioner, not the answerer.
After fifteen minutes she knew that he was a match for them—his mind was quicker, subtler and more powerful. He made them all seem mentally clumsy and evilly disposed. He could put their questions, even the hostile ones, so much better than they could. Again and again, with a gentle, an almost loving smile, he would say, "I think, Mister Senator, if you will allow me, that what you really mean to ask in that last question is whether" And a clear exact statement of the confused ideas of the senator would follow, as the senator, with an abashed nod, would be forced to admit.
Lydia, unused to this sort of thing, thought it little short of a miracle that anyone's mind could work as well as that under such pressure. He seemed to her a superman.
After the hearing they lunched downstairs in the airless basement in which the Fathers of the Senate are provided with excellent Southern dishes, served by white-jacketed negroes. Lydia met most of the notables, even the fox-faced senator, who, she was told was very much of a ladies' man. She was for the first time a satellite, a part of the suite of a great man, and glad to be.
Then, after luncheon, Benny having tactfully expressed a wish to go back to the hotel and rest, as they were going out to dinner, Lydia and the governor took a walk along the banks of the Potomac. March is very springlike in Washington. The fruit trees were beginning to bud and the air was mild and still, so that the river reflected the monument like a looking-glass.
"You seemed to me very wonderful this morning," she said.
He turned to her.
"If I were thirty years younger you wouldn't say that to me with impunity."
"If you were thirty years younger you would seem like an inefficient boy compared to what you are now." Her face, her eyes, her whole body expressed the admiration she felt for his powers.
There was a little silence; then he said gravely, "If I could only persuade myself that it was possible that a girl of your age could love a man of mine" Lydia caught her underlip in a white tooth—she had not meant love—she had not thought it a question of that. His sensitive egotism understood her thought without any spoken word, and he added, "And I should be content with nothing else—nothing else, Lydia."
In all her cogitation on the possibility of her marriage with the governor she had somehow never thought of his expecting her to love him—to be in love with him.
She walked on a few steps, and then said, "I don't think I shall ever be in love—I never have. I feel for you a more serious respect and admiration than I have ever felt for anyone, man or woman."
"And what do you feel for this little blond whippersnapper who is always under your feet?"
"For Bobby?" Her surprise was genuine that his name should be dragged into a serious discussion. "I feel affection for Bobby. He is very useful and kind. I could never love him. Oh, mercy no!"
"Do you mean to say," said Albee, "you have never felt—you have never had a man take you in his arms, and say to yourself as he did, 'This is living'?"
"No, no, no, no! Never, never!" said Lydia. She lied passionately, so passionately that she never stopped to remember that she was lying. "I don't want to feel like that. You don't understand me, governor. To feel what I feel for you is more, much more than"
She stopped without finishing her sentence.
"You make me very proud, very happy when you talk like that," said Albee. "I certainly never expected that the happiest time of my life—these last few weeks—would come to me after I was fifty. I wonder," he added, turning and looking her over with a sort of paternal amusement which she had grown to like—"I wonder if there were really girls like you in my own time, if I had had sense enough to find them."
Lydia, who was under the impression that her whole future was being settled there and then in Potomac Park, within sight of the White House, on which she kept a metaphysical eye, felt that this was the ideal way for a man and woman to discuss their marriage—not coldly, but without surging waves of emotion to blind their eyes. Marriage had not been actually mentioned. Nothing definite had been said by either of them when before five they came in to join Benny at tea. But Lydia had no doubt of the significance of their talk. Like most clear-sighted heiresses, she know, rationally, that her fortune was a part of her charms; but like most human beings, she found it easy to believe that she was loved for herself.
They were to go back to New York on the midnight train so that the governor might be in time for his morning's work in the investigation, but before going he was having a small dinner party. An extra man for Benny, a distinguished member of the House, and the senator from his own state—an old political ally—and his wife. His wife had been a Washington woman of an old family, and now with her husband's money and position her house was a place of some political importance.
