Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 16

T was the last week in August when John Levine was summoned before the commission. Lydia and Amos were summoned with him.

Lydia was frightened, Amos was irritable and sullen by turns after the summons finally came. They were due at the hearing at nine o'clock and arrived a little late. Amos had refused to be hurried.

The room in which the hearing was held was big and cool, with a heavily carpeted floor and walls lined with black walnut bookcases. There were two long tables at one end of the room behind one of which sat the three commissioners. At the other table were the official stenographers and Charlie Jackson. Before the tables were chairs and here were John Levine and Kent, Pa Norton, and Billy, old Susie and a younger squaw, with several bucks.

Lydia and her father dropped into empty seats and Lydia gave a little sigh of relief when Levine caught her eye across the room and smiled at her. She looked at the commissioners curiously. They were talking in undertones to one another and she thought that they all looked tired and harassed. She knew them fairly well from the many newspaper pictures she had seen of them. The fat gentleman, with penetrating blue eyes and a clean-shaven face, was Senator Smith of Texas. The roly-poly man, with black eyes and a grizzled beard, was Senator Elway of Maine, and the tall, smooth-shaven man with red hair was Senator James of New York.

"Mr. Levine," said Senator Smith, suddenly, "we are sorry to have to put you to this inconvenience. Believe us, we find our task no more savory than you do."

Levine gave his slow, sardonic grin. "Don't apologize, gentlemen. Only make the ordeal as short as you can."

"We have done that," said Elway. "We found that you had carried on so many—er—transactions that we finally decided to choose three or four sample cases and let our case stand on those. First, we have found that full bloods have been repeatedly sworn as mixed bloods, in order that their lands might be alienated. A curious idea, Mr. Levine, to attempt to legalize an illegality by false swearing. Jackson, call Crippled Bear."

Charlie, who had been sitting with arms folded, his somber eyes on Lydia, spoke quickly to one of the bucks, who rose and took the empty chair by Charlie.

He began to talk at once, Charlie interpreting slowly and carefully.

"I am a mixed blood. I speak English pretty well when I am with only one white. With so many, my English goes. Many moons ago the man Levine found me drunk in the snow. He picked me up and kept me in his house over night. When I was sober, he fed me. Then he made this plan. I was to gather half a dozen half-breeds together, he could trust. In the spring he would come up to the reservation and talk to us. I did this and he came. We were very hungry when he met us in the woods and he gave us food and money. Then he told us he was going to get the big fathers at Washington to let us sell our pines so we could always have money and food. Never be hungry any more—never."

Charlie's voice was husky as he said this and he looked at Levine with his teeth bared, like a wolf, Lydia thought.

"Then he said while he was getting that done, he would pay us a little every month to go through the woods and chop down the best trees. The Big Father will let whites get 'dead and down' timber out of Indian woods, he said. But not let whites cut any. So we say yes, and though full bloods are very mad when we cut down big trees, we do it. For many moons we do it and in winter, white men haul it to sawmills.

"Every little while, Levine comes up there and we have a council and tell him everything that happens. All about things Marshall and other whites do. And he pays us always. Then he tells us that the Big Father will let mixed bloods sell their pine lands but not full bloods. So then we agree when he wants any full blood land to swear that any full blood is mixed. And we have done this now, perhaps twenty times."

The mixed blood and Charlie paused, and Levine leaned forward. "Crippled Bear," he said, "why did you tell all this?"

Crippled Bear jerked a swarthy thumb at Billy Norton. "That white," he answered in English, "tell me if I tell truth, maybe I get back all lands and pine. I like that, you un'stand—for then I sell 'em again, un'stand."

A little ripple of laughter went through the room, though John himself did not smile. He looked at young Norton with his black eyes half closed.

Mr. Smith took up a paper. "I have here, Mr. Levine, a statement of your dealings with the Lake City Lumber Company. You have had sawed by them during the past six or eight years millions of feet of pine lumber. I find that you are holding Indian lands in the name of Lydia Dudley and her father, Amos Dudley, these lands legally belonging to full bloods. Amos Dudley is also the purchaser of land from full bloods, as is William Norton, Senior, through you."

Levine rose quickly. "Gentlemen," he exclaimed, "surely you can find enough counts against me without including Miss Dudley, who has never heard of the matters you mention."

Commissioner James spoke for the first time. "Suppose we go on with the witnesses before we open any discussion with Mr. Levine. Jackson, what have these squaws to tell? Or first, what about the other bucks?"

