The Steadfast Heart/Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In Rainbow where even “hired girls” stay in the same family for twenty years, a year of service is lightly regarded. If a young man began as a grocery clerk at eighteen he was usually found in the same store, engaged in slicing cheese and weighing out sugar at forty. Jobs were permanent. So, at the end of Angus Burke’s first twelve months in the bank, he was still looked upon by the citizenry as having “started to work for Mr. Woodhouse.” They were commencing to be accustomed to seeing him in the bank, but had not begun to forgive him for being there…. The year had made no impression upon Rainbow; upon Angus its effect had been impressive.
He was now drawing toward his majority—older than his years, still of the class of silent men, never volunteering conversation, smiling seldom, laughing never—in public. The world offered him little to laugh at. It was only latterly that he laughed at all; such as it was it was intimate, secluded laughter, never to be paraded, and kept for his intimate friends.
Social Rainbow was not aware of his existence. It was a jolly town which, compelled to manufacture its own pleasures, was rich in picnics, sleigh-rides, dances, “home-talent” plays and parties. These, however, were for those who possessed caste, and almost everybody in town except Angus was enough of a Brahmin for these. He knew men during their business hours, men who tolerated him because they were compelled to tolerate, but whose attitude was not friendly; their homes he saw only from without. The younger folks he knew not at all, because their orbits did not touch his. Only two women did Angus meet in a social way—Lydia Canfield and Mary Browning, and to leave him alone with either of them was to strike him with silence and with discomfort. Mary was always gentle, solicitous, motherly, and Angus repaid her with a warm, unexpressed affection; to Lydia he was not quite a human being to be dealt with as a human being. He was different, set apart, something which had not been born, but manufacured. Somehow she felt she had had a part in his manufacturing and therefore was highly interested…. Angus admired her as one might admire a distant star. The thought of friendship with her never occurred to him. She was Lydia Canfield! And Lydia Canfield was an uncertain, tempestuous, incomprehensible creature…. He sought to accustom himself to her moods and humors and sudden changes, but never could he grow accustomed…. Theirs was a queer relationship….
It was about this time that Lydia made a queer, rather startling, and altogether momentous discovery. Silently she had been regarding Angus during dinner, studying him abstractedly, with a puzzled look. When he was gone she said to Mary Browning, “Why, Mary, Angus Burke is actually good-looking.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “he’s a wholesome-looking boy. Too grave for his years.”
“I don’t mean that,” Lydia objected quickly, “he looks—oh, as if he’d had a grandfather.”
Mary smiled. “You’ll be trying to furnish him with ancestors next…. I do wish you thought less about family, Lydia.”
“What better could I think about?… But, just the same, he looks like a gentleman.” There was a touch of stubbornness in her tone. “And it doesn’t seem possible. It isn’t possible…. I saw his father once.”
“Nonsense. When could you have seen his father?”
Lydia’s eyes filled with the remembered horror of that meeting, with the dreadfulness of the event, and with the loathsomeness of Titus Burke. “It was a long time ago,” she said evasively…. That was all. But the discovery of Angus’s personableness and the remembrance of Angus’s father offset each other. The recollection was unfortunate for Angus.
Lydia’s attitude toward Angus was peculiar, and now became more so. It is doubtful if she had any clear definition in her mind of her feelings toward the young man. Undoubtedly there was friendship of a sort, tinged with condescension and with tolerance—the toleration of your aristocrat for one too lowly to be considered as impinging upon her life at all. She pitied him for his extraction, and was contemptuous of him for the same reason. On the whole she regarded him rather as a protégé than as an acquaintance or a friend.
It would be more difficult, indeed impossible, to describe Angus Burke’s sentiments toward the girl. He did not feel for her such affection as a brother would manifest toward a sister. They were too far apart for that. Friendship is a placid, smoothly flowing sentiment, very sweet, but very human and finite. There is nothing mystic, nothing occult about friendship…. In Angus Burke’s regard for Lydia was mysticism. Doubtless Angus was incapable of understanding what a queen of the fairies meant to the normal child, but, as was the fairy to the child, so, after a fashion, was Lydia to Angus; also there was something of the reverence of the serf for the princess… something of the fear of that serf.
