Lydia of the Pines Part 54

"I suggest that we adjourn for lunch," said Smith. "Miss Dudley, you need not return."

While her father paused to speak to Kent and Levine, Lydia made her escape. She wanted more than anything in the world to be alone, but when she reached home, Ma Norton and Lizzie were waiting at the cottage, both of them half sick with anxiety. They were not rea.s.sured by Lydia's story of the morning session, although Ma said,

"Of course, it's the disgrace of the thing that worries us. Pa and Billy say all this commission can do is to present their evidence to Congress. I'm not saying, of course, that you weren't right plucky to take the stand you did, Lydia. And I'm proud of Billy though he is bringing trouble on his poor father!"

Lydia spent the afternoon with Adam in the woods. She expected John Levine to come home with her father to supper, and for the first time in her life, she did not want to meet her best loved friend. But she might have spared herself this anxiety, for Amos came home alone.

Levine was busy, he said.

Amos was in a curiously subdued mood. Whatever Lydia had expected of him, she had not expected the almost conciliatory att.i.tude he took toward her. It embarra.s.sed her far more than recriminations would have.

"I do think, Lydia," he said mildly, after they had discussed the morning session, "you should have told me what was going on. But there, I suppose, I'd have raised Cain, if you had."

"Is Mr. Levine very angry with me?" asked Lydia.

"He didn't say. I don't see how he can be. After all, the stuff was bound to come out, sooner or later. He's got something up his sleeve.

This experience's done one thing. It's brought all the different factions together. Disgrace loves company as well as misery."

"I'm so worried about it all!" sighed Lydia.

"Kind of late in the day for you to worry," sniffed Amos. "I suppose Billy's worrying too! But there, I guess you two have put some saving grace into Lake City, in the commission's eyes. Of course, I'm going to give up any claim on those lands."

Amos pulled at his pipe thoughtfully and looked at Lydia's tired, wistful face complacently. He did not tell her that the three commissioners had individually and collectively congratulated him on Lydia and their praise had been such that he felt that any disgrace he had suffered in connection with the Indian lands had been more than counteracted by Lydia's performance.

To Lydia's pain and disappointment, Levine did not come to the cottage before he returned to Washington, which he did the week following the hearing. And then, all thought of her status with him was swallowed up in astonishment over the revelations that came out early in September when Dave Marshall and the Indian Agent were called before the commission.

Dave Marshall was the owner of the Last Chance! The Last Chance where "hussies" lay in wait like vultures for the Indian youths, took their government allowances, took their ancient Indian decency, and cast them forth to pollute their tribe with drink and disease. The Last Chance!

The headquarters for the illegal selling of whisky to Indians. Where Indians were taught to evade the law, to carry whisky into the reservation and where in turn the bounty for their arrest was pledged to Marshall. The Last Chance, the main source of Dave Marshall's wealth!

Even Lake City was horrified by these revelations. People began to remove their money from his bank and for a time a run was threatened, then Dave resigned as president and the run was stayed. The drugstore owned by Dave was boycotted. The women of the town began to cut Margery and Elviry. The minister of the Methodist Church asked Dave for his resignation as Trustee.

To say that old Lizzie was pleased by the revelations would be perhaps to do the old lady an injustice. Yet the fact remains that she did go about with a knowing, "I told you so" air, that smacked of complacency.

"He always was just _skulch_," she insisted to Lydia. "When he was a child, he was the kind of a brat mothers didn't want their children to play with. I always prayed he'd get his come-uppers, and Elviry too.

But I am sorry for Margery. Poor young one! Her future's ruined."

Lydia, sitting on the front steps in the lovely September afternoons, rubbed Adam's ears, watched the pine and the Norton herds and thought some long, long thoughts. Finally, one hazy Sat.u.r.day afternoon, she gathered a great bunch of many colored asters and started off, without telling Lizzie of her destination.

It was nearly five o'clock when she stopped at the Marshalls' gate.

The front of the house was closed, but nothing daunted, she made her way round to the kitchen door, which was open. Elviry answered her rap.

