Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 4

T would be difficult to say which enjoyed the doll house more, Lydia or Patience. It would be difficult to say which one was the more touched, Lizzie or Amos by the package each found on the breakfast table. Amos unwrapped his to find therein a pipe tray fashioned from cigar box wood and stained with Lydia's walnut dye. Lizzie's gift was a flat black pin-cushion, with "Lizzie, with love from Lydia," embroidered crazily on it in red. Florence Dombey showed no emotion over her gift, a string of red beads that had a curious resemblance to asparagus seed-pods, but she wore them gracefully and stared round-eyed at all the festivities. Lydia and Patience each wore pinned to her dress a cotton handkerchief, Lizzie's gift.

John Levine appeared at noon, laden like a pack horse. This was his great opportunity during the year to do things for the Dudley children and he took full advantage of the moment. Books for Lydia, little toys for the baby, a pipe for Amos, a woolen dress pattern for Lizzie, a blue sailor suit for Lydia, a fur hood for Patience.

John's thin, sallow face glowed, his black eyes gleamed as he watched the children unwrap the packages. In the midst of the excitement, Lydia shrieked.

"My ducks! My ducks!" and bolted for the kitchen.

"The pie!" cried Lizzie, panting after her.

"Don't tell me they're spoiled!" groaned Amos, as with John and the baby, he followed into the kitchen.

"Safe!" shouted Lydia, on her knees before the oven. "Just the pope's nose is scorched! The pie is perfect."

"Let's eat before anything else happens," said Amos, nervously.

"Lord!" said John Levine, "who'd miss spending Christmas where there are children? I'd a gotten out here to-day if I'd had to come barefooted."

The dinner was eaten and pronounced perfect. The gifts were re-examined and re-admired. John Levine, with Lydia and Florence Dombey on his lap, Amos with the drowsy little Patience in his arms, and Lizzie, her tired hands folded across her comfortable stomach, sat round the base burner while the wind rose outside and the boom of the ice-locked lake filled the room from time to time.

"Fearful cold when the ice cracks that way," said Amos.

"'The owl, for all his feathers was a-cold,'" murmured Lydia.

"Where'd you get that and what's the rest of it?" asked Levine.

"Selected Gems," replied Lydia. "It's a book at school.

I forget the rest."

The grown-ups glanced at each other over the children's heads.

"Say your pretty Christmas poem you spoke at school, Lydia," suggested old Lizzie.

Lydia rested her head back comfortably on John's shoulder and rambled on in her childish contralto.

There was silence for a moment.

"Why did you choose that one, young Lydia?" asked Levine.

"I don't know. I seemed to like it," answered Lydia. "It's a girl's poem. Gosh, I've been happy to-day! Daddy, you thought we'd have an awful poor Christmas, didn't you? Poor old Daddy! Why, I've just felt all day as if my heart was on tip-toes."

It had indeed been a high day for the child. Perhaps she remembered it for years after as one of her perfect days, because of the heart breaking days that followed.

For little Patience for the first time in her tiny life was taken ill. For three or four days after Christmas she was feverish and cross with a hoarse cold. When Amos came home the fourth night, he thought she had the croup and sent Lydia pelting through the darkness for the dairy farmer's wife. Mrs. Norton, the mother of Billy, was not long in coming to a decision.

"'Tain't regular croup. You go after the doctor, Mr. Dudley."

Patience, frightened by her difficult breathing, would let no one but Lydia touch her. Under Mrs. Norton's supervision, she packed the baby in hot water bottles while Lizzie heated water and stoked the fires till the stove doors glowed red.

Amos came back with the doctor about nine o'clock. Patience was in a stupor. The doctor sent Lydia away while he made his examination. The child clenched her fists and walked up and down the living-room, cheeks scarlet, eyes blazing. Suddenly she dropped on her knees by the window and lifted her clasped hands to the stars.

"God! God, up there!" she called. "If you let her die, I'll never pray to you again! Never! I warned You when You let mother die!"

She remained a moment on her knees, staring at the stars while fragments of Sunday School lore flashed through her mind. "Our Father who art in heaven," she said. "No, that won't do. Suffer little children to come unto me. Oh, no, no."

The door opened and Lizzie came out, tears running down her cheeks.

Lydia flew to her.

"They say I got to tell you. Diphtheritic croup—her lungs is full—no hope."