The lives of Angus and Lydia, converging from extremes, had touched, and touching, left their impress. Each, after his way, was occupied with the other far more than either imagined. The boy had his strength, the girl her power. Both were distinct, individual, personalities to be reckoned with. Such people cannot meet on a negative plane. But, let it be understood, love or thoughts of love had no residence in either. Their relationship was unique….
On the tenth of September Lydia Canfield would be eighteen years of age. In Rainbow there is one manner, and one only, of celebrating the birthday—the good, wholesome gathering of friends in the home—friends bearing gifts; in short, an old-fashioned party. Lydia invited young Rainbow to her party, and the town buzzed with anticipation…. Impelled by one of her sudden impulses Lydia invited Angus Burke.
“Are you coming to my party, Angus?” she asked unexpectedly.
After a slight hesitation he replied with admirable directness, “No.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never been to a party.”
“That’s no reason why you shouldn’t come to one now.”
He did not answer this, though she waited for a reply.
“I want you to come,” she said presently.
“No,” said Angus.
Lydia’s face flushed dangerously. “Don’t you want to come?”
“I don’t think I ought to come.”
“Why?”
“The—the others might not like to have me there.”
Lydia flared instantly. “It’s my party and I’ll have whoever I want…. I never asked you to do anything before, Angus Burke. And I’m entitled to ask you something. I want you to come. Won'’t you? As a favor?”
Angus hesitated again. “I’m afraid—” he began.
“That’s it,” she said scornfully. “You’re afraid. You’re a coward…. You’re afraid of people. I—I hate people who are afraid.”
“Perhaps,” said Craig Browning from the doorway, “Angus has some small cause.”
Lydia disregarded him, as was to be expected. “Won’t you come? Please?” It was not often Lydia pleaded.
Angus, wearing his old look of dumb perplexity, peered down at the ground, moving his feet uneasily. He feared to risk affront and indignity, feared Rainbow would show openly, as it always had done, its contempt for him. But, after a while, he lifted his eyes and said slowly, “I’ll come — for you.”
“I knew you would,” said Lydia, delighted in her victory. “You’ll like it, too, see if you don’t.”
“You don’t know…. You don’t understand. People always remember….” He had forgotten the party now, forgotten everything save recollections of his boyhood, terrible recollections. “I’m the same boy. They don’t call murderer after me, but they think it. It’s as bad. I can see them thinking it…. Ten years ago they wouldn’t let me go to the same school with their children. They won’t want me at parties with their children to-day.”
“Don’t you want any friends?” she demanded.
“I would like more friends. But I have Uncle Dave and Mr. Browning and Jake Schwartz and Bishwhang—but I—would like more.” His voice was wistful.
“Jake Schwartz and Bishwhang!” Lydia said with an air of supercilious contempt.
Angus frowned. “They’re my friends,” he said simply. “I wouldn’t trade them for any others in the world.”
“But aren’t you dreadfully dull? You have no fun at all. What do you do?”
“Sometimes I work—evenings. Then Uncle Dave and I read together. Sometimes I walk in the country with Bishwhang…. I read a good deal. I like to read.”
“What do you read?” Lydia asked, with curiosity aroused.
“Uncle Dave’s books. Stories like Ivanhoe and the ones by Dickens…. I like them. Uncle Dave and I just finished The Wealth of Nations. Now we’re reading a book by a man named Lecky—about Morals….”
“Do you like such books?”
“They’re interesting. They tell you things that come handy every day—especially men like John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. They’ve thought out things; all you have to do is think the thoughts they’ve gotten ready for you.”
“Why,” said Lydia almost childishly, “you know more than I do. I couldn’t read such things.” She was impressed, overshadowed. This recital of Angus’s literary adventures magnified him in her eyes, for her grandfather had set culture as the thing in the world of next importance to family.
Presently Dave Wilkins called in from the porch that he was ready to go, and Angus arose.
“Remember,” said Lydia, “you promised to come to my party.”
“Yes,” said Angus. “…I’ll come.”