From the moment the Framinghams arrived a cloud began to descend on Lydia. She liked them both—the fresh-faced, white-haired, clever, wise senator and his pretty, elegant wife—elegant, but a little more elaborate than the same type in New York. Mrs. Framingham's hair was more carefully curled, her dress a trifle richer and tighter, her jewels more numerous than Lydia's or Miss Bennett's; but still Lydia recognized her at once as an equal—a woman who had her own way socially in her own setting.
She liked the Framinghams—it was Albee she liked less well. He was different from the instant of their entrance. To use the language of the nursery, he began to show off, not in connection with his success of the morning—Lydia could have forgiven some vanity about that performance—but about social matters, the opera, Miss Thorne's box, and then—Lydia knew it was coming—the Pulsifers. He wanted Mrs. Framingham to know that he had been asked to the Pulsifers'. He did it this way:
"You may imagine, Mrs. Framingham, how much flattered I feel that Miss Thorne should have come on to the hearing, missing one of the most brilliant parties of the season—yes, the Pulsifers'. Of course, as far as I am concerned, it is a great relief to side-step that sort of thing. Oh, I don't wish to appear ungracious. It was very kind of Mrs. Pulsifer to invite me, but I was glad of an excuse to avoid it. Only for Miss Thorne"
Even his voice sounded different—specious, servile—"servile" was the word in Lydia's mind. Mrs. Framingham, if she were impressed by the news that the governor could have gone if he had wanted, betrayed not the least interest. Lydia pieced out the story of her attitude to the governor. Evidently when she had been last in the capital of her husband's state Albee had been only a powerful member of the legislature—useful to her husband, but not invited to her house. All very well, thought Lydia—a criticism of Mrs. Framingham's lack of vision—if only Albee would stand by it, resent it, and not be so eager to please.
As she grew more and more silent the governor, ably seconded by Miss Bennett, grew more and more affable. It would have been a very pleasant party if Lydia had not been there. Miss Bennett could not imagine what was wrong; and even Albee, with his instinctive knowledge of human beings and his quick egotism to guide him, was too well pleased with his own relation to his party to feel anything wrong. Lydia's silence only gave him greater scope.
She did not see him alone again. After dinner they went to the theater and then to the train. In the compartment she and Benny had the little scene they always had on these occasions. Lydia assumed that she as the younger woman would take the upper berth. Miss Bennett asserted that she infinitely preferred it. Lydia ignored the assertion, doubting its accuracy. Miss Bennett insisted, and Lydia yielded—yielded largely for the reason that the dispute seemed to her undignified.
She was glad on this occasion that she was in the lower berth, for she did not sleep, and raising the shade she stared out. There was something soothing in lying back on her pillows watching the world flash past you as if you were being dragged along on a magic carpet while everyone else slept.
Her future was all in chaos again. She could never marry Albee. She thought, as she so often did, of Ilseboro's parting words about her being such a bully that she would always get second-rate playmates. It seemed to her the real trouble lay in her demand that they should be first-rate. Most women would have accepted Albee as first-rate, but she knew he wasn't. She felt tragically alone.
Their train got in at seven, and as soon as Lydia had had a bath and breakfast—that is, by nine o'clock—she was calling Eleanor on the telephone. Consideration of the fact that her friend might have been up late the night before was not characteristic of Lydia. Tragic or not, she was curious to hear what had happened at the Pulsifers'. She wanted Eleanor to come and lunch with her. No, Miss Bellington was going back to the country that morning. It was finally settled that Lydia should drive Eleanor home in the little runabout and stay for luncheon with her.
It was one of those mild days that make you think March is really a spring month. Eleanor did not like to drive fast; and Lydia, with unusual thoughtfulness, remembered her friend's wishes and drove at a moderate pace. That was one way to tell if Lydia was really fond of anyone—if she showed the sort of consideration that most people are brought up to show to all human beings. The two women gossiped like schoolgirls.
"Was Bobby too wonderful in his costume?"
"My dear, I wish you could have seen him. May Swayne made really rather a goose of herself about him."
"Yes"—this thoughtfully from Lydia—"she always does when I'm not there to protect him. And Fanny—was her Cleopatra as comic as it sounded?"
