Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 18

YDIA returned to her college work the Monday after the Junior Prom, a little thinner, and her color not quite so bright as usual, but in a most cheerful frame of mind. She was feeling, somehow, a new sense of maturity and contentment. Even tales of the wonders of the Prom did not disturb her much. She made up her lost classroom work, then took on an extra course in English Essayists with Professor Willis, just to satisfy her general sense of superiority to the ordinary temptations that should have disturbed a young female with fifteen idle dollars in her pocket!

Kent was devoting a good deal of attention to Lydia but this did not prevent his taking Margery about. He was, he explained to Lydia, so sorry for her!

"You don't have to explain to me," protested Lydia. "I want you to go with all the girls you like. I intend to see all I want of as many men as care to see me. I told you this was my playtime."

Kent's reply to this was a non-committal grunt.

It was late in May that he told Lydia what John Levine had finally accomplished, in his silent months of work in Washington. The morning after he told Lydia, Lake City was ringing with the news. The Indians on the reservation were to be removed bodily to a reservation in the Southwest. The reservation was then to be thrown open to white settlement.

"What will poor Charlie Jackson say?" were Lydia's first words.

Kent shrugged his shoulders. "Poor old scout! He'll have to make a new start in the West. But isn't it glorious news, Lyd! The land reverts to the Government and the Land Office opens it, just as in pioneer days. Everybody who's title's in question now can reenter under settlement laws. Isn't Levine a wizard! Why don't you say something, Lydia?"

"I don't know what to say," said Lydia. "I'm sick at heart for the Indians. But I'm glad that the awful temptation of the pines is going to be taken away from Lake City. Though how good can come out of a wrong, I'm not sure. I don't understand Mr. Levine. Oh, dear! It's all wrong. When do the Indians go?"

"The last of June. It's funny, Lydia, that you don't have more sympathy with my work," replied Kent, gloomily.

"Oh, Kent!" cried Lydia, "I want to believe that everything you do is right but something's the matter with my mind. I seem to have to decide matters of right and wrong for myself. When will Mr. Levine come home?"

"Next month. Well, there's one consolation. You've always been crazy about Levine and you don't approve of him, either."

Lydia flushed. "Oh, I don't say that I don't approve of him. I just don't understand him. Maybe he really believes the end justifies the means."

"Huh! Isn't that just what I believe?" demanded Kent. He looked at her so happily, his boyish eyes so appealing, his square chin so belligerent, that Lydia suddenly laughed and gave his ear a tweak.

"Poor old vanity! Did he want all the ladies to adore him? Well, they do, so cheer up!"

Kent grinned. "Lyd, you're a goose and a good old pal! Hang it, I'm glad you've got brain enough to stick to your own opinions!"

On a Sunday afternoon, late in June, John Levine turned in at the gate as casually as though he had left but the day before. Lydia was inspecting the garden with her father, when she heard Adam bark and whine a welcome to some one.

"Oh, there he is, Daddy!" she cried, and she dashed down the rows of young peas, her white skirts fluttering, both hands extended.

John seized her hands and for a moment the two stood smiling and looking into each other's face. Except that he was grayer, Levine was unchanged. He broke the silence to say, "Well! Well! young Lydia, you are grown up. I don't see how you manage to look so grown up, when your face remains unchanged."

"It's my hair," said Lydia, "and my skirts."

"Of course," growled Amos, "I realize that I count only as Lydia's father. Still I think you ought to recognize me, anyhow."

The two men clasped hands. "Well, Amos?"

"It's been a long time between drinks, John."

"I know it, Amos, but my chore's done. Now, I'll stay home and enjoy life. Lydia, is it too hot for waffles and coffee, for supper? Lord, I've dreamed of those old days and of this meeting for nine months."

"It's not too hot for anything on earth you can ask for," returned Lydia, beginning to roll up her sleeves. "I'll go right in and start them now."

John looked after her, at the lengthened skirts, at the gold braids wrapped round her head. "She doesn't change except in size, thank God," he said.

