Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
CAP AND GOWN
"Nature never pretends. She gives her secrets only to the unpretending."
THE fifteen dollars, after all, were disposed of in a highly satisfactory manner. They paid for Lydia's senior cap and gown. Perhaps there were other members of the class to whom their senior insignia meant as much as they did to Lydia, but that is to be doubted.
Although, ever since her illness, she had firmly resolved never to worry again over her meager wardrobe, she almost wept with joy when she first beheld herself in cap and gown. For she looked exactly like other girls! It didn't matter at all, this year, whether or not she had a new suit or a new overcoat. The gown was all-concealing. Donning it was like turning from caterpillar to butterfly with a single wave of the hand.
Amos and Lizzie were as much impressed as Lydia, but for different reasons. Lizzie was sure that the gown was proof and evidence that Lydia had compassed all human knowledge.
"Land, Lydia," she murmured, walking slowly around the slender figure, "it makes you look terrible dignified and I'm glad of that. No one could look at you now and not feel that you know an awful lot."
Amos was unimpressed by Lydia's stores of wisdom but it seemed to him that there never was such a lovely face as that which looked out at him from under the mortar-board cap. There was a depth to the clear blue eyes, a sweetness to the red lips, that moved him so that for a moment he could not speak.
"It's an awful pretty idea, wearing the cap and gown, isn't it!" he said, finally. "Somewhere, back East, there's a picture of one of your ancestors who taught in an English college. You look something like him."
"Did I have that kind of an ancestor?" asked Lydia with interest. "Isn't it too bad that we Americans don't know anything about our forebears. I wonder what the old duck would say if he could see me!"
It was the rainiest Fall within Lydia's recollection. It seemed, after the drought was once broken, as if nature would never leave off trying to compensate for the burning summer. The dark weather had a very depressing effect on Amos and instead of growing more resigned to his friend's death, he seemed to Lydia to become daily more morose and irritable.
In a way, Lydia's conscience smote her. She knew that her father was worrying over her attitude on her inheritance, but she continued to avoid the issue with him while the estate was being settled. Lydia was doing heavy work in college. She actually had entered all the classes in dairying possible, while carrying her other college work. And she enjoyed the new work amazingly.
She had not mentioned her purpose to any one of her friends but Billy. Therefore when Professor Willis, showing some Eastern visitors through the dairy building, came upon her washing cream bottles one afternoon, he was rendered entirely speechless for a moment.
Lydia, in a huge white dairy apron and cap, was sluicing the bottles happily, the only girl in a class of a dozen men, when Willis came in, followed by two tall men in eyeglasses.
"Queer, I admit, to find this sort of thing in a college," he was saying, "but decidedly interesting, nevertheless. Well, Miss Dudley, are you—I didn't know—I beg your pardon."
The class, which was working without an instructor, looked up in astonishment. Lydia blushed furiously and the two visitors looked on with obvious interest.
"It's a class in bottle sterilizing," she explained. "It just happens to be my turn."
The look of relief on Willis' face made Lydia angry. She turned her back on him and proceeded to let a cloud of steam envelop her and her bottles.
"The idiot! He thought I was dish-washing for a living, I suppose," she murmured to herself. "What business is it of his, anyhow?"
How Willis got rid of his two guests, he did not say, but half an hour later, when Lydia emerged from the dairy building, he was waiting for her. There was a quiet drizzle of rain, as was usual this Fall, and Lydia was wearing her old coat, with her mortar-board. But it was clear that the professor of Shakespeare did not know what she wore. It was a half mile through the University farm to the street-car and he wanted to re-establish himself with Lydia before some other swain appeared.
"Tell me what this means, Miss Dudley!" he said eagerly as he raised his umbrella to hold it carefully over the mortar-board.
"It looks as though it meant rain, to me," replied Lydia, shortly.
Willis gave a little gasp. "Oh! I beg your pardon!"
His chagrin made Lydia ashamed of herself. "I don't see why you should be so shocked at my trying to learn something useful," she said.