Lydia struck the kind old hand from her shoulder and dashed out of the house. She ran through the snow to a giant pine by the gate and beat her fists against it for how long she did not know. Pain in her bruised hands and the intense cold finally brought her to her senses. A self-control that was partly inherent and partly the result of too early knowledge of grief and of responsibility came to her rescue. With a long sigh, she walked steadily into the house and into the room where the baby sister lay in a stupor, breathing stertorously.

The doctor and Amos were there. Mrs. Norton was now soothing Lizzie in the kitchen, now obeying the doctor's orders. Amos did not stir from his chair by the bed, nor speak a word, all that night. The doctor was in his shirt sleeves, prepared to fight as best he could.

"Go out, Lydia," said Dr. Fulton, quietly.

"She'll want me," replied the child.

The doctor looked at Lydia keenly. He knew her well. He had ushered her as well as Patience into the world. He pulled her to him, with one hand, not relinquishing his hold on the baby's pulse with the other.

"She's in a stupor and won't miss you, Lydia. She is not suffering at all. Now, I want you to go to bed like a good girl."

"I won't," said Lydia, quietly.

"Lydia," the doctor went on, as if he were talking to a grown person, "all your life you will be grateful to me, if I make you obey me now. I know those wild nerves of yours, too much and too early controlled. Lydia, go to bed!"

Not because she feared him but because some knowledge beyond her years told her of his wisdom, Lydia turned, found Florence Dombey in the living-room and with her and a blanket, crept under her father's bed, into the farthest corner where she lay wide-eyed until dawn. Some one closed the door into the room then, and shortly, she fell asleep.

In three days, the like of which are the longest, the shortest days of life, the house had returned to the remnant of its old routine. The place had been fumigated. Lydia had placed in her bedroom everything that had belonged to the baby, had locked the door and had moved herself into Lizzie's room. Amos departed before dawn as usual with his dinner pail, stumbling like an old man, over the road.

The quarantine sign was on the house and no one but the undertaker, the doctor, Mrs. Norton and John Levine had been allowed to come to see the stricken little family, excepting the minister. He, poor man, had babies of his own, and had been nervous during the few short minutes of the service.

Lydia and Lizzie put in the morning cleaning the cottage. Never since they had lived in it had the little house been so spic and span. At noon, they sat down to lunch in a splendor of cleanliness that made the place seem stranger than ever to them both. Neither talked much. At intervals, tears ran down old Lizzie's wrinkled cheeks and Lydia looked at her wonderingly. Lydia had not shed a tear. But all the time her cheeks were scarlet, her hands were cold and trembled and her stomach ached.

"You must eat, childie. You haven't eat enough to keep a bird alive since—since—"

There was a bang on the door, and Lizzie trundled over to open it.

"For the Lord's sake, Kent!"

Kent it was, big and rosy with his skates over his shoulders. He walked into the living-room deliberately.

"Hello, Lydia," he said, "I came out to see your Christmas presents."

Lydia clasped her hands. "Oh, Kent, I'm so glad! But you can't stay! We're quarantined."

"What the seventeen thunder-bugs do I care," returned Kent, gruffly, looking away from Lydia's appealing eyes.

Lydia laughed, as she always did at Kent's astonishing oaths. At the sound of the laughter, old Lizzie gave a sigh as though some of her own tense nerves had relaxed.

"Now see here," growled Kent, "they've got no business to shut you up this way. You come out and skate for a while. The wind's blown the snow till there's lots of clear places. I got up here without much trouble. We won't meet anybody at this end of the lake."

"Just the thing, quarantine or not!" exclaimed, Lizzie, briskly. "And I'll cook a surprise for the two of you. Keep her out an hour, Kent."

Lydia silently got into overcoat and leggings and pulled on her Tam o' Shanter. She brought her skates from the kitchen and the two children made their way to the lake shore.

It was a brilliant afternoon. The vast white expanse of the lake was dotted with the flash of opals wherever the wind had exposed the ice to the winter sun. Far down the lake toward the college shore, the flitting sails of ice-boats gleamed, and faint and far up the wind came the clear "cling-pling" of their steel runners. The mercury was hovering around ten or twelve above zero as the fierce booming of the expanding ice attested.

