Lydia of the Pines Part 47

The next day was Sat.u.r.day, and Lydia started an attack on the living-room immediately after breakfast. She re-oiled the floors. She took down the curtains, washed and ironed them and put them up again.

She blacked the base burner and gave the howling Adam a bath. The old mahogany worried her, even after she had polished it and re-arranged it until the worst of the scratches were obscured.

Her father's old wooden armchair, a solid mahogany that had belonged to his great-grandfather, she decided to varnish. She gave it two heavy coats and set it close to the kitchen stove to dry. By this time she was tired out. She lay in the dusk on the old couch watching the red eyes of the base burner, when Billy came in.

"Just stopped on my way home to see if you'd go skating to-night," he said. "Tired out? What've you been doing?"

Lydia enumerated the day's activities ending with, "Professor Willis is coming to call this evening."

Billy gave a low whistle. "Of course, I knew they'd begin to take notice sooner or later. But I don't see why you wanted to wear yourself out for a sissy like him."

"He's not a sissy. He's a gentleman," said Lydia, calmly. She was still curled up on the couch and Billy could just distinguish her bright hair in the red glow from the stove.

Billy was silent for a moment, then he said, "It's a shame you have to work so hard. I think of you so often when I see other girls in their pretty clothes, gadding about! Doggone it! and you're worth any ten of them. If I had my way--"

He paused and for a moment only the familiar booming of the ice disturbed the silence.

"I don't mind the work so much as I do going without the pretty clothes," said Lydia. "I suppose you'll think I'm awful silly," she suddenly sat up in her earnestness, "but when I get to thinking about how I'm growing up and that dresses never can mean to me when I'm old what they do now--oh, I can't explain to a man! It's like Omar Khayyam--

"'Yet ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose That youth's sweet scented ma.n.u.script should close--'

and my youth's going to close without the sweet scent of the rose."

Billy made one great stride over to the couch and sitting down beside Lydia he took her thin, work hardened little hands in his. "Lydia, no!

You don't see yourself right! All the dresses in the world couldn't make you sweeter or more fragrant to a fellow's heart than you are now.

The only importance to the clothes is that you love them so. Don't you see?"

Lydia laughed uncertainly. "I see that you're a dear old blarney, Billy. And I know one thing I have got that not one girl in a thousand has and that is the friendship of some of the best men in the world.

In lots of ways, I'm very lucky. Honestly, I am! Trot on home, Billy.

I've got to get supper. And I don't have to work so hard, remember that. Half my work is in trying to fix up the house."

Billy rose reluctantly. "I'm leaving you some marshmallows," he said.

"I hope if you offer Willis one, it'll choke him, or," as he opened the door, "maybe he'll break his leg or his neck on the way out," and he shut the door firmly behind him.

Amos submitted with some grumbling to being relegated to the dining-room with Lizzie for the evening. He complained somewhat bitterly, however, over the condition of his armchair which had refused to dry and was in a state of stickiness that defied description.

Old Lizzie, who was almost as flushed and bright-eyed over the expected caller as Lydia, finally squelched Amos with the remark, "For the land's sake, Amos, you talk like an old man instead of a man still forty who ought to remember his own courting days!"

Willis arrived, shortly after eight. If the trip had been somewhat strenuous, he did not mention the fact. He shook hands with Amos, who, always eager to meet new people, would have lingered. But Lizzie called to him and he reluctantly withdrew. Lydia established her guest with his back to the dining-room door and the evening began.

The Harvard man was frankly curious. This was his first experience west of New York and he was trying to cla.s.sify his impressions. The beauty of Lake City had intrigued him at first, he told Lydia, into believing that he was merely in a transplanted New England town. "And you know there are plenty of New Englanders on the faculty and many of the people of Lake Sh.o.r.e Avenue are second and third generation New Englanders. But the townspeople as a whole!" He stopped with a groan.