"Oh, she gets prettier," said Amos, carelessly. "She's sort of grown up to her mouth, and the way she wears her hair shows the fine set of her head. She's improved a lot."

"She has not! Amos, you never did appreciate her. She couldn't be any more charming now than she was as a kiddie."

Amos put an affectionate hand on his friend's shoulder. "You always were an old fool, John. Come up and peel your coat, then take a look at the garden. There's Lizzie, dying to speak to you."

Levine looked around the living-room, complacently. "Jove, isn't it fine! Most homelike place in America. Lydia's been fixing up the old mahogany, eh?"

"Yes! One of the professors told her it was O. K., so she got a book out of the library on old furniture and now we are contented and strictly up to date. These damned rugs though, I can't get her to tack 'em down. They're just like so many rags on the floor! I never had a chance to tell you what she did to my mahogany arm chair, did I?"

He retailed the story of Willis' first call and John roared though he murmured, "Poor kiddie," as he did so.

"She's given me over to my sins, though, lately," Amos went on, with the faint twinkle in his eyes that Lydia had inherited. "She brought me up by hand, for a long time, hid my pipes, wanted me to manicure my nails, wouldn't let me eat in my shirt sleeves or drink my coffee out of the saucer. But her friend, Willis, likes me, as is,—so she's let me backslide without a murmur."

Amos paused and looked out at the shimmering lake. "John, I wish I had five daughters. There's nothing like 'em in the world."

Levine did not answer for a moment, while his gaze followed Amos' out over the familiar outline of blue water and far green hills.

"Sometimes, Amos," he muttered, finally, "I feel as if my whole life had been wasted."

It was an extraordinarily pleasant supper. John and Amos, in their shirt sleeves, ate waffles till Lydia declared that both the batter and her strength were exhausted. Indians were not mentioned. Levine was in a reminiscent mood and told stories of his boyhood on a Northern Vermont farm and old Lizzie for the first time in Lydia's remembrance told of some of the beaux she had had when her father was the richest farmer round Lake City.

After the dishes were washed, Levine asked Lydia to stroll up the road with him while Amos did his evening chores. It was dusk when they turned out the gate to the road, Lydia clinging to John's arm. A June dusk, with the fresh smell of the lake mingling with the heavy scent of syringa and alder bloom, and of all the world of leafage at the high tide of freshness. June dusk, with the steady croak of frogs from the meadows and the faint call of whippoorwills from the woods.

John put a long, hard hand over the small thin one on his arm. "Have you missed me, young Lydia?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, "especially as you never came near us after the hearing."

"How could I come?" asked the man, simply. "You had weighed me and found me wanting. There was nothing for me to do but to go ahead and finish my job, as I still saw the right of it. Have you forgiven me, Lydia?"

"It wasn't a matter between you and me," replied the girl, slowly. "It was between you and your conscience and if your conscience approves, what's the use of asking me to forgive you?"

"Because, I can't stand not having your approval," said Levine.

They strolled on in silence, while Lydia considered her reply. "No matter if the destroying of the Indians were right, that wouldn't exonerate the whites for having been cruel and crooked in doing it. People will always remember it of us."

Levine gave a laugh that had no mirth in it. "Lord, who'll say the New England spirit is dead! You're as cold in judging me as one of your ancestors was when he sentenced a witch to be burned."

"Oh, no!" cried Lydia. "Dear John Levine, I couldn't be cold to you. Nothing could make me love you less. And you yourself told me to be true to myself."

John sighed, then said abruptly, "Let's never discuss it again. What are you reading now, Lydia?"

"English essayists and Emerson. I'm crazy about Emerson. He seems so much more human than Leigh Hunt and De Quincey and the rest of them. Maybe it's because he's an American, so I understand him better. I think I like Compensation and Friendship the best so far. I learned one thing from Friendship to quote to you. It's like you and me."

With both hands clasping his arm, her sweet face upturned to his in the dusk, and with the rich notes in her voice that were reminiscent of little Patience, she quoted:

"'Friendship—that select and sacred relationship that is a kind of absolute and which even leaves the language of love suspicious and common so much is this purer; and nothing is so much divine.'"