With unwonted consideration, Kent helped Lydia strap on her skates. Then the two started, hand in hand, up the lake. They skated well, as did most of the children of the community. The wind in their faces was bitter cold, making conversation difficult. Whether or not Kent was grateful for this, one could not say. He watched Lydia out of the tail of his eye and as the wind whipped the old red into her cheeks, he began to whistle. They had been going perhaps fifteen minutes when the little girl stumbled several times.

"What's the matter, Lyd?" asked Kent.

"I don't know," she panted. "I—I guess I'm tired."

"Tired already! Gosh! And you've always worn me out. Come on up to the shore, and I'll make a fire, so's you can rest."

Lydia, who always had scorned the thought of rest, while at play, followed meekly and stood in silence while Kent without removing his skates hobbled up the bank and pulled some dead branches to the shore. Shortly he had a bright blaze at her feet. He kicked the snow off a small log.

"Sit down—here where you get the warmth," he ordered, his voice as gruff as he could make it.

Lydia sat down obediently, her mittened hands clasping her knees. Kent stood staring at his little chum. He took in the faded blue Tam, the outgrown coat, the red mittens, so badly mended, the leggings with patches on the knees. Then he eyed the heavy circles around her eyes and the droop to the mouth that was meant to be merry.

"I'm sorriest for Lydia," his mother had said that morning. "No mother could feel much worse than she does, and she's got no one to turn to for comfort. I know Amos. He'll shut up like a clam. Just as soon as they're out of quarantine, I'll go out there."

Kent was only a boy, but he was mature in spite of his heedless ways. Staring at the tragedy in Lydia's ravished little face, a sympathy for her pain as real as it was unwonted swept over him. Suddenly he dropped down beside her on the log and threw his boyish arms about her.

"I'm so doggone sorry for you, Lydia!" he whispered.

Lydia lifted startled eyes to his. Never before had Kent shown her the slightest affection. When she saw the sweetness and sympathy in his brown gaze,

"Oh, Kent," she whispered, "why did God let it happen! Why did He?" and she buried her face on his shoulder and began to sob. Softly at first, then with a racking agony of tears.

Even a child is wise in the matter of grief. Kent's lips trembled, but he made no attempt to comfort Lydia. He only held her tightly and watched the fire with bright, unseeing eyes. And after what seemed a long, long time, the sobs grew less. Finally, he slipped a pocket handkerchief into Lydia's hand. It was gray with use but of a comforting size.

"Wipe your eyes, old lady," he said in a cheerful, matter of fact tone. "I've got to put the fire out, so's we can start home."

Lydia mopped her face and by the time Kent had the fire smothered with snow, she was standing, sad-eyed but calm except for dry sobs. Kent picked up one of the sticks he had brought for the fire.

"Catch hold," he said, "I'll pull you home."

Old Lizzie was watching for them and when they came stamping into the dining-room, they found a pitcher of steaming cocoa and a plate of bread and butter with hot gingerbread awaiting them.

"See if you can get her to eat, Kent," said Lizzie.

"Sure, she'll eat," Kent answered her. "Gimme back my hanky, Lyd!"

Lizzie gave a keen look at Lydia's tear-stained face and turned abruptly into the kitchen. She came back in a moment to find Lydia silently eating what Kent had set before her.

Kent ate hugely and talked without cessation. About what, Lydia did not know, for the sleep that had been long denied her was claiming her. She did not know that she almost buried her head in her second cup of cocoa, nor that Kent helped carry her to the couch behind the living-room base burner.

"Is she sick? Shall I get the doctor?" he whispered as old Lizzie tucked a shawl over her.

"Sick! No! No! She's just dead for sleep. She's neither cried nor eat nor had a decent hour of sleep since it happened. And now, thanks to you, she's done all three. You are a good boy, Kent Moulton."

Kent looked suddenly foolish and embarrassed. "Aw—that's nothing," he muttered. "Where's my coat? Maybe I'll come out again to-morrow, if I ain't got anything better to do."

All the rest of the winter afternoon, Lydia slept. The sun dipped low beyond the white hills, filling the living-room with scarlet for one breathless moment, before a blanket of twilight hid all save the red eyes of the base burner. Amos came home at seven and he and Lizzie ate supper in silence except for the old lady's story of Kent's visit.

"Poor young one," muttered Amos, looking slowly toward the quiet blond head on the faded brown cushion. "I'm glad she's a child and 'll forget it soon."

Lizzie gave Amos a curious glance. "You don't know Lydia, Amos," she said.

