The Steadfast Heart/Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
If Lydia Canfield expected her engagement to Malcolm Crane to bring her ease, she was bitterly disappointed. She discovered, as others have discovered before her, that a promise to one man will not force another man out of mind. One may will to give one’s self, but one cannot will to forget, for the function of remembering is independent of the will. For reasons of justice and self-preservation it has been made automatic. Yet Lydia did experience a certain sensation of safety; Malcolm Crane was a bulwark between her and Angus which could not be scaled.
On the morning after Lydia announced her engagement, Myrtle Cuyler, as in duty bound she was, came to talk it over. She came to express her surprise—although she felt that surprise over any action of Lydia’s was not altogether to be justified, because the unusual was the usual in so far as Lydia’s actions and motives were concerned…. She was disappointed, too, and hurt for Angus’s sake…. Myrtle found Lydia swollen-eyed, secluded in her room, looking as if she had not slept through the entire night…. Found her careless of personal appearance, careless of everything; in such a state of mind as no one had ever seen Lydia in before.
“I came over as soon as I could,” said Myrtle, “to hear all about it.”
Lydia turned away her head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she murmured chokingly. “I don’t….”
“What is it? What has happened? You didn’t go and quarrel with Mal before you got home!”
“Quarrel with him? No…. No…. I wish….” The strain had been too great. Unnerved by a sleepless night, by a night of wretchedness, by a night spent in rebellion of spirit and in muttering over and over and over Angus Burke’s name… in stifled terrors of the future, she found her strength of body and will and courage gone.
“Oh, Myrtle… Myrtle…” she cried, and flung herself sobbing upon the bed.
Myrtle was startled. The thing was so unlike Lydia, so impossible in Lydia, and she sat down beside her, stroked her hair, mothered her as her gentle nature was so finely able to do until the paroxysm had passed. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me, Lydia. It’ll make you feel better.”
“I can’t…. I can’t…. Oh, Myrtle, I’m a coward, a mean, miserable coward…. I wish—I wish I had never been born.” Then she straightened up suddenly, fiercely. “What did he say?… How did he act? Tell me.”
“He? Who?”
“Never mind…. Nobody…. I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s been a dreadful night and I—I’m half crazy.”
“Who do you mean?” persisted Myrtle. “Malcolm?”
“What do I care what Malcolm said or what Malcolm thought!” Lydia burst out vehemently. “I know about him—all about him. Why, I’m going to marry him. I’m going to live in the same house with him—all my life…. He’s going to be my husband—my husband!…” Again she threw herself on the bed, silent now, tense, with hands clenched and pressed over her ears, as if they might by some magic shut out the entire world from her thoughts.
Myrtle was frightened, would have called Mary Browning, but Lydia suddenly clung to her, would not let her go. She drew Lydia to her, held closely this proud girl who never would submit to embraces or familiarities, held her tightly, stroking her hair and her cheek as if she were any common girl in trouble…. What, she wondered, could have caused this outburst?… She herself was engaged, but the days following her engagement had been happy ones, without fears or questionings…. She could not understand Lydia—but then no one had ever understood her; yet she was wise enough to understand that here was no school-girl’s tempest in a teapot, but a woman’s tragedy, real, terrible, devastating.
Myrtle struggled for understanding…. Her first conclusion, reached by intuition more than by logic, was that Lydia could not love Malcolm Crane. Yet she had promised herself in marriage to him…. The thing was incomprehensible. Why should Lydia Canfield, of all created beings, choose the immolation of a loveless marriage; what could compel her to such a step? She puzzled over it, seeking some romantic explanation, some mystery, but reached the conclusion that there could be nothing to compel Lydia to marry Malcolm against her will. Lydia had wealth, independence, perfect freedom of choice.
There must be some reason, potent to Lydia. Knowing her friend as she did, she recognized the truth that Lydia’s reason might not seem adequate to anybody else—which would not in the least interfere with the power it would exercise over Lydia…. Cross currents of thought, fragments of recollections, opinions previously held flitted through her mind as Lydia clung to her…. She thought of many things, of her astonishment that Lydia had chosen Malcolm, of her belief that Lydia loved Angus Burke—of Angus Burke’s face when he heard Lydia announce her engagement…. And these fragments touched some spring of intuition, showing her the truth.
“Lydia… Lydia,” she cried, “why did you do it? How could you do it?” Her words were drawn from her, uttered involuntarily. “He loves you—Angus Burke loves you—and you love him…. You love each other—and you put him aside for Malcolm Crane! How could you?… How could you?”
