Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 1

HERE is a State in the North Mississippi Valley unexcelled for its quiet beauty. To the casual traveler there may be a certain monotony in the unending miles of rolling green hills, stretching on and on into distant, pale skies. But the native of the State knows that the monotony is only seeming.

He knows that the green hills shelter in their gentle valleys many placid lakes. Some of them are shallow and bordered with wild rice. Some are couched deep in the hollow of curving bluffs. Some are carefully secreted in virgin pine woods. From the train these pines are little suspected. Fire and the ax have long since destroyed any trace of their growth along the railway.

Yet if the traveler but knew, those distant purple shadows against the sky-line are primeval pine woods, strange to find in a State so highly cultivated, so dotted with thriving towns.

In summer the whole great State is a wonderland of color. Wide wheat lands of a delicate yellowish green sweep mile on mile till brought to pause by the black green of the woods. Mighty acres of corn land, blue-green, march on the heels of the wheat. Great pastures riotous with early goldenrod are thick dotted with milk herds. White farmhouses with red barns and little towns with gray roofs and green shaded streets dot the State like flower beds.

An old State, as we measure things out of New England, settled by New Englanders during the first great emigration after the War of 1812. Its capital, Lake City, lays claim to almost a century of existence. Lying among the hills in the northern part of the State, it contains both the state capitol and the state university. Of its thirty thousand inhabitants, five thousand are students and another five thousand are state legislators and state employees.

The town is one of quiet loveliness. It lies in the curving shore of one of the most beautiful of the little inland lakes. The university campus lies at the northern end of the curve. The dome of the capitol rises from the trees at the southern end. Between, deep lawns stretch to the water's edge with fine old houses capping the gentle slope of the shore. Inland lies the business section of the town, with the less pretentious of the dwellings. The whole city is dotted with great elms and maples, planted three quarters of a century ago.

A quiet town, Lake City, with an atmosphere that might well belong to New England,—beauty, culture, leisure, are its hallmarks.

Fifteen years ago half a mile inland from the lake was an empty block that once had been a farm pasture. Three fine old oaks stood with tops together in the center of the block. The grass was still firm and green and thick in the ancient pasture except for narrow trails worn by children's feet. To the initiated each trail told its own story. There was a hollow square that formed the baseball diamond. There was a straight, short cut that led to the little cress-grown spring. There were the parallel lines for "Come-Come Pull Away," and there were numerous bald spots, the center of little radiating trails where, in the fall, each group of children had its complicated roasting oven in which potatoes and "weenies" were cooked.

On one August afternoon the pasture seemed deserted. It was circus day and the children of the surrounding blocks had all by one method or another won admission to the big tent on the hill east of the town.

Yet not quite all the children. For under one of the oak trees was a baby carriage in which a little girl of two lay fast asleep. And far above her, perched lightly but firmly in a swaying fork of the oak, was a long-legged little girl of twelve. She sat where she could peer easily down on her small sleeping sister, yet high enough to be completely hidden from casual view. She was a thin youngster, with short curling hair of a dusty yellow. The curly hair did not hide the fine square head, a noble head for so small a girl, set well on the little square shoulders. Her eyes were blue and black lashed, her nose nondescript, her mouth large, her chin square and her little jaw line long and pronounced. She wore a soiled sailor suit of blue galatea. Caught in the crotch of two opposite branches was a doll almost as large as the sleeping child below. It was a queer old-fashioned doll, with a huge china head, that displayed brilliant black hair and eyes as blue as those of her little mistress. The doll wore a clumsily made sailor suit of blue calico, which evidently had been washed recently, but not ironed. It is necessary to meet the doll properly, for she was an intimate and important member of the little girl's family. Her name was Florence Dombey.

A battered red book lay in Florence Dombey's lap. It was called, "With Clive in India." It was written by G. A. Henty and told of the marvelous and hair-breadth adventures of an English lad in an Indian campaign.

