Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 15

OR several days Lydia was unhappy and absent-minded. At first, in her thoughts she was inclined to blame Billy for forcing this turmoil of mind on her. But, a little later, she admitted to herself that for years, something within her had been demanding that she take a stand on the Indian question something to which Charlie Jackson and Billy had appealed, something which Kent and John Levine had ignored. Yet neither Charlie nor Billy had really forced her to a decision.

Lydia was grown up. All her young life she had carried the responsibilities and had faced the home tragedies that come usually only to grown folk. Now, in her young womanhood it was natural and inevitable that she should turn to the larger responsibilities of the living world about her in order to satisfy the larger needs of her maturity.

Yet, still old affection fought with new clarity of vision. Old loyalty quarreled with new understanding. Bit by bit she went over her thinking life, beginning with her first recollection of Charlie Jackson in the class in Civil Government, and all that was feminine and blind devotion in her fought desperately with all that education and her civic-minded forefathers had given her.

Coming home from her last recitation, one mild afternoon, she stopped at the gate and looked up into the pine tree. Its scent carried her back to the cloistered wood on the reservation and once more the desire for the soil was on her. She leaned against the giant tree trunk and looked out over the lake, steel blue and cold in the March sunshine. And there with the lowing of the Norton herds and the hoarse call of the crows mingling with the soft voice of the pine and the lapping of the lake, she made her decision. For clearly as though the pine had put it into words, something said to Lydia that it was not her business to decide whether or not the Indians deserved to live. It was her business to recognize that in their method of killing the Indians, the whites had been utterly dishonorable. That her refusing to take a stand could not exonerate them. History would not fail to record the black fact against her race that, a free people, the boasted vanguard of human liberty, Americans had first made a race dependent, then by fraud and faithlessness, by cruelty and debauchery, were utterly destroying it. And finally, that by closing her eyes to the facts, because of her love for Levine, she was herself sharing the general taint.

It was Lydia's first acknowledgment of her responsibility to America, and it left her a little breathless and trembling. She turned back to the road and made her way swiftly to the Norton place. She did not go into the house, but down the lane where she could see Billy putting up the bars after the cattle. He waited for her, leaning against the rails.

"Billy," she said, panting, her cheeks bright and her yellow hair blowing, "I'm against the Indian grafting."

Billy put out his hand, solemnly, and the two shook hands. For all Billy was four years older than Lydia, they both were very, very young. So young that they believed that they could fight single-handed the whole world of intrigue and greed in which their little community was set. So young that they trembled and were filled with awe at the vast importance of their own dreams. And yet, futile as they may seem, it is on young decisions such as these that the race creeps upward!

"What are you going to do, Billy?" asked Lydia.

"I'm going to get a government investigation started, somehow," he replied. "It'll take time, but I'll get it."

Lydia looked at him admiringly, then she shivered a little. "I hate to think of it, but I'll stand by you, Billy, whatever you do."

"I'm going into ex-Senator Alvord's law office this June. I'll bet he'll help. He's so sore at Levine. It'll be lovely muckraking, Lyd!"

"I hate to think of it," she said unsteadily. "Lizzie is miserable, to-day. Will you tell your mother, Billy, and ask her to come over to see her this evening? I mustn't stop any longer now."

Poor old Lizzie was miserable, indeed. For years, she had struggled against rheumatism, but now it had bound her, hand and foot. Ma Norton came over in the evening. Lizzie was in bed shivering and flushed and moaning with pain.

"Now, don't bother about me," she insisted. "Lydia's threatening to stay home to-morrow, and I tell you I won't have it," and the poor old soul began to cry weakly.

Ma pulled the covers over the shaking shoulders. "If I were you, Lizzie, I'd think about getting well and let Lydia do what she thinks best. A day or so out of school isn't going to count in the long run with a young thing like her."

She waited till Lizzie slept, then she told Lydia and Amos that Dr. Fulton had better be called, and Amos with a worried air, started for town at once.

Dr. Fulton shook his head and sighed.

"She's in for a run of rheumatic fever. Get some extra hot water bottles and make up your mind for a long siege, Lydia."

