It was midnight, and Lydia was sitting alone with her husband near the fire. Sophia had retired an hour ago, but husband and wife had not spoken a single word since then. They might have been strangers, watching the fire, neither reading or moving.
At last Rufus said, “Well, you asked me to stay, after my mother left. What is it?”
Lydia looked at him before answering. He had lost considerable flesh these past two months, and much of his color. Because of this, his red hair was more conspicuous than ever. Wrinkles had appeared about his eyes, and there was now a permanent cleft on each side of his mouth. If we have all suffered, he has suffered, too, thought Lydia with both bitterness and pity. She said at last, “I have wanted you to know that I don’t blame you too much, Rufus. I know that you betrayed Stephen; I know that you have waited over eleven years to take what he had. You see, it wasn’t you who really defeated Stephen, and killed him. The world killed Stephen, and his own nature.”
Rufus’s face changed. He began to rub his mouth with the knuckles of his right hand, and he turned to the fire again.
“You always knew that would happen,” Lydia went on gently. “So you waited, and you worked, knowing your time would come. You were not deceived by the very paradox which amazed some other people: Stephen’s sudden spurts of power and perspicacity and apparent ruthlessness. Yes”—and she smiled sadly as Rufus abruptly faced her—“I know so much more than you could possibly understand.”
She waited, but Rufus, though he had flushed, still did not speak. She went on:
“Stephen never wanted to live after Alice died. In fact, knowing him so well now, I doubt if he ever wanted to live. Alice changed that a little, gave him something to exist for. Then she was taken from him. You see, Rufus, he told me about Mr. Gunther, and how he had been able to circumvent him. That was before Stephen and I stopped being friends.”
“He told you about Gunther?” asked Rufus, surprised and deeply interested.
“Yes. I think he had to tell someone. He trusted me, and so he told me.”
“Go on, please,” murmured Rufus. The tenseness of his body was beginning to relax. He had to tell someone. He, Rufus, had long wanted to tell “someone,” himself.
“So, even when he outwitted Mr. Gunther, it was no pleasure to him. It was a—sickness. He was always being betrayed by his compassion, and so, when he did what he had to do to Mr. Gunther, he was sorry for him. A paradox? But aren’t all of us always being torn between our emotions and our reason?
“Stephen was not fit to struggle with evil, because there was so little evil in him.”
Lydia hesitated. She could scarcely bring herself to the final words she must say. She glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. It was almost half-past twelve. Her hands became suddenly damp, and she wiped them with her lace handkerchief.
“Yes, you are right, Lydia,” Rufus was saying.
“But there is something else, too,” said Lydia in a lower voice. “Stephen also died when he came to realize that he had never had any friends, in spite of lies, hypocrisies, and affirmations of faithfulness. During the last few months of his life he would wait for Mr. Baynes and Mr. Orville, but they never came to him. They must have heard he was ill, a month before he died, but they never came.”
Rufus spoke with sudden bitter harshness: “He lent those rascals nearly forty thousand dollars, and to protect them he destroyed their notes! No, they never came, the righteous dogs. And I could have ruined them, and revenged Steve, if he hadn’t destroyed those damn notes! I could have taken over their—” He stopped abruptly.
But Lydia, as if she had not heard, went on: “What has a man to live for, except love, and personal ambitions? He can survive without ambition, but he can’t survive without love.”
She looked at Rufus, and now her face was stern and cold. “Though you didn’t have very much to do with Stephen’s defeat—and I mean his spiritual defeat and death—you betrayed him in his emotions. The ‘affection’ was an unnecessary cruelty. He came to rely upon it.”
Rufus stood up very slowly but deliberately, and as if with purpose. “I’ve always thought you were a perceptive woman, Lydia, and an intelligent one. But in a way or two, you are stupid. ‘Unnecessary cruelty.’ I had my personal and exigent reasons for it, yes. I also knew poor old Steve well, and in the past years I came to know him better. What had begun on my part as ‘hypocrisy,’ as you would say, and for my own reasons, also became, a little later, and to my own surprise, a real affection for him. You see, Lydia, things are never as vile as you think they are, or as good.”