When Charlie had called the last of these Levine spoke, "I'd like to call the Government Roll-maker, Mr. Hardy."

A small man, who had slipped into the room unnoticed during the proceedings, came forward.

"What is your business, Mr. Hardy?" asked Levine.

"I am sent here by the Indian office to make a Roll of the Indians on this reservation, in the attempt to discover which are full and which mixed bloods."

"Do you find your task difficult, Mr. Hardy?" Levine's voice was whimsical.

"Very! The Government allows a man to claim his Indian rights when he has as little as one sixty-fourth of Indian blood in his veins. On the other hand, the older Indians are deadly ashamed of white blood in their veins and hate to admit it."

"Mr. Hardy, you have your Rolls with you? Yes? Well, tell me the blood status of each of these witnesses."

The room was breathless while the little Roll-maker ran through his list. According to this not one of the witnesses against Levine was a full blood nor one of the Indians from whom he had taken land. Even old Susie and Charlie's sister, he stated, had white blood in their veins.

"It's a lie!" shouted Charlie. "This man Hardy is paid by Levine!"

"Gently, Jackson!" said Senator James. "Mr. Levine, do you wish to call more witnesses?"

"Not for the present," replied John. "Let Jackson go on."

Charlie called old Susie. And old Susie, waving aside any attempts on Charlie's part to help, told of the death of her daughter from starvation and cold, this same daughter having sold her pines to Levine for a five-dollar bill and a dollar watch. She held out the watch toward Levine in one trembling old hand.

"I find this in dress, when she dead. She strong. It take her many days to die. I old. I pray Great Spirit take me. No! I starve! I freeze! I no can die. She young. She have little baby. She die."

Suddenly, she flung the watch at Levine's feet and sank trembling into her chair.

There was silence for a moment. In at the open window came the rumble of a street-car. Levine cleared his throat.

"All this is dramatic, of course, but doesn't make me the murderer of the squaw."

"No! but you killed my father!" shouted Charlie Jackson. And rising, he hurled forth the story he had told Lydia, years before. Lydia sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes fastened in horror on Charlie's face. A great actor had been lost in creating Charlie an Indian. He pictured his father's death, his sister's two attempts at revenge with a vividness and power that held even Levine spell-bound. It seemed to Lydia that the noose was fastened closer round John's neck with every word that was uttered.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet. "Stop, Charlie! Stop!" she screamed. "You shan't say any more!"

Senator Elway rapped on the table. "You're out of order, Miss Dudley," he exclaimed, sharply.

Lydia had forgotten to be embarrassed. "I can't help it if I am," she insisted, "I won't have Charlie Jackson picturing Mr. Levine as a fiend, while I have a tongue to speak with. I know how bad the Indian matters are. Nobody's worried about it more than I have. But Mr. Levine's not a murderer. He couldn't be."

The three commissioners had looked up at Lydia with a scowl when she had interrupted Charlie. Now the scowl, as they watched her flushed face, gave way to arched eyebrows and a little smile, that was reflected on every face in the room except Charlie Jackson's.

"Lydia, you keep out of this," he shouted. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I do too!" stormed Lydia. "I—"

"Order! Let Jackson finish, Miss Dudley," said Senator Smith.

"I can't let him finish," cried Lydia, "until I tell you about Mr. Levine. He's been as much to me as my own father ever since my mother died when I was a little girl. He's understood me as only my own mother could, hasn't he, Daddy!"

Amos nodded, with a little apologetic glance at the commissioners. Levine's eyes were fastened on Lydia's face with an expression that was as sweet as it was fathomless. Charlie Jackson stood biting his nails and waiting, his affection for Lydia holding in abeyance his frenzied loyalty to his father.

"You think he could murder when he could hold a little girl on his knees and comfort her for the death of her little sister, when he taught her how to find God, when—oh, I know he's robbed the Indians—so has my own father, it seems, and so has Pa Norton, and so has Kent, and all of them are dear people. They've all been wrong. But think of the temptation, Mr. Commissioner! Supposing you were poor and the wonderful pines lay up there, so easy to take."

Senator Elway would have interrupted, but Senator James laid a hand on his arm. "It's all informal, let her have her say," he whispered. "It's the first bright spot in all the weeks of the hearing."

"Did you ever feel land hunger yourself," Lydia went on eagerly, "to look at the rows and rows of pine and think what it would mean to own them, forever! It's the queerest, strongest hunger in the world. I know, because I've had it. Honestly, I have, as strongly as any one here—only—I knew Charlie Jackson and this awful tragedy of his and I knew his eyes would haunt me if I took Indian lands."

