Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 14

HE University campus was a huge square of green, elm dotted, that was bordered on one edge for a quarter of a mile by the lake. The other three sides were enclosed by the college buildings, great Gothic piles of gray stone, ivy grown, with swallow haunted eaves. One entered the campus through wide archways, that framed from the street ravishing views of lake and elm, with leisurely figures of seniors in cap and gown in the foreground.

College life was not much unlike High School life for Lydia. She of course missed the dormitory living which is what makes University existence unique. The cottage was nearly three miles from the campus. Lydia took a street-car every morning, leaving the house with her father. She was very timid at first: suffered agony when called on to recite: reached all her classes as early as possible and sat in a far corner to escape notice. But gradually, among the six thousand students she began to lose her self-consciousness and to feel that, after all, she was only attending a larger High School.

It was curious, it seemed to her, in how short a time the real High School dropped out of her life. Miss Towne and the cooking teacher who had had so much to do with her adolescent development, became more or less dreamlike. And though Lydia did try to call on Miss Towne at the High School, her days were very full and little by little she slipped away entirely from the old environment.

Except for flying visits home, John Levine spent the year at Washington. He was returned to Congress practically automatically, at the end of his term. Kent throve mightily as a real estate man. He dashed about in a little "one lung" car with all the importance of nineteen in business for the first time. He continued to call on Lydia at irregular intervals in order to boast, she thought, of his real estate acumen and of his correspondence with Margery and Olga, both of whom were now at boarding-school.

Lydia was taking a general course in college. In a vague way, she was planning to become a teacher and partly because she had no aptitude for foreign languages, and partly because of the deep impression Miss Towne's little lecture on slang had made on her, she decided to teach English. She therefore took not only the required course in Freshman Composition, but an elective in Shakespeare, and was herded with fifty others into the classroom of a young instructor fresh from Harvard. He was a frail looking young man, smooth shaven and thin, with large, light brown eyes behind gold rimmed eyeglasses.

Lydia was deeply impressed from the very first by the young man's culture. He could quote Latin and Greek quite as freely as he could French and German and his ease in quoting the latter seemed as great as in quoting Palgrave's Lyrics, which Lydia was sure he could quote from cover to cover.

If his manner was a trifle impatient and condescending, this only served to enhance his impressiveness. And he knew his Shakespeare. Lydia entered under his guidance that ever new and ever old world of beauty that only the born Shakespeare lover discovers.

The Christmas recess had come and gone before Lydia became vaguely conscious that young Professor Willis called on her always to recite, whether he did on any other girl in the class or not. She did not know that from the first day she had entered his class the young professor had been conscious of the yellow head in the furthest corner of the classroom. It was a nobly shaped head bound round with curly yellow braids above a slender face, red cheeked yet delicate. He was conscious too of the home-made suit and the cheap shirtwaists, with the pathetic attempt at variety through different colored neckties. Little by little he recognized that the bashful young person had a mental background not shared by her mates, and he wondered about her.

It was early in January that he made an attempt to satisfy his curiosity. The snowfall had been light so far and heavy winds had blown the lake clear of drifts. Lydia often brought her skates to class with her and if the wind were favorable skated home after her last recitation.

She had just fastened on her skates one day when a rather breathless voice behind her said,

"Going for a skate, Miss Dudley?" and Professor Willis, skates over his shoulder, bore down on her.

Lydia blushed vividly—"I—I often skate home. I live three miles down the shore."

"Rather thought I'd have a try myself, if you don't mind."

"Heavens!" thought Lydia. "I hope he won't come clear home with me? The house looks awful!"

Willis fastened on his skates and stood up. "Which way?" he asked.

Lydia nodded homeward and started off silently, the Harvard man close beside her.

"You enjoy your Shakespeare work, Miss Dudley?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" cried Lydia. "That most of anything. Don't you love to teach it?"

"Er—in some ways! I will admit that the co-educational end of it is very trying to an Eastern college man."

This was such a surprising view to Lydia that she forgot to be bashful.

"Don't you like girls, Professor Willis?" she asked.