He smiled at her somberly, and she sat up straighter in her chair, staring at him. He nodded. “I never stopped hating the fact that he was president of the company, but I finally understood this served my purpose very well. The whole complex business would take too long to explain, and has too many ramifications. You never gave me any credit for being paradoxical, myself.
“I’m wandering from the point, though. Steve was not only a suicidally compassionate man, he was also intuitive. He was on his guard for a long time, and never was entirely trustful of me. But when I began to feel a genuine, if contemptuous, affection for him, he knew. He knew he never had a friend, except Jim Purcell, and he was always trying to beat down that knowledge because he detested Purcell’s ethics. He knew you weren’t his friend.”
Lydia turned crimson. She stood up and faced her husband on the hearth rug. Then she paled, and her face took on the color and naked shine of bone.
“You despised Steve, Lydia, because you considered him weak. That’s the simple truth. As a woman”—and Rufus paused a little, his eyes shining maliciously—“you like strength in men. You don’t like masked strength, or devious strength, like mine. You call it cunning. You like open and brutal strength—like Purcell’s.”
The name lay between them like a weapon. Rufus watched Lydia, and laughed a little. “We’ll come back to Purcell in a few moments. I just want to show you, my dear, that in your own clever way you are quite a fool.
“Steve loved this house. He knew that I loved it, too. And so, at the last, when he felt death in him, he left the house to me, though my father had bequeathed it to him and his heirs ‘forever.’ Naturally, you never arrived at the truth when you thought about this. You probably considered it ‘compassion’ or silliness, on Steve’s part. He did it because he wanted someone to own this house who cared about it as much as he did.”
Lydia stood in stiff silence, very white, her black mourning silk draped about her slender figure.
“You don’t love this house, my dear Lydia, nor does my mother; she is only proud of it, and she will live here all the rest of her life. Cornelia loves this house. No matter where she goes, she will always return to it. Steve knew that, too.”
“You are imagining things,” stammered Lydia. “You are trying to excuse your conduct. …”
Rufus was beginning to enjoy himself. He shook his head. “You are a very logical woman, Lydia. But logic is too rigid; it never bends or embraces, or covers intangibles. It is wonderful for syllogisms, but never admits that there is more to reality than it covers.”
“No!” exclaimed Lydia. “I refuse to admit your premises.”
‘You’ll never learn, I suppose, Lydia, that there is more to living than just premises. Do you know,” he continued, eyeing her curiously, “I once thought you were a very subtle woman. You can be very subtle about abstractions, but realities throw you into a dither. Like little Laura, you are overcivilized.”
Lydia gazed at him with sudden and intense astonishment This made Rufus laugh shortly. “You are mortified to discover that I’m not as single-minded or as uncomplex as you thought I was. You’d much prefer to think I’m a very lively and completely ruthless villain.”
He glanced at the mantel clock, checked it with his gold watch. “In about ten minutes, Lydia, your carriage will be here to take you down to Mrs. Townsend’s house. Never mind how I know; I just know. Once there, wi
th your friend, you intend to start suit for divorce against me, on some delicate ground. Then you intend to marry Purcell.”
Lydia reached blindly for a chair, and fell into it, her great dark eyes fixed on Rufus. He was smiling at her with high amusement, yet he spoke gently: “There was a time when I would have fought all this, my dear. You see, I still loved you. Perhaps in a way, I love you still. But I intend to let you divorce me. You see, I am president of the company now, and I have the house. I need and want sons. It may surprise you to know I have already picked the lady who will be my wife.
“Cornelia is my pet, and my darling. But she might be in the way of my new wife, for a time. So, being a sensible man, and knowing that you are, in your limited way, a wise woman as well as a good one, I think it best that Cornelia go to live with you. And with Laura. You were made Laura’s guardian, you know. I’m not aftaid that Purcell will ‘turn’ Cornelia against me. She is only eleven, but she has a mind. You are a just person; you will allow Cornelia to return home whenever she desires, on a visit, or whenever I wish to see her. And you’ll never lie to her about me. You see how I trust you.”
