Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
THE YOUNGEST SCHOLAR
"The Indians knew no home, and so they died."
IF Amos was not happy after Lydia's concession, at least she never had seen him so interested in life as he was now. Nor had Kent ever been more considerate of Lydia. They went to a number of dances and skated together frequently in spite of the fact that Kent was very busy with his real estate work.
All this, Lydia told herself, should have made her happy, and yet, she was not. Even when Professor Willis took her to a Military hop and brought her home in a hack, she was conscious of the feverish sense of loss and uncertainty that had become a part of her daily living. Several times she had an almost overwhelming desire to tell him what she had done. But she could not bear to destroy the ideal she knew he had of her, even for the relief of receiving his sympathy, of which she was very sure.
Billy came to see her as usual, and took her to an occasional dance. But he was not the friend of old. And the change was not in any neglect of things done, it was in his way of looking at her; in his long silences when he studied her face with a grieved, puzzled look that made her frantic; in his ceasing to talk over his work with her with any air of comradeship, and most of all in his ceasing to bully her—that inalienable earmark of the attitude of the lover toward the beloved.
Lydia's nerves began to feel the strain before spring came in. She was pale in the morning and fever-flushed in the afternoon and her hands were uncertain. March was long and bleak, that year, but April came in as sweetly as a silver bugle call. The first week in April the ice went out of the lake with a crash and boom and mighty upheaval, leaving a pellucid calm of blue waters that brought a new light to Lydia's face. She heard the first robin call on her way home from college, the day that the ice went out.
She had walked up the road ahead of Billy, her black scholar's gown fluttering. Once, he would have run to overtake her, but now he plodded along a block behind, without a sound. Lydia did not pause at the cottage gate. The call of the robin was in her blood and she swung on up the road, past the Norton place, and into the woods.
Young April was there, with its silence a-tip-toe, and its warmth and chill. Lydia drew a deep breath and paused where through the trunks of the white birches she caught the glimmer of the lake. There was a log at hand and she sat down, threw her mortar-board on the ground and rested, chin cupped in her hands, lips parted, eyes tear dimmed. She was weary of thought. She only knew that the spiritual rightness with which she had sustained her mind and body through all the hard years of her youth, had gone wrong. She only knew that a loneliness of soul she could not seem to endure was robbing her of a youth that as yet she had scarcely tasted.
She sat without stirring. The blue of the lake began to turn orange. The robin's note grew fainter. Suddenly there was the sound of hasty footsteps through the dead leaves. Lydia looked up. Billy was striding toward her. She did not speak, nor did he. It seemed to her that she never had noticed before how mature Billy's face was in its new gauntness, nor how deep and direct was his gaze.
He strode up to the log, stooped, and drew Lydia to her feet. Then he lifted her, scholar's gown and all, in his arms and kissed her full on the lips, kissed her long and passionately, then looked deep into her eyes and held her to him until she could feel his heart beating full and quick.
For just a moment, Lydia did not stir, then she threw her arms around his neck, hid her face against his shoulder and clung to him with an intensity that made him tremble.
The robin's note grew sweeter, fainter. The lake lap-lapped beyond the birches. Billy slipped his hand under Lydia's cheek and turned her face so that he could look into her eyes. At what he saw there, his own firm lips quivered.
"Lydia!" he whispered.
Then he kissed her again.
Lydia freed herself from his arms, though he kept both of her hands in his.
"Now," he said gently, with a smile of a quality Lydia never had seen on his lips before, "now, sweetheart, are you going to be good?"
"Yes," murmured Lydia, with the contralto lilt in her voice. "What do you want me to do. Billy?"
"I want what you want, dearest. I want the old Lydia with the vision. Has she come back, or shall I have to look for her again?"
He started as if to take Lydia in his arms once more, but with a sudden rich little laugh, she stepped away from him.
"She's here—Oh, Billy, dearest! How could you let her wander around alone so long."
"It didn't hurt my cause any for her to miss me," answered Billy, grimly, "though I didn't realize that till a moment ago. Stop your trembling, Lydia. I'm here to look out for you, for the rest of time."
