CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Craig Browning brought home the news to Mary as soon as his presence was no longer required at the bank—hurried home to forestall distorted rumor. The task of breaking the news to Lydia disturbed him more than he would have cared to admit, for he and Mary were aware the girl was passing through some trying crisis. High-strung, tempestuous, imaginative as Lydia was, Craig feared the results of knowledge that the father of her future husband was an embezzler, had met his death in an effort to escape with money which he had stolen.
“She’ll have to know, of course,” Mary Browning said apprehensively, “but—she’s shut in her room now, Craig. Something’s happened again. Mal was here this afternoon—and—there was some sort of a quarrel…. I can’t understand Lydia—but I don’t believe she cares for Mal. Never have I seen an engaged girl act as she acts. Poor Mal, I’m so sorry for him.”
“And I for Lydia. Her character, her upbringing, her reactions are all so potent to bring great unhappiness. She will either be very happy when she comes face to face with life, or frightfully miserable. There’s no middle road for Lydia.”
“Poor child! She hasn’t been herself for weeks.”
“Something’s on her mind. She acts as if something were preying on her. Heaven only knows what sort of a mess she’s capable of getting herself into.”
“Most of Lydia’s troubles are imaginary,” Mary said practically.
Craig shook his head. “No…. Perhaps she imagines herself into trouble sometimes—but there’s a fine, strong woman buried in Lydia somewhere. There’s a bigness about her, even when she’s most headstrong. There’s a fineness about her. She’s the wonderful or the foolish sort who would submit to boiling in oil for an ideal…. The devil of it is that the ideal might be an absurdity.”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Mary. “I believe she wants to break her engagement with Mal. I think she leaped into it without looking, and now she’s terrified at the prospect.”
Lydia was terrified at the prospect. She had arrived at a point where she abhorred the thought of giving herself to Malcolm; where she felt an actual, living, physical repulsion…. To be his wife, living under the same roof with him in the intimacy of marriage, seemed horrible, monstrous…. But she had given her word. Over and over she declared to herself that she could not, would not break it…. This repetition, the necessity for bolstering up her will was an unmistakable sign of weakening.
On that very afternoon Malcolm had come directly from his train to the house, eager to be with her, filled with hope that he would find a change, that she would be kinder, sweeter to him. He had brooded over the matter until he had worked himself into a state of passionate excitement, into a condition of mind which did not promise diplomacy or self-restraint. It was no humor in which to seek out Lydia Canfield.
He waited for her in the parlor, impatiently; his humor growing more difficult as Lydia delayed. With boyish lack of understanding—with that lack of understanding which has killed many a marriage in the first days of the honeymoon—he insisted to himself that as Lydia’s fiancé he had certain rights upon which it was his duty to insist—which it would be unmanly, weak, for him to forego. She was to be his wife, and it was her duty to conduct herself toward him in the manner which his reading of romance had informed him was correct…. He compressed his lips, told himself he was very stern and righteous, and girded up his loins to demand his due…. Then Lydia appeared in the door.
She was lovely—the lovelier for a certain wanness, a trace of pallor; for the scarce-discernible shadows under her eyes. She was a picture of desire, vivid even in the extreme pensiveness which rested upon her. The suddenness of her appearance, the loveliness of the unheralded vision fired Malcolm’s veins…. He forgot everything save her desirability, his hunger to hold her in his arms and to subject her lips to the touch of his passion.
Before she could be warned to draw back, Mal strode across the room and clutched her in his arms, roughly, baldly, crudely. It was a seizure, a violation—an idiocy. He crushed her to him with trembling, hot arms, and despite her sudden wild struggles to free herself, he kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair, her throat…. And then, the fire having spent its force in explosion, he stood appalled, frightened, holding her because he did not know how to let her go.
Lydia tore herself away and stood an instant white as the lace in the window behind her, white except for her lips which burned a curious carmine, and her eyes which blazed with a light which was impossibly green—the green of trapped fury. She stood rigid, immovable, as if turned to ice by her sense of outrage…. Then she seemed to think, to realize, to become a human girl, capable of ordinary human emotions and actions…. The change was swift, startling, not without its elements of youthful comedy, for she stepped forward a pace and deliberately, with the gesture of an angry child, she slapped Malcolm across the mouth…. Mal gave back a step, even as in childhood he had been used to seek safety from her sudden tempers in flight…. She did not follow, but, having slapped him, became very still again, motionless. Then she rubbed her cheek, her lips with her hand, as though to remove something repulsive to her skin, did it slowly, thoroughly…. This action seemed to call her to herself, for she drew a deep breath which sounded like a gasp of pain. Her face paled and then flushed. Strangely, even then, she felt deep within her a relief, a breaking of something which she desired to have broken… and knowledge came to her—the knowledge that she had attempted the impossible, that she could never give herself to Malcolm Crane; could never, never again endure his touch nor submit her soul to the impiety of his caresses….