Florence Dombey's attention, however, was not on the book. It was riveted, hectically, on her mistress, who with her tongue caught between her lips was deftly whittling a cigar box cover into doll furniture, of a scale so tiny that even had Florence Dombey had a doll of her own, it could not have hoped to use the furniture.

It was very quiet in the oak tree. The little furniture-maker spoke softly to Florence Dombey occasionally, but otherwise crickets and locusts made the only sounds on the summer air.

Suddenly she closed the knife sharply. "Darn it! I've cut myself again," she said. She dropped the knife down the neck of her blouse and began to suck her finger. "Here, let me have Henty, Florence Dombey. Don't try to pig it, all the time. You know I don't get hardly any time to read."

The furniture and the remains of the cigar-box cover followed the knife into her blouse and she opened the book. But before she had begun to read there was a sleepy little call from below.

"Yes, baby!" called the child. "Here's Lydia, up in the tree! Watch me, dearie! See me come down. Here comes Florence Dombey first."

With some difficulty the book followed the knife and the furniture into the blouse. Florence Dombey, being hastily inverted, showed a length of light martin cord wrapped about her cotton legs.

"Here she comes, baby! Catch now for Lydia."

The baby below, a tiny plump replica of Lydia, sat up with a gurgle of delight and held up her arms as Florence Dombey, dangling unhappily, upside down, on the end of the marlin cord, was lowered carefully into the perambulator.

"And here I come. Watch me, baby!"

With a swing light and agile as a young monkey, Lydia let herself down, landing with a spring of which an acrobat might have boasted, beside the perambulator.

"There, sweetness!"—kissing the baby—"first we'll fix Florence Dombey, then we'll start for home."

"Florence, home wiv baby."

"Yes, it's getting near supper time." Lydia tucked the still hectically staring doll in beside her small sister, turned the perambulator around and ran it along one of the little paths to the sidewalk. She hoisted it to the sidewalk with some puffing and several "darn its," then started toward the block of houses, north of the pasture.

At the crossing she met a small girl of her own age, who carried a toy balloon, and a popcorn ball.

"Hello, Lydia!" she cried. "It was a perfectly lovely circus!"

"Was it?" said Lydia, with an indifferent voice that something in her blue eyes denied. "Well, I had to take care of little Patience!"

"Huh!" shrilled the little girl, "old Lizzie would have done that! I think your father's mean not to give you the money."

Lydia's red cheeks went still redder. "My father's got plenty of money," she began fiercely. Here the baby interrupted.

"Baby love pritty—Baby love—" she held out two beseeching dimpled hands toward the red balloon.

"Patience, you can't have it," cried Lydia. "It—it'll make your tummy ache. I'll buy you one when you're older."

The black-eyed child, holding the red balloon, suddenly kissed little Patience, who was the pet of all the children in the neighborhood, and put the string of her balloon into the dimpled hand. "I had the circus—you can have the balloon," she said.

Lydia jerked the string away and held it out to the owner.

"We're no cheerity charities, Margery," she said. "I'll get Patience a balloon."

"You're an awful liar and a cruel beast, Lydia!" cried Margery. She snatched the string and tied it about the baby's wrist. "You know you can't buy her one and you know she'll cry herself sick for one, now she's seen mine, and I guess I love her as much as you do."

Lydia looked from the cherub in the perambulator, crowing ecstatically over the red bubble that tugged at her wrist, to the defiant Margery.

"I'll let her have it, Margery," she said reluctantly. "I'll make you a doll's high chair."

"All right," said Margery, nonchalantly. "Face tag! So long!"

Lydia ran the perambulator along the board walk. The street was macadamized and bordered with thrifty maple trees. Back of the maple trees were frame houses, of cheap and stupid construction. Before one of these Lydia paused. It was a dingy brown house, of the type known as "story and a half." There was a dormer window at the top and a bow window in the ground floor and a tiny entry porch at the front.

Lydia opened the gate in the picket fence and tugged the perambulator through and up to the porch.