"I can hear Adam barking," said Lydia. "Dad must have come home. Take me back, Billy."
"All right," replied Billy. "I will just as soon as you tell me something."
Lydia looked up into his face. "Not that just yet, please, Billy. I must make things right with Dad and Kent."
Billy seized her shoulders. "Is there anything between you and Kent, Lydia?" he said, jealously.
"Not in words," she answered, "but of course he's gone ahead with my land deal, with the idea he'd share in it."
Billy's hands tightened on her shoulders. "Dear," Lydia went on pleadingly, "don't spoil this perfect moment. We must have this, always, no matter what comes."
"Nothing can come," replied Billy sternly. "Give me your hand, little girl. It's getting cold in these woods."
They walked back to the cottage in silence, hand in hand. They paused at the gate and Lydia pointed through the dusk at the new moon.
"Let's wish on it," she said. "Close your eyes, and wish."
Billy closed his eyes. A kiss as soft as the robin's note fell on his lips and the gate clicked. He opened his eyes and stood looking up the path long after the door closed, his hat in his hand.
Lydia wandered into the dining-room quite casually.
"For heaven's sake, Lydia!" cried Amos. "I was just going to start on a hunt for you!"
"I took a walk in the woods," explained Lydia, "and was gone longer than I realized."
"Supper's ready. Sit right down," said Lizzie, looking at Lydia, intently.
Amos was absorbed in his own thoughts during the meal. He and Kent had both been worried and absent minded, lately. He paid no heed to the fact that Lydia only played with her food and that during the meal she smiled at nothing. But old Lizzie, who had worried herself half sick over Lydia, watched her with growing curiosity.
"Seen Kent, to-day, Lydia?" she asked.
After a moment—"Did you speak to me, Lizzie?" Lydia inquired.
"Yes, I did. I asked if you'd seen Kent to-day."
"I? No, I haven't seen Kent. We had a quiz in chemistry, to-day."
"What's that got to do with anything?" grunted Lizzie. But she asked no more questions.
Ma Norton came over during the evening to borrow some yeast. Amos was working over some figures on a bit of paper. Lydia was sitting with a text book in front of her. She had not turned a leaf in twenty minutes, to Lizzie's actual count.
"Spring's here," said Ma. "Though there's still a bite in the air. Not that Billy seems to notice it. I found him sitting on the front steps with his cigar, as if it was June."
Lizzie gave Lydia a quick look and wondered if she only imagined that her cheeks were turning pinker.
"I can't sit down," Ma went on, "I've got to set this sponge to rise."
"I'll walk home with you, Mrs. Norton," said Lydia, suddenly. "It seems as if one couldn't get enough of this first spring day."
"Do!" Ma's voice was always extra cordial when she spoke to Lydia.
Lizzie watched the door close behind the two. "I knew it," she exclaimed.
"Knew what?" inquired Amos, looking up from his figures.
"That there was a new moon," answered the old lady, shortly, trudging off to her bedroom.
"Liz is getting childish," thought Amos, returning to his work.
"Bill's still on the front porch," said Ma Norton as they reached the Norton driveway. "Do go speak to him, Lydia. He's amiable to-night, but he's been like a bear for months."
Billy's mother went on into the kitchen entrance and Lydia went over to the dim figure on the steps.
"Your mother told me to speak to you," she said meekly.
"I heard her." Billy gave a low laugh. "Come up here in the shadow, sweetheart, and tell me if you ever saw such a moonlit and starlit night."
But Lydia did not stir. "Honestly, I don't dare look at the sky any longer. I have a quiz in rhetoric to-morrow and I've got to get my mind on it."
Billy came down the steps. "Then I'll walk home with you."
"No, you won't. I—I just came over to see if it's all real. Just to touch you and then run back. I'd rather you didn't walk back with me."
The night was brilliant and Billy, responding to some little petitioning note in Lydia's voice, did not offer to touch her but stood looking down at the sweet dim face turned up to his. She lifted her hand, that thin hand with the work calluses on it, and ran it over his cheeks, brushed her cheek against his shoulder, and then ran away.