“Go,” she said, her voice a hard, cold whisper. “Go!… Go!… Go!… Never—never come again…. Never!…”
“Lydia!”
She stamped her foot, for a moment seeming like her old elfin self. “I hate you… I despise you,” she cried, and then not waiting for him to obey, she fled from the room—out of his life. It seemed as if leaving that room was in effect a bursting out of his life into a freedom of her own. Up the stairs she flew to the sanctuary of her room, there to sit down, cold, tense, gasping. She did not sob; she shed no tear, but with hands clutching her temples remained with eyes fixed on vacancy for minute after minute, until the minutes strung together into hours…. Mary Browning summoned her to supper…. She would not answer.
So it was not until the calmer next day that she was told of Judge Crane’s death, and of the matters which contributed to it—and of Angus Burke’s part therein. She listened apathetically until Angus’s name was spoken; then she listened tensely, apprehensively, with eyes that brightened or darkened under the play of her emotions.
“What—what do people say of him?… Do they blame him?” she asked.
“Blame him!” Mary Browning’s voice lifted with her astonishment at the question. “The idea! Rainbow has made a hero of him.” Then, as the irony of it struck her afresh, “Because he saved Rainbow’s money,” she said with a trace of bitterness. “Nobody cared how finely he lived; nobody gave a thought to the splendid fight he has made. He was still Angus Burke—to be looked at askance. He was still—oh, he would always have been—” she hesitated for a word—“tolerated, if this hadn’t happened. They couldn’t see, and didn’t want to see. Nobody cared—until he saved their money…. And now he’s a hero. Everything’s forgotten because he brought back their nasty hoarded pennies and nickels and dollars.”
And so it was. The verdict of the post office was in Angus’s favor. There were many versions, as there were many people. Indeed it is doubtful if any citizen of Rainbow knew exactly what had happened—except that their savings had been preserved for them, and that Angus Burke had done it. Since the tale had first spread from Gene Goff’s lips while yet Angus was in pursuit of the Judge it had been enlarged, garbled, distorted—but the one fact stood out distinct and admirable in every telling—the money was safe…. And so Angus Burke came into his own at last, not through greatness of soul; not through fineness under trials; not because of the splendidness of his accomplishment, but because eight out of ten residents of the town were not the poorer because of his decision and promptness and readiness. He was a hero, a greater hero than he who risks life to save life. He had hazarded death—according to some stories—to save their money. They were grateful, hysterically, absurdly grateful. Had Angus appeared, it would have taken but the suggestion to set the crowd to cheering for him…. But Angus did not appear.
“I never was one of them that held ag’in Angus,” said Druggist Ramsay righteously.
“Wa-al, I admit,” said Butcher Pratt, “that I was kind of skeptical of him, but from the first I says to my wife, says I, ‘The’s good in that boy if it kin be fetched out.’ Them was my i-dentical words…. And it’s been fetched out, by Dad!”
“Crane’s doin’s,” said another. “He was allus pursuin’ and henderin’ the boy, and keepin’ public opinion het up. Wa-al, the boy was too much fer him in the end of it…. I never set much store by Crane anyhow….”
And so it went. Angus Burke…. Angus Burke…. On the street, at the dinner table, in church, everywhere, his name flew back and forth, a conversational shuttlecock, and with every rebound the legend of it expanded and magnified, and through constant polishing grew the brighter. In that day he dominated Rainbow. The people rubbed their eyes, opened them in surprise to find Angus an imposing figure, full-developed, lacking in nothing. From negligibility he sprang in a night to giant’s stature. Rainbow capitulated; its walls fell amid rejoicings, and its inhabitants gave Angus a triumph.
All this came to batter upon the ramparts of Lydia’s will during the next few passing days. It was as though all Rainbow had chosen to agree against her judgment of him; as if Rainbow had become his champion to fight for him before the court of her heart. Rainbow conspired together, it seemed, to lift Angus high above the mire of his origin, to adulate him, to set him upon a pinnacle…. And now Lydia strove not only against her heart but against reason—against a thing more difficult to conquer: her stubbornness.
One phase of his conduct stood prominent and glowing before her eyes. She cared little for that side of the matter which had won Rainbow, but his magnanimity, what she saw as magnanimity, moved and shook her. Angus had tried to save Judge Crane, his ancient enemy; had not sought in the moment of his power to retaliate for years of bitterness and cruelty…. He had tried to save the Judge, and that he had not succeeded was no fault of his…. She endowed him with a greatness of soul, when the thing he had possessed was nothing more nor less than a sense of duty—not to Crane but to his employer. Perhaps this had been fine—it was fine. But Lydia raised it to a sublimity…. She glorified Angus, gloried in her love for him… but still would not surrender. “I can’t… I can’t,” she said distractedly. “What he is cannot destroy what he was.”