"What's the matter with them?" Lydia asked, a trifle belligerently.

She was sitting on the couch, chin cupped in her hand, watching her caller so intently that she was forgetting to be bashful.

"Oh, you know they're so exactly like my cla.s.ses in Shakespeare--raw-minded, no background, and plenty of them are of New England descent! I don't understand it. It's New England without its ancient soul, your Middle West."

"I don't know what you mean by background," said Lydia.

"But, Miss Dudley, you have it! Something, your reading or your environment has given you a mental referendum, as it were. You get more out of your Shakespeare than most of your mates because you understand so many of his references. You must have been a wide reader or your father and mother taught you well."

"I--you've got the wrong impression about me," Lydia protested. "I've read always and mostly good things, thanks to Mr. Levine, but so have many other people in Lake City."

Professor Willis looked at Lydia thoughtfully. "Levine? I thought he was a cheap scamp."

Lydia flushed. "He's my best friend and a finely read man. He's kept me supplied with books."

"Finely read, on the one hand," exclaimed Willis, "and on the other robbing Indians. How do you account for it?"

Lydia did not stir. She continued with her crystal gaze on this wise man from the East, struggling to get his viewpoint. There flashed into her mind the thought that perhaps, when she knew him better, he could help her on the Indian question.

"I can't account for it," she said. "I wish I could. Except for a French Canadian great-grandfather, Mr. Levine's a New Englander too."

"New Englander! Pshaw! Outside of Lake Sh.o.r.e Avenue and the college there are no New Englanders here. They are hollow mockeries, unless,"

he stared at Lydia through his gold-rimmed gla.s.s, "unless you are a reversion to type, yourself."

Lizzie spoke from the dining-room. "The chocolate's all ready, Lydia."

"Oh, I forgot," exclaimed Lydia, flying out of the room and returning with a tray of chocolate and cake. "The cold walk must have made you hungry."

Willis drew up to the table, and over his cup of chocolate remarked, "Ah--pardon me if I comment on the wonderful pieces of mahogany you have."

Lydia set down her cup. "Why, I hate it!" she cried.

"Hate it! It's priceless! Family pieces? I thought so! What delicious cake! How kind of your mother! I'd like to meet her, if I may."

"I made the cake, Professor Willis. My--my mother is not living."

The Harvard man's stilted manner left him. He set down his cup hastily. "Oh, my dear!" he exclaimed. "I was tactless! Forgive me!"

Again he looked about the room and back at Lydia's face above the meager dress fashioned the year before from a cheap remnant. Could a mother's death, he wondered, have put the look into her eyes and lips he had often surprised there. "I suppose," he said finally, "that one might explain you, eventually, if one had the privilege of knowing you long enough, I--"

Adam chose this moment to yelp at the dining-room door which was barely ajar.

"Adam, be quiet!" roared Amos. "Liz, did you see my carpet slippers anywhere?" he added in a lower voice.

"I brought you a book," said Willis. "Browning's Dramatic Lyrics."

"I'd like to read them," Lydia spoke eagerly, with one ear on the dining-room.

Amos yawned loudly. "Did you wind the clock, Lizzie? No? Well, I will!" Another loud yawn and Amos was heard to begin on the mechanism of the huge old wall clock which wound with a sound like an old-fashioned chain pump. Lydia set her teeth in misery.

"Yes, you must add Browning to your background," said the Harvard man, appearing undisturbed by the sounds in the next room. "Browning is difficult at times but--" He was interrupted by a great clattering in the dining-room.

"Lizzie!" roared Amos. "Come here and pull this chair off of me. The next time Lydia varnishes anything--"

There was the sound of Lizzie pounding across the floor. The dining-room door was banged and after that the murmur of Lizzie's voice and subdued roars from Amos. Lydia looked at Willis in an agony of embarra.s.sment.

"Well," he said, rising, "it's quite a walk back to the trolley.

Perhaps I'd better be going."