The Squirrel-Cage Part 21

"I guess we're not Episcopalians enough to hurt," commented her father, who had never taken the conversion of his women-folks very seriously.

"And it's my pink crepe for dinner and tan-colored suit if they have afternoon tea. And Mrs. Mallory is to be asked to visit us, but not her daughter, because of her impossible husband, and I'm to play my prettiest to the Governor, because he's always needing dynamos and such in the works, and Paul--"

The big car came booming around the corner, and she stopped her category of recommendations. The doctor rushed in with a last one as they stepped hurriedly toward the rear platform: "And don't forget that your host is the most unmitigated old rascal that ever stood in with two political machines at once."

The Judge swung her up on the platform, the doctor gave her valise to the conductor, her mother waved her hand, and she was off.

The two men turned away. Not so Mrs. Emery. She was staring after the car in a fierce endeavor to focus her gaze on the interior. "Who was that man that jumped up so surprised to speak to Lydia?"

"I didn't notice anybody," said the Judge.

Dr. Melton spoke quickly. "Lydia's getting in a very nervous state, my friends; I want you to know that. This confounded life is too much for her."

"She doesn't kill herself getting up in the morning," complained her father. "It is a month now since I've seen her at breakfast."

"I don't _let_ her get up," said Mrs. Emery. "I guess if you'd been up till two every morning dancing split dances because you were _the_ belle of the season, you'd sleep late! Besides," she went on, "she'll be all right as soon as her engagement is announced. The excitement of that'll brace her up."

"Good Lord! It's not more excitement she needs," began Dr. Melton; but they had reached the house, and Mrs. Emery, obviously preoccupied, pulled her husband quickly in, dismissing the doctor with a nod.

She drew the Judge hurriedly into the hall, and, "It was that Rankin!"

she cried, the slam of the door underscoring her words, "and _I_ believe Marius Melton knew he was going on that car and made Lydia late on purpose."

Judge Emery was in the state in which of late the end of the day's work found him--overwhelmingly fatigued. He had not an ounce of superfluous energy to answer his wife's tocsin. "Well, what if it was?" he said.

"They'll be an hour and a half together--alone--more alone than anywhere except on a desert island. Alone--an hour and a half!"

"Oh, Susan! If Paul can't in three months make more headway than Rankin can tear down in an hour and a half--"

She raged at him, revolted at the calmness with which he was unb.u.t.toning his overcoat and unwinding his m.u.f.fler, "You don't understand--_anything_! I'm not afraid she'll elope with him--Paul's got her too solid for that--Rankin probably won't say anything of _that_ kind! But he'll put notions in her head again--she's so impressionable.

And she says queer things now, once in a while, if she's left alone a minute. She needs managing. She's not like that levelheaded, sensible Madeleine Hollister. Lydia has to be guided, and you don't see anything--you leave it all to me."

She was almost crying with nervous exhaustion. That Lydia's course ran smooth through a thousand complications was not accomplished without an incalculable expenditure of nervous force on her mother's part. Dr.

Melton had several times of late predicted that he would have his old patient back under his care again. Judge Emery, remembering this prophecy, was now moved by his wife's pale agitation to a heart-sickening mixture of apprehension for her and of recollection of his own extreme discomfort whenever she was sick. He tried to soothe her. "But, Susan, there's nothing we can do about it," he said reasoningly, hanging up his overcoat, blandly ignorant that her irritation came largely from his failure to fall in with her conception of the moment as a tragic one.

"You could _care_ something about it," she said bitterly, standing with all her wraps on. The telephone bell rang. She motioned him back. "No; I might as well go first as last. It'll be something I'd have to see about, anyway."

As he hesitated in the middle of the hall, longing to betake himself to a deep easy chair and a moment's relaxation, and not daring to do so, he was startled by an electric change in his wife's voice. "You're at Hardville, you say? Oh, Flora Burgess, I could go down on my knees in thanksgiving. I want you to run right out as fast as you can and get on the next Interurban car from Endbury. Lydia's on it--" she cast caution from her desperately--"and I've just heard that there's somebody I don't want her to talk to--you know--_carpenters_--run--fly--never mind what they say! Make them talk to you, too!"

She turned back to her husband, transfigured with triumph. "I guess that'll put a spoke in _his_ wheel!" she cried. "Flora Burgess's at Hardville, and that's only half an hour from here. I guess they can't get very far in half an hour."

The Judge considered the matter with pursed lips. "I wish it hadn't happened," he mused, as unresponsive to his wife's relief as he had been to her anxiety. "At first, I mean--last autumn--at all."

His wife caught him up with a good humor gay with relief. "Oh, give you time, Nat, and you come round to seeing what's under your nose. I was wis.h.i.+ng it hadn't happened long before I knew it had. I breathed it in the air before we ever knew she'd so much as seen him."