Eleanor wanted to know about Lydia's experiences—the hearing, Washington. Lydia told how magnificently the governor had defended himself, and added nothing at first about the less desirable aspects of his character. She thought this reserve arose from loyalty, but the fact that the governor was generally considered to be her own property made her feel that to criticize him was to cheapen her own assets. But she had great confidence in Eleanor, and by the time they had sat down to lunch alone together she found herself launched on the whole story of the impression Albee had made upon her. So interested, indeed, was she in the narrative that when toward the end of luncheon Eleanor was called to the telephone she hardly noticed the incident, except as it was an interruption. She sat going over it all in her mind during the few minutes that Eleanor was away, and the instant Eleanor came back she resumed what she was saying.
Eleanor was a satisfactory listener. She did not begin scolding you, telling you what you ought to have done before you had half finished. She did not allow herself to be reminded of adventures of her own and snatch the narrative away from you. She sat silent but alert, conveying by something neither words nor motion that she followed every intricacy.
Her comment was, "I feel rather sorry for Albee."
"You mean you don't think he's a worm?" Lydia was genuinely surprised.
"Oh, yes, I think he is just as you represent him! I feel sorry for people whose faults make them comic and defenseless. After all, Albee has great abilities. You don't care a bit for those, because he turns out not to be perfect. And who are you, my dear, to demand perfection?"
"I don't! I don't," cried Lydia eagerly. "Oh, Eleanor, men are fortunate! Apparently they can fall in love without a bit respecting you—all the more if they don't—but a woman must believe a man has something superior about him, if it is only his wickedness. I don't demand perfection—not a bit—but I do ask that a man's faults should not be contemptible faults; that he should have some force and snap; that he should be at least a man."
"That doesn't seem to please you always either."
"You're thinking of Ilseboro. I did like Ilseboro, though he was such a bully."
"No, I was thinking of Dan."
Lydia opened her eyes as if she couldn't imagine whom she meant.
"Of Dan?"
"Dan O'Bannon."
"Oh, it's got as far as being 'Dan' now, has it?"
"You dislike him for these very qualities you say you demand," Eleanor went on—"force and strength"
Lydia broke in.
"Strength and force! What I really dislike about him, Eleanor dear, is that you take him so seriously. I can't bear to see you making yourself ridiculous about any man."
"I don't feel I make myself ridiculous, thank you."
"I don't mean you'd ever be undignified, but it is ridiculous for a woman of your attainment and position to take that young Irishman so seriously—a country lawyer. Why, I can't bear to name you in the same breath!"
Eleanor raised her shoulders a little.
"He'll be here in a few minutes."
"Here?" Lydia sprang up. "I'm off then!"
"I wish you wouldn't go. If you saw more of him you'd change your opinion of him."
"If I saw more of him I'd insult him. Send for my car, will you? No, no, Eleanor! I know I'm right about this—really, I am. Some day you'll come to agree with me."
"Or you with me," answered Eleanor, but she rang and ordered Lydia's car.
A few minutes later Lydia was on her way home. It was a day when everything had gone wrong, she thought; but now a cure for the nerves was open to her. The roads were empty at that hour, and her foot pressed the accelerator. She thought that if Eleanor married O'Bannon she would lose her. She would like to prevent it. With most girls she could poison their minds against a man by representing him as ludicrous, but Eleanor was not easily swayed. Lydia wondered if after they were married she could be more successful. She had never hated anyone quite the way she hated O'Bannon. It was fun, in a way, to hate a person. Her spirits began to mount as speed, like a narcotic, soothed her nerves. The road was smooth and new and had stood the winter frosts well. The first spring thaw had deposited on its cement surface a dampness which glistened here and there and made the wheels slip and the car waver like a living thing. This only increased Lydia's pleasure and fixed her attention as on the narrow ribbon of cement she passed an occasional car.
Suddenly as she dashed past a crossroad she caught a glimpse of a motorcycle and a khaki figure already preparing to mount. She turned her head far enough to be sure that it was the same man. She saw him hold up his hand, heard his voice calling to her to stop.