She finished her studying and went to bed early, only to lie awake for hours. At last, she crept out of bed and as once before, she clasped her hands and lifted her face to the heavens. "Thank you, God!" she whispered. Then she went to sleep.
The next night, Kent came out to the cottage. Lydia dreaded his coming so little that she was surprised. Yet this day had been one of continual surprise to her. She had wakened to a dawn of robin songs, and had dressed with an answering song in her own heart. She was as one who had never known sorrow or anxiety. Her whole future lay before her, a clear and unobstructed pathway.
For Lydia had found herself. She was a creature to whom a great love and devotion were essential as motive forces. In turn she had given this, in childish form, to her mother, to little Patience and to Levine. One by one these had been taken from her and she had struggled to give this devotion to Kent, but she could not give where there was no understanding.
And now she saw that for years it had been Billy. Billy who combined all the best of what her mother, her baby sister, and Levine had meant to her, with something greatly more—the divinity of passion—a thing she could not understand, yet that had created a new world for her.
Kent tossed his hat on the couch and shook his head at Amos. "Dave's not going to get away with it. He's got some kind of a row going with the Whiskey people and he says we might as well count him out. I don't know what to do now."
Amos groaned. "Lord, what luck!"
"Don't let it worry you," said Lydia calmly. "I made up my mind to-day that I'd go ahead and enter on that land just as other folks are doing, in the good old way. I'm going to make a farm up there, that will blot out all memory of what Mr. Levine did. But I'm going to work for it as a homesteader has to and not take any advantage through Mr. Levine's graft."
Kent looked up crossly. "Oh, Lydia, for heaven's sake, don't begin that again!"
Lydia crossed the room and put her hand on Kent's shoulder as he sat on the couch.
"Kent, look at me," she said, then, very quietly, "I'm going to homestead that land." There was no escaping the note of finality in her decision.
Kent's face whitened. He looked up steadily at Lydia. Amos and Lizzie sensed that they were spectators of a deeper crisis than they understood and they watched breathlessly. Kent rose slowly. The sweat stood on his forehead.
"You know what that means, as far as I'm concerned," he said.
Lydia, chin up, gaze never more clearly blue, nodded.
"Yes, Kent, but we never would have been happy. You and Margery were meant for each other, anyhow."
"Lydia! Lydia!" exclaimed Kent hoarsely, half angrily, half pleadingly.
"No, you won't feel badly, when you think it over. Go to Margery now and tell her, Kent."
Kent picked up his cap. "I—I don't understand," he said. Then, angrily, "You aren't treating me right, Lydia. I'll talk to you when I'm not so sore," and he walked out of the house.
Lydia turned to Amos and Lizzie. "There," she said, happily, "I've got Kent settled for life!"
Amos sank into his armchair. "Lydia, have you lost your mind!" he groaned.
"No, I've found it, Daddy. Poor Dad, don't look as if you'd fathered a lunatic!"
Amos shook his head.
"Daddy, let's homestead that land! Let's quit this idea of getting something by graft. Let's do like our forefathers did. Let's homestead that land! Let's earn it by farming it."
Lydia's father looked at her, long and meditatively. He was pretty well discouraged about the probability of ever getting a clear title to the land through Kent or Marshall. And the longer he looked at Lydia, the more his mind reverted to New England, to old tales of the farm on which he and his ancestors had been bred.
"A man with three hundred and twenty acres of land is a power in the community," he said, suddenly.
"Oh, yes, Dad!" cried Lydia.
"You never know what a feeling of independence is," said Lizzie, "till you own land and raise wheat."
Amos stared out the door into the darkness. Little by little Lydia saw creeping into his face new lines of determination, a new sort of pride that the thought of the selling of the lands had not put there. He cleared his throat.
"Hang it, Lydia, I'm not as hard as you think I am. I want you to be happy. And I'm not so damned old as you think I am. I'm good for homesteading, if you and Liz are. A farmer with three hundred and twenty acres! God!"