"Melton says he thinks the fellow has a future before him--"

"Oh, Marius Melton! How many of his swans have stuffed feather pillows!"

The Judge demurred. "I often wish I could think he _was_--but Melton's no fool." He added, uneasily, "He's been pestering me again about taking a long rest--says I'm really out of condition."

"Perhaps a change of work would do you good--to be in active practice again. You could be your own master more--take more vacations, maybe."

The Judge surveyed her with a whimsical smile. "I'd make a lot more money in practice," he admitted.

If she heard this comment she made no sign, but went on, "You do work too constantly, too. I've always said so! If you'd be willing to take a little more relaxation--go out more--"

Judge Emery shuddered. "Endbury tea-parties--!"

His wife, half-way up the stairs, laughed down at him. "Tea-parties!

There hasn't been a tea-party given in Endbury since we were wearing pull-backs."

The laugh was so good-natured that the Judge hoped for a favorable opening and ventured to say irrelevantly, as though reverting automatically to a subject always in his mind, "But, honest, Susie, can't we shave expenses down some? This winter is costing--"

She turned on him, not resentfully this time, but with a solemn appeal.

"Why, Nat! Lydia's season! The last winter we'll have her with us, no doubt! I'd go on bread and water afterward to give her what she wants now--wouldn't _you_? What are we old folks good for but to do our best by our children?"

The Judge looked up at her, baffled, inarticulate. "Oh, of course," he agreed helplessly, "we want to do the best by our children."

CHAPTER XV

A HALF-HOUR'S LIBERTY

Inside the big Interurban car Lydia and Rankin were talking with a freedom that enormously surprised Lydia. The man had started up with an exclamation of pleasure, had taken her bag, found a vacant seat, put her next the window and sat down by her before Lydia, quite breathless with the shock of seeing him, could do more than notice how vigorous he looked, his tall, spare figure alert and erect, his ruddy hair and close-clipped beard contrasting vividly with his dark-blue flannel s.h.i.+rt and soft black hat. He was on a business trip, evidently, for on his knees he held a tool-box with large ungloved hands, roughened and red.

With his usual sweeping disregard of conventional approaches, he plunged boldly into the matter with which their thoughts were at once occupied.

"So this was why Dr. Melton insisted I should take this car. Well, I'm grateful to him! It gives me a chance to relieve my mind of a weight of remorse I've been carrying around."

Lydia looked at him, relieved and surprised at the hearty spontaneity of this opening.

He misunderstood her expression. "You don't mind, do you, my speaking to you about last fall--my saying I am so very sorry I made you all the trouble Dr. Melton tells me I did? I'm really very sorry!"

Nothing could have more completely disarmed Lydia's acquired fear of him as the bogey-man of her mother's exhortations. It is true that she was, as she put it to herself, somewhat taken down by the contrast between her secret thought of him as a wounded, rejected suitor, and this clear-eyed, self-possessed, friendly reality before her; but, after a momentary feeling of pique, coming from a sense of the romantic, superficially grafted on her natural good feeling, she was filled with an immense relief. Lydia was no man-eater. In spite of traditional wisdom, she, like a considerable number of her contemporaries, was as far removed from this stage of feminine development as from a Stone-age appet.i.te for raw meat. She now drew a long breath of the most honest satisfaction that she had done him no harm, and smiled at Rankin. He waited for her to speak, and she finally said: "It's awfully good of you to put it that way! I've been afraid you must have been angry with me and hurt that I--so you didn't mind at all!"

Rankin smiled at little ruefully at her swift conclusion. "I believe in telling the truth, even to young ladies, and I can not say I didn't mind at all--or that I don't now. But I am convinced that you were right in dropping me--out of the realm of acquaintances." His a.s.sumption was, Lydia saw with grat.i.tude, that they were talking simply about a possible acquaintances.h.i.+p between them. "It's evidently true--what I told you the very first time I saw you. We don't belong in the same world."

As he said this, he looked at her with an expression Lydia thought severe. She protested, "What makes you so sure?"

"Because to live in my world--even to step into it from time to time--requires the courage to believe in it."

"And you think I didn't?" asked Lydia. It was an inestimable comfort to her to have brought into the light the problem that had so long lain in the back of her head, a confused ma.s.s of dark conjecture.

"Did you?" he asked steadily. "You ought to know."

There was silence, while Lydia turned her head away and looked at the brown, flat winter landscape jerking itself past the windows as the car began to develop speed in the first long, open s.p.a.ce between settlements. She was trying to remember something distinct about the nightmare of misery that had followed her admission of the ident.i.ty of the man who had kissed her hand that starry night in October, but from the black chaos of her recollection she brought out only, "Oh, you don't realize how things are with a girl--how many million little ways she's bound and tied down, just from everybody in the family loving her as--"