Chapter XLIX: Lydia’s First Letter

The postman’s knock! Lydia ran to the door, swung it open, and reached forth her hand.

“Miss Lydia—Lydia—”

“That’s for me my own self!” cried the girl, snatching at the letter in an ecstasy of excitement.

“Well, I hope you can make it out,” said the postman, laughing, as he went down the steps, “for a crookeder hand I never got hold of.”

Lydia tore off the envelope from her letter and began to read it in the hall. It began, “Dear Liddy;” but that was crossed out, and the substitution was:

“MISS LIDDY:

“I take up my pen hoping that you are well and enjoying good health,
which I am, with Nancy and the rest—all sending love but myself, which
is respects. Miss Liddy, the reason of my writing this is that things
are going all wrong over to the brown house. Miss Clara is pined down
to a shadder, with eyes that scare you when you look into them—scare
you and make you cry at the same time. She don’t have no work to do
now. The people here have got mad about her riding out with young Mr.
Lane, and won’t send her any. Mother does her best, and so do I; but
trout isn’t plenty, and it’s a sin to kill birds so near nesting-time.

“Miss Liddy, she won’t go out to ride or get into the dug-out, but
wanders off and off alone sometimes, and comes back white as a ghost;
but sometimes with her cheeks a burning like hot coals. She is sick, I
tell you, and going to die; that’s my opinion, and it’s mother’s too,
saying nothing of Nancy. I’ve seen her faint clear away more’n once,
and the old lady is growing so sweet and pleasant that it scares me
half to death. Something is a going to happen in that house; I know it
is.

“Can’t you think of something as ought to be done? You allus could
plan things better than anybody. Do try now; for if something isn’t
done right off, Miss Clara will be dead. Since the time you know of
she hasn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive. Couldn’t _he_ be coaxed
back some way?

Your true friend to command,
“BENJAMIN VOSE.”

Lydia’s face was a study as she read this letter. It flashed, it frowned, and grew tender with grief, all in a moment. During Waldon’s visits to the house she had been full of smothered indignation, kept in check only by her promise to Clara Anderson. At first this astute man had recognized her with some apprehension; but she never seemed to remember him, and, like most egotists, he regarded persons of her class more as automatons than human beings. That this singular girl had suspected him from the first, and read his arts with the keen acumen of a critic, never once entered his imagination.

Waldon was waiting in the parlor when Lydia got her letter. She knew nothing of his engagement to Bertha, but saw with anger that the young lady was treading closely in the footsteps of Clara Anderson, and resented it in many ways, especially when she happened to be for a minute alone with Waldon. With the open letter fluttering in her hand, she walked into the parlor, marched up to its rather impatient inmate, and held the missive out to him.

“There, read that and see what you think of yourself for being here!” she said in a voice that snapped like her eyes.

Waldon put the letter aside with his hand.

“Take the scrawl away. Some one in the kitchen will read it for you,” he said.

“No, they won’t. I promised Miss Clara Anderson never to mention your name, and if this letter don’t do it right out it’s just as bad.”

“My name—Miss Clara Anderson!” said Waldon, struck with absolute amazement.

“Just that and nothing more. I ain’t blind if I am cross-eyed, nor deaf neither; but I’ve promised, and that’s enough. If I hadn’t, as sure as you’re alive Miss Bertha would have known all about your readings, and eating up all the strawberries, and looking at Miss Clara while she made believe work. Don’t look so mad! I’m not a going to tell her because of that promise; but only try that same thing on here, and there’ll be such a tussle as you never heard on between you and this girl. Now read that letter. I want you to see your own tracks.”

Waldon took the letter and went with it to a window. He was so astonished by the girl’s energetic language that the paper fairly shook in his hand. More than once, when some slight noise arrested him, he would turn anxiously toward the door, as if fearful that Bertha might come in and find him in this questionable position.

Lydia stood in the open door watching the man and the stairs with equal vigilance.

As Waldon folded up the letter and was about to put it in his pocket, the girl flew upon him.

“No, you don’t! Give that letter here!” she said, snatching it from his hand. “Now do you mean to go up to Connecticut and set things right or don’t you?”

Waldon clenched his white hand, sorely tempted to knock the girl down; but she neither flinched at the menace nor the wrathful flash of his eyes.

“Do you or don’t you? That’s the question.”

To her astonishment his face changed to its usual open, if not bland, expression, and he answered her—she thought to herself afterward—as if she had been a born lady.

“Of course, little girl, I will do anything to prove my friendship for the young lady. Do not trouble yourself any more about it. You were very kind to show me that letter. Take good care of it.”

“That’s just what I’m a going to do,” said the girl, greatly mollified by his manner. “But here comes Miss Bertha. Mind you say nothing to her.”

Waldon bent his head, smiling, and Lydia darted out of the room.

Once in her room, the girl took out her letter and fell to reading it again. It was the first she had ever received, and brought Ben kindly bade to her remembrance.

Slowly and very earnestly she gathered in its sense line by line, brightening over the “Dear Liddy” which had been crossed out, and wishing in her heart that he had left it so. When she came to the signature, which was ended with a flourish that looked like a coiled whiplash, she discovered a word that had escaped both herself and Waldon—one little word, “over.”

Turning the paper on the other side she found this:

“P. S.—The old lady is dead; so is Miss Clara, drowned in the river.
Amongst them all they have driv her crazy. Oh, Liddy! Liddy I how I
wish you was here.”

When Waldon was going out he found Lydia in the hall; her face was red with weeping, and she leaned against the wall in an attitude of great dejection.

“Read that,” she said, drawing the paper from behind her, and pointing out the paragraph with her finger.

“Read that, if you’ve got the heart. Then go home and kill yourself.”

Waldon took the paper in silence; he dared not speak, for Bertha was in the next room.

Lydia watched him keenly. She expected to see his eyes fill with tears, and his face clouded with sorrow.

Instead of that he handed back the letter with no visible emotion, and without a word.

Bertha was standing by the window, as usual, watching to see him go out, for the most precious thing on earth to her was this stolen glance at her lover’s face.

“How splendid he looks!” she whispered to herself. “Ah! I must have made him very happy when he smiles so. Still I thought him a little troubled, and wondered what made him so anxious that we should begin our journey at once. In fact, it seemed to me that my answer disturbed him, when I said that mamma would not hasten the time. Of course I was mistaken, for never in my life have I seen his face so lighted up.”

Bertha was mistaken. That awful paragraph had relieved Waldon of a great apprehension. Instead of remorse or horror, he felt absolutely elated that fate had swept one more old love from his path.