Lydia nodded. Amos began to walk the floor. "I'm still a young man. If I had the backing that land gives a man, I could clean out a lot of rottenness in the State. Even if I only did it by showing what a man with a clean record could make of himself."
"That's just the point," cried Lydia eagerly, "and your record wouldn't have been clean, if you'd gotten it through Marshall."
"What young men need nowadays," Amos went on, "is to get back to the old idea of land ownership. Three hundred and twenty acres! Lydia, why can't I enter on it to-morrow?"
"Why not?" asked Lydia.
"If I take Brown's offer for the cottage, it would leave us enough to get a team and I bet I could hire a tractor to get to the cleared portion of it, this Fall. A hundred acres are clear, you know. I might as well quit the factory now, eh, Lydia?"
With a laugh that had a sob in it, Lydia kissed her father and whirled out the door. Billy was coming in at the gate. She flew down to seize his hand and turn him toward the road.
"Let's walk! I've such quantities to tell you!"
Billy turned obediently, but paused in the shadow of the pine. "Lydia, I can't tell you what it means to me. No matter what bigger things may seem to happen to me, nothing can equal the things I've felt and dreamed to-day."
Then he put his arms about Lydia and kissed her, and she put her arms about his neck and laid her head against his shoulder. They stood thus motionless while the pine whispered above them. And in the intensity of that embrace all the griefs of Lydia's life were hallowed and made purposeful.
"Lydia," said Billy, "I want to tell Mother and Dad. Will you come over home with me, now?"
"Yes," replied Lydia, "and then we must tell my father and Lizzie. Oh, Billy, I forgot," as they started down the road, "I've decided to homestead that land."
"But—why, Lydia dear, you're going to be a lawyer's wife. For heaven's sake, let that beastly land go."
"No, I'm going to be a pioneer's wife!"
There was a little pause, then Billy laughed uncertainly. "Well, I'm not going to talk about it to-night. I'm in a frame of mind to-night where I'd promise you to be an Indian chief if you ask it. Mother and Dad are in the kitchen."
They opened the kitchen door and stepped in. Pa Norton was sitting in his stocking feet, reading the evening paper. Ma was putting away the day's baking. She paused with a loaf of bread in her hand as the two came in and Pa looked over his glasses.
"Mother and Dad," said Billy, uncertainly, "I—I've brought Lydia home to you! Look at her, Dad! Isn't she a peach!"
Lydia stood with her back against the door, cheeks scarlet, golden head held high, but her lips quivering.
Ma dropped her loaf of bread. "Oh, Lydia," she cried, "I thought that numskull of a Billy never would see daylight! I've prayed for this for years. Come straight over here to your mother, love."
But Pa Norton had dropped his paper when Ma dropped her bread and had not paused for comments. He made three strides to Lydia, and gave her a great hug and a kiss. Then he said, "First time I saw you carrying that milk for Billy's books, I said, there's the wife Billy ought to have. Ma, wasn't she the dearest—"
But Ma shoved him aside contemptuously. "Get over and talk to Billy. This is a woman's affair. Who cares about reminiscences now. Oh, Billy, do you remember I used to worry because she didn't keep the back of her neck clean!"
"Who's reminiscencing now?" asked Pa belligerently.
Everybody laughed. Then Pa sighed. "Well, I feel almost reconciled now to Bill's giving up farming. When're you going to be married?"
Lydia blushed. "Oh, not for a long time. Now, let's go and tell my people, Billy."
Out in the night again! Curious how long the short walk to the cottage could be made! Curious how near the stars were—heaven just over the road where the lovers strolled. Not strange that such ecstasy cannot last forever. The human mind could not bear that heaven-born rapture too long.
Lizzie was mending. Amos was sitting in his arm chair, with a bit of paper on which he was figuring. Lydia flew across the room and dropped on her knees beside him.
"Oh, Daddy dear, look at me! Billy's here and he's always going to be here. Tell us you're glad."