Lydia sat upright, suddenly calm, cold. She seemed older, matured, drawn—almost unbeautiful.
“How could I do anything else?” she asked. “You must see…. There was no other way—because I was afraid. I wanted him so that I was afraid….”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid I would give in to it—that I would give myself to him…. Oh, I loved him—loved him.”
“You love Angus Burke!”
“Yes…. Yes…. When Malcolm asked me to marry him I knew that was the way—that if I married Mal I would be safe from Angus…. Don’t you see?… And then I told everybody—so—so it would be irrevocable.”
“But why? Why? If you love him and he loves you—Lydia Canfield, you must be crazy!”
“I think I shall go crazy…. Oh, don’t you understand? Won’t anybody understand? Think, Myrtle, think! Think of what Angus was. Think of his dreadful father!… How could I marry a man—like that?”
“Do you mean to sit there and tell me, Lydia Canfield, that you wouldn’t marry Angus Burke even when you knew you loved him and he loved you—just because you’re ashamed of his father and his mother? Just because you’re too absurdly proud to forget the—the misfortune that happened to him when he was a little boy—when he was too young to help himself?… He’s worth a dozen Malcolm Cranes. Family! I’m ashamed of you—I—I almost despise you. It’s nothing but vanity, silly, criminal vanity…. Lydia, if I thought Angus loved me I’d be proud—proud. I never knew anybody like him. He’s good; he’s strong…. See what he’s made of himself…. And you’re ashamed to marry him—you and your silly ancestors! What did they amount to?… Just name a single one of them who was as good a man as Angus Burke!”
“Myrtle Cuyler—” Lydia stopped, choking. Something like her old facility at flying into a passion was coming to her rescue. “How dare you speak so to me? How dare you—”
“Dare….” Myrtle shook her head. “Oh, I’ve no patience with you…. I’ll tell you this: Angus Burke is good enough for anybody. I’ve a few ancestors of my own, and he could have had me if he’d wanted me….”
Again Lydia’s mood changed. “Don’t,” she cried piteously, “don’t… I can’t bear it….”
“You ought to suffer,” said the mild, gentle Myrtle, aroused to cruelty. “A girl that will spoil two lives—three, for you are spoiling Malcolm’s, too—just for a ridiculous pride! I’ve admired you—I’ve thought you had character, stronger character than I, and I’ve envied you—but you haven’t…. If you have any heart or any backbone you’ll get up and dress, and you won’t waste any time over it. Then you’ll tell Malcolm Crane—now—that it was all a mistake. You can’t go through with it, anyhow…. Break it off with Mal—and then wait. Everything will come out all right. Everything always does—if you play fair….”
“No…. No…. I must go on. If I broke with Mal I—I couldn’t—answer for myself. I’d go to Angus, I know I would…. Maybe what you say is all so, Myrtle. But that doesn’t alter things a bit. I won’t marry Angus Burke. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t! Think of it. Myrtle, that man—his father—would be grandfather to—to my children!”
From that thought Myrtle could not move Lydia—and, indeed, when it was presented in that light she was compelled to admit that it was not without some foundation upon which a girl like Lydia might base her position…. It made the thing dreadfully concrete. Titus Burke as grandfather of her children was a point which had never presented itself to Myrtle…. It was not a pleasant point to contemplate….
Lydia was calmer now; she had passed through her storm, had surmounted her hour of weakness; the outburst was over…. Now, if she suffered, it would be in silence, bravely; nobody should ever again see the deepness of her wound…. She felt she would have strength to go through with it now—strength to marry Malcolm Crane….
…It was a strange engagement. Poor Malcolm was unable to understand his fiancée, to comprehend her manner, her moods, her capricious conduct toward himself. She had promised to marry him, to be his wife. She was willing ultimately to unite her life with his, yet she exhibited toward him an aversion which both hurt and frightened him…. It was as if he were repulsive to her…. Once he tried to kiss her—once after the night of their engagement…. She pushed him away with a violence which amounted almost to frenzy and faced him with a blaze of rage and repugnance. He drew back, startled.
“But Lydia…” he expostulated.
“Don’t touch me,” she said with savage vehemence. “Don’t dare to touch me…. Not now. Never until I give you permission. I won’t have you touching me.”
“But Lydia…” he repeated.
She interrupted him with a gesture—convulsive, hysterical. Her eyes seemed to hate him as her body shrank from him. “I told you I didn’t love you. I told you. Go away…. Go away out of my sight….”
He went, dismayed. How could any young man be expected to understand such conduct?