"Oh, but I'm not! Nothing that you could do would shock me! You've got a good reason, for you're the most sensible girl I ever met. And that's what I'm keen about, the reason."
"The reason?" Lydia stared at the dripping woodland through which they were making their way. "I'm not just sure I had a reason. I don't want to teach. I do love farming. I don't see why a woman can't learn dairy work as well as a man."
"You're the only girl doing it, aren't you?"
"Yes, but what difference does that make? The boys are fine to me."
"I don't know that that surprises me any," Willis smiled down at the pink profile at his shoulder. "Well, and then what?"
"Then a dairy farm, if Dad and I can rent the makings of one."
"But you have plenty of land, haven't you? Levine left all his property to you, I understand."
Lydia looked quickly up into Willis' face. "If you were I would you keep that property?"
The professor's eyes widened. "I? Oh! I don't know. It would be an awful temptation, I'm afraid."
"I'd rather be poor all my life," said Lydia. "I'm not afraid of poverty. I've lived with it always and I know it's a sheep in wolf's clothing."
"You mean you've got the courage to give the pine land up?" asked Willis, quickly.
"It isn't courage. It's being afraid of my conscience. I—I feel as if I were finishing out John Levine's life for him—doing what he ought to have done."
"I wonder if you have any idea what you mean to me!" Willis suddenly burst forth. "You embody for me all the things my puritan grandmothers stood for. By Jove, if the New England men have failed, perhaps the Western women will renew their spirit."
Lydia flushed. "I—I wish you wouldn't talk that way," she protested. "I'm not really wise nor very good. I just feel my way along—and there's no one to advise me."
"That's the penalty of growing up, my dear," said Willis. "We no longer have any one to tell us what to do. Here comes your car. I'm afraid I let the umbrella drip on your cap."
"It doesn't matter," said Lydia, valiantly.
"Miss Dudley—" as he signaled the car, "I'm coming to see you, just as often as you'll let me, this winter," and he walked off before Lydia could reply. She sank into a car seat, her cheeks burning, her heart thudding.
Early in December, the settlement of the Levine estate was completed. John's method of "shoestringing" his property was disastrous as far as the size of Lydia's heritage went. Her father tried to make her understand the statement of the Second National Bank, which was acting as executor. And as nearly as Lydia could understand, one portion of the estate was used to pay up the indebtedness of another portion, until all that was left was the cottage, with a mortgage on it, and three hundred and twenty acres of land on the reservation.
The three hundred and twenty acres on the reservation was under a cloud. Part of it was land he had gotten from Charlie's sister. All of it he had obtained from alleged full bloods.
"Then," said Lydia, in a relieved manner, "I really haven't any Indian lands at all!"
"Oh, yes, you have," replied Amos. "The court will take the oath of a number of people that the land was obtained from mixed bloods. Dave Marshall has fixed that up."
"Dave Marshall!" gasped Lydia.
Amos nodded. "He's strong with the Whiskey Trust. And the Whiskey Trust is extra strong wherever there's a reservation."
"Oh, Daddy!" cried Lydia, "we can't take it? Don't you see we can't?"
It was just after supper and they were in the familiar old living-room. Adam was snoring with his head under the base burner, and Lizzie was clattering the dishes in the kitchen. Amos stood by the table, filling his pipe, and Lydia with her pile of text books had prepared for her evening of study. Amos' work-blunted fingers trembled as he tamped the tobacco into the bowl and Lydia knew that the long dreaded battle was on.
"I can't understand why you act so like a fool," began Amos, querulously. "And I can't see why you set your judgment up as better than mine. I swan—even your Mother never did that, except on borrowing money."
"It isn't judgment. It's conviction, Daddy. And John Levine told me to stand by my own convictions, even when they were against his. Oh, how can you be willing to take land stolen in the first place and then the theft legalized by the Whiskey Trust! Why, you don't want me even to speak to Dave Marshall now, yet you're willing to take this dirty favor from him."
