It was noticeable--though no one noticed it--that a month after Lydia
went to work in Mrs. Galton's organization everyone in her immediate
circle was doing something for released convicts. Bobby, Miss Bennett,
Eleanor, Wiley, all suddenly began to think that the problem of the
criminal was the most important, the most vital, the most interesting
problem in the world. The explanation was simple: A will like Lydia's,
harnessed to a constructive purpose, was far more irresistible than in
the old days when it had been selfish, spasmodic and undisciplined.
She was given a little office, like Miss Galton's, and she was in it
every morning at nine o'clock. Miss Bennett, who had worried all her
life because Lydia led an irregular, aimless, idle existence, now
worried even more because her working hours were long.
"Surely," she protested almost every morning, "Mrs. Galton will not care
if you don't get there until half past nine or even ten. These cold days
it isn't good for you----"
Lydia explained that she was not going to the office early in order to
please Mrs. Galton, who, as a matter of fact, did not arrive there
until late in the morning. The organization needed money desperately,
there was much to be done. But the truth was she loved the routine--the
hard impersonal work. It saved her from herself. She was almost happy.
Eleanor had evidently done what she had been asked to do, for O'Bannon
seemed to have dropped out of the world. His name was never mentioned,
and as week after week went by it seemed to Lydia that she herself was
forgetting him. Perhaps a time would come when she could even see him
without wrecking her peace of soul. Her only sorrow was the delay in
Evans' pardon. It didn't come. Lydia could not enjoy her liberty with
Evans in prison. The forms had all been complied with, but the governor
did not act. At last Mrs. Galton suggested her going to Albany; or
perhaps she knew someone who would have influence with the governor.
Yes, Lydia knew someone--Albee.
Albee was now senator from his own state, and a busy session in
Washington had kept him there. He had been among the first to telegraph
Lydia. She found his message and his flowers in the house when she first
came home. The message sounded as if it had come from a friend; but
Lydia knew that it had not; that Albee had escaped from her and her
influence, or thought he had. She had known it even in the days of her
trial, and looking back on the facts and on herself she wondered that
she had not resented it. Those were days in which she had awarded
punishments readily, and Albee had really behaved badly to her. They had
been very nearly engaged and yet the instant she was in trouble he had
deserted her. He had gone through all the motions of helping her, but in
spirit she knew that Albee the day she killed Drummond had begun to
disentangle himself. She felt not the least resentment against him; only
she recognized the fact that his remoteness from her made it more
difficult to make use of him for Evans, unless--the idea suddenly came
to her--it might make it easier. He would avoid seeing her if he could;
but if she found her way to him he might be eager to atone, to set
himself right by doing her a definite favor.
The evening of the day that she saw this clearly she took a train to
Washington. The next morning she was waiting in his outer office before
he reached it himself. A new secretary--the old one had been promoted to
some position of political prominence at home--did not know her and had
not been warned against her by name. So she was sitting there when Albee
came in with his old cheerful, dominating, leonine look. Just for the
fraction of a second his face fell at seeing her, and then he hurried to
her side, as if out of all the world she was the person he most wanted
to see.
It must not be supposed that Lydia had become so saintly that she had
forgotten her knowledge of men. She knew now that if she were cordial
to Albee she could not depend on his doing what she wanted. If on the
other hand she withheld her friendship she was sure he would bid high
for it. She ignored all his flustered protestations. She smiled at him,
a smile a little sad, a little chilly and infinitely remote.
"I want very much to speak to you, Stephen," she said, and her tone told
him that whatever she wanted to talk about had nothing whatsoever to do
with themselves.
He led her into the inner office. A curious thing was happening to him.
He had never been in love with Lydia. He had deliberately allowed her
beauty and wealth to dazzle him; he had admired her courage, her
sureness of herself, contrasting it with his own terror of giving
offense to anyone; but at times he had almost hated her. If she had
inspired him with one atom of tenderness he would not have deserted her.
She never had. He had cut himself off from her without regret. But now
as she sat there, finer and paler and more--much more--than two years
older, she did inspire tenderness, tenderness of a most vivid and
disturbing sort. He could not take his eyes from her face. He suddenly
cut into what she was saying about Evans.
"Lydia, my dear, are you happy? Yes, yes, of course I can get from the
governor anything you ask me, but tell me about yourself."
He leaned over, taking her hands in his. She rose, withdrawing them
slowly as she did so.
"Not now," she answered, and moved toward the door.
"You mustn't go like that," he protested. "Just think, my dear, I have
not seen you for two years--the toughest two years I ever spent! You
can't just come and go like this. I must see you, talk to you."