"Not in a boys' classroom—that is—at first the situation brought cold sweat to my face. But now, I carry on the work to a great extent for you. You are the only person with a background, don't you know."

Lydia didn't know. The Harvard man's voice, however, was entirely impersonal, so she ventured to explore.

"What do you mean by background?"

"If you wouldn't skate so outrageously fast," he panted, "I could tell you with more—more aplomb."

"But," explained Lydia, "I have to skate fast. There's always so much to be done and old Lizzie isn't well."

She looked at the Shakespeare professor innocently. He looked at his watch.

"Dear me!" he said, "I must be back in the classroom in half an hour. Supposing we continue this conversation to-morrow, in your own home, Miss Dudley? May I call to-morrow night?"

"Why yes," replied Lydia, in utter embarrassment again, "if you really want to! It's a dreadful trip,—to the end of the car line and half a mile along the road to a white cottage after that."

"That's nothing," said the Harvard man, gravely. "Till to-morrow night then," and lifting his cap, he skated back, leaving Lydia in a state of mind difficult to define.

She told Lizzie and her father that evening. Amos looked over his paper with a slight scowl. "You're too young to have a college professor calling."

"Well," cried Lydia, "you don't seem to realize how wonderful it is that he wants to take this awful trip out here, just to see me. And don't let it worry you, Daddy! He'll never want to come but once." She looked around the living-room disgustedly.

Amos started to speak, looked at Lizzie, who shook her head, and subsided. The older Lydia grew, the more helpless he felt in guiding her. It seemed to him though that Patience would be pleased to have a professor calling on her daughter, and he let the matter go at that.

The next day was Saturday, and Lydia started an attack on the living-room immediately after breakfast. She re-oiled the floors. She took down the curtains, washed and ironed them and put them up again. She blacked the base burner and gave the howling Adam a bath. The old mahogany worried her, even after she had polished it and re-arranged it until the worst of the scratches were obscured.

Her father's old wooden armchair, a solid mahogany that had belonged to his great-grandfather, she decided to varnish. She gave it two heavy coats and set it close to the kitchen stove to dry. By this time she was tired out. She lay in the dusk on the old couch watching the red eyes of the base burner, when Billy came in.

"Just stopped on my way home to see if you'd go skating to-night," he said. "Tired out? What've you been doing?"

Lydia enumerated the day's activities ending with, "Professor Willis is coming to call this evening."

Billy gave a low whistle. "Of course, I knew they'd begin to take notice sooner or later. But I don't see why you wanted to wear yourself out for a sissy like him."

"He's not a sissy. He's a gentleman," said Lydia, calmly. She was still curled up on the couch and Billy could just distinguish her bright hair in the red glow from the stove.

Billy was silent for a moment, then he said, "It's a shame you have to work so hard. I think of you so often when I see other girls in their pretty clothes, gadding about! Doggone it! and you're worth any ten of them. If I had my way—"

He paused and for a moment only the familiar booming of the ice disturbed the silence.

"I don't mind the work so much as I do going without the pretty clothes," said Lydia. "I suppose you'll think I'm awful silly," she suddenly sat up in her earnestness, "but when I get to thinking about how I'm growing up and that dresses never can mean to me when I'm old what they do now—oh, I can't explain to a man! It's like Omar Khayyam—

and my youth's going to close without the sweet scent of the rose."

Billy made one great stride over to the couch and sitting down beside Lydia he took her thin, work hardened little hands in his. "Lydia, no! You don't see yourself right! All the dresses in the world couldn't make you sweeter or more fragrant to a fellow's heart than you are now. The only importance to the clothes is that you love them so. Don't you see?"

Lydia laughed uncertainly. "I see that you're a dear old blarney, Billy. And I know one thing I have got that not one girl in a thousand has and that is the friendship of some of the best men in the world. In lots of ways, I'm very lucky. Honestly, I am! Trot on home, Billy. I've got to get supper. And I don't have to work so hard, remember that. Half my work is in trying to fix up the house."

Billy rose reluctantly. "I'm leaving you some marshmallows," he said. "I hope if you offer Willis one, it'll choke him, or," as he opened the door, "maybe he'll break his leg or his neck on the way out," and he shut the door firmly behind him.