"We won't keep the land. We'll sell it and have the money to clear up the mortgage on the cottage. I'd take a favor from the devil in hell to get this place clear," replied Amos slowly. He took a turn up and down the room. "I can't see what's happened to children nowadays. In my day we obeyed. Lydia, I'm not going to discuss this any longer. You've got to take that land."
Lydia sat with her thin hands clasped before her on the table, her clear eyes fastened on her father's face.
"I'm not a child, Daddy," she said in a low voice, "I'm a woman, grown. And if you'd wanted me to grow up without any convictions, you should have given me different ancestors and then you shouldn't have brought me up in a town like Lake City."
Amos looked down at his daughter grimly. The Daniel Webster picture in its black carved frame was just behind him and the somber vision in the living and the pictured eyes was identical.
"Can't you see what a fool you are!" he shouted. "The land can never go back to the Indians. John took good care of that. If you don't take it, somebody else will. Can't you see!"
Lydia's lips tightened. "That's not the point. It's the way we're getting it and the way John Levine got it."
"And yet you pretended that you loved and admired Levine!" sneered Amos.
Lydia sprang to her feet. She was white to her lips. "Don't repeat that remark," she said in a choked voice. "What do you know about the feeling John Levine and I had for each other? He was the one friend of my life."
"Nice way you have of showing it, now he's gone," roared Amos. "Just about the way you show your affection for me. Will nothing satisfy you? Norton and I never squealed when you and Billy got our claims taken away from us. Doesn't it occur to you it's about time you sacrificed something to me!"
Lydia had never seen her father so angry before. He had often worked himself into a tantrum on the subject of money but there was an aspect to his anger now that was new to her. She was trembling but cool.
"I'll do anything you want but this, Dad," she said.
"But this is all I want. It's what I've wanted for years, this little bit of land. And you haven't any idea what that feeling is."
Like a flash Lydia saw again long aisles of pines, smelled again the odor of the needles, heard again the murmuring call of the wind.
"Good God!" cried Amos, tossing his pipe on the table, "poverty's hounded me all my life—poverty and death. The only two people who cared about me, Patience and Levine're gone. Yet here's the chance for me to be independent. Here's a chance for me to make up for the failure I've made of life. A man with a little piece of property like this and a little bank account is somebody in the community. What do I care how I get it, as long's I can hold it? What's a lot of dirty Indians to stand between me and my future? But what do you care?"
"O Daddy! O Daddy! How can you talk so to me!" groaned Lydia. She put her hands over her eyes for a moment, swallowed a sob and then started for the outer door. She caught her coat from the nail and closed the door behind her.
An irresistible impulse had carried her from the house. She wanted to see Billy. It was still early and a lantern flickered in the Norton barnyard. She ran along the snowy road and down the drive of the Norton yard, pausing beside a lilac bush to see whether it was Billy or his father just entering the cowshed. It was Billy and she ran across the barnyard to the shed door. Billy was whistling to himself as he began to bed down the cattle for the night. Lydia looked at him eagerly in the dim light. How big and strong he was!
"Billy!" she said, softly.
The young man dropped his pitchfork and came toward her. "What's the matter, Lydia!" he exclaimed.
"Dad and I've been having an awful quarrel."
"About the land?" asked Billy quickly.
Lydia nodded. "Oh, I don't know what to do!" And then, not having meant to do so at all, she suddenly began to cry.
"Why can't they let you alone, damn 'em!" exclaimed Billy, furiously. "Come away from that cold doorway, dear." And he led her into the warm stable and over to a harness box. "There," pulling her down beside him on the box, and putting his arm about her, "don't cry, Lydia. I can't stand it. I'm liable to go over and say things to your father and Kent."
There was an edge to his voice as he said this that vaguely alarmed Lydia. She wiped her eyes.
"Kent wasn't there," she said.
"No, but he's behind your father in this. I'll tell 'em both, sometime, what I think of their bullying you this way."