"There, baby mine, shall Lydia take you in for your supper?"

"Supper," cooed little Patience, lifting her arms.

Lydia lifted her to the porch with surprising ease. The little two year old should have been no light weight for the little mother of twelve. She stood on the porch, watching Lydia arrange Florence Dombey in her place in the perambulator. Her resemblance to Lydia was marked. The same dusty gold hair though lighter, the square little shoulders, and fine set of the head. The red balloon tugging at her wrist, her soiled little white dress blowing in the summer breeze, she finally grew impatient of Lydia's attentions to Florence Dombey.

"Baby eat now," she cried with a stamp of her small foot.

Lydia laughed. She ran up the steps, took the baby's hand and led her through the entry into a square little room, evidently the parlor of the home. It was dusty and disorderly. The center-table of fine old mahogany was littered with pipes and newspapers. A patent rocker was doing duty as a clothes rack for hats and coats. A mahogany desk was almost indistinguishable under a clutter of doll's furniture. The sunset glow pouring through the window disclosed rolls of dust on the faded red Brussels carpet.

Lydia disgorged the contents of her blouse upon the desk, then followed little Patience into the next room. This was larger than the first and was evidently the dining-room and sitting-room. A huge old mahogany table and sideboard, ill kept and dusty, filled the bow window end of the room. Opposite the sideboard was a couch, draped with a red and green chenille spread. The floor was covered with oil cloth.

A short, stout old woman was setting the table. She had iron gray hair. Her face was a broad wreath of wrinkles, surrounding bespectacled black eyes and a thin mouth that never quite concealed a very white and handsome set of false teeth.

"See! Liz! See!" cried little Patience, pattering up to the old woman with the tugging balloon.

"Ain't that grand!" said Lizzie. "Where'd you git the money, Lydia? Baby's milk's in the tin cup on the kitchen table. Your father's home. You'd better fry the steak. He complains so about it when I do it."

Lydia left the baby clinging to Lizzie's skirts and went on into the kitchen. Her father was washing his hands at the sink.

"Hello, Dad!" she said. The child had a peculiar thread of richness in her voice when she spoke to little Patience and it was apparent again as she greeted the man at the sink. He turned toward her.

"Well, young woman, it's about time you got home," he said. "Baby all right?"

Lydia nodded and turned toward the litter of dishes and paper parcels on the kitchen table. Amos Dudley at this time was about forty years old,—a thin man of medium weight, his brown hair already gray at the temples. Lydia evidently got from him the blue of her eyes and the white of her teeth. He began to peel off a pair of brown overalls.

"What's for supper?" he asked.

"Round steak," said Lydia.

"For heaven's sake, don't let Liz touch it."

"I won't," said the child, piling up dishes deftly. "I'm going to give baby her cup of milk, and then I'll fix it in my patent way."

Amos nodded. "You're a natural cook, like your mother." He paused, one leg of his overalls off, disclosing his shiny black trousers. Lydia carried the cup of milk toward the dining-room. From where he sat he could see her kneel before little Patience, and hold the cup, while the baby drank thirstily. Little motes of the sunset light danced on the two curly golden heads. He looked from the children toward the dusty kitchen table.

"What a hell of a mess Liz does keep going," he muttered. "Patience would break her heart, if she knew. Oh! Patience, Patience!—"

Lydia came back with the empty cup. "Now for the steak," she exclaimed. "Gosh, what a fire—"

She attacked the greasy stove with enthusiasm and in a short time a savory smell of steak filled the house. Amos went into the dining-room and sat in a rocking chair with little Patience and the balloon in his lap. Old Lizzie hummed as she finished setting the table and Lydia whistled as she seasoned the potatoes Lizzie had set to frying.

"Where'd she get the balloon?" asked Amos as Lydia brought in the platter of meat.

"Margery gave it to her," answered the child. "Supper's ready."

"Got it at the circus, I suppose. I wish I could 'a' let you go, Lydia, but at a dollar and a half a day, I swan I—"

"I didn't want to go," returned Lydia, sitting the baby in her high chair. "I'm getting too big for circuses."