"When you have got me Evans' pardon, Stephen--if you get it." She still
spoke gently, but there was a good deal of intention behind Lydia at her
gentlest.
He caught the "if"--almost an insult after his confident assertion, but
he did not think of the insult. He was aware of nothing but the desire
that she should smile gayly and admiringly at him again as she used to,
making him feel Jovian.
"I'm going to New York on Thursday," he said. "On Friday evening you
shall have the pardon. Will you be at the opera Friday evening?"
She hesitated. She had not been to the opera yet. She could not bear the
publicity of that blazing circle, but she had kept her box. After all,
she thought, she could sit in the back of it, and music was one of the
greatest of her pleasures.
"Will you join me there?" she said.
"It will be like old times."
"Not quite," she answered.
Still with his hand on the knob of the door, as if he were just going
to open it for her, he detained her, trying to make her talk, asking her
about her friends, her work, her health; trying to hit upon the master
key to her mind, and at last, for he was a man of long experience, he
found it.
"And that damned crook who prosecuted your case," he said. "Do you ever
see him?"
She shook her head.
"I prefer not even to think of him," she replied, and this time she made
a gesture that he should open the door. Instead he stepped in front of
it. He had waked her; he had her attention at last.
"Naturally, naturally," he said, "but I wish you would think of him for
a minute. I'm in rather a fix about that fellow."
She longed to know what the fix was, but she did not dare hear. She said
softly, "Please don't make me think of him, Stephen. I'd really rather
not."
"But you must listen, Lydia. Help me. I don't know what I ought to do. I
have it in my power to ruin that man. Shall I?"
There was a pause. Albee heard her long breaths trembling as she drew
them. He thought to himself that his knowledge of her had not gone
astray. She had hated that man, and whatever else had changed in her,
that hadn't. She suddenly came to life and tried to open the door for
herself.
"I must go," she said. He did not move.
"You know," he said, speaking quickly, "that after your trial he went
to pieces, resigned his position, took to drinking again, tried to make
his way in New York. He was nearly down and out for a time there."
He watched her. A smile, a terrible smile, began to curve the corners of
her mouth. He went on:
"I couldn't be exactly sorry for his bad luck. In fact, to be candid, I
gave him a kick or two when I had the chance. But now he's pulled
himself out. He's worked like a dog, and I hear that a couple of friends
of mine, of the firm of Simpson, Aspinwall & McCarter, are going to
offer him a partnership. It's a big firm, particularly in the political
world." There was a short silence. "Shall I let him have it, Lydia?"
She raised her shoulders scornfully.
"Could you stop his getting it, Stephen?"
"Do you doubt it?"
She turned on him. Her jaw was set and lifted as in the old days.
"Of course I do! If you could have you certainly would have without
consulting me. There is a man who you know lacks all integrity and
honor, and who, moreover, goes about saying that you tried to bribe
him--and failed. Oh, he makes a great point of that--you failed! Would
you let a man like that go into a firm of your friends if you could stop
it? No, no! Not unless you have grown a good deal meeker than I remember
you, Stephen."
Albee made a sweeping gesture, as expressive as a Roman emperor's thumbs
down.
"He shall not have it," and he added with a smile as cruel as Lydia's
own: "He believes himself absolutely sure of it."
She smiled straight into his eyes.
"Bring me that Friday night," she said. "It's more important than the
pardon."
He opened the door for her and she went out.
This was Wednesday. She could hardly wait for Friday to come. This was
the right way--to destroy the man first and then to forget him. She had
been silly and sentimental and weak to fancy that she could have real
peace in any other way, to imagine that she could go through life
skulking, fearing. She was furious at herself when she remembered that
she had asked Eleanor to avoid mentioning his name. She could mention
his name now herself, and see him too. She would enjoy seeing him. She
was hardly aware of the passage of time on her journey back to New York.
She was living over a meeting between O'Bannon and herself after the
partnership had been withdrawn. He must be made aware that it was her
doing.
She reached home just before dinner, and found that Miss Bennett was
dining out. Good! Lydia had no objection to being alone. But Benny had
arranged otherwise. She had telephoned to Eleanor, and she was coming to
dine. Lydia smiled. That was pleasant too.
Eleanor was an intelligent woman but not a mind reader. She saw some
change had taken place in Lydia, noticed that she ate no dinner, and
came to the conclusion that something had gone wrong about Evans'
pardon; that Albee had been, as usual, a weak friend. When they were
alone after dinner was over she prepared herself to hear the story.
Instead, Lydia said, "I'm going to the opera on Friday, Nell--Samson and
Delilah. Will you come with me?"