"You're covering a good deal of ground and getting away from the specific case, Miss Dudley," said, Smith. "Of course, what you say doesn't exonerate Mr. Levine. On the other hand, Jackson has no means of proving him accessory to the murder of his father. We've threshed that out with Jackson before. What you say of Mr. Levine's character is interesting but there remains the fact that he has been proceeding fraudulently for years in his relations to the Indian lands. You yourself don't pretend to justify your acts, do you, Mr. Levine?"

Lydia sat down and Levine slowly rose and looked thoughtfully out of the window. "The legality or illegality of the matter has nothing to do with the broader ethics of the case, though I think you will find, gentlemen, that my acts are protected by law," he said. "The virgin land lies there, inhabited by a degenerate race, whose one hope of salvation lay in amalgamation with the white race. An ignorant government, when land was plenty and the tribe was larger, placed certain restrictions on the reservation. When land became scarce, and the tribe dwindled to a handful, those restrictions became wrong. It was inevitable that the whites should override them. Knowing that the ethics of my acts and those of other people would be questioned, I went to Congress to get these restrictions removed. If another two years could have elapsed, before these investigations had been begun, the fair name of Lake City never would have been smirched." Levine's hand on the back of his chair tightened as he looked directly at Billy Norton.

Once more Lydia came to her feet. "Oh, Mr. Levine," she exclaimed, "don't put all the blame on Billy! Really, it's my fault. He wouldn't have done it if I hadn't agreed that it was right. And he would have stopped when he found that Dad and his father had taken full blood lands only—why—why, I said that if I could stand his showing that you had been—crooked—up there, I could stand anything and I made him go on."

She stopped with a little break in her voice that was not unlike a sob. And for the first time there spread over John Levine's face a blush, so dark, so agonizing, that the men about him turned their eyes away. With a little groan, he sat down. Lydia clasped her hands.

"Oh, it is all my fault," she repeated brokenly, "all the trouble that's come to Lake City."

Billy Norton jumped up. "That's blamed nonsense!" he began, when Smith interrupted him, impatiently.

"Be seated, Norton." Then, gently, to Lydia, "My dear, you mean that, knowing what an investigation would mean to the people you love, you backed young Norton in instigating one. That you knew he would not go on without your backing?"

"Yes, sir," faltered Lydia.

"Can you tell us why?" asked Elway, still more gently.

Lydia, whose cheeks were burning and whose eyes were deep with unshed tears, twisted her hands uncomfortably and looked at Billy.

"Go ahead, Lyd," he said, reassuringly.

"Because it was right," she said, finally. "Because—Ducit Amor Patriae—-you know, because no matter whether the Indians were good or bad, we had made promises to them and they depended on us." She paused, struggling for words.

"I did it because I felt responsible to the country like my ancestors did, in the Civil War and in the Revolution, to—to take care of America, to keep it clean, no matter how it hurt. I—I couldn't be led by love of country and see my people doing something contemptible, something that the world would remember against us forever, and not try to stop it, no matter how it hurt."

Trembling so that the ribbon at her throat quivered, she looked at the three commissioners, and sat down.

James cleared his throat. "Mr. Dudley, did you know your daughter's attitude when you undertook to get some pine lands?"

Amos pulled himself to his feet. His first anger at Lydia had given way to a mixture of feelings. Now, he swallowed once or twice and answered, "Of course, I knew she was sympathetic with the Indians, but I don't know anything about the rest of it."

The commissioners waited as though expecting Amos to go on. He fumbled with his watch chain for a moment, staring out the window. With his thin face, his high forehead and sparse hair, he never looked more like the picture of Daniel Webster than now.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I'm a New Englander and I'm frank to admit that I've wandered a long way from the old ideals, like most of the New Englanders in America. But that isn't saying, gentlemen, that I'm not—not darned proud of Lydia!"

There was a little murmur through the room and Senator Elway smiled, a trifle sadly. "Mr. Dudley," he said, "we're all proud of Lydia. She's made our unsavory task seem better worth while."

"I suggest that we adjourn for lunch," said Smith. "Miss Dudley, you need not return."

While her father paused to speak to Kent and Levine, Lydia made her escape. She wanted more than anything in the world to be alone, but when she reached home, Ma Norton and Lizzie were waiting at the cottage, both of them half sick with anxiety. They were not reassured by Lydia's story of the morning session, although Ma said,

"Of course, it's the disgrace of the thing that worries us. Pa and Billy say all this commission can do is to present their evidence to Congress. I'm not saying, of course, that you weren't right plucky to take the stand you did, Lydia. And I'm proud of Billy though he is bringing trouble on his poor father!"