"Too big for a circus!" Her father looked at her with understanding eyes. "I guess heaven is paved with lies like yours, Lydia. John Levine will be over to-night. Get some of the mess dug out of the parlor, will you, Lizzie?"

"Sure," said Lizzie, good-naturedly. Lydia sat opposite her father and poured tea. The ancient maid of all work sat beside Patience and dispensed the currant sauce and the cake.

The baby was half asleep before the meal was ended. "She didn't finish her nap this afternoon," said Lydia. "I'll take her up to bed now and finish my cake afterward."

She tugged the baby out of the high chair that was becoming too close a fit and toiled with her up the narrow stairs that led from the entry.

The little sisters slept together in a slant-ceilinged bedroom. Here again was dust and disorder, the floor covered with clothing and toys, the bed unmade, the old fashioned mahogany bureau piled high with books, brushes, and soiled teacups that had held the baby's milk.

There was still light enough to see by. Lydia stood Patience on the bed and got her into her nightdress after gently persuading the baby to let her fasten the balloon to the foot of the bed. Then she carried her to the little rocker by the window and with a look that was the very essence of motherhood began to rock the two year old to sleep. Presently there floated down to Amos, smoking his pipe on the front step, Lydia's childish, throaty contralto:

A little pause, during which crickets shrilled, then, in a softer voice:

Another pause—and still more softly:

The coolness of the August wind touched Amos' face, "Oh! Patience, Patience—" he murmured.

Lydia sat for a moment or two with the sleeping baby in her arms, looking down on her with a curious gentle intentness. Then she rose carefully, and as carefully deposited little Patience on the bed. This done, she untied the balloon and carried it out with her to the little landing. There was a window here into which the August moon was beginning to shine. Lydia sat down with the balloon and felt of it carefully.

"Aren't balloons the most wonderful things, almost as wonderful as bubbles," she murmured. "I love the smell of them. Think what they can do, how they can float, better than birds! How you want to squeeze them but you don't dast! I'd rather have gone to the circus than to heaven."

In a moment she heard steps and greetings and her father leading his friend into the house. Then she slipped down the stairs and into the night. A dozen times she ran up and down the yard, the balloon like a fettered bird tugging at her wrist.

"I love it as much as little Patience does," she murmured. "Oh, I wish it was mine."

Finally, she ran out of the gate and up the street to the one fine house of which the street boasted. She stole up to the door and fastened the string of the balloon to the door bell, gave the bell a jerk and fled.

As she ran down the street, a boy, leaning against the gate-post next her own, cried, "What's the rush, Lydia?"

"Oh, hello, Kent! Did you like the circus?"

"The best ever! You should have taken that ticket I wanted you to. Didn't cost me anything but carrying water to the elephants."

"I can't take anything I don't pay for. I promised mother. You know how it is, Kent."

"I guess your mother fixed it so you'd miss lots of good times, all right— Now, don't fly off the handle—look, I got a trick. I've rubbed my baseball with match heads, so's I can play catch at night. Try it?"

"Gosh, isn't that wonderful!" exclaimed Lydia. The boy, who was a little taller than Lydia, led the way to the open space between his home and Lydia's. Then he spun Lydia a brisk ball.

"It's like a shooting star," she cried, spinning back a quick overhand shot, "but it makes your hands smell like anything."

"Lydia," called her father from the bow window, "it's time to come in."

"All right!" Then aside to Kent, "I'll wait till he calls me twice more, Kent. Keep them coming."

"Lydia!"

"Yes, Dad. Not so hard, Kent. Don't throw curves, just because I can't."

"Lydia! I shan't call again."

"Coming, Dad! Good night, Kent. Face tag!"

"Face tag yourself, smarty. Maybe I'll be over, to-morrow, if I ain't got anything better to do."