Amos submitted with some grumbling to being relegated to the dining-room with Lizzie for the evening. He complained somewhat bitterly, however, over the condition of his armchair which had refused to dry and was in a state of stickiness that defied description.

Old Lizzie, who was almost as flushed and bright-eyed over the expected caller as Lydia, finally squelched Amos with the remark, "For the land's sake, Amos, you talk like an old man instead of a man still forty who ought to remember his own courting days!"

Willis arrived, shortly after eight. If the trip had been somewhat strenuous, he did not mention the fact. He shook hands with Amos, who, always eager to meet new people, would have lingered. But Lizzie called to him and he reluctantly withdrew. Lydia established her guest with his back to the dining-room door and the evening began.

The Harvard man was frankly curious. This was his first experience west of New York and he was trying to classify his impressions. The beauty of Lake City had intrigued him at first, he told Lydia, into believing that he was merely in a transplanted New England town. "And you know there are plenty of New Englanders on the faculty and many of the people of Lake Shore Avenue are second and third generation New Englanders. But the townspeople as a whole!" He stopped with a groan.

"What's the matter with them?" Lydia asked, a trifle belligerently. She was sitting on the couch, chin cupped in her hand, watching her caller so intently that she was forgetting to be bashful.

"Oh, you know they're so exactly like my classes in Shakespeare—raw-minded, no background, and plenty of them are of New England descent! I don't understand it. It's New England without its ancient soul, your Middle West."

"I don't know what you mean by background," said Lydia.

"But, Miss Dudley, you have it! Something, your reading or your environment has given you a mental referendum, as it were. You get more out of your Shakespeare than most of your mates because you understand so many of his references. You must have been a wide reader or your father and mother taught you well."

"I—you've got the wrong impression about me," Lydia protested. "I've read always and mostly good things, thanks to Mr. Levine, but so have many other people in Lake City."

Professor Willis looked at Lydia thoughtfully. "Levine? I thought he was a cheap scamp."

Lydia flushed. "He's my best friend and a finely read man. He's kept me supplied with books."

"Finely read, on the one hand," exclaimed Willis, "and on the other robbing Indians. How do you account for it?"

Lydia did not stir. She continued with her crystal gaze on this wise man from the East, struggling to get his viewpoint. There flashed into her mind the thought that perhaps, when she knew him better, he could help her on the Indian question.

"I can't account for it," she said. "I wish I could. Except for a French Canadian great-grandfather, Mr. Levine's a New Englander too."

"New Englander! Pshaw! Outside of Lake Shore Avenue and the college there are no New Englanders here. They are hollow mockeries, unless," he stared at Lydia through his gold-rimmed glass, "unless you are a reversion to type, yourself."

Lizzie spoke from the dining-room. "The chocolate's all ready, Lydia."

"Oh, I forgot," exclaimed Lydia, flying out of the room and returning with a tray of chocolate and cake. "The cold walk must have made you hungry."

Willis drew up to the table, and over his cup of chocolate remarked, "Ah—pardon me if I comment on the wonderful pieces of mahogany you have."

Lydia set down her cup. "Why, I hate it!" she cried.

"Hate it! It's priceless! Family pieces? I thought so! What delicious cake! How kind of your mother! I'd like to meet her, if I may."

"I made the cake, Professor Willis. My—my mother is not living."

The Harvard man's stilted manner left him. He set down his cup hastily. "Oh, my dear!" he exclaimed. "I was tactless! Forgive me!" Again he looked about the room and back at Lydia's face above the meager dress fashioned the year before from a cheap remnant. Could a mother's death, he wondered, have put the look into her eyes and lips he had often surprised there. "I suppose," he said finally, "that one might explain you, eventually, if one had the privilege of knowing you long enough, I—"

Adam chose this moment to yelp at the dining-room door which was barely ajar.

"Adam, be quiet!" roared Amos. "Liz, did you see my carpet slippers anywhere?" he added in a lower voice.

"I brought you a book," said Willis. "Browning's Dramatic Lyrics."

"I'd like to read them," Lydia spoke eagerly, with one ear on the dining-room.