Lydia spent the afternoon with Adam in the woods. She expected John Levine to come home with her father to supper, and for the first time in her life, she did not want to meet her best loved friend. But she might have spared herself this anxiety, for Amos came home alone. Levine was busy, he said.

Amos was in a curiously subdued mood. Whatever Lydia had expected of him, she had not expected the almost conciliatory attitude he took toward her. It embarrassed her far more than recriminations would have.

"I do think, Lydia," he said mildly, after they had discussed the morning session, "you should have told me what was going on. But there, I suppose, I'd have raised Cain, if you had."

"Is Mr. Levine very angry with me?" asked Lydia.

"He didn't say. I don't see how he can be. After all, the stuff was bound to come out, sooner or later. He's got something up his sleeve. This experience's done one thing. It's brought all the different factions together. Disgrace loves company as well as misery."

"I'm so worried about it all!" sighed Lydia.

"Kind of late in the day for you to worry," sniffed Amos. "I suppose Billy's worrying too! But there, I guess you two have put some saving grace into Lake City, in the commission's eyes. Of course, I'm going to give up any claim on those lands."

Amos pulled at his pipe thoughtfully and looked at Lydia's tired, wistful face complacently. He did not tell her that the three commissioners had individually and collectively congratulated him on Lydia and their praise had been such that he felt that any disgrace he had suffered in connection with the Indian lands had been more than counteracted by Lydia's performance.

To Lydia's pain and disappointment, Levine did not come to the cottage before he returned to Washington, which he did the week following the hearing. And then, all thought of her status with him was swallowed up in astonishment over the revelations that came out early in September when Dave Marshall and the Indian Agent were called before the commission.

Dave Marshall was the owner of the Last Chance! The Last Chance where "hussies" lay in wait like vultures for the Indian youths, took their government allowances, took their ancient Indian decency, and cast them forth to pollute their tribe with drink and disease. The Last Chance! The headquarters for the illegal selling of whisky to Indians. Where Indians were taught to evade the law, to carry whisky into the reservation and where in turn the bounty for their arrest was pledged to Marshall. The Last Chance, the main source of Dave Marshall's wealth!

Even Lake City was horrified by these revelations. People began to remove their money from his bank and for a time a run was threatened, then Dave resigned as president and the run was stayed. The drugstore owned by Dave was boycotted. The women of the town began to cut Margery and Elviry. The minister of the Methodist Church asked Dave for his resignation as Trustee.

To say that old Lizzie was pleased by the revelations would be perhaps to do the old lady an injustice. Yet the fact remains that she did go about with a knowing, "I told you so" air, that smacked of complacency.

"He always was just skulch," she insisted to Lydia. "When he was a child, he was the kind of a brat mothers didn't want their children to play with. I always prayed he'd get his come-uppers, and Elviry too. But I am sorry for Margery. Poor young one! Her future's ruined."

Lydia, sitting on the front steps in the lovely September afternoons, rubbed Adam's ears, watched the pine and the Norton herds and thought some long, long thoughts. Finally, one hazy Saturday afternoon, she gathered a great bunch of many colored asters and started off, without telling Lizzie of her destination.

It was nearly five o'clock when she stopped at the Marshalls' gate. The front of the house was closed, but nothing daunted, she made her way round to the kitchen door, which was open. Elviry answered her rap.

"Oh, it's Lydia," she said, brusquely. "What do you want?"

"I brought Marg some flowers," answered Lydia, awkwardly.

Elviry hesitated. "Margery's been having a headache and I don't know as she'd want to see you."

Lydia was not entirely daunted. "Well, if you're getting supper you might let me come and sit in the kitchen a few minutes. It's quite a walk in from the cottage."

Elviry opened the screen door and Lydia marched in and paused. Dave Marshall was sitting by the kitchen table, his hat on the back of his head, a pile of newspapers on the floor beside him. He did not speak to Lydia when she came in, but Lydia nodded brightly at him and said, "You like to sit in the kitchen, the way Dad does, don't you?"

She sat down in the rocker by the dining-room door and Elviry began to stir a kettle of catsup that was simmering on the back of the stove.

This was worse than Lydia had thought it would be. She had not calculated on Dave's being at home. However, her fighting blood was up.

"You haven't asked me about my clothes, Mrs. Marshall," she said. "Don't you think I did pretty well with this skirt?"