Lydia sauntered slowly up to the kitchen steps. "Well, I haven't anything pleasant at all to look forward to now," she thought. "The circus parade is over and I've returned the balloon. Gee, yes, there is too! I didn't eat my cake yet!"

She turned up the lamp in the kitchen and foraged in the cake box, bringing out the cake Lizzie had saved for her. With this in her hand she entered the dining-room. An extraordinarily long, thin man was stretched out in one arm chair, Amos in the other.

"You ought to sit in the parlor, Dad," said Lydia, reproachfully.

"It's too stuffy," said Amos.

"Oh, hello, young Lydia!" said the tall man. "Come here and let me look at you."

Levine drew the child to his knee. She looked with a clear affectionate gaze on his thin smooth-shaven face, and into his tired black eyes.

"Why do you always say 'young' Lydia?" asked the child.

"That's what I want to know, too," agreed Amos.

"Because, by heck! she's so young to be such an old lady." He smoothed the short curly hair with a gesture that was indescribably gentle. "I tell you what, young Lydia, if you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

Lydia leaned against his knee and took a large bite of cake. "You'd take me traveling, wouldn't you, Mr. Levine?" she said, comfortably.

"You bet I would, and you should have your heart's desire, whatever that might be. If any one deserves it you do, young Lydia."

Amos nodded and Lydia looked at them both with a sort of puzzled content as she munched her cake.

"I brought a newly illustrated copy of 'Tom Sawyer' for you to see, Lydia," said Levine. "Keep it as long as you want to. It's over on the couch there."

Lydia threw herself headlong on the book and the two men returned to the conversation she had interrupted.

"My loan from Marshall comes due in January," said Amos. "My lord, I've got to do something."

"What made you get so much?" asked Levine.

"A thousand dollars? I told you at the time, I sorta lumped all my outstanding debts with the doctor's bill and funeral expenses and borrowed enough to cover."

"He's a skin, Marshall is. Why does he live on this street except to save money?"

Lydia looked up from "Tom Sawyer." There were two little lines of worry between her eyes and the little sick sense in the pit of her stomach that always came when she heard money matters discussed. Her earliest recollection was of her mother frantically striving to devise some method of meeting their latest loan.

"I'd like to get enough ahead to buy a little farm. All my folks were farmers back in New Hampshire and I was a fool ever to have quit it. It looked like a mechanic could eat a farmer up, though, when I was a young fellow. Now a little farm looks good enough to me. But on a dollar and a half a day, I swan—" Amos sighed.

"Land's high around here," said Levine. "I understand Marshall sold Eagle Farm for a hundred dollars an acre. Takes a sharp farmer to make interest on a hundred an acre. Lord—when you think of the land on the reservation twenty miles from here, just yelling for men to farm it and nothing but a bunch of dirty Indians to take advantage of it."

"Look here, John," said Amos with sudden energy. "It's time that bunch of Indians moved on and gave white men a chance. I wouldn't say a word if they farmed the land, but such a lazy, lousy outfit!"

"There are more than you feel that way, Amos," replied Levine. "But it would take an Act of Congress to do anything."

"Well, why not an Act of Congress, then? What's that bunch we sent down to Washington doing?"

"Poor brutes of Indians," said John Levine, refilling his pipe. "I get ugly about the reservation, yet I realize they've got first right to the land."

"The man that can make best use of the land's got first right to it," insisted Amos. "That's what my ancestors believed two hundred and fifty years ago when they settled in New Hampshire and put loopholes under the eaves of their houses. Our farmhouse had loopholes like that. Snow used to sift in through 'em on my bed when I was a kid."

Lydia, lying on her stomach on the couch, turning the leaves of "Tom Sawyer," looked up with sudden interest.

"Daddy, let's go back there to live. I'd love to live in a house with loopholes."

The two men laughed. "You should have been a boy, Lydia," said Amos.

"A boy," sniffed Levine, "and who'd have mothered little Patience if she'd been a boy?"

"That's right—yet, look at that litter on the desk in the parlor."

