The Steadfast Heart/Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rainbow’s post office was always crowded when the three o’clock mail was distributed; it was a daily clearing house of gossip, a club with a general membership, an institution of importance in the political and financial and social life of the town. On the afternoon following Lydia Canfield’s party, the session was devoted almost exclusively to Angus Burke. He had become a personage. The town set a new value on him… a value not solid but tinseled. Temporarily his act of the night before had gilded him, had caused other matters to be lost sight of which, presently, would be remembered again. Every phase of his rescue of Myrtle Cuyler was discussed and its possibilities followed into the remote future. Rainbow loved to speculate upon the future.
Lydia Canfield came through the door and bent to open her post box as Mrs. Bowen, wife of Chet, was saying:
“Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out to be a romance, like in books? Angus Burke’s old enough to marry, and so’s Myrtle Cuyler. And wouldn’t it be a kind of fascinatin’ story if this savin’ her life was to bring them together—him bein’ what he is and her bein’ who she is. You read about sich things, and I’ll venture that’s what’ll come about.”
Lydia turned a displeased face upon Mrs. Bowen, and noticed for the first time how common Mrs. Bowen looked and how dowdy her hat was and how loud her voice. She had always rather liked Mrs. Bowen before, and wondered now how it was she had never noticed such glaring defects.
“Be a fine thing for young Burke if he was to marry into a fam’ly like that,” Mrs. Bowen went on. “Folks’d have to take another tack with him then…. Kind of hard on Myrtle, maybe, but she’s Myrtle Cuyler, jest the same, and folks ’ud have to put up with her husband whoever he was…. Anyhow, my husband Chet says young Burke’s gettin’ on fine in business. He’s got to kind of like him.”
Lydia stood very straight and severe; she eyed Mrs. Bowen coldly. “Angus Burke doesn’t have to marry anybody,” she said frostily, in her most lofty and forbidding manner. “His friends are satisfied with him as he is.” Color was rising in her face and it was apparent she was on the verge of what Rainbow knew as her “tantrums.” When these were on the horizon Rainbow preferred to take shelter. It rather gloried in Lydia’s tantrums. Persons who have never lived in a community like Rainbow have no idea how far a young person like Lydia can go, nor what it means to be the Lydia Canfield of such a town…. Mrs. Bowen made no rejoinder; rather, she changed the subject abruptly.
“Hear about Clara Reynolds?” she asked generally of the assemblage.
“Sick?”
“Married. Her and John Fritch was married secret in Lansing yestiddy.”
“John Fritch!” exclaimed Lydia. “You don’t mean that young man at the hotel!”
“Him and no other,” said Mrs. Bowen impressively.
“What in the world can Clara have been thinking of? Why, nobody knows anything about this Mr. Fritch. He’s a foreigner or something, isn’t he? And somebody told me his father was a circus performer.”
“So they say.”
Lydia shook her head. “It doesn't seem possible. How a girl can marry a man like that, with no family—who has queer people like circus performers or actors or something, I can’t see. Why, the Reynolds family is related to Governor Wing, and Mrs. Reynolds was a Chadwick.”
“Folks forgets ancestry when they fall in love,” said Mrs. Pratt.
“They ought not to. If you have good family it’s your duty to keep it good—just as much as it’s your duty to keep your hands clean, or to keep from doing anything you’re ashamed of.”
Mrs. Pratt bridled; she was notoriously lacking in family tree. “Some folks seems willin’ enough to make friends with folks that don’t brag much about fam’ly,” she said acidly.
“What do you mean, Mrs. Pratt?” asked Lydia, immediately on her dignity.
“I mean you and Angus Burke. I guess he don’t say much about his ancestors, does he? Don’t brag none about his father. But you’re ready enough to be friends with him—and to shove him down folks’ throats by invitin’ him to your party. Guess I wouldn’t talk so much about Clara Reynolds.”