Lydia exhaled her held breath. Tears began to fill her eyes. When Rufus lifted her hand and kissed it, the tears spilled over her cheeks and she sobbed brokenly.
“Don’t, Lydia,” said Rufus softly. “Don’t begin to think for a minute that perhaps you’ve been unjust to me. You haven’t, in a large measure. I’m going to miss you like hell; I’m going to miss the girls even worse. But for what one gives up, sometimes, one gets a great deal more.”
PART TWO
24
Allan Marshall leaned on his hoe to stare for a considerable time at the great and beautiful white brick house high above him on its terraces. Hot sunlight struck its lower arches, its tall white pillars, its long and blinding windows. On this lower terrace the willows moved in constant light, bowing and blowing like green fountains, and oaks and elms sheltered tilted spaces of dark grass. Late roses were still blooming on the descending stone walls; paths lined with flocks, marigolds, sweet alyssum, summer lilies, and many other flowers whose names he did not know, wandered casually up and down the terraces and disappeared behind thickets of trees and shrubs. A mountain wind, carrying the scent of roses and pine, filled the shining silence all about the young man, and occasionally a bird sang suddenly, or, carrying radiance on its wings, darted up to the sky.
If I had a house like that, he thought, with mingled resentment, ambition, and envy, I’d never leave it for those damned places they go to—New York, Paris, Newport, and the Riviera. But he knew he would, for he was not only a highly intelligent young man, but a disingenuous one. He smiled to himself sourly. He wiped his sweating face, resumed his cultivation of the narrow garden on which he was working, and let his ambition take hold of him once more. He knew exactly where he not only wished to go but was determined to go. To dream was not enough; daydreams drugged a man’s spirit and left him nothing at the last but the sick belly and hating nausea of envy and unproductive spite. He despised those who enjoyed fortunes for which they had not worked; but he despised, even more, those men without ability, intellect, or aspiration who hated the fortunate. He had to listen to them often. He knew he would need them, and that he would use them ruthlessly.
He saw the house, and what the house represented. Though he was the gardener and walked among beauty, and worked with it, he had no feeling for it and, in fact, hardly saw it. A tree was a tree to him, and a damned nuisance, sometimes, when it had to be pruned; flowers were pretty, but they had to be staked and watered, and served no real purpose to a man who was on his way. He thought of the half-crippled and malign old woman who would occasionally, and with pain, lean on the arm of a manservant and stiffly walk around the gardens in the evenings. She rarely left the house and its grounds; she never went on the constant hegiras of the rest of the family. For her, these gardens bloomed and the trees blew and the paths must be kept well-graveled and trimmed. Allan suspected that she was as little moved by natural beauty as himself. The power of possession was enough for her, as it was enough for him.
He tore at some weeds with calm viciousness, ripping out the roots, tossing them aside. A weed produced neither beauty nor harvest, therefore it had no reason to live. He took pleasure in destroying the weeds, his young face intent. He thought of the men he represented, and he studied the weeds. The men were brothers to this worthless growth, but the men were necessary for what they could do for men like himself.
He wiped his face again, and then, on a higher terrace, he caught the vivid electric blue of a dress. What the hell, he thought, leaning on the hoe again. The old devil very seldom had visitors, and when those visitors did come they wore sober rich silks and not wild color like this. Moreover, he had not heard the sound of a carriage winding up the mountain. Then he knew. It was the young girl, that Cornelia deWitt, the granddaughter of the old woman. But what was she doing here in July, when her father, stepmother, and two little half-brothers were in Newport? She must have come last night.
The violent color was slowly descending the terraces. He caught a glimpse of brilliant red hair between the trees. He had often seen Cornelia in her carriage on the streets of Portersville, during the brief weeks she and her family spent at home. He had thought her amazingly beautiful, except for her hair. He had no penchant for hair so blatantly red.
Unaware of him, she had begun to sing as she descended smoothly and easily. She had a hoarse and lively voice, and the song she sang was a popular one, vulgar, common, but vigorous. It suited her. Allan began to smile. He was averse to “unrefined” females, especially if those females were young; he preferred pale and gentle and silent young girls. However, if a girl was a minx he believed it added to her jauntiness if she did not pretend to be otherwise.