"No more bracelets, my friend," she thought, and her car shot forward faster than ever.
She fancied that he must be having trouble getting his engine started, for she did not hear the motorcycle behind her. She knew that just before she entered the village about half a mile ahead of her there was an unfrequented little road that ran into the highroad she was on, almost parallel to it. If she could get on that she could let the car out for miles and miles. The only trouble was that she would have to turn almost completely round and, going at this pace, that wouldn't be easy.
Presently she caught the sound of the quick, regular explosion, and the anticipated speck appeared in her mirror. All her powers were concentrated now on keeping her car straight on the slippery road, but she thought grimly, "Worse for him on two wheels than for me on four." She felt a mounting determination not to be caught—a willingness to take any risk. Still the man on the motorcycle was gaining on her. At an inequality in the road her front wheels veered sharply. With a quick twist she recovered control and went straight again. She knew how to drive, thank goodness!
With the man gaining on her, she welcomed the sight of her back road coming in on the right. Even at the pace she could get round it, she thought, by skidding her car; and the motorcycle couldn't but would shoot ahead right into the village of Wide Plains, scattering children and dogs before him as he came. She felt a wild amusement at the thought, but her face did not relax its tense sternness.
She tightened her grip on the wheel, working the car to the left, preparing for the turn, and put on her brakes hard enough to lock the back wheels, expecting to feel the quick sideways slip of a skidding car. Instead there was a terrific impact—the crash of steel and glass, a cry. Her own car shot out of her control, turning a complete circle, bounded off the road and on again, and came slowly to a standstill, pointing in the same direction as before, but some yards beyond the fork in the road. She looked about her. Fragments of the motorcycle were strewn from the corner to where in a ditch at the foot of a telegraph pole the man was lying, a featureless mass.
She leaped out of her car. Amid the wreckage of the motorcycle the clock stared up at her like a little white face. The world seemed to have become silent; her feet beating on the cement as she ran made the only sound. The man lay motionless. He was bent together and strangely twisted like a boneless scarecrow thrown down by the winds. An arm was under him, his eyes were closed, blood was oozing from his mouth. She stooped over him, trying to lift his body into a more natural position; but he was a large man, and she could do nothing with him. She looked up from the struggle and found to her astonishment that she was no longer alone. People seemed to have sprung from the earth, the air was full of screams and explanations. A large touring car had come to a standstill near by. She vaguely remembered having passed it. A flivver was panting across the road. Everyone was asking questions, which she did not stop to answer. The important thing was to get the man into the touring car and take him to the hospital.
She was so absorbed in all his that her own connection with the situation did not enter her mind. As she sat in the back of the car supporting his body, the blood stiffening on her own dark clothes, she thought only of her victim. She was not the type of egotist who thinks always, "How terrible that this should have happened to me!"
She said to herself: "He probably has a wife and children. It would have been better if I had been the one to be killed."
Arrived at the hospital, she followed him into the ward where the stretcher carried him, and waited outside the screen while the nurses cut his clothes off. It seemed to her hours before the young house surgeon emerged, shaking his head.
"Fracture of the base," he said. "If he gets through the next twenty-four hours he'll have a 60 per cent chance," and he hurried away to telephone the details to his chief.
As she sat there she realized that her own body was sore and stiff. She must have wrenched herself, or struck the steering wheel in the sudden turn of the car. She felt suddenly exhausted. There seemed no point in waiting. They could telephone her the result of the night. She left her name and address and went home by train.
She made a vow to herself that she would never drive a car again. She would not explain it or discuss it, but nothing should ever induce her to touch a steering wheel. It was an inadequate expiation. Every time she shut her eyes she saw that heap of blood and steel at the foot of the telegraph pole. Oh, if time could only be turned back so that she could be starting a second time from Eleanor's door! It never crossed her mind that this terrible personal misfortune which had befallen her made her seriously amenable to the law.
A Paramount Picture Manslaughter
IT WAS A VERY TERRIFYING MOMENT FOR LYDIA.