"Kent hasn't bullied me," insisted Lydia.
"No? Well, give him time! Poor little girl! Don't tremble so. You don't have to talk any more about it to any one. Just send 'em to me."
Lydia smiled through her tears. "I can't send my own father to you. And you and Kent would come to blows."
"We probably would," replied Billy. "Want my hanky or haven't you wept yours full yet?"
"I'm not going to cry any more," said Lydia, raising her head. Billy still held her warmly in the circle of his arm. The stable was dim and quiet and fragrant with clover. "You're such a comfort, Billy. Now that John Levine's gone, there's no one understands me as you do. How can I reconcile Dad to giving up the land?"
"You can't, Lydia. You'll just have to reconcile yourself to a misunderstanding with him."
"But I can't live that way!" wailed Lydia.
"Well, you have the cottage. He used to think he'd be perfectly happy if he owned that."
"Oh, there's a mortgage on the cottage!" exclaimed Lydia. "Poor Daddy! He wants to pay the mortgage with the lands."
"It's tough luck! But there's nothing for you to do, Lydia, but to stick to it. Don't weaken and things will come out all right. See if they don't. And you've always got me. And if I see they're worrying you too much, I'll make trouble for 'em."
A vague, warm sense of comfort and protection was stilling Lydia's trembling. She rose and looked up into his face gratefully. "I don't see why you're so good to me," she said.
"Do you want me to tell you?" began the young man eagerly.
"No! No!" Lydia began to move hastily toward the door. "Don't come home with me, Billy. I'll just run back alone."
Billy's face in the lantern light was inscrutable. "I'll obey to-night, Lydia," he said, "but the time's coming, when I won't," and he picked up the pitchfork he had dropped.
With the sense of comfort and protection sustaining her, Lydia went homeward under the winter stars. Kent's automobile was standing before the gate and Lydia's heart sank. It was the first time in her life she ever had been sorry at the thought of seeing Kent.
He was sitting before the base burner with her father and jumped up to help her take her coat off. He greeted her soberly.
"Your father's been telling me about your discussion, Lyd," he said. "You can't mean to stick by your decision!"
Lydia sat down wearily. "Oh, Kent, don't you begin at me, too."
"But I think I ought to, Lydia," replied Kent, his voice dangerously eager. "I don't think any of your friends have a right to be quiet when you're letting a silly scruple ruin your and your father's future."
"It certainly won't ruin my future," said Lydia. "And I won't let it ruin Dad's."
"Now look here, Lydia," began Kent, "let's begin at the beginning and sift this thing out."
"But why?" groaned Lydia. "You know exactly how I feel and why I feel it. And I know how you feel. We've been debating it for years."
"Yes, but listen," persisted Kent, and once more he began his arguments on the Indian question.
Kent had a certain eloquence of speech, yet Lydia, knowing all that he would say, gave little heed to his words while she watched his glowing face.
"Don't you see?" he ended finally.
"I see how you feel, yes," replied Lydia. "But just because you can list what you call average American business deals that are crooked, you aren't justified in being crooked, are you?"
Kent threw out his hand helplessly, and for a moment there was stance in the room, then he said,
"Well, after all, there's nothing so selfish as your Puritans. Of course, every one but yourselves is wrong. And, of course, it doesn't occur to you that it might be a decent thing of you to sacrifice your own scruples to do a thing that would mean so much to your father."
Lydia looked at Kent quickly. This was a new angle. He would have followed this opening at once had not Amos spoken for the first time.
"Hold up, Kent," he said in a tired voice. "Don't heckle her any more. After all, I'm getting on toward fifty and I guess it's too late for me to begin over, anyhow. I'll plod along as I always have."
"Oh, Daddy!" cried Lydia, "don't talk that way! You aren't a bit old. You make me feel like a beast, between you."
"Well, we don't mean to," Amos went on, "but I guess we have been pretty hard on you."