Amos yawned loudly. "Did you wind the clock, Lizzie? No? Well, I will!" Another loud yawn and Amos was heard to begin on the mechanism of the huge old wall clock which wound with a sound like an old-fashioned chain pump. Lydia set her teeth in misery.

"Yes, you must add Browning to your background," said the Harvard man, appearing undisturbed by the sounds in the next room. "Browning is difficult at times but—" He was interrupted by a great clattering in the dining-room.

"Lizzie!" roared Amos. "Come here and pull this chair off of me. The next time Lydia varnishes anything—"

There was the sound of Lizzie pounding across the floor. The dining-room door was banged and after that the murmur of Lizzie's voice and subdued roars from Amos. Lydia looked at Willis in an agony of embarrassment.

"Well," he said, rising, "it's quite a walk back to the trolley. Perhaps I'd better be going."

Lydia rose with alacrity. "I'm—I'm glad you like the mahogany," she said awkwardly.

"Er—yes. So am I," returned Willis, making for the door as Amos groaned again. "Good night, Miss Dudley."

"Good night," said Lydia, and closing the door with a gasp of relief she dashed for the dining-room.

"Just when I'm trying to be refined and lady-like!" she wailed. Then she stopped.

"Lydia," roared Amos, "if you ever touch my chair again! Look at my shirt and pants!"

Lydia looked and from these to the chair, denuded of the two coats of varnish. "But you knew it wasn't dry," she protested.

"How could I remember?" cried Amos. "I just sat down a minute to put on my slippers you'd hid."

"I don't see why you couldn't have been quiet about it," Lydia half sobbed. "We were having such a nice time and all of a sudden it sounded like an Irish wake out here. It embarrassed Professor Willis so he went right home and I know he'll never come back."

"I should hope he wouldn't," retorted Amos. "Of course, what a college professor thinks is more important than my comfort. Why, that varnish went through my shirt to my skin. Liz, what are you laughing at?"

Lizzie had suppressed her laughter till she was weak. "At you, Amos! Till my dying day, I'll never forget how you looked prancing round the room with that chair glued to your back!"

"Oh, Daddy! It must have been funny!" cried Lydia, beginning to giggle.

Amos looked uncertainly at his two women folk, and then his lips twisted and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.

"Lydia! Lydia!" he cried, "don't try to be elegant with any more of your callers! It's too hard on your poor old father!"

"I won't," replied Lydia. "He likes the mahogany, anyway. But he'll never come again," she added, with sudden gloom. "Not that I care, stiff old Harvard thing," and she patted Adam and went soberly to bed.

But Professor Willis did come again. Not so frequently, of course, as to compromise his dignity. An instructor who called on freshman girls was always laughed at. But several times during the winter and spring he appeared at the cottage, and talked with Lydia earnestly and intellectually. Nor did he always confine his calls to the evening.

One Sunday afternoon in March Amos was in town with John Levine, who was on one of his hurried visits home, when Billy Norton came over to the cottage.

Lydia, who was poring over "The Ring and the Book," saw at once that something was wrong.

"What's worrying you, Billy?" she asked.

"Lydia," he said, dropping into Amos' chair and folding his big arms, "you know my tract of land—the one I was going to buy from an Indian? I paid young Lone Wolf a ten dollar option on it while I looked round to see how I could raise enough to pay him a fair price. He's only a kid of seventeen and stone blind from trachoma. Well, yesterday I found that Marshall had bought it in. Of course, I didn't really think Lone Wolf knew what an option was, but Marshall and the Indian Agent and Levine and all the rest knew what I was trying to do, so I thought they'd keep their hands off."

"What a shame!" exclaimed Lydia.

"Yes," said Billy grimly, a certain tensity in his tones that made Lydia look at him more closely, "Yes, a shame. The way Marshall did it was this. He looked young Lone Wolf up and gave him a bag of candy. The Indians are crazy for candy. Then he told him to make his cross on a piece of paper. That that was a receipt that he was to keep and if he'd show it at the store whenever he wanted candy, he'd have all he wanted, for nothing. And he had two half-breeds witness it. What Marshall had done was to get Lone Wolf to sign a warranty deed, giving Marshall his pine land. The poor devil of an Indian didn't know it till yesterday when he showed me his 'receipt' in great glee. Of course, they'll swear he's a mixed blood."