He did not seem to hear her. He moved his chair toward the stove, put his feet on the fender, lighted his pipe and then sat without moving until a stamping of feet and a hearty rap on the door roused him. Lizzie let John Levine in.

"Where's Lydia?" was Levine's first question.

Lizzie pointed to the couch, where, undisturbed, Lydia slept on.

"Good!" said John. He drew his chair up beside Amos' and the two fell into low-voiced conversation.

It must have been nine o'clock when Lydia opened her eyes to hear Amos say fretfully,

"I tell you, I went to him to-day as I'll go to no man again. I begged him to renew the note, but he insisted his duty to the bank wouldn't let him. I told him it would put you in a terrible fix, that you'd gone on the note when you couldn't afford it. He grinned a devil's grin then and said, 'Amos, I know you've got nothing to lose in this. If you had, for the sake of your children—I mean Lydia, I'd hold off. But Levine can fix it up!'"

"So I could, ordinarily," said Levine in a troubled voice. "But it just happens that everything I've got on earth is shoe-stringed out to hang onto that pine section of mine up in Bear county. I'm mortgaged up to my eyebrows. Marshall knows it and sees a chance to get hold of the pines, damn him!"

Lydia sat up and rubbed her eyes.

"Well! Well! young Lydia," cried Levine. "Had a fine sleep, didn't you!"

"I'm awful hungry," said the child.

"Bless your soul," exclaimed Lizzie. "I'll warm your supper up for you in a minute."

Lydia stood with hands outstretched to the base burner, her hair tumbled, her glance traveling from Amos to Levine.

"What makes Mr. Marshall act so?" she asked.

"Sho," said Levine, "little girls your age don't know anything about such things, do they, Amos? Come here. You shall eat your supper on my lap."

"I'm getting too old for laps," said Lydia, coming very willingly nevertheless within the compass of John's long arms. "But I love you next to Daddy now, in all the world."

John swept her to his knees and put his cheek against hers for a moment, while tears gleamed in his black eyes.

"Eat your supper and go to bed, Lydia," said Amos.

"Don't be so cross, Amos," protested Levine.

"God knows I'm not cross—to Lydia of all people in the world," sighed Amos, "but she worries over money matters just the way her mother did and I want to finish talking this over with you."

"There's nothing more to talk about," Levine's voice was short. "Let him call in the loan, the fat hog!"

Lydia slept the long night through. She awoke refreshed and renewed. After first adjusting herself to the awful sense of loss, which is the worst of waking in grief, the recollection of the conversation she had heard the night before returned with sickening vividness. After she had wiped the breakfast dishes for Lizzie she stood for a long time at the living-room window with Florence Dombey in her arms staring at the lake. Finally, she tucked the doll up comfortably on the couch and announced to Lizzie that she was going skating.

An hour later, Dave Marshall heard his clerk protesting outside his door and a childish voice saying, "But please, just for a minute. He likes me. He truly does."

Then the door opened and Lydia, breathless and rosy and threadbare, came into his little private office. She closed the door and stood with her back against it, unsmiling.

"I'm in quarantine," she said, "so I won't come near you."

"Why, Lydia!" exclaimed Marshall, "where did you come from!"

"Home. Mr. Marshall, won't you fix Daddy's note if he gives you me?"

"Huh!" ejaculated Marshall.

"You said last fall," the child went on, her voice quavering but her eyes resolute, "that if Daddy ever wanted to sell me, you'd buy me. I think I ought to be worth a thousand dollars. I can do so much work around the house and help you train Margery! I can work hard. You ask John Levine."

Marshall's fat face was purple and then pale.

"Does your father know you're here, Lydia?" he asked.

She clasped her mittened hands in sudden agitation.

"Nobody knows but you," she exclaimed. "Oh! you mustn't tell the man out there my name. I'm in quarantine and I'd be arrested, if the health office knew!"

"I won't tell," said Dave, gently. "Come over here by me, Lydia. Margery is away on a visit so I'm not afraid for her."

Lydia crossed the room. Marshall took the skates from her shoulders and unfastened her coat.

"Sit down on that chair and let's talk this over. You know what a note is, do you, Lydia?"

"It's money you owe," she said, her blue eyes anxiously fixed on Marshall's face.