Amos' weariness and gentleness moved Lydia as no threats could. Her eyes filled with tears and she crossed over quickly to the window and looked out on the starlit splendor of the lake. In how many, many crises of her life she had gazed on this self-same scene and found decision and comfort there!
Was she selfish? Was she putting her own desire for an easy conscience ahead of her father's happiness? Amos went into the kitchen for a drink and Kent followed her to the window and took both her hands.
"Lydia," he said, "I'm awful sorry to press you so, but you're being unfair and foolish, honestly you are. You used to let me look out for you in the old days—the old days when I used to pull little Patience's carriage with my bicycle—why can't you trust me now? Come, dearest,—and next year we'll be married and live happy ever after."
Lydia's lips quivered. All Kent's charm of manhood, all the memories of their childhood together, of his boyhood love for her and her baby sister, spoke together to win her to his desires. And after all, what could matter so much to her as her father's and Kent's happiness?
"Kent!" she cried with the breathlessness of a new idea, "if I should give in and agree to take the land, would you go up there with me and turn it into a farm?"
Kent smiled at her pityingly. "Why, Lyd, there's nothing in that! Why should we try to farm it? The money is in speculating with it. I could clear up a mint of money for you in a couple of years, if you'll give me the handling of it."
But Lydia's eyes were shining now. "Oh, but listen! You don't understand. Mr. Levine drove the Indians out, by fraud and murder. Yes, he did, Kent. And yet, he had big dreams about it. He must have had. He was that kind of a man. And if we should go up there and turn those acres into a great farm, and—and make it stand for something big and right—perhaps that would make up for everything!"
"Lord, what a dreamer you are, Lyd," groaned Kent. "Mr. Dudley, do you hear this?"
Amos grunted. "Nothing looks good to me but this cottage. I'd have a cow and a few pigs and some bees and the whole world could go to the devil for all of me."
"Lydia," said Kent, "be sensible. Don't talk impossibilities."
"What is there impossible about it?" demanded Lydia.
"Gee, easy money on one side, and a lifetime of hard work on the other! Yet you act as if there was a choice."
"Kent, can't you understand how I feel?" pleaded Lydia. "Have you got a blind spot in your mind where money is concerned? Are all the men in America money crazy like the men in Lake City?"
"Sure," replied Kent cheerfully. "Oh, Lydia, honey, don't be so hard! Look at your poor old Dad! Think what it would mean to him. Don't be so doggone sanctimonious!"
Instead of looking at her father, Lydia looked at Kent, long and wistfully. How dear he was to her! What an inalienable part of her life he was! What was the use of always struggling against her heart. Kent smiled into her face. Her lips trembled and she turned to look at Amos. He was standing by the table, filling his pipe. Suddenly Lydia realized how gray and broken he looked, how bent his shoulders were with work, and there swept over her anew an understanding of his utter loneliness since her mother's and Levine's death.
With a little inarticulate murmur, she ran across the room and threw her arms about his neck. "Oh, Daddy," she cried, "I'll do it! I'll agree to it! If only you'll promise me to be happy!"
Amos dropped his pipe. "Lydia! You don't mean it! Why, my little girl! Lord, Kent! Isn't she just all right! Make me happy! Why, Lydia, you've made a young man of me—I swan—!"
Kent was holding one hand now, Amos the other. Both looked at Lydia with radiant faces. And she could but feel an answering glow.
"We'll make this up to you, Lyd, old lady," cried Kent. "See if we don't." There was a little pause during which the ice boomed. Then,
"Well, what happens next, now you've settled me?" asked Lydia.
"Something to eat," exclaimed Amos. "I didn't eat any supper. I swear I haven't eaten for months with any relish. Lydia, make us some chocolate or something."
As Lydia passed through the dining-room with her steaming tray, a little later, Lizzie called from her bed and Lydia set down the tray and went to her.
"Did they win you over, Lydia?" she asked. "I went to bed so's not to interrupt."
"Yes, they won me," said Lydia.