John stopped and taking Lydia's face in both his hands, he exclaimed huskily. "Oh, my dear, this is my real welcome home! Oh, Lydia, Lydia, if you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

Lydia laughed. "Then we'd travel—to all the happy places of the world. We must turn back. Daddy'll be waiting."

Levine turned obediently, saying as he did so, "Just one thing more, then the year's absence will be spanned. How does the Great Search go on? Do you ever have bad dreams at night, now?"

"Sometimes," replied Lydia. "Just the other night I woke up with the old fear and then—it was very curious—I heard the lap-lapping of the lake, and the little murmur of the wind in the pine and the frogs cheeping and the steady chirp of the crickets, and, Mr. Levine, the queerest sense of comfort came to me. I can't put it into words. Somehow it was as if Something behind all those little voices spoke to me and told me things were—were right."

"Lydia," said Levine, quickly, "you've struck the right trail. I'll follow it with you. What a long way you've come alone, little girl. Give me your hand, dear. I like to feel it on my arm. Oh, Lydia! Lydia!"

"What are you two mooning about," said Amos' voice, as he loomed on them through the dusk.

"Enterprises of great pith and moment," replied Levine. "Got any tobacco with you, Amos?"

"No! We'd better go in the house, anyhow. The mosquitoes will eat us up. Lydia, Margery's looking for you."

And as far as Lydia was concerned, the evening was ended.

Levine was very busy with the details of the Indian removal for the next week or two. The exodus was accomplished in a business-like manner. A steady line of busses brought the Indians from the reservation to the outskirts of Lake City, where rough barracks had been erected to care for the government wards while they were being concentrated. The state militia was on guard here, at intervals along the road and upon the reservation. There were some disturbances on the reservation, but for the most part, the Indians were dazed and unprotesting. Before the concentration began, the precaution was taken of sending Charlie Jackson under guard to the new reservation in the Southwest. Lydia had never seen him after her day at the hearing. She always was to carry in her memory, his handsome bronze face, too early marked with lines of despair, as she saw it while she uttered her protest to the commissioners. And it was a hauntingly sad memory to carry.

She went with Billy to see the embarking of the Indians in the special trains provided for them. The streets along the line of march were lined with whites, silent but triumphant. It was a beautiful day, clear and hot. Two by two, the Indians moved along the fine old elm-shadowed streets, old Wolf at the head, shambling and decrepit, but with his splendid old head held high. Two by two, in utter silence, their moccasined feet soundless, old Indians in buckskins, and young Indians in store clothes, then squaws, in calico "mother-hubbards," great bundles strapped to their backs, and children in their arms or clinging to their skirts. A long, slow moving line, in a silence that even the children did not break.

It took until well in the evening to get the pathetic exiles into the trains. Lydia did not stay after dark. Profoundly depressed, she made Billy take her home.

In the evening she sat with her Emerson open before her, but with her unseeing eyes fastened on the open door. It was a little after nine when the chug-chug of Kent's car stopped at the gate and in a moment Kent, white faced, appeared in the door.

"John Levine's been shot. He wants Lydia!"

Without a sound Lydia started after Kent down the path, Amos following. Kent packed them into the little car and started back toward town at breakneck speed.

"How bad off is he?" asked Amos.

"Can't live," answered Kent.

Still Lydia made no sound though Amos held her firmly in the vain attempt to still her trembling.

"How'd it happen?" Amos' voice broke a little.

"That damned sister of Charlie Jackson and old Susie both took a shot at him, just as the last car-load was finished. The police and the militia got 'em right off. Shot 'em all to pieces. It looked as though there'd be a wholesale fight for a minute but the militia closed in and the last train got off."

"Where is John?" asked Amos.

"In Doc Fulton's office. They can't move him."

No one spoke again. Kent brought the automobile up with a bang before the doctor's house and Lydia, followed closely by the two men, ran up to the door, through the outer office to the inner, where a nurse and Doc Fulton stood beside a cot.

