Lydia of the Pines Part 37

"I shouldn't say it was the best idea in the world for you to be wandering through the woods with that young Indian," was Levine's comment when Lydia had finished.

"I don't see how you can speak so," cried Lydia, pa.s.sionately, "when this minute you're taking his pine wood."

"Lydia!" said Amos, sharply.

"Let her alone, Amos," Levine spoke quietly. "What are you talking about, Lydia?"

For a moment, Lydia sat looking at her friend, uncertain how much or how little to say. She had idealized him so long, had clung so long to her faith in his perfection, that a deep feeling of indignation toward him for not living up to her belief in him drove her to saying what she never had dreamed she could have said to John Levine.

"The Indians are people, just like us," she cried, "and you're treating them as if they were beasts. You're robbing them and letting them starve! Oh, I saw them! Charlie showed the poor things to me--all sore eyes, and coughing and eating dirt. And you're making money out of them! Maybe the very money you paid our note with was made out of a starved squaw. Oh, I can't stand it to think it of you!"

Lydia paused with a half sob and for a moment only the gentle ripple of the waves on the sh.o.r.e and the crickets were to be heard Levine, elbow on knee, chin in hand, looked through the dusk at the shadowy sweetness of Lydia's face, his own face calm and thoughtful.

"You're so good and kind to me," Lydia began again, "how can you be so hard on the Indians? Are you stealing Charlie's logs? _Are_ you, Mr.

Levine?"

"I bought his pine," replied Levine, quietly.

"He doesn't believe it. He thinks you're stealing. And he's so afraid of you. He says if he makes a fuss, you'll shoot him. Why does he feel that way, Mr. Levine?"

Lydia's thin hands were shaking, but she stood before the Congressman like a small accusing conscience, unafraid, not easily to be stilled.

"Lydia! What're you saying!" exclaimed Amos.

"Keep out, Amos," said Levine. "We've got to clear this up. I've been expecting it, for some time. Lydia, years ago before the Government began to support the Indians, they were a fine, upstanding race. The whites could have learned a lot from them. They were brave, and honorable, and moral, and in a primitive way, thrifty. Well, then the sentimentalists among the whites devised the reservation system and the allowance system. And the Indians have gone to the devil, just as whites would under like circ.u.mstances. Any human being has to earn what he eats or he degenerates. You can put that down as generally true, can't you, Amos?"

"You certainly can," agreed Amos.

"Now, the only way to save those Indians up there is to kick them out.

The strong ones will live and be a.s.similated into our civilization.

The weak ones will die, just like weak whites do."

"But how about Charlie's pines?" insisted Lydia.

Something like a note of amus.e.m.e.nt at the young girl's persistence was in John's voice, but he answered gravely enough.

"Yes, I've bought his pines and I'll get them out, next winter.

There's no denying we want the Indians' land. But there's no denying that throwing the Indian off the reservation is the best thing for the Indian."

"But what makes Charlie think you're stealing them? And he says that when the pines go, the tribe will die."

"I paid for the pine," insisted Levine. "An Indian has no idea of buying and selling. It's a cruel incident, this breaking up of the reservation, but it's like cutting off a leg to save the patient's life. Sentiment is wasted."

"That's the great trouble with America, these days," said Amos, his pipe bowl glowing in the summer darkness. "All these foreigners coming in here filled the country with gush. What's become of the New Englanders in this town? Well, they founded the University, named the streets, planted the elms and built the Capitol. Since then they've been snowed under by the Germans and the Norwegians, a lot of beer drinkers and fish eaters. n.o.body calls a spade a spade, these days.

They rant and spout socialism. The old blood's gone. The old, stern, puritanical crowd can't be found in America to-day."

Lydia was giving little heed to her father. Amos was given to fireside oratory. She was turning over in her mind the scene in the woods between John and the half breeds. That then was a part of the process of removing the patient's leg! The end justified the means.

She heaved a great sigh of relief. "Well, then, I don't have to worry about that any more," she said. "Only, I don't dare to think about those starving old squaws, or the baby that froze to death."

"That's right," agreed Levine, comfortably. "Don't think about them."

Old Lizzie snored gently, gave a sudden sigh and a jerk. "Land! I must have dozed off for a minute."

Lydia laughed. "It was nip and tuck between you and Adam, Lizzie.

Let's get in away from the mosquitoes--I'm so glad I had this talk with you, Mr. Levine."

"Lydia should have been a boy," said Amos; "she likes politics."