Lydia was speechless with disgust for a moment, then she burst out, "Oh, I wish that reservation had never been heard of! It demoralizes every one who comes in contact with it."

"Lydia," said Billy, slowly, "I'm going to expose Marshall."

"What do you mean?" Lydia looked a little frightened.

"I mean that I'm going to show up his crooked deals with the Indians. I'm going to rip this reservation graft wide open. I'm not going to touch an acre of the land myself so I can go in with clean hands and I'm not going to forget that I came pretty close to being a skunk, myself."

"Oh, but, Billy!" cried Lydia. "There's John Levine and all our friends—oh, you can't do it!"

"Look here, Lydia," Billy's voice was stern, "are you for or against Indian graft?"

Lydia drew a long breath but was spared an immediate answer for there was a knock on the door and Kent came in, followed shortly by Professor Willis.

"Well," said Kent, after Lydia had settled them all comfortably, "I just left Charlie Jackson—poor old prune!"

"Oh, how is he?" asked Lydia eagerly, "and what is he doing?"

"He's pretty seedy," answered Kent. "He's been trying to keep the whites off the reservation by organizing the full bloods to stand against the half-breeds. But after a year of trying he's given up hope. The full bloods are fatalists, you know, and Charlie has gone back to it himself."

"Charlie Jackson is an old schoolmate of ours." Lydia turned to Willis and gave him a rapid sketch of Charlie's life. The Harvard man was deeply interested.

"Can't you get him back to his work with the doctor?" he asked Kent.

Kent shook his head. "The only way to keep an Indian from reverting is to put him where he never can see his people or the reservation. Charlie's given up. He's drinking a little."

"And still you folks will keep on, stealing the reservation!" exclaimed Billy.

Kent gave Billy a grin, half irritated, half whimsical. "I know it's Sunday, old man, but don't let's have a sermon. You're a farmer, Bill, anyhow, no matter what else you try to be."

"Thank God for that," laughed Billy.

"My word!" ejaculated Willis. "What a country! You spout the classics on week days and on holidays you steal from the aborigines!"

"Oh, here, draw it mild, Professor!" growled Kent.

"Well, but it's true," exclaimed Lydia. "Where's our old New England sense of fairness?"

"That's good too," said Kent. "Who was brisker than our forefathers at killing redskins?"

"Altogether a different case," returned the Harvard man. "Our forefathers killed in self-defense. You folks are killing out of wanton greed."

"That's the point, exactly," said Billy.

Kent gave his cheerful grin. "Call it what you please," he laughed. "As long as the whites will have the land, I'm going to get my share."

Nobody spoke for a moment. Lydia looked from Billy to Kent, and back again. Kent was by far the handsomer of the two. He had kept the brilliant color and the charming glow in his eyes that had belonged to his boyhood. He dressed well, and sat now, knees crossed, hands clasped behind his head, with easy grace. Billy was a six-footer, larger than Kent and inclined to be raw-boned. His mouth was humorous and sensitive, his gray eyes were searching.

"Let's not talk about it," Lydia said. "Let's go out in the kitchen and pop corn and make candy." This with a little questioning glance at the professor of Shakespeare. He, however, rose with alacrity, and the rest of the afternoon passed without friction. Willis developed a positive passion for making popcorn balls and he left with Kent at dusk proudly bearing off a bag of the results of his labors.

Billy stayed after the rest and helped Lydia to clean up the dishes. Kent would never have thought of this, Lydia said to herself with a vague pang. When they had finished Billy gravely took Lydia's coat from the hook and said, "Come, woman, and walk in the gloaming with your humble servant."

Lydia giggled and obeyed. There was still snow, in the hollows but the road was clear and frozen hard. They walked briskly till a rise in the road gave them a view of the lake and a scarlet rift in the sky where the sun had sunk in a bank of clouds.