Lydia turned away her head. Unconsciously Mrs. Pratt had touched upon an open sore which Lydia had sought to conceal even from herself. For months past Angus Burke had been growing in importance to Lydia Canfield; assuming a larger place in her life and her consciousness. She had fought to suppress him, to exclude him from her thoughts, because she considered he was unworthy to occupy so large a place in her meditations, but he remained…. Last night had been a sort of culmination, an exclamation point at the end of a sentence calling the attention of the reader to what had gone before, setting it forth more starkly. She had gone to sleep thinking of Angus—breathlessly, apprehensively. She had been frightened, yet she refused to make any admissions to herself. She told herself there were no admissions to make, except that Angus Burke was using up too much of her thinking time. Yet, withal, she had the sensation of being dragged, pushed, hurried against her will to some destination, and she was afraid of what she did not understand…. She was far from realizing that she desired Angus Burke as the one man necessary to the perfection of her future. She would have refuted the suggestion with scorn, but, nevertheless, lurking in the subconscious depths of her mind was something very like it—and she dared not peer deeper to see if it were so…. Side by side with this subconsciousness, repressed knowledge, crowding it back, endeavoring to strangle it, was the thought of Angus Burke’s parentage, of his dreadful, criminal father; his squalid, degraded mother…. Strangely, but perhaps naturally to one of her vigorous character, she did not consider Angus’s own past, his killing of a man, his imprisonment and trial. Those things were negligible—his parentage was everything. In this she differed from Rainbow…. Had anyone hinted to her of a possible marriage between herself and Angus Burke, such a one would have forfeited her friendship forever, and in the process would have heard words and phrases calculated to put him in his place forever…. In the light of reason such a dénouement seemed monstrous, impossible.
Now, as if a cold hand had been placed upon her back, she came face to face with a fact and could not evade it. The sensation she had just experienced, when Mrs. Bowen had planned a romance between Angus and Myrtle Cuyler, had been jealousy! She knew in this appalling moment that she had been jealous last night when her guest had admired Angus so heartily and praised him so generously…. It shocked her, terrified her. It was a thing she could not reason with in that crowded place; a thing requiring seclusion, a thing requiring clear thinking and resolution…. And, as these matters came to vex her, she had a vision of Angus himself. He came to overshadow all other reflections as she saw him as he had stood before her the night before, tall, dignified, seemly, in appearance more as a gentleman should be than any of her accepted friends. She saw him rising to emergencies, more than one of them, as a gentleman should rise to an emergency…. Because the conduct was his, of whom she had not expected it, it was magnified in her eyes, made to appear more remarkable, finer, more admirable.
“Why,” her mind whispered in a sort of agonized flutter for a means of escape, “why couldn’t Angus have been somebody?” Then she took herself to task for asking such a question. What did it matter who he was? What could it be to her? She assured herself the whole discussion was negligible, but while she gave herself this assurance, she knew it was not, never could be negligible again.
Young Malcolm Crane came into the post office while Mrs. Pratt was speaking to Lydia. He walked to her side, tipped his hat, and somewhat cavalierly turned his back upon Mrs. Pratt.
“I see you survived the revels,” he said smiling. “I thought you’d be here. That’s why I came, for I haven’t the least idea I’ll get any mail.”
Lydia was glad to have him there; he formed a bulwark between her and assembled Rainbow, between her and thoughts of Angus Burke. She was confident in Malcolm’s selfishness and in its willingness and ability to exclude anybody else from a thing he wanted himself…. Malcolm Crane was a straw at which she clutched in the current which was sweeping her to disaster.
“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” she said, wiling to forget their quarrel of the night before. In other circumstances she might not have been so readily forgiving.
They turned toward the door and presently were walking down the street together. When they were alone, on a secluded side street, Malcolm assumed a somber bearing, one of melancholy dignity, tinged with tragedy.
“Lydia,” he said, “I—I want to speak to you about something. I’ve got to speak to you…. A year ago I—told you I loved you, and you were angry with me. I don’t know why. There isn’t anything wrong about loving a girl that I can see—anything she should take offense at.” He stopped and studied her face, which she turned toward him and then quickly turned away. She was not angry, he saw, as she had been before, and from this he drew hope.
