The Squirrel-Cage Part 14

"Yes; that's what I mean," said the doctor heavily, rising from his chair. "That and such thousands of others. Oh, for a Theseus to hunt down this Minotaur of false standards and wretched ideas of success! I see them, the precious youths and maidens, going in by thousands to his den of mean aspirations, and not a hand is raised to warn them. They must be silly and tragic because everyone else is!"

Rankin shook his head. "I think I'm proving that you don't have to go into the labyrinth--that you can live in health and happiness outside."

"There's rather more than that to be done, you'll admit," said the doctor with an uncompromising bitterness.

Rankin colored. "I don't pretend that it's much of anything--what I've done."

The doctor did not deny him. He thrust out his lips and rubbed his hand nervously over his face. Finally, "But you have done it, at least," he brought out, "and I've only talked. As another doctor has said: 'I've never taken a bribe; but there's a pale shade of bribery known as prosperity.'"

They fell into a silence, broken by Mrs. Sandworth's asking, "Lydia, have your folks got an old mythology book? I studied it at school, of course, but it has sort of pa.s.sed out of my mind. Was it the Minotaur that sowed teeth and something else very odd came up that you wouldn't expect?"

Lydia did not smile. "I don't know whether we have the book or not, but Miss Slater told us the story of the Minotaur. There's a picture of Theseus and Ariadne in Europe somewhere--Munich, I think--or maybe Siena. It was where one of the girls had a sore throat, I remember, and we had to stay quite a while. Miss Slater told us about it then."

The doctor stood up. "Julia, it's nearly half-past now. Who remembered this time? I'm off, all of you. Rankin, see that Lydia gets home safely, will you?"

"Oh, I must go too--now, with you." The girl jumped up. "I didn't realize it was so late. They'll be wondering at home."

"Come along, then, both of you. I'll go with you to the corner where I take my car."

The chill of the night air sent them along at a brisk gait, Lydia swinging easily between them, her head on a level with Rankin's, the doctor's hat on a level with her ear. She said nothing, and the two talked across her, disjointed bits of an argument apparently under endless discussion between them.

The doctor flung down, with a militant despondency, "It'd be no use trying to do anything, even if you weren't so slothful and sedentary as you are! It moves in a vicious circle. Because material success is what the majority want, the majority'll go on wanting it. Hardy says somewhere that it's innate in human nature not to desire the undesired of others."

Rankin sang out a ringing "Aw, g'wan! It's innate in human nature to murder and steal whenever it pleases, and I guess even Hardy'd admit that those aren't the amus.e.m.e.nts of the majority quite so extensively as they used to be--what? First thing you know people'll begin to desire things because they're worth desiring and not because other folks have them--even so astonis.h.i.+ng a flight as that!" he made a boyish gesture--"and what a grand time that'll be to live in, to be sure!"

They were waiting at the corner for the doctor's street car, which now came noisily down toward them. He watched it advance, and proffered as a valedictory, his gloom untempered to the last, "You're a wild man that lives in the woods. I've doctored everybody in the world for thirty years. Which knows human nature best?"

Rankin roared after him defiantly, waking the echoes and startling the occupants of the car, "I do! I do! I do!"

The car bore the doctor away, a perversely melancholy little figure, contemplating the young people blackly.

"Whatever do you suppose set him off so?" Rankin wondered aloud as they resumed their rapid, swinging walk through the cold air.

"I'm afraid I did," Lydia surmised. "I had a wretched fit of the blues, and I guess he must have caught them from me."

Rankin looked down at her keenly, his thoughts apparently quite altered by her phrase. "Ah, he worries a great deal about you," he murmured.

Lydia laughed nervously, and said nothing. They walked swiftly in silence. The stars were thick above them in the wind-swept autumn night.

Lydia tilted her head to look up at them once or twice. She saw Rankin's face pale under the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat, his eyes meeting hers in an intent regard like a wordless speech. The fine, cold, austere wind swept them along like leaves, whipping their young pulses, chanting loudly in the leafless branches of the maples, and filling the dark s.p.a.ces above with a great humming roar. They thrilled responsive to all this and to the mood of high seriousness each divined in the other.

Lydia's voice, breaking in upon the intimate silence, continued the talk, but it was with another note. The mute interval, filled with wind and darkness and the light of stars, had swung them up to a higher plane. She spoke with an artless sureness of comprehension--a certainty--they were close in spirit at that moment, and she was not frightened, not even conscious of it. "Why should the doctor worry?