And it was a long siege. Six weeks of agony for Lizzie, of nursing and housework and worrying for Lydia. Ma Norton and the neighbors gave what time they could, but the brunt, of course, fell on Lydia. She fretted most about her college work. Sitting by Lizzie's bed, when the old lady dozed in her brief respites from pain, she tried to carry on her lessons alone, but with indifferent success. She was too tired to concentrate her mind. Trigonometry rapidly became a hopeless tangle to her; Ancient History a stupid jumble of unrelated dates. And most of all, as the days went by, she felt the indifference of University folk. Nobody cared that she had dropped out, it seemed to her.

Billy called every evening on his way home to supper. He filled water buckets, chopped wood and fed the chickens, that Amos might be free to take Lydia's place. John Levine sat up two or three nights a week. Kent came out once a week, with a cheery word and a basket of fruit. And at frequent intervals, the Marshall surrey stopped at the gate and Elviry or Dave appeared with some of Elviry's delicious cookery for Lydia and Amos.

One afternoon in April when Lizzie had at last taken a turn for the better, Lydia elected to clean the kitchen floor. She was down on her hands and knees scrubbing when there came a soft tap on the open door. She looked up. Professor Willis was standing on the steps.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Lydia, rising with burning cheeks.

"I—I couldn't make any one hear at the front door. I came to see why you didn't come to class."

Lydia was wearing a faded and outgrown blue gingham. Her face was flushed but there were black rings round her eyes, and she was too tired to be polite.

"I think it's just awful for you to come on me, scrubbing floors! You should have knocked at the front door, till I heard," she said, crossly.

The Harvard man looked at her seriously. "I really never saw a girl playing golf look as pretty as you do, scrubbing floors. May I come in?"

He did not wait for an invitation but stepped over the pail and brush to the chair beside the table. An open book lay on the chair. He picked it up. "'Ancient Rome,'" he read.

"I'm trying to keep up." Lydia was drying her red hands on the roller towel. Her shoulders drooped despondently. "What's the use of trying to be a lady," she said, suddenly, "when you have to fight poverty like this! You oughtn't to have come on me this way!"

The Harvard man looked from the immaculate kitchen to the slender girl, with her fine head, and then at the book in his hand.

"Of course, I've never known a girl like you. But I should imagine that eventually you'll achieve something finer out of your poverty than the other girls at the University will out of their golf and tennis. I don't fancy that our New England mothers were ashamed of scrubbing floors."

He looked at her with a smile on his pale face. Suddenly Lydia smiled in return. "Sit down while I make us some tea," she said. "I'll never try to play lady with you again."

Willis stayed with her an hour, sitting in the kitchen where the open door showed the turquoise lake through a gray-green net of swelling tree buds. He did not leave till Lizzie wakened. He cleared up the tangle in Lydia's trigonometry for her and went over the lost lessons in Shakespeare, all the while with a vague lump in his throat over the wistful eagerness in the blue eyes opposite his, over the thin, red, watersoaked hands that turned the leaves of the books.

When Billy called that evening he found Lydia more cheerful than she had been in weeks. When she told him of her caller he looked at her thoughtfully and growled, "I hope he chokes," and not another word did he say while he finished Amos' chores.

Professor Willis came out regularly after this and when Lydia returned to class work in May, she was able to work creditably through the reviews then taking place and in June to pass the examinations.

During all this time she said nothing to Billy about his muckraking campaign. In spite of her high resolves she half hoped he had given it up. But she did not know Billy as well as she thought she did. He finished his law course in June and entered ex-Senator Alvord's office as he had planned. There was another election in the fall and John Levine was returned to Congress, this time almost without a struggle. So many of the voters of the community were profiting by the alienating of the mixed-blood pines that it would have been blatant hypocrisy on the part of Republicans as well as Democrats to have opposed him. In fact, thanks to Levine, the town had entered on a period of unprecedented prosperity. The college itself had purchased for a song a section of land to be used as an agricultural experiment station.