“I’m going back to college in a few days, and then it will be a long time before I see you again…. Won’t you marry me? Won’t you tell me before I go away that you’ll be my wife—when I graduate?”
After a moment of hesitation she replied coldly, “I don’t want to marry anybody, Malcolm. I haven’t any idea of getting married, so don’t speak about it any more…. I’m not going to marry for years.”
“I haven’t a fair chance,” Malcolm complained. “I have to be away most of the year, and you’ll forget all about me. While I’m gone somebody else will come along—and you’ll marry him.”
“There’s no need to complain to me about that,” said Lydia. “I don’t send you away to college.” Her irritation began to arise at the note of self-pity in Malcolm’s voice. “You go to school of your own accord, and I’m sure I never asked you to fall in love with me.”
“If you should fall in love with somebody else while I’m gone, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“You’d do nothing at all,” she said sharply.
They had turned again on to Main Street and were passing the bank. Malcolm saw Angus Burke standing inside in conversation with a customer…. Immediately he became savage, vindictive, made so first by Lydia’s conduct, but principally by the sight of the boy he had been taught by his father to hate.
“It might even be that Burke,” he said unwisely, “the way you have him around all the time.”
For once Lydia controlled herself, or perhaps she was so angry that no adequate outbreak was possible. She spoke quietly. “Malcolm,” she said, “it’s none of your business who I marry. Right at this minute, I’d a thousand times rather marry Angus Burke than you. He’s a better gentleman than you’ll ever know how to be.” She stopped, stamped her foot, and her self-control began to slip.
“Angus Burke is a gentleman,” she said, “and I like him and I’m proud of him…. I don’t know but I would marry him if he should ask me, so there!” Then she finished, lips white, eyes flashing, “Why shouldn’t I?”
Malcolm was as angry as she, and anger gave him courage. “Because he’s the son of a pauper and a thief. He’s a criminal, and just because he’s fooling people now, don’t think he can keep it up. The day will come when he’ll see the inside of a jail again, because it’s in his blood…. Go ahead. Marry him if you want to, and see how you’ll like it…. You, with all your talk about family and ancestors…. If you had any children they’d be proud of their father’s ancestors, wouldn't they?” He stopped suddenly, frightened by what he had said, by this inadvertent allusion to future children, a matter to which Rainbow does not allude.
Lydia clutched her skirt with both hands, her fingers crushed the fabric. She was a picture of fury, and Malcolm drew back a step in real fear lest she should strike him. She could have struck him, trampled him at that moment…. She did not move. Then, suddenly, terrifyingly, she began to sob, great, deep, rending sobs!
“I’ll marry him if I want to,” she cried. “I’ll marry him if I want to…. I don’t care—who he is—or what—he does…. I’d marry him in a prison cell if I wanted him.”
Though she was a young woman of dignified years and marriageable age, she turned swiftly, gathered up her skirts, and ran toward home as fast as she could fly, sobbing as she went. Malcolm stood dumbly, staring after her.
Lydia ran until her strength deserted her midway up the hill. There she stopped an instant, dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, and continued at a more decorous pace. Home appeared to her a harbor of refuge. There she could hide, there she could steal away to her own room, lock the door and shut out all the world…. Not stopping to remove her hat, she threw herself on the bed and ground her face into the coverlet—ground it so there was actual pain…. It was welcome pain.
When your ordinary girl first realizes the possibility, the possible imminence, of giving herself into the keeping of a definite man, she does so with pleasure. There may be trepidation, conventional fears, tremblings, but there is also joy…. Lydia Canfield felt only a numbing horror….
She did not search her heart to discover if she loved Angus Burke. For the time that aspect of the matter was laid aside. All that was apparent to her was the dreadful possibility of a Canfield being hurried by mysterious forces into marriage with a Burke; the scandalous thought of a girl in her position smirching herself and her family by mating with a man of Angus Burke's antecedents, his degraded parentage.
“I sha’n’t…. I sha’n’t…. I sha’n’t…” she muttered fiercely, repeating it again and again. “I sha’n’t marry him. I’ll never see him again…. Never…. Never…. Never….”