An Alabaster Box Part 28

Chapter XIII

Lydia laid the picture carefully away in a pigeonhole of her desk.

She was still thinking soberly of the subtle web of prejudices, feelings and conditions into which she had obtruded her one fixed purpose in life. But if Mr. Elliot had been as good as engaged to f.a.n.n.y Dodge, as Mrs. Solomon Black had been at some pains to imply, in what way had she (Lydia) interfered with the denouement?

She shook her head at last over the intricacies of the imperfectly stated problem. The idea of coquetting with a man had never entered Lydia's fancy. Long since, in the chill spring of her girlhood, she had understood her position in life as compared with that of other girls. She must never marry. She must never fall in love, even. The inflexible Puritan code of her uncle's wife had found ready acceptance in Lydia's nature. If not an active partic.i.p.ant in her father's crime, she still felt herself in a measure responsible for it. He had determined to grow rich and powerful for her sake. More than once, in the empty rambling talk which he poured forth in a turgid stream during their infrequent meetings, he had told her so, with extravagant phrase and gesture. And so, at last, she had come to share his punishment in a hundred secret, unconfessed ways. She ate scant food, slept on the hardest of beds, labored unceasingly, with the great, impossible purpose of some day making things right: of restoring the money they--she no longer said _he_--had stolen; of building again the waste places desolated by the fire of his ambition for her. There had followed that other purpose, growing ever stronger with the years, and deepening with the deepening stream of her womanhood: her love, her vast, unavailing pity for the broken and aging man, who would some day be free. She came at length to the time when she saw clearly that he would never leave the prison alive, unless in some way she could contrive to keep open the clogging springs of hope and desire. She began deliberately and with purpose to call back memories of the past: the house in which he had lived, the gardens and orchards in which he once had taken pride, his ambitious projects for village improvement.

"You shall have it all back, father!" she promised him, with pa.s.sionate resolve. "And it will only be a little while to wait, now."

Thus encouraged, the prisoner's horizon widened, day by day. He appeared, indeed, to almost forget the prison, so busy was he in recalling trivial details and unimportant memories of events long since past. He babbled incessantly of his old neighbors, calling them by name, and chuckling feebly as he told her of their foibles and peculiarities.

"But we must give them every cent of the money, father," she insisted; "we must make everything right."

"Oh, yes! Oh, yes, we'll fix it up somehow with the creditors," he would say.

Then he would scowl and rub his shorn head with his tremulous old hands.

"What did they do with the house, Margaret?" he asked, over and over, a furtive gleam of anxiety in his eyes. "They didn't tear it down; did they?"

He waxed increasingly anxious on this point as the years of his imprisonment dwindled at last to months. And then her dream had unexpectedly come true. She had money--plenty of it--and nothing stood in the way. She could never forget the day she told him about the house. Always she had tried to quiet him with vague promises and imagined descriptions of a place she had completely forgotten.

"The house is ours, father," she a.s.sured him, jubilantly. "And I am having it painted on the outside."

"You are having it painted on the outside, Margaret? Was that necessary, already?"

"Yes, father.... But I am Lydia. Don't you remember? I am your little girl, grown up."

"Yes, yes, of course. You are like your mother-- And you are having the house painted? Who's doing the job?"

She told him the man's name and he laughed rather immoderately.

"He'll do you on the white lead, if you don't watch him," he said. "I know Asa Todd. Talk about frauds-- You must be sure he puts honest linseed oil in the paint. He won't, unless you watch him."

"I'll see to it, father."

"But whatever you do, don't let 'em into my room," he went on, after a frowning pause.

"You mean your library, father? I'm having the ceiling whitened.

It--it needed it."

"I mean my bedroom, child. I won't have workmen pottering about in there."

"But you won't mind if they paint the woodwork, father? It--has grown quite yellow in places."

"Nonsense, my dear! Why, I had all the paint upstairs gone over--let me see--"

And he fell into one of his heavy moods of introspection which seemed, indeed, not far removed from torpor.

When she had at last roused him with an animated description of the vegetable garden, he appeared to have forgotten his objections to having workmen enter his chamber. And Lydia was careful not to recall it to his mind.

She was still sitting before his desk, ostensibly absorbed in the rows of incomprehensible figures Deacon Whittle, as general contractor, had urged upon her attention, when Martha again parted the heavy cloud of her thoughts.

"The minister, come to see you again," she announced, with a slight but mordant emphasis on the ultimate word.

"Yes," said Lydia, rousing herself, with an effort. "Mr. Elliot, you said?"

"I s'pose that's his name," conceded Martha ungraciously. "I set him in the dining room. It's about the only place with two chairs in it; an' I shan't have no time to make more lemonade, in case you wanted it, m'm."

Chapter XIV

The Reverend Wesley Elliot, looking young, eager and pleasingly worldly in a blue serge suit of unclerical cut, rose to greet her as she entered.

"I haven't been here in two or three days," he began, as he took the hand she offered, "and I'm really astonished at the progress you've been making."

He still retained her hand, as he smiled down into her grave, preoccupied face.

"What's the trouble with our little lady of Bolton House?" he inquired. "Any of the workmen on strike, or--"

She withdrew her hand with a faint smile.

"Everything is going very well, I think," she told him.

He was still scrutinizing her with that air of intimate concern, which inspired most of the women of his flock to unburden themselves of their manifold anxieties at his slightest word of encouragement.

"It's a pretty heavy burden for you," he said gravely. "You need some one to help you. I wonder if I couldn't shoulder a few of the grosser details?"

"You've already been most kind," Lydia said evasively. "But now-- Oh, I think everything has been thought of. You know Mr. Whittle is looking after the work."

He smiled, a glimmer of humorous understanding in his fine dark eyes.

"Yes, I know," he said.

A silence fell between them. Lydia was one of those rare women who do not object to silence. It seemed to her that she had always lived alone with her ambitions, which could not be shared, and her bitter knowledge, which was never to be spoken of. But now she stirred uneasily in her chair, aware of the intent expression in his eyes.

Her troubled thoughts reverted to the little picture which had fluttered to the floor from somebody's keeping only an hour before.

"I've had visitors this morning," she told him, with purpose.

"Ah! people are sure to be curious and interested," he commented.

"They were Mrs. Dodge and her daughter and Mrs. Dix and Ellen," she explained.

"That must have been pleasant," he murmured perfunctorily. "Are you--do you find yourself becoming at all interested in the people about here? Of course it is easy to see you come to us from quite another world."