"Oh, it's Lydia," she said, brusquely. "What do you want?"

"I brought Marg some flowers," answered Lydia, awkwardly.

Elviry hesitated. "Margery's been having a headache and I don't know as she'd want to see you."

Lydia was not entirely daunted. "Well, if you're getting supper you might let me come and sit in the kitchen a few minutes. It's quite a walk in from the cottage."

Elviry opened the screen door and Lydia marched in and paused. Dave Marshall was sitting by the kitchen table, his hat on the back of his head, a pile of newspapers on the floor beside him. He did not speak to Lydia when she came in, but Lydia nodded brightly at him and said, "You like to sit in the kitchen, the way Dad does, don't you?"

She sat down in the rocker by the dining-room door and Elviry began to stir a kettle of catsup that was simmering on the back of the stove.

This was worse than Lydia had thought it would be. She had not calculated on Dave's being at home. However, her fighting blood was up.

"You haven't asked me about my clothes, Mrs. Marshall," she said.

"Don't you think I did pretty well with this skirt?"

Elviry glanced at the blue serge skirt. "It'll do," she answered listlessly.

Lydia looked at Dave desperately. At that moment there was a light step in the dining-room, and Margery came into the kitchen. When she saw Lydia she gasped.

"Hadn't you heard? Oh, Lydia! You came anyhow!" and suddenly Margery threw herself down and sobbed with her face in Lydia's lap.

Elviry threw her ap.r.o.n over her head and Dave, with a groan, dropped his head on his chest. For a moment, there was only the crackling of the fire in the stove and Margery's sobs to be heard.

Then Dave said, "What did you come for, Lydia? You only hurt yourself and you can't help us. I don't know what to do! G.o.d! I don't know what to do!"

"I don't see why everybody acts so," cried Elviry, "as if what you'd done was any worse than every one else's doings."

Margery raised her head. "Of course it's worse! A thousand times worse! I could have stood Dad's even having an Indian wife, better than this."

Dave looked at Margery helplessly and his chin quivered. Lydia noticed then how old he was looking.

"I want Margery and her mother to pack up and go away--for good," said Dave to Lydia. "I'll close up here and follow when I can. None of these cases will ever come to anything in our state court. It's the disgrace--and the way the women folks take it."

"I--I've been thinking," said Lydia, timidly, "that what you ought to do--"

Margery was sitting back on the floor now and she interrupted bitterly.

"I don't see why you should try to help us, Lyd. Mother's always treated you dirt mean."

"It's not because of your mother," said Lydia, honestly. "I couldn't even try to forgive her--but--your father did a great favor to me and once I promised him then to be his friend. And you, Margery, you were fond of--of little Patience, and she did love you so! If she'd lived, I know she'd have wanted me to stand by you."

"She was a dear little kiddie," said Margery. "I always meant to tell you how I cried when she died, and then somehow, you were so silent, I couldn't."

The old lines round Lydia's mouth deepened for a minute, then she swallowed and said,

"I don't think it would do a bit of good for you all to go away. The story would follow you. Mr. Marshall ought to sell out everything and buy a farm. Let Mrs. Marshall go off for a visit, if she wants to, and let Margery come and stay with me a while and go to college."

Dave raised his head. "That's what I'd rather do, Lydia, for myself.

Just stay here and try to live it down. I'd like to farm it. Always intended to."

Margery wrung her hands. "Oh, I don't see how I can! If it had been anything, anything but the Last Chance. Everybody will cut me and talk about me."

"Oh, well, Margery," said Lydia, a little impatiently, "it's the first trouble you've had in all your life and it won't kill you. Anybody that's as pretty as you are can live down anything. I know our house is awful scrimpy, but we'd have some good times, anyhow. Kent and Billy will stand by us and we'll pull through. See if we don't."

"I don't see why she needs to go to your house," said Elviry. "Let her stay right here, and go up to college with you if she will. And I don't want to go live on a farm, either."

"Mother, you don't understand, yet!" exclaimed Margery.