Amos looked up with a jerk. First at Billy standing stalwart and grave by the table, his deep eyes as steady as the hand he held out to Lizzie. Then at his daughter, with her transformed face.
"But," protested Amos, "I thought it was to be Kent."
"Oh, it couldn't have been Kent," exclaimed Lydia. "We never would have understood each other. Kent was for Margery."
A frown gathered on Amos' face. He did not really want Lydia to marry any one. All that had reconciled him to the thought of Kent had been Kent's relation to the Indian lands. And now, he discovered that he didn't want to give his daughter to any one. He threw a jealous arm about her.
"No, you can't have her, Billy," he said. "Nobody shall have her. She's too good for the best man living."
"Yes, she is," agreed Billy. "But that isn't the point. The point is that Lydia actually wants me. I don't understand it myself, but she does and I know I can make her happy."
"I can make her happy myself," said Amos, gruffly.
"But you haven't," retorted Billy. "Look at the way you've acted about this land matter. And God knows, she deserves to be happy at any cost. Good heavens, when I think of her, it seems to me that nothing could be too much for her. I think of her trudging those miles in her patched old clothes to buy her school books—what a thin, big-eyed kiddie she was. Why, even as a cub, I used to appreciate her. And then when she stood up before the hearing, the bravest man among us, and when she got sick trying to earn those silly Prom clothes— My God, Amos, if Lydia wants me, or the moon, or a town lot in South Africa, it's up to you to give it to her."
Amos did not reply for a moment. Down through the years he was watching a thin little figure trudge with such patience and sweetness and determination as he seemed never before to have appreciated. Slowly his hold loosened on Lydia's shoulders and he looked into her face.
"Do you want to marry Billy?" he asked.
"Oh, Daddy, yes," whispered Lydia.
Amos looked up at the young man, who stood returning his gaze. "Take her, Billy, and heaven help you if you're not good to her, for John Levine's spirit will haunt you with a curse."
Billy raised Lydia to her feet and the extraordinary smile was on his face.
"What do you think about it, Lizzie?" he asked.
Lizzie, who had been crying comfortably, wiped her eyes with the sock she was darning.
"I'm thinking that any one that can bring the look to Lydia's face she's been wearing for twenty-four hours, deserves her. Rheumatism or no, down I get on my old knees to-night and give thanks—just for the look in that child's eyes."
And now for a while, Lydia was content to live absolutely in the present, as was Billy. Surely there never was such an April. And surely no April ever melted so softly into so glorious a May. Apple blossoms, lilac blooms, violets and wind flowers and through them, Lydia in her scholar's gown, hanging to Billy's arm, after the day's work was done.
She seemed singularly uninterested in the preparations for Commencement, though she went through her final examinations with credit. But the week before Commencement she came home one afternoon with blazing cheeks. Billy was at the cottage for supper and when they had begun the meal, she exploded her bomb.
"Dad! Billy! Lizzie! They've elected me a member of the Scholars' Club!"
"For the love of heaven!" exclaimed Amos, dropping his fork.
"Why not?" asked Lizzie.
"Lydia, dear, but I'm proud of you," breathed Billy.
"Professor Willis told me, this afternoon," Lydia went on, "and I laughed at him at first. I thought he was teasing me. Why only high-brows belong to the Scholars' Club! Prexy belongs and the best of the professors and only a few of the post-graduate pupils. But he says I was elected. I told him lots of students had higher standings than I, and he only laughed and said he knew it. And I've got to go to that banquet of theirs next week!"
"Fine!" said Billy.
"Fine! Why, Billy Norton, I never went to a banquet in my life. I don't know what forks to use, and I never saw a finger bowl!"
Amos grinned. "What's the use of being a scholar, if that sort of thing bothers you?"
"I might get a book on etiquette and polish up," said Lydia, thoughtfully. "I'll get one to-morrow, and practise on the family."