He nodded. "Yes. When your mother was sick, your father asked my bank here to lend him a thousand dollars for two years. Now, your father is very poor. He doesn't own anything that's worth a thousand dollars and I knew he could never pay it back. So I told him he must get some one to promise to pay that money for him if he couldn't, at the end of the two years. Understand?"

Lydia nodded.

"Well, he got John Levine. Now the two years are up and unless that thousand dollars is paid, the people whose money I take care of in the bank, will each lose some of that thousand. See?"

Lydia stared at him, struggling to take in the explanation. "I see," she said. "But if you'd pay a thousand dollars for me, that would fix it all up."

"Why Lydia, do you mean you would leave your father?"

"I wouldn't want to," she answered earnestly, "but Lizzie could take care of Daddy. He doesn't really need me. There isn't anybody really needs me—needs me—now—"

She swallowed a sob, then went on. "Mr. Levine just mustn't pay it. He's awful worried. His land's fixed so's he'd never get over it. And he's the best friend we have in all the world. He just mustn't pay it. It would kill mother, if she knew. Oh, she hated borrowing so."

Marshall chewed his cigar. "Levine," he growled, "is a long legged crook."

Lydia flew out of her chair and shook her fist in the banker's face. "Don't you dare say that!" she cried. "He's a dear lamb, that's what he is."

Dave's fat jaw dropped. "A dear lamb, eh? Ask him some time what a land shark is—a dear lamb?"

He went on chewing his cigar and Lydia returned to her chair. Whether it was the anxious round eyes, above the scarlet cheeks, whether it was the wistful droop of the childish lips, whether it was the look that belongs to ravished motherhood and seemed grossly wrong on a child's face, whether it was some thought of his own pampered little daughter, whether it was that curious appeal Lydia always made to men, or a combination of all, that moved Marshall, he could not have told. But suddenly he burst forth.

"Good God, I've done hard things in my life, but I can't do this! Lydia, you go home and tell your father I'll renew that note, but he's got to pay the interest and ten per cent. of the principal, every year till he's paid it up. Here, I'll write it down. And tell him that I'm not doing it for him or for that skunk of a Levine, but I'm doing it for you. Here, I'll write that down, too."

He folded the bit of paper and put it in an envelope. "Come here," he said. He pinned the note into the pocket of her blouse. "Understand, Lydia," he said in a low voice, tilting her head up so that he looked down into her eyes, "I'm buying your friendship with this. You go on living with your father and taking care of him, but I'm buying your friendship for me and Margery—for good and all." He looked out of the window with a curious air of abstraction. Then, "Button your coat and run along."

"I haven't thanked you," exclaimed Lydia, "I can't thank you. Oh, but thank you, Mr. Marshall—I—I—" she began to tremble violently.

"Stop!" roared Marshall. "And you tell your father to look out for your nerves. Now skip." And Lydia's trembling stopped and she skipped.

She did not tell Lizzie of her errand and that faithful soul was too glad to see her eat her dinner to think to ask her why she had skated so long. Kent came out in the afternoon and the two fished through the ice until sunset, when they came in with a string of fish sufficiently long to divide and make a meal for the Dudleys and the Moultons. At dusk, Kent departed with his fish and "Men of Iron," loaned by Lydia as a special favor, under his arm.

Old Lizzie cleaned the fish and Lydia fried them, with the daintiness and skill that seemed to have been born in her. She laid an envelope at her father's plate and when he sat down, silent and abstracted, without heeding the fish, she shook her head at Lizzie who was about to protest.

"Where'd this come from?" he asked, absentmindedly opening the envelope. Then, "For God's sake! Lydia—where? how?"

"It was like this," said Lydia. "Set the fish back to warm, while I explain, Lizzie. It was like this—" and she gave a full history of her morning's visit, to her two speechless listeners. "And I ran all the way to the lake and I skated like the wind, and I never told Lizzie a word, though I nearly busted!"

Amos looked from Lydia to Lizzie, from Lizzie to Lydia.

"Lydia—my little daughter—" he faltered.

The tears flew to Lydia's eyes and she spoke hastily, "Lizzie, show him the fish we caught!"

Amos smiled while he shook his head. "I won't forget it, Lydia. In spite of little Patience's going, you've taken ten years off me this night. What do you suppose John Levine will say?"

"He'll say," replied Lydia, taking her serving of fish, "'If you were ten years older, Lydia, and I were ten years younger,' and I'll say—'then we'd travel.'"