"Poor child! I never wished harder'n I have to-night that your mother hadn't died. But never mind! I guess it's just as well you gave in. Kent could win the heart of a bronze image. Drat him! Run along with the supper, Lydia."
"Now," said Kent, as he sipped his chocolate, "let's lay our plans."
"Not before me," exclaimed Lydia. "My one stipulation is that you don't tell me any of the details."
"All right," said Amos, hastily. "We'll do anything she wants, now, eh, Kent?"
"You bet," replied the young man.
That night, after Kent had gone, Lydia stood long at the living-room window which gave on the front gate. The pine, its boughs powdered with snow, kept its lonely vigil over the cottage.
"Yes," whispered Lydia, finally, "your last friend has deserted you, but I guess I'm keeping faith with Kent and Dad, anyhow."
Then she went to bed.
For a day or so Lydia avoided Billy Norton. But she was restless and unhappy and found it difficult to keep her mind on her college work. Finally, she timed her return from the dairy school, one afternoon, to coincide with Billy's home-coming from his office and she overtook him Just beyond the end of the street-car line. The sun was sinking and the wind was rising.
"Billy!" called Lydia.
He turned and waited for her with a broad smile. "Billy," she said without preliminaries, "I gave in!"
"Lydia!" he gasped.
"I couldn't stand their pleading. I gave in. I hate myself, but Dad looks ten years younger!"
"You actually mean you're letting yourself get mixed up with the Whiskey Trust and that pup of a Dave Marshall?"
Lydia plodded doggedly through the snow. "Of course, Kent's tending to all that, I refuse to be told the details."
"Lydia!" cried Billy again and there was such a note of pain in his voice that she turned her face to his with the same dogged look in her eyes that had been expressed in her walk.
"Why," he said, "what am I going to do without you to look up to—to live up to? You can't mean it!"
"But I do mean it. I fought and fought and I have for years till I'm sick of it. Now, at least, there'll be no more poverty for Dad to complain of."
"'Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribband to wear in his coat,'"
quoted Billy bitterly. "Lydia, I can't believe it!"
"It's true," repeated Lydia. "I couldn't stand Kent and Dad both. And partly I did it for John Levine's memory. I'm not trying to justify myself Billy. I know that I'm doing something wrong, but I've definitely made up my mind to sacrifice my own ease of conscience to Dad's happiness."
"You can't do it! You aren't built that way," exclaimed Billy.
"But I am doing it," reiterated Lydia.
"Look here," he cried, eagerly, "do you expect to keep my respect and yet go on with this?"
Lydia did not reply for some time. They were nearing the cottage, and she could see the pine, black against the afterglow, when she said,
"Well, I'm not keeping my own self-respect and yet, I'm glad I'm making Dad and Kent happy."
"Kent! Wait till I see him!"
"You can't change Kent, if I couldn't," replied Lydia.
"I'll not try to change him," said Billy grimly. "I'll tell him what I think of him, though."
They paused by the gate. Billy looked down at Lydia with a puzzled frown.
"How about 'Ducit Amor Patriae' now, Lydia?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know," she sighed. "Good night, Billy."
"Good-by, Lydia," said the young man heavily and he turned away, leaving her standing at the gate.
But though she had maintained a calm front with Billy, Lydia went over and over their conversation that night feverishly before she went to sleep. She tossed and turned and then long after the old living-room clock had struck midnight, she slipped out of bed and crouched on her knees, her hands clasped across her pillow, her eyes on the quiet stars that glowed through the window.
"O God," she prayed, "O God, if You do exist, help me now! Don't let me lose Billy's respect for I don't know how I can get along without it. God! God! Make me believe in You, for I must have Some One to turn to! You have taken mother and little Patience and John Levine from me! Oh, let me keep Billy! Let me keep him, God, and make me strong enough to keep on accepting that three hundred and twenty acres. Amen."
Shivering, but somehow quieted, she crept into bed and fell asleep.