Amos groaned, but to no avail. Lydia borrowed a book on etiquette from the library and for a week Amos ate his supper with an array of silver and kitchen-ware before him that took his appetite away. He rebelled utterly at using the finger bowls, which at breakfast were porridge dishes. Lizzie, however, was apt and read the book so diligently while Lydia was in class that she was able to correct Lydia as well as Amos at night.
Ma Norton had insisted on making Lydia a white mull graduation dress. She would not let either Lizzie or Lydia help her. She had been daughter-hungry all her life and since she made her own wedding gown, no bit of sewing had given her the satisfaction that this did.
So it was that Lydia, wearing the mull under her scholar's gown, and with the precepts of the book on etiquette in her mind, attended the Scholars' banquet, timidly but not with the self-consciousness that she might otherwise have felt.
Billy left her at the door of the hall and Professor Willis took her in to dinner. There were only two other women there, but Lydia did not mind.
"You never told me," said Willis, after Lydia had safely chosen her salad fork, "what you've done about the three hundred and twenty acres."
Lydia looked up at him quickly. She had been dreading this moment for some time.
"I'm going to give up John Levine's claim on it, and enter on it as a homesteader."
"But what an undertaking!" exclaimed Willis.
"I'll not go alone," said Lydia gently. "Billy Norton will go with me."
Willis turned white, and laid down his salad fork. Lydia turned her head away, then looked back, her eyes a little tear dimmed.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be," he answered, after a moment. "You never did a kinder thing than to tell me this now—before—not but what it would have been too late, had you told me two years ago."
"Oh, I am so sorry," repeated Lydia miserably.
"But you mustn't be! Besides, you and I are both scholars and scholars are always philosophers!"
He was silent for the rest of the banquet, in spite of his philosophy. But when he was called on for his toast, which was the last one, he rose coolly enough, and began steadily,
"My toast is to all scholars, everywhere, but also to one scholar in particular. It is to one who was born with a love of books, to one who made books—good books—so intimate a part of her life that she made poverty a blessing, who combined books and living so deeply that she read her community aright, when others failed to do so, to one who is a scholar in the truest sense of the word—a book lover with a vision. I drink to the youngest and sweetest scholar of us all!" and he bowed to Lydia.
How she got through the congratulations and out to Billy, patiently waiting at the main campus gate, Lydia was not sure, for she was quite drunk with surprise and pleasure. After she had told it all to Billy, and once more they were standing under the pine at the gate, she said,
"Billy, will you go up with Father and Lizzie and me to open up the three hundred and twenty acres?"
Billy answered slowly. "There's nothing I'd like better. I was born to be a farmer. But, Lydia, it looks to me as if, as a lawyer, I'd be a more useful citizen, the way things are now in the country."
Lydia shook her head. "We've got too many lawyers in America. What I think America needs is real love of America. And it seems to me the best way to get it is to identify oneself with the actual soil of the community. What I want is this. That you and I, upon the ground where poor John Levine did such wrongs, build us a home. I don't mean a home as Americans usually mean the word. I mean we'll try to found a family there. We'll send the roots of our roof tree so deep into the ground that for generations to come our children's children will be found there and our family name will stand for old American ideals in the community. I don't see how else we Americans can make up to the world for the way we've exploited America."
Billy stood with his arm about the slender "scholar." Suddenly there flooded in upon him the old, old call, the call that had brought his Pilgrim forefathers across the Atlantic, the call that was as old as the yearning for freedom of the soil.
"Lord!" he cried, "how glad I'll be to go up there! Think of beginning our life together with such a dream!"
"I believe John Levine would be glad, if he knew," said Lydia, wistfully.
"I know he'd be glad.... Lydia, do you love me, dear?"
"Love you! Oh, more than all the world! You know it, don't you?"
"I know it, but I can't believe it." His arm tightened around Lydia and as on just such an evening, four years before, he said,
"What a wonderful night!"
A wonderful night, indeed! Sound and scent of bursting summer. Syringas coming as lilacs went. The lake, lap-lapping on the shore. The lazy croak of frogs and the moon sinking low over the cottage. Above them the pine, murmuring as of old. Life and the year at the full. A wonderful night, indeed!
THE END