Now Cornelia stepped out on a small area of velvet grass which sloped about four feet above Allan Marshall. She still did not see him. There she stood against the bright green background of grass and trees, unusually tall but with a youthful voluptuousness which was startling. She was only nineteen years old; she had the ripe figure of a woman in her late twenties. The blue dress, shimmering, skin-tight over the high full breasts, the narrow waist, and the swelling hips, set off every attribute. Below the hips, the gown billowed into ruffles and draperies and ruchings. She was holding up considerable of it for the sake of free movement, and Allan could see her fine curving legs almost to the knees. Her slippers matched her dress exactly. Her flesh was as pale as a lily, enhanced by flutters of white lace petticoats.
A beam of light struck through the trees, and her masses of heaped red curls burst into fire. She blinked, but not before he had caught a glimpse of her tawny hazel eyes, full of life and vitality. They were lion’s eyes, yet humorous, and seemed to possess a primordial zest. Her broad full face was colored strongly, and her big full mouth looked like a poppy in full sunlight. Her slightly aquiline nose gave a predatory expression to a countenance that was otherwise good-tempered and gay. She was lifting her head, and Allan saw the long white lines of her young throat, and the roundness of her dimpled chin. She broke into another song, more than slightly lewd and rollicking. She started to laugh. A red curl had fallen on her neck. She tucked it away, patting it lovingly. Then she saw the young man below. Her mouth fell open, showing the big white teeth.
“Hello!” she exclaimed, and her husky voice was almost a shout. “Who are you? The new gardener?”
He smiled up at her, without respect. With enormous perspicacity, he understood people; so he knew that his lack of servility and humbleness would not offend her. “Yes, Miss deWitt. Or, at least, I’m one of them, working all through the summer when the spring work is done. I’m Allan Marshall,” he added. He leaned on the hoe again, staring up at her with open admiration. She had not dropped her dress over her legs; she showed no maidenly confusion. After a moment or two, during which they smiled at each other, she advanced farther down the small terrace to join him. He p
ut out his soiled brown hand to assist her, but she was already leaping over the edge of the terrace in a shower of silk and lace. Once beside him, he could feel her tremendous verve and energy. She expelled a primitive force, utterly without any concealing elegance.
She was staring at him, pleased. She let her skirts drop, not as if conscious of what she had been revealing but simply as if it was no longer necessary to hold them up. “You don’t look like a gardener, Allan,” she said with candor.
“I’m not, really.” He took out his pipe and calmly lit it while she watched him. “I’m reading law at night, in the offices of the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Peale. He’s assigned one of his lawyers to teach me.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Cornelia admiringly. “So, you’re going to be a lawyer. In Mr. Peale’s office.”
“Not exactly, Miss. I’m going to be a labor lawyer. My dad’s an engineer on one of your father’s roads. I know all about labor problems. They aren’t going to be solved without lawyers. And I’m going to be one.”
“Are you an anarchist?” she asked with interest.
He grimaced. “No, I don’t think so. That’s what the railroad owners call people like me. But I’m not. The future lies with the workers of America, and—” He hesitated.
She shouted with laughter, and pointed a ringed finger at him. “And you’re going to be a part of the future! I know all about people, and you’re really not part of the workers, and you don’t groan for them. Not really!”
Her common but beautiful face glowed with mirth and happy derision. Her breasts rose and fell as she screamed in her amusement, and the bright blue of her bodice rippled and swelled like water. There was a scent emanating from her, a clean strong scent of atavistic youth and power, and her forehead exuded sweat in the heat of the sun.
For just an instant or so, Allan was angry and nonplused at her exposure of what he was. Then he was relieved. He leaned against the trunk of a small tree, crossed his legs, and smoked. What a damned vixen it was, and what a cunning one, too. He decided he liked Cornelia very much, but he was not prepared to trust her, for all her frankness and easy democracy. He suspected that they hid considerable hypocrisy and sly affectation. He waited for her to expend her gleeful and mocking laughter at his expense. At length she just stood and looked at him, her face simmering with enjoyment.
Never Victorious, Never Defeated Page 28