Levine lay with his face turned toward the door. When he saw Lydia he smiled faintly. She was quite calm, except for her trembling. She walked quickly to his side and took his hand.

"Looks like I was going to start traveling alone, young Lydia," he said feebly. "I just wanted to tell you—that Great Search—is ending all right—don't worry—"

"I won't," said Lydia.

"Only I hate to go alone—my mother—gimme something, Doc."

The doctor held a glass to his lips. After a moment, Levine said again, "My mother used to hold me—" his voice trailed off and Lydia said suddenly,

"You mean you want me to comfort you like I used to comfort little Patience?"

"Yes! Yes!" whispered Levine. "It's going to sleep alone I— Mother—"

Lydia knelt and sliding her arm under Levine's neck, she pulled his head over gently to rest on her shoulder. Then she began with infinite softness the little songs she had not uttered for so many years.

Suddenly the nurse shifted John's head and Doc Fulton lifted Lydia to her feet. "Take her home, Amos," he said.

John Levine had finished the Great Search.

Curiously enough, nothing could have done so much toward reinstating Lake City in the good opinion of the country at large as did Levine's tragic death. There was felt to be a divine justice in the manner of his taking off that partook largely of the nature of atonement. He had led the whites in the despoiling of the Indians. For this the Indians had killed him.

That a white life extinguished for a tribe destroyed might not be full compensation in the eyes of that Larger Justice which, after all, rules the Universe, did not seriously influence the reaction of public opinion toward thinking better of Lake City. And John Levine, known in life as an Indian Graft politician, became in his death a Statesman of far vision.

Levine's will was not found at first. Distant cousins in Vermont would be his heirs, if indeed after his estate was settled, it was found that there was left anything to inherit.

Kent for a month or so after the tragedy was extremely busy helping to disentangle Levine's complicated real estate holdings. It was found that he held heavily mortgaged second growth timber lands in the northern part of the State and Kent spent a month superintending a re-survey of them. He was very much broken up by Levine's death, and welcomed the heavy work.

In spite of Lydia's deep affection for Levine, she did not feel his death as much as Amos did. For after all, Lydia was young, gloriously young, and with a forward-turned face. Amos had lost in John his only real friend, the only human being who in some ways had helped to fill in the hopeless gap left by his wife's death. And Amos, though still a young man, kept his face turned backward.

After her first wild grief had expended itself, Lydia found that, after all, Levine's tragic death had not surprised her. She realized that ever since she had known Charlie Jackson, she had been vaguely haunted by a fear of just such an ending.

July slipped into a breathless, dusty August. Lydia worked very hard, making herself tasks when necessary work was done. She put up fruit. She worked in the garden. She took up the dining-room carpet and oiled the floor and made rugs. After she had had her swim in the late afternoon, she would take up her old position on the front doorstep, to sew or read or to dream with her eyes on the pine.

How silently, how broodingly it had stood there, month in, month out, year after year! What did it feel, Lydia wondered, now that the Indians were gone? Was it glad that Levine had been punished?

Billy, trundling up the dusty road from the law office on his bicycle, late each afternoon, would stop for a moment or two. Since the tragedy, not a day had gone by that Lydia had not seen him.

"The drought is something frightful," he said to Lydia one afternoon in late August, wiping the sweat and dust from his face. "This is the ninth week without rain. The corn is ruined. I never knew anything like this and Dad says he hasn't either."

"Our garden died weeks ago," said Lydia, listlessly.

Billy looked at her keenly. "Are you feeling any more cheerful, Lyd?"

Lydia turned her gaze from the burning brown meadows to Billy's tanned, rugged face.

"I shall always have a gap in my life, where he went out," she said, slowly. "I shall never get over missing him. Oh, he was so dear to me! And yet, Billy, it isn't at all like little Patience's death. He didn't depend on me and I didn't live with him so that everything doesn't cry his absence to me. And I've got more resources than I had then—"

She laid her hand on the open book in her lap.

"What're you reading?" asked Billy.

"Emerson—Compensation. Listen, Billy—'We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.'