Like a bomb, then, late in December fell the news that the Indian Commissioner had been called before a senate committee to answer questions regarding the relations of Lake City to the reservation. While following close on the heels of this announcement came word that a congressional commission of three had been appointed to sit at Lake City to investigate Indian matters.

"Billy, how did you do it?" asked Lydia, in consternation. He had overtaken her one bitter cold January afternoon, on her way home from college.

"I didn't do much," said Billy. "I just got affidavits, dozens of them, showing frauds, and gave them to Senator Alvord. He has a lot of influence among the Democratic senators and is a personal friend of the President. It was a wonderful chance, he saw, to hurt the Republicans, even though there were Democrats implicated. The Indian Commissioner and Levine are both Republicans, you know. Then, when he finally got the hearing before the Senate Committee, he smuggled Charlie Jackson and Susie and old Chief Wolf down there. Nobody here knows that."

Lydia's lips were set tightly as she plodded along the snowy road.

"Billy," she said, finally, "are you doing this to get even with Dave Marshall?"

"Lydia!" cried Billy, catching her arm and forcing her to stop and face him. "Don't you know me better than that? Don't you?"

"Then why are you doing it?" demanded Lydia.

"I'm doing it because I'm ashamed of what New Englanders have done with their heritage. And I'm doing it for you. To make a name for you. Look at me. No, not at the lake, into my eyes. You are going to marry me, some day, Lydia."

"I'm not," said Lydia flatly.

Billy laughed. "You can't help yourself, honey. It's fate for both of us. Come along home! You're shivering."

"When you talk that way, I hate you!" exclaimed Lydia, but Billy only laughed again.

Amos at first was furious when he heard of the investigation. He, with every one else in town, was eager to know who had started the trouble.

"Some sorehead," said Amos, "who couldn't get all the land he wanted, I'll bet. And a sweet time the commission will have. Why, they'll have to dig into the private history of every one in Lake City. It'll ruin Levine! Oh, pshaw! No, it won't either! He can get everything whitewashed. That's the way American investigations always end!"

But Levine could not get everything whitewashed. The group of three commissioners sat for months and in that time they exposed to the burning sun of publicity the muck of thievery and dishonor on which Lake City's placid beauty was built.

By some strange turn of fortune, Congress had chosen three honest men for this unsavory task, three men grimly and unswervingly determined to see the matter through. They sat in rooms in the post-office building. In and out of the building day after day passed the Indians to face the sullen and unwilling whites summoned to hear and answer what these Indians had to say of them. Charlie Jackson acted as interpreter. Lydia saw him once or twice on the street when he nodded coolly. He had dropped his white associates completely.

The local papers refused to report the commission's session. But papers outside the State were voracious for the news and little by little tales were published to the world that made Lake City citizens when out of the city, hesitate to confess the name of their home town.

The leading trustee of the Methodist Church was found to have married a squaw in order to get her pine and her pitiful Government allowance. His white wife and children left him when this was proved to them, and it was proved only when the starving squaw and her starving children were finally acknowledged by the trustee before the commission.

The Methodists were held up to scorn for a few months until a prominent Presbyterian who was the leading grocer in town was found to have supplied the Indian Agent for years with tainted groceries for the Indians.

The most popular dentist in town filled teeth for the Indians whenever they received their allowances. His method of filling was simple. He drove empty copper cartridge caps over the teeth. These when burnished made a handsome showing until gangrene set in. The afflicted Indians were then turned over to a popular young doctor of Lake City who took the next year's allowance from the bewildered patients.

Marriage after marriage of squaws with Lake City citizens was unearthed, most of these same citizens also having a white family. Hundreds of tracts of lands that had been obtained by stealing or by fraud from full bloods were listed. Bags of candy, bits of jewelry, bolts of cotton had been exchanged for pine worth thousands of dollars.

It was a nerve-racking period for Lake City. Whether purposely or not, the net did not begin to close round John Levine till toward the end of the hearing. Nor did Levine come home until late in the summer, when the commission had been sitting for some months.

In spite of a sense of apprehension that would not lift, the year was a happy one for Lydia. In the first place, she went to three college dancing parties during the year. The adaptability of the graduation gown was wonderful and although Lydia knew that she was only a little frump compared with the other girls, Billy, who took her each time, always wore the dress suit! So she shone happily in reflected elegance.