There was a little pause, a slight constraint. Then Eleanor answered
that she couldn't; that she had a box of her own that someone had sent
her. Lydia sprang up with a sudden, short, wild laugh.
"That man's going with you!" she said.
"Mr. O'Bannon? Yes, he is." Eleanor thought a second. "I'll put him off,
Lydia. I'll tell him not to come."
"You'll do nothing of the kind. It's perfect. I don't know what got into
me the other day, Eleanor. You must have despised me for such pitiful
cowardice."
"No, my dear," said Eleanor slowly, but obviously relieved that the
question had come up again. "But I did feel that you weren't going to
work the best way to get the poison of the whole thing out of your
soul."
Lydia laughed the same way again.
"Oh, don't worry about that! I shall get rid of the poison."
"How?"
"I shall make him suffer. I shall revenge myself, and then forget he
exists. You can tell him so if you want."
Eleanor stared in front of her, blank and serious. Then she said, "I
don't have many opportunities any more. I seldom see him."
Lydia's eyes brightened.
"Ah, you've found him out!"
"On the contrary, the longer I know him the more highly I think of him.
I don't see him because he's busy. He has been having a difficult
time--in business. He decided to get out of politics and go into
straight law. New York is like a ferocious monster to a man beginning
any profession. Dan--but it doesn't matter. His troubles are over now."
"Are they indeed?" said Lydia.
"Yes, he's had a wonderful offer of a partnership from an older man
who----Oh, Lydia, you ought to try to see that your point of view about
him is a prejudiced--a natural one, but still----"
"Is it a definite offer, Eleanor?"
"Yes, absolutely, though the papers are not to be signed for a day or
so."
Lydia breathed in thoughtfully "A day or so," and Eleanor pressed on.
"It isn't that I care what you think of him or he of you. I'm past that
with my friends, and, as I say, I don't see nearly as much of him as I
used to; but----"
"Of course you don't," answered Lydia. "He's ashamed--or, no, it's more
that he can't bear to see himself in contrast with your perfect
integrity, Eleanor. Did you know that he came to prison to see me, to
gloat over me? Sent in for me to come to him in my prison clothes----"
Lydia's breath quickened as she spoke of the outrage.
"He didn't come to gloat over you."
"What did he come for then?"
To her own surprise Eleanor heard her own voice saying, as if unaided it
tapped some source of knowledge never before open to her, "Because you
know very well, Lydia, the man's in love with you."
Lydia sprang forward like a cat.
"Never say such a thing as that again!" she said. "You don't understand,
but it degrades me, it pollutes me! Love me! That man! I'd kill him if I
thought he dared!"
Nothing rendered Eleanor so calm as excitement in others.
"Well," she said, "perhaps I'm mistaken," and appeared to let the matter
drop; but the other would not have it.
"Of course you're mistaken! But you must have had some reason for saying
such a thing. You're not the kind of person, Eleanor, who goes about
having disgusting suspicions like that without a reason."
"Do you really want me to give you a reason or are you only waiting to
tear me to pieces, whatever I say?"
Lydia sat down and caught her hands between her knees, determined to be
good.
"I want your reason," she said.
Reasons were not so easy, Eleanor found. She spoke slowly.
"I saw all through your trial that Dan was not like himself, that he was
struggling with something stronger than he. He is a man who has always
had terrible weaknesses, temptations----"
"He drinks," said Lydia, and there was a note of almost boastful triumph
in her tone.
"No"--Eleanor was very firm about it--"in recent years only once."
"More than once, Eleanor."
"Only once, in a time of emotional strain. What was the emotion? You had
just been sentenced. It came to me suddenly that if he were in love with
you--it would explain everything."
"If he hated me--that would explain it too."
"The two emotions are pretty close, Lydia."
"Close?" Lydia exclaimed violently. "It shows that you have never felt
either."
"Have you?"
"Yes, I've felt hate. It's poisoned and withered me for over two years
now, and I don't mean to bear it any more. I mean to get rid of it this
way--to hurt that man enough to satisfy myself."
Eleanor rose slowly, and the two women stood a little apart, looking at
each other. Then Eleanor said, "You'll never get rid of it that way.
Don't do it, Lydia, whatever you mean to do."
"You're pleading for that man, Nell. Don't! It's ignominious."
"I'm pleading for you, my dear."
"Don't! It's impertinent."
Worse than either, Eleanor knew it was useless. Her motor was waiting
for her and she went away. For the first time she understood something
that Dorset had once said to her--that Lydia in her evil moods was the
most pathetic figure in the world.