"And so," Lydia's voice trembled, but she went on bravely, "I'm trying to understand—trying to see how I can make something good come out of his poor lost life. Somehow I feel as if that were my job. And—and the idea helps me. Oh, my dear John Levine!"

Billy cleared his throat. "Let's see that passage, Lyd." He took the book and read on: "'The death of a dear friend—wife, lover, brother—terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth that was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation or style of living and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.'"

The two young people sat staring at the distant hills.

"Don't you see," Lydia burst out, "that I've got to do something, be something, to make all the loss and trouble of my life worth while?"

"I understand," answered Billy. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm not quite sure, yet," replied Lydia, "but I'll tell you as soon as I've made up my mind. Billy, ask your father to come over this evening. Dad is so desperately blue."

Billy rose to go. "One thing I will tell you, Billy," Lydia went on, "I'm going to take the short dairy course this winter, besides my other work."

Billy looked at the sweet, resolute face curiously, then he chuckled.

"Whenever you deign to unravel the workings of the mystery you call your mind, I'll be crazy to listen," he said.

Early in September, John Levine's will was found. He had left his entire property, unconditionally, to Lydia.

Amos, at first, was frantic with delight. Lydia was appalled.

"All my life," she half sobbed to her father, "I've been fighting to get away from Indian lands. And Mr. Levine knew how I felt. Oh, how could he do this to me!"

"Don't talk like a fool, Lydia!" roared Amos.

Lydia turned to Kent, who was sitting on the back steps with them. He leaned over and patted her hand.

"Why worry about it, Lyd? Your father and I'll look out for it all."

"Do I have to keep it?" asked Lydia, tensely. "Will the law make me?"

"I should say not! You can give it to me, if you want to," laughed Kent.

"But don't you see how I feel?" cried Lydia. "Don't you see that all John Levine's lands up there are haunted by death—his own—and all the starving Indians? Oh, why did he do this to me!"

"I suppose you feel the same way about the cottage," said Amos, sarcastically.

"I don't either," contradicted Lydia. "I'm as happy as I can be that we've got that. But all the rest! I won't have it, I tell you! I'd rather be poverty stricken all my life."

"Well, don't worry too much about that," said Kent. "Dave Marshall thinks there won't be anything left after the estate is settled, but the Indian lands."

"Oh, Kent, you aren't having anything to do with Dave Marshall, are you?" exclaimed Lydia.

Kent flushed a little. "Well, his advice can't hurt me. If it's bad, I don't have to take it. You ought to go out and see his farm, Lydia. They're getting the house all fitted with modern conveniences. Dave's going to make a model stock farm."

"Bought with money earned by the Last Chance!" said Lydia.

"You can't be so darned squeamish about where a man gets his money these days, Lyd. Of course, there was no excuse for the Last Chance. But Dave's done what he could about it."

Lydia made no reply and Kent looked at her quizzically. "A New England conscience must be something awful to own, eh, Lyd?"

Lydia chuckled. "It's pretty bad," she admitted, then she went on soberly, "but I won't take those Indian lands."

"You can give them to me," reiterated Kent, cheerfully.

"She'll keep them," said Amos, shortly, "or Lydia and I'll have our first real row."

"Well, save up the fight till the estate's settled," said Kent, soothingly. "And then you'll know what you're fighting about. That will take some months."

Lydia sighed with relief. And again Kent laughed. "Oh, Lyd! You haven't any idea how funny you are! Come to, old lady! This is the twentieth century! And twentieth century business ethics don't belong to town meeting days. The best fellow gets the boodle!"

"Then Dave Marshall is the best fellow in our community, I suppose," said Lydia.

"Oh, Gee, Lyd! After all, he's Margery's father!"

Lydia looked at Kent thoughtfully. Since the day under the willows, he had not made love to her, yet she had the feeling that Kent was devoted to her and she wondered sometimes why he liked to spend as much time with Margery as with herself. Then she gave herself a mental shake.

"I'm going to tell you right now, that until I have to I'm not going to worry. I'm going to try to be happy in my senior year."