_What is the matter?_ Marietta says the trouble with me is that I'm spoiled with having everything that I want."

"_Have_ you everything you want?" Rankin's bluntness of interrogation was unmitigated.

Lydia looked up at him swiftly, keenly. In his grave face there was that which made her break out with an open quivering emotion she had not shown even to the doctor's loving heart. "It's a weight on my very soul--that there's nothing for me to look forward to--nothing, nothing that's worth growing up to do. I haven't been taught anything--but I know I want to be something better than--perhaps I can't be--but I want to try! I want to try! That's not much to ask--just a chance to try--But I don't even know how to get that. I don't even dare to speak of--of--such things. People laugh and say it's Sunday-schooley fancies that'll disappear, that I'll forget as I get into living. But I don't want to forget. I'm afraid I shall. I want to keep trying. I don't know--"

They did not slacken their swift advance as they talked. They looked at each other seriously in the starlight.

Rankin had given an indrawn exclamation as she finished, and after an instant's pause he said, with a deep emotion, "Oh, perhaps--at least we both want to try--_Be Ariadne for me!_ Help me to find the clue to what's wrong in our lives, and perhaps--" He looked down at her, shaken, drawing quick breaths. She answered his gaze silently, her face as s.h.i.+ning white as his.

He went on: "You shall decide what Ariadne may be or may come to be--I will take whatever you choose to give--and bless you!"

She had a gesture of humility. "_I_ haven't anything to give."

His accent was memorable as he cried, "You have yourself--you--you! But you are too gentle! It is hard for you--it will be too hard for you to do what you feel should be done. I could perhaps do the things if you would tell me--help you not to forget--not to let life make you forget what is worth doing and learning!"

She put back a mesh of her wind-blown hair to look at him intently, and to say again in wonder, "I'm not anything. What can you think I--what can you hope--"

They were standing now on the walk before her father's house. "I can hope--" his voice shook, "I can hope that you may make me into a man worthy to help you to be the best that's in you."

Lydia put out her hand impulsively. It did not tremble. She looked at him with radiant, steady eyes. He raised the slim, gloved fingers to his lips. "Whether to leave you, or to try to--Oh, I would give my life to know how best to serve you," he said huskily. He turned away, the sound of his steps ringing loud in the silent street.

Lydia went slowly up the walk and into the empty hall. She stood an instant, her hands clasped before her breast, her eyes closed, her face still and clear. Then she moved upstairs like one in a dream.

As she pa.s.sed her mother's door she started violently, and for an instant had no breath to answer. Some one had called her name laughingly.

Finally, "Yes," she answered without stirring.

"Oh, come in, come in!" cried Marietta mockingly. "We know all about everything. We heard you come up the street, and saw you philandering on the front walk. And for all it's so dark, we made out that Paul kissed your hand when he went away."

There was a silence in the hall. Then Lydia appeared in the door. Mrs.

Emery gave a scream. "Why, Lydia! what makes you look so queer?"

They turned startled, inquiring, daunting faces upon her. It was the baptism of fire to Lydia. The battle, inevitable for her, had begun. She faced it; she did not take refuge in the safe, silent lie which opened before her, but her courage was a piteous one. In her utter heartsick shrinking from the consequences of her answer she had a premonition of the weakness that was to make the combat so unequal. "It was not Paul,"

she said, pale in the doorway; "it was Daniel Rankin."

BOOK II

IN THE LOCOMOTIVE CAB

CHAPTER XI

WHAT IS BEST FOR LYDIA

The girls who were to be debutantes that season, the "crowd" or (more accurately to quote Madeleine Hollister's racy characterization) "the gang," stood before Hallam's drug store, chattering like a group of bright-colored paroquets. They had finished three or four ice-cream sodas apiece, and now, inimitably unconscious that they were on the street corner, they were "getting up" a matinee party for the performance of the popular actress whom, at that time, it was the fas.h.i.+on for all girls of their age and condition to adore. They had worked themselves up to a state of hysteric excitement over the prospect.

A tall brown-eyed blonde, with the physical development of a woman and the facial expression of a child of twelve, cried out, "I feel as though I should swoon for joy to see that darling way she holds her hands when the leading man's making love to her--so sort of helpless--like this--"

"Oh, Madeleine, that's not a _bit_ the way. It's so!"

The first speaker protested, "Well, I guess I ought to be able to do it.

I've practiced for _hours_ in front of the gla.s.s doing it."