Elviry glanced at the blue serge skirt. "It'll do," she answered listlessly.

Lydia looked at Dave desperately. At that moment there was a light step in the dining-room, and Margery came into the kitchen. When she saw Lydia she gasped.

"Hadn't you heard? Oh, Lydia! You came anyhow!" and suddenly Margery threw herself down and sobbed with her face in Lydia's lap.

Elviry threw her apron over her head and Dave, with a groan, dropped his head on his chest. For a moment, there was only the crackling of the fire in the stove and Margery's sobs to be heard.

Then Dave said, "What did you come for, Lydia? You only hurt yourself and you can't help us. I don't know what to do! God! I don't know what to do!"

"I don't see why everybody acts so," cried Elviry, "as if what you'd done was any worse than every one else's doings."

Margery raised her head. "Of course it's worse! A thousand times worse! I could have stood Dad's even having an Indian wife, better than this."

Dave looked at Margery helplessly and his chin quivered. Lydia noticed then how old he was looking.

"I want Margery and her mother to pack up and go away—for good," said Dave to Lydia. "I'll close up here and follow when I can. None of these cases will ever come to anything in our state court. It's the disgrace—and the way the women folks take it."

"I—I've been thinking," said Lydia, timidly, "that what you ought to do—"

Margery was sitting back on the floor now and she interrupted bitterly. "I don't see why you should try to help us, Lyd. Mother's always treated you dirt mean."

"It's not because of your mother," said Lydia, honestly. "I couldn't even try to forgive her—but—your father did a great favor to me and once I promised him then to be his friend. And you, Margery, you were fond of—of little Patience, and she did love you so! If she'd lived, I know she'd have wanted me to stand by you."

"She was a dear little kiddie," said Margery. "I always meant to tell you how I cried when she died, and then somehow, you were so silent, I couldn't."

The old lines round Lydia's mouth deepened for a minute, then she swallowed and said,

"I don't think it would do a bit of good for you all to go away. The story would follow you. Mr. Marshall ought to sell out everything and buy a farm. Let Mrs. Marshall go off for a visit, if she wants to, and let Margery come and stay with me a while and go to college."

Dave raised his head. "That's what I'd rather do, Lydia, for myself. Just stay here and try to live it down. I'd like to farm it. Always intended to."

Margery wrung her hands. "Oh, I don't see how I can! If it had been anything, anything but the Last Chance. Everybody will cut me and talk about me."

"Oh, well, Margery," said Lydia, a little impatiently, "it's the first trouble you've had in all your life and it won't kill you. Anybody that's as pretty as you are can live down anything. I know our house is awful scrimpy, but we'd have some good times, anyhow. Kent and Billy will stand by us and we'll pull through. See if we don't."

"I don't see why she needs to go to your house," said Elviry. "Let her stay right here, and go up to college with you if she will. And I don't want to go live on a farm, either."

"Mother, you don't understand, yet!" exclaimed Margery.

"Elviry," said Dave grimly, "our day is over. All we can hope to save out of the wreck is a future for Margery. Just get that through your head once and for all. I think Lydia's idea is horse sense. But it's for Margery to decide."

Margery got up from her place on the floor. "I thought we'd sell out and go to Europe for the rest of our lives," she said, "but as Lydia says, the story would follow us there. Dad," sharply, "you aren't going to sell the Last Chance and use that money?"

"I closed it up, last week," said Dave shortly. "I'm going to have the place torn down."

Margery rubbed her hand over her forehead. "Well," she said, "I don't see that I'd gain anything but a reputation for being a quitter, if I went to Lydia's. I'll stay with you folks, but I'll go to college, if Lydia'll stand by me."

Lydia rose. "Then that's settled. On Monday we'll register. I'll meet you on the eight o'clock car."

"I can't thank you, Lyd,—" began Margery.

"I don't want any thanks," said Lydia, making for the door, where Dave intercepted her with outstretched hand.

Lydia looked up into his dark face and her own turned crimson. "I can't shake hands," she said, "honestly, I can't. The Last Chance and the—the starving squaws make me sick. I'll stand by Margery and help you—but I can't do that."

Dave Marshall dropped his hand and turned away without a word and Lydia sped from the house into the sunset.

Amos heard Lydia's story of her call with a none too pleased face. "I don't think I want you mixing up with them, in any way," he said.

"But let me help Margery," pleaded Lydia, "Little Patience did love her so!"

"Well—Margery—you can help her," he agreed, reluctantly, "but you can't go near their house again. Margery will have to do all the visiting."