"Now, Lydia," said Billy, "answer my question. Are you for or against Indian graft?"

"I just won't take sides," announced Lydia, obstinately.

Billy stepped round in front of the young girl and put both hands gently on her shoulders. "Look at me, Lydia," he said. "You have to take sides! You can't escape it. You mean too much to too many of us men. You've got to take a perfectly clear stand on questions like this. It means too much to America for you not to. Your influence counts, in that way if in no other, don't you see."

Lydia's throat tightened. "I won't take sides against Mr. Levine," she repeated.

"Do you mean that you don't want me to expose Marshall?" asked Billy.

"You've no right to ask me that." Lydia's voice was cross.

"But I have. Lydia, though you don't want it, my life is yours. No matter whether we can ever be anything else, we are friends, aren't we, friends in the deepest sense of the word,—aren't we, Lydia?"

Lydia stared at Billy in silence. Perhaps it was the glow from the west that helped to deepen and soften his gray eyes, for there was nothing searching in them now. There was a depth and loyalty in them and a something besides that reminded her vaguely of the way John Levine looked at her. A crow cawed faintly from the woods and the wind fluttered Billy's hair.

Friendship! Something very warm and high and fine entered Lydia's heart.

"Yes, we are friends. Billy," she said slowly. "But oh, Billy, don't make me decide that!"

"Lydia, you must! You can't have a friend and not share his problems and you can't live in a community and not share its problems, if you're going to be worth anything to the world."

"But if the problems really meant anything to you," protested Lydia, "you wouldn't depend on some girl to shove you into them."

"But men do. They are built that way. Not some girl but the girl. Every great cause was fought for some woman! Oh, Lydia, Lydia!"

"Billy," Lydia looked away from him to the lake, "you'll have to let me think about it. You see, it's deciding my attitude toward all my friends, even toward Dad. And I hadn't intended ever to decide."

"And will you tell me, to-morrow, or next day, Lydia?"

"I'll tell you as soon as I decide," she answered.

Amos brought John Levine home with him for supper. It seemed to Lydia that Levine never had been dearer to her than he was that evening. After supper, they drew up around the base burner in the old way, while the two men smoked. Lizzie sat rocking and rubbing her rheumatism-racked old hands and Adam, who snored worse as he grew old, wheezed with his head baking under the stove. Levine did not talk of the Indians, to Lydia's relief, but of Washington politics. As the evening drew to a close, and Amos went out to his chickens as usual after Lizzie had gone to bed, John turned to Lydia.

"What are you reading, these days, young Lydia?"

"Browning—'The Ring and the Book,'" replied Lydia.

John shook his head. "Really grown up, aren't you, Lydia? Do you enjoy being a young lady?"

"Yes, I do, only I miss the old days when I saw so much of you."

"Do you, my dear?" asked Levine, eagerly. "In what ways do you miss me?"

"Oh, every way! No one will ever understand me as you do."

"Oh, I don't know. There are Billy and Kent."

Lydia shook her head, though Billy's face in the moonlight after the graduation party, returned unexpectedly to her memory as she did so.

"There'll never be any one like you." Then moved by a sudden impulse she leaned toward him and said, "No matter what happens, you will always know that I love you, won't you, Mr. Levine?"

John looked at the wistful face, keenly. "Why, what could happen, young Lydia?" "Oh, lots of things! I'm grown up now and—and I have to make decisions about the rightness and the wrongness of things. But no matter what I decide, nothing can change my love for you."

"Lydia, come here," said Levine, abruptly.

In the old way, Lydia came to his side and he pulled her down to the arm of his chair. For a moment they sat in silence, his arm about her, her cheek against his hair, staring into the glowing stove.

"When you were just a little tot," said Levine at last, "you were full of gumption and did your own thinking. And I've been glad to see you keep the habit. Always make your own decisions, dear. Don't let me or any one else decide matters of conscience for you. 'To thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.' Eh, little girl?"

He rose as he heard Amos coming in the back door, and with his hand under Lydia's chin, he looked long and earnestly into her eyes. Then as Billy had done earlier in the evening, he sighed, "Oh, Lydia! Lydia!" and turned away.