In the second place, three men called on her regularly—Billy, Kent and Professor Willis.

In the third place, Kent asked her to go with him to the last party and, to Lydia's mind, a notable conversation took place at that time.

"Thanks, Kent," said Lydia, carelessly, "but I'm going with Billy."

"Billy! Always Billy!" snorted Kent. "Why, you and I were friends before we ever heard of Billy!"

"Yes," returned Lydia calmly, "and in all these years this is the first time you've asked me to go to a party. I've often wondered why."

Kent moved uncomfortably. "Pshaw, Lyd, you know I always went with some girl I was having a crush on—that was why."

"And don't you ever ask a girl to go to a party unless you have a crush on her?" asked Lydia, mischievously.

Kent gave her a clear look. "No!" he replied.

Lydia flushed, then she said, slowly, "That's only half true, Kent. You've always liked me as I have you. But you've always been ashamed of my clothes. I don't blame you a bit, but you can imagine how I feel about Billy, who's taken me, clothes or no clothes."

It was Kent's turn to flush and he did so to such an extent that Lydia was sorry for him while she waited for him to answer.

"Hang it, Lyd, I've been an infernal cad, that's all!"

"And," Lydia went on, mercilessly, "I've got nothing to wear now but the same old graduating dress. I suppose you were hoping for better things?"

"Stop it!" Kent shouted. "I deserve it, but I'm not going to take it. I'm asking you for just one reason and that is, I've waked up to the fact that you're the finest girl in the world. No one can hold a candle to you."

There was a sudden lilt in Lydia's voice that did not escape Kent as she answered laughingly, "Well, if you feel the same after seeing Margery this summer, I'll be glad to go to one of the hops next fall with you, and thank you, deeply, Mr. Moulton."

"All right," said Kent, soberly. "The first hop next fall is mine and as many more as I can get."

It was late in the spring and after the conversation with Kent, that it began to be rumored about town that ex-Senator Alvord's office was at the bottom of the Indian investigation. Billy had been called in to testify and had shown an uncanny amount of knowledge of fraudulent land deals and Alvord had corroborated many of his statements.

Kent accused Billy of this openly, one Sunday afternoon at Lydia's. They were sitting on the lake shore, for the day was parching hot. Both the young men were in flannels and hatless, and lolled on the grass at Lydia's feet, as she sat with her back against a tree. She noticed how Kent was all grace, and ease, while Billy, whose face had lately become thinner, was all gaunt angles.

"I'm willing to take the blame, if necessary," said Billy.

Kent sat up with sudden energy. "Look here, if it once got round town that you're the father of this, you'll be run out of Lake City."

Billy laughed. "Oh, no I won't! All you respectable citizens have got too many troubles of your own."

"Nice thing to do to your friends and neighbors, Bill," Kent went on, excitement growing in his voice as he realized the import of Billy's acknowledgment. "What the deuce did you do it for?"

Billy shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. Kent appealed to Lydia. "Would you have gone to parties with him if you'd known what he was doing to his town, Lyd?"

Billy was still lying on both elbows, industriously herding a pair of ants. He did not look up at Lydia as she stared at his massive blond head.

"Kent, I knew it," said Lydia, after a pause.

"You knew it! You let a lot of sickly sentimentality ruin Lake City in the eyes of the world? Not only that. Think what's coming to John Levine! Think what's coming to me, though I've done little enough!"

"Then I'm glad it came to stop you; while you'd still done little!" cried Lydia.

"Nonsense!" snapped Kent. "Of course, you don't expect anything but gush from a girl about the Indians. But I don't see what you get out of it, Bill. Who's paying you? Are you going to run for president on the purity ticket?"

"There's no use in my trying to tell you why I did it," grunted Billy.

"No, there isn't," agreed Kent. "But I'll tell you this much. Bill, you and I break right here and now. I've no use for a sneak."

Again Billy shrugged his shoulders. Lydia looked at the two in despair, then she smiled and cried, "Oh, there's Margery! Isn't she lovely!"