"I'd rather be a girl than anything in the world," protested Lydia, and the two men laughed. If there was still a doubt in the back of Lydia's mind regarding the reservation, for a time, at least, she succeeded in quieting it. She dreaded meeting Charlie and was relieved to hear that Dr. Fulton had taken him East with him for a couple of weeks to attend a health convention.

One of the not unimportant results of the camping trip was that Lydia rediscovered the pine by the gate. It was the same pine against which she had beaten her little fists, the night of Patience's death. She had often climbed into its lower branches, getting well gummed with fragrant pitch in the process. But after her return from the reservation, the tall tree had a new significance to her.

She liked to sit on the steps and stare at it, dreaming and wondering.

Who had left it, when all the rest of the pines about it had been cleared off? How did it feel, left alone among the alien oaks and with white people living their curious lives about it? Did it mourn, in its endless murmuring, for the Indians--the Indians of other days and not the poor decadents who shambled up and down the road? For the Indians and the pines were now unalterably a.s.sociated in Lydia's mind. The life of one depended on that of the other. Strange thoughts and perhaps not altogether cheerful and wholesome thoughts for a girl of Lydia's age.

So it was probably well that Margery about this time began to show Lydia a certain Margery-esque type of attention. In her heart, in spite of her mother's teachings, Margery had always shared her father's admiration for Lydia. In her childhood it had been a grudging, jealous admiration that seemed like actual dislike. But as Margery developed as a social favorite and Lydia remained about the same quiet little dowd, the jealousy of the banker's daughter gave way to liking.

Therefore several times a week, Margery appeared on her bicycle, her embroidery bag dangling from the handle bars. The two girls would then establish themselves on cus.h.i.+ons by the water, and sew and chatter.

Lizzie, from the kitchen or from the bedroom where she was resting, could catch the unceasing sound of voices, broken at regular intervals by giggles.

"Lydia's reached the giggling age," she would say to herself. "Well, thank the Lord she's got some one to giggle with, even if Margery is a silly coot. There they go again! What are they laughing at?"

Hysterical shrieks from the lawn, with the two girls rolling helplessly about on the cus.h.i.+ons! Overhearing the conversation would not have enlightened old Lizzie, for the girls' talk was mostly reminiscent of the camp experiences or of their recollections of Kent's little boyhood, of Charlie's prowess at school, or of Gustus' "sportiness" and his fascinating deviltry. Lydia was enjoying the inalienable right of every girl of fifteen to giggle, and talk about the boys, the two seemingly having no causative relation, yet always existing together.

Lizzie had not realized how quiet and mature Lydia had been since little Patience's death until now. She would mix some lemonade and invite the girls into the house to drink it, just for the mere pleasure of joining in the laughter. She never got the remotest inkling of why the two would double up with joy when one or the other got the hiccoughs in the midst of a sentence. But she would lean against the sideboard and laugh with them, the tears running down her old cheeks.

It was no uncommon occurrence during this summer for Amos to come on the two, giggling helplessly on a log by the roadside. Lydia would have been walking a little way with Margery to come back with her father, when their mirth overcame them. Amos had no patience with this new phase of Lydia's development.

"For heaven's sake," he said to John Levine, one Sunday afternoon, when hysterical shrieks drifted up from the pier, "do you suppose I'd better speak to Doc Fulton or shut her up on bread and water?"

"Pshaw, let her alone. It's the giggles! She's just being normal,"

said John, laughing softly in sympathy as the shrieks grew weak and maudlin.

The two did have lucid intervals during the summer, however. During one of these, Lydia said, "I wish we had hard wood floors like yours."

"What kind are yours?" inquired Margery.

"Just pine, and kind of mean, splintery pine, too."

"Upstairs at Olga's all the floors were that way," said Margery, "and they had a man come and sandpaper 'em and put kind of putty stuff in the cracks and oil and wax 'em and they look fine."

"Gee!" said Lydia, thoughtfully. "That is, I don't mean 'Gee,' I mean whatever polite word Miss Towne would use for 'Gee.'"

The girls giggled, then Lydia said, "I'll do it! And I'll cut our old living-room carpet up into two or three rugs. Lizzie'll have to squeeze enough out of the grocery money for fringe. I'd rather have fringe than a fall coat."

Amos, coming home a night or so later found the living-room floor bare and Lydia hard at work with a bit of gla.s.s and sand paper, sc.r.a.ping at the slivers.

"Ain't it awful?" asked Lizzie from the dining-room. "She would do it."