Both the men smiled while Lydia blushed.

"What are you going to do with that doll furniture, Lydia?" asked John Levine.

"I'm going to make a doll house for little Patience, for Christmas." Lydia gave an uncomfortable wriggle. "Don't talk about me so much."

"You're working a long way ahead," commented Amos. "That was your mother's trait. I wish I'd had it. Though how I could look ahead on a dollar and a half a day—Lydia, it's bedtime."

Lydia rose reluctantly, her book under her arm.

"Don't read upstairs, child," Amos went on; "go to bed and to sleep, directly."

Lydia looked around for a safe place for the book and finally climbed up on a chair and laid it on the top shelf of the sideboard. Then she came back to her father's side and lifted her face for her good night kiss.

"Good night, my child," said Amos.

"How about me," asked Levine. "Haven't you one to spare for a lonely bachelor?"

He pulled Lydia to him and kissed her gently on the cheek. "If you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

"Then we'd travel," said the child, with a happy giggle as she ran out of the room.

There was silence for a moment, then John Levine said, "Too bad old Lizzie is such a slob."

"I know it," replied Amos, "but she gets no wages, just stayed on after nursing my wife. I can't afford to pay for decent help. And after all, she does the rough work, and she's honest and fond of the children."

"Still Lydia ought to have a better chance. I wish you'd let me—" he hesitated.

"Let you what?" asked Amos.

"Nothing. She'd better work out things her own way. She'll be getting to notice things around the house as she grows older."

"It is the devil's own mess here," admitted Amos. "I'm going to move next month. This place has got on my nerves."

"No, Daddy, no!" exclaimed Lydia.

Both men started as the little girl appeared in the kitchen door. "I came down to put Florence Dombey to bed," she explained. "Oh, Daddy, don't let's move again! Why, we've only been here two years."

"I've got to get into a place where I can have a garden," insisted Amos. "If we go further out of town we can get more land for less rent."

"Oh, I don't want to move," wailed Lydia. "Seems to me we've always been moving. Last time you said 'twas because you couldn't bear to stay in the house where mother died. I don't see what excuse you've got this time."

"Lydia, go to bed!" cried Amos.

Lydia retreated hastily into the kitchen and in a moment they heard her footsteps on the back stairs.

"It's a good idea to have a garden," said John Levine. "I tell you, take that cottage of mine out near the lake. I'll let you have it for what you pay for this. It'll be empty the first of September."

"I'll go you," said Amos. "It's as pretty a place as I know of."

Again silence fell. Then Amos said, "John, why don't you go to Congress? Not to-day, or to-morrow, but maybe four or five years from now."

Levine looked at Amos curiously. The two men were about the same age. Levine's brown face had a foreign look about it, the gift of a Canadian French grandfather. Amos was typically Yankee, with the slightly aquiline nose, the high forehead and the thin hair, usually associated with portraits of Daniel Webster.

"Nice question for one poor man to put to another," said Levine, with a short laugh.

"No reason you should always be poor," replied Amos. "There's rich land lying twenty miles north of here, owned by nothing but Indians."

Levine scratched his head.

"You could run for sheriff," said Amos, "as a starter. You're an Elk."

"By heck!" exploded John Levine. "I'll try for it. No reason why a real estate man shouldn't go into politics as well as some of the shyster lawyers you and I know, huh, Amos?"

Upstairs, Lydia stood in a path of moonlight pulling off her clothes slowly and stifling her sobs for the sake of the little figure in the bed. Having jerked herself into her nightdress, she knelt by the bedside.

"O God," she prayed in a whisper, "don't let there be any more deaths in our family and help me to bring little Patience up right." This was her regular formula. To-night she added a plea and a threat. "And O God, don't let us move again. Seems though I can't stand being jerked around so much. If you do, God, I don't know what I'll say to you—Amen."

Softly as a shadow she crept in beside her baby sister and the moonlight slowly edged across the room and rested for a long time on the two curly heads, motionless in childhood's slumber.