It was Margery, just home from boarding-school, where she gaily announced as she shook hands she had been "finally finished."

"Though," she added. "Daddy wants to pack me right off again because of this silly investigation. As if I wanted to miss the fun of viewing all our best family skeletons!"

"Margery," cried Lydia, quickly, "you're so beautiful that you're simply above envy. What a duck of a dress!"

"Isn't it!" agreed Margery. "Kent, do get me a chair. I'll spoil all my ruffles on the grass. Well! Here I am! And what were you all discussing so solemnly when I interrupted?"

"Indian graft!" said Billy, laconically.

"Isn't it awful! And isn't it funny! You know, I was actually proud that I lived in Lake City. The girls used to point me out in school to visitors."

Margery, exquisite in her dainty gown, her wonderful black eyes gleaming with fun, as a sample of Lake City dishonesty appealed to the sense of humor of her audience and they all laughed, though Lydia felt her throat tighten strangely as she did so,—Margery, made exquisite on the money of blind squaws and papooses that froze to death!

"Daddy is all worked up, though I told him they certainly hadn't done anything much to him, so far, and I'd feel real neglected if they didn't find he had an Indian wife up his sleeve," Margery went on. "Oh, Billy, by the way. Daddy says he thinks Senator Alvord started the whole thing. Did he?"

"Yes, and I helped," replied Billy shortly.

"Well, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself," cried Margery, airily. "Don't you, Lydia?"

"No, I don't, I'm proud of him, though I'm scared to death," said Lydia. "Things are so much worse than I thought they'd be."

"Well, I just tell you, Billy Norton," there was a sudden shrill note in Margery's voice, "if anything really horrid is unearthed about Daddy, I'll never speak to you again. Would you, Kent?"

"I don't intend to anyhow," replied Kent, coolly. "How'd you come out, Marg?"

"I walked from the trolley. I'd no idea it was so hot."

"Let me take you home in my toot-toot."

"But I just got here," protested Margery.

"It's now or never," said Kent, rising, "I've got to run along."

"Oh, if it's that serious!" Margery took Kent's arm. "By-by, Lydia! Come over and see my new dresses."

After they were gone, Billy sat up and looked at Lydia. Neither spoke for a few moments. The sun was sinking and all the world was enveloped in a crimson dust. There had been a drought now for six weeks. Even Amos' garden was languishing.

"Lydia," said Billy, "I'm going to quit. You know I've worked with Charlie Jackson right along."

"Quit? But Billy, why I—I didn't think you minded Kent and Margery that much!"

"I don't mind them at all. But, Lydia, I found yesterday my father got one hundred and twenty acres from a ten-year-old full-blood boy for five dollars and a bicycle. Last week Charlie unearthed a full-blood squaw from whom your father had gotten two hundred and forty acres for an old sewing machine and twenty-five dollars. I've done so much for the Indians and Charlie is so fond of you that he'll shut these Indians up, but I can't go on, after that, of course."

Lydia was motionless. Over the house top, the great branches of the pine were turned to flames. The long drawn notes of a locust sounded above the steady drone of the crickets. Lydia had a curiously old feeling.

"I can't go on, Lydia," Billy repeated. "My fine old father and dear old Amos! I can't."

"Yes, you'll go on, Billy," Lydia's voice was very low. "After I faced what would come to John Levine through this, I can face anything."

Billy gave a little groan and bowed his head on Lydia's knee. Suddenly she felt years older than Billy. She smoothed his tumbled blond hair.

"Go on, Billy. Our ancestors left England for conscience' sake. And our grandfathers both laid down their lives for the Union."

Lydia ended with a little gulp of embarrassment. Billy caught her hand and sat up, looking eagerly through the gloaming at her face.

"I told you all the battles of the world were fought for a woman," he said. "Dear, I'll go on, though it'll break mother's heart."

"It won't break her heart," said Lydia. "Women's hearts don't break over that sort of thing."

"Lydia!" called Amos from the doorway, "aren't you going to give me any supper to-night?"

"Lord, it's two hours past milking time!" groaned Billy, and he started on a dog-trot for home.