12

Rufus sat alone in his bedroom before the fire, wrapped in his dark blue dressing gown and smoking a cheroot. He was lonely; it was midnight. The house lay about him in ponderous silence, an island cut off from the world by wind and snow and storm. He was thinking, and his thoughts were heavy and despondent and still black with rage. He no longer blamed Stephen for his father’s will, but thinking of Aaron, consigned to his grave that day, his hatred became a violent thing in him. He glanced about his room, tenantless except for himself, and his hatred spread to everything and everybody. He ran his hands distractedly through his red hair, threw the cheroot into the fire, and cursed aloud. He had humor of an exceptional kind, but he could find nothing humorous in his present situation, the end of his hopes and plans. He got to his feet and began to pace the carpet, up and down, back and forth, rubbing his chin, clenching his hands, muttering under his breath.

He was, by nature, exuberant and immediate, and so, at first, his plans were all urgent and active. One by one, he discarded them regretfully. Intuitive and full of perception, he had known that when Stephen had accompanied Lydia down the stairs and into the drawing room a few hours ago, Stephen had been prepared not only to offer his mother and brother a home for life in this house, but to offer to help break the will or rectify its provisions. If only Sophia had been more intelligent and less coarse and stupid! In less than ten minutes she had destroyed her favorite son’s hopes and had set him here, plotting unnecessarily and almost futilely. But what, Rufus allowed himself to think in the midst of his searching, had come over old Steve, that he had not gone on with his offer? What had turned that undistinguished face into stone?

The time had gone, perhaps, when one could strike at Stephen through his absurd emotions, his reasonless and self-imposed guilts, his humility, his inability to wound others and to protect himself, his enormous lack of self-esteem, his conviction of his worthlessness. Someway, Stephen had mysteriously glimpsed a little of the truth which Rufus had always known: that he had intrinsic power and ability and keenness, and that without his really great mentality and planning and acumen the State Railroad Company might be less than it was. Aaron had known; it was unpardonable that, after his death, he had not let the comfortable deception persist.

Stephen had, in some way, caught a glimmering of the truth. Sophia had presented him with that glimmering. Yet, something else had also happened in that room in the space of a few moments, something which Rufus could not grasp. He did not waste time in attempting to grasp it; it was powerful, but it was intangible too. He had to reckon with it, and so quell any immediacy.

Rufus’s door opened; he heard it and started. Lydia was entering, closing the door behind her. She was dressed in a soft rose peignoir, and her long black hair fell to her waist. Rufus stared at her disbelievingly. He looked at her pale face and large dark eyes, and he saw that she was both sad and resolute. She had never entered this room since he had taken up occupancy, and she had never permitted him to enter her own bedroom from the time of Cornelia’s birth. Rufus, his heart suddenly racing, his face flushing and his eyes brightening, got to his feet speechlessly.

She came up to him and looked into his eyes gravely. “I’m terribly sorry about the will, Rufus,” she said in a low voice. “It must be dreadful for you.”

She pitied him, he understood. He drew out a chair for her, and she sat down, clasping her hands on her knees. His breath was coming fast, and he knew that his features were thickening with desire for her, with love and passion for her. He sat near her and waited, and let his face become despondent and withdrawn.

“But nothing can be done, and it’s best to go on in the most sensible way,” Lydia continued. There was no uneasiness about her, no coldness, and Rufus’s ears began to sing with joy and exultation. She was gazing at him so sympathetically, so kindly.

“Dear Lydia,” he said softly. With genuine shyness, he reached out his hand and took one of her own. She did not resist, though she did not respond with any pressure. However, she leaned toward him, and her face softened almost to tenderness.

His first impulse was to speak with intimate contempt of Stephen, and to express bitterness against his father and his own “wrongs.” But his perceptiveness held the impulse back. Lydia was not a woman of petty character or feeble mind. So he said, very carefully and quietly, “Don’t be too sorry, Lydia, my darling. Perhaps my father thought he was doing what was best.”

He knew he had been right, for Lydia’s face took on color and more gentleness. Now she actually pressed his fingers. He became a little dejected, and somewhat angry. If he had hoped that her sympathy was tinged with indignation and scorn for Stephen, he was disillusioned. She was nodding her head. “You are perfectly right, Rufus.” She smiled at him, and he was mortified that she so easily accepted the premise of the “value” of his brother as opposed to the lesser value of himself.

As if she understood what he was thinking, she said quickly, “I did not mean to appear disloyal to you today, Rufus. I was merely calling your attention to facts. Of course, I know that in your first shock you had forgotten that the will was made two years ago.”

Rufus nodded. “But I still don’t understand,” he said. He held tighter to her hand, and she let it remain.

“It doesn’t matter, after all,” said Lydia. “We have a great deal, Rufus. I should like to leave this house with you and Cornelia, and have a home of our own. Your mother can remain with Stephen, of course.”

He forgot all his distraction, momentarily, in his joy and relief. “You would honestly prefer that, Liddie? The three of us, alone?”

“I’d honestly prefer it.”

Rufus considered. Apparently Lydia was offering her husband a normal family life again, and if this was so, then she loved him in spite of the coldly violent conversations they had had over the past months. This was enough to give him delight. He looked into her eyes and asked, “You do love me, don’t you, darling?”

She was silent, and the color left her face, and she gently withdrew her hand. But she did not look away from him. “I still love what I thought you were, up to six months after I married you, Rufus.”

He stood up, his florid face darkening. “One of your serpentine remarks, Lydia. You’ve told me a dozen times this past year that what you thought I was, and what I really am, are two irreconcilable things. Therefore, you have said, it was impossible to love the reality which is me. Are you still of that opinion?”

She waited a moment, then said with remorse, “Yes, I am.”

He did not want to lose the joy and delight he had felt. He stood beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Lydia, let us be reasonable. Was it my fault that you had some impossible image of me in your mind? Was it my fault that you were deceiving yourself?”

“No.”

“Then why should you punish me because I am not the man you thought I was? Did I ever deceive you about my character?”

She bent her head and began to cry silently. “What can I say, Rufus? It isn’t my intention to ‘punish’ you for my own ignorance and stupidity. I am punishing myself, and if you are hurt by it, I can only say I am sorry, and please forgive me. No, you never deceived me about your character. I was the one who was blind, and unable to see. But what you are, Rufus, completely and happily amoral, completely expedient and ruthless, is repulsive to me.”

She lifted her wet face and gazed at him with real anguish. “Forgive me, Rufus, for my stupidity, and for the misery I must have caused you all this time.”

He saw he had some strong advantage. He let his face express grim wretchedness and affront. “I find it hard to forgive you, Lydia. You’ve made my life almost impossible.”

“I know.” She thought of the poisonous little rumors she had overheard about Rufus’s attachment to some easy lady in Portersville, the wealthy widow of a land speculator. She felt no humiliation or anger. It was her own doing, she told herself. She was too conscience-stricken to remark that it was a little absurd for Rufus to say that his “life had been made impossible.”

She said falteringly, “Rufus, if you want me to, I’ll stay here with you tonight, and any other night.”

His first impulse was to take her in his arms with relief and happiness. He thought to himself: Perhaps I can overcome her distrust of me, and get her to abandon her foolish ideas. And, even if I can’t, I’ll at least have her, and perhaps that will be enough.

And then he knew it would not be enough. He loved her too much to take what she was offering in mortifying sympathy.

He was sickened with his desolation, but he said, “I’m not quite so ‘amoral’ as you think, Liddie. For, you see, I don’t want you in my room and in my bed if you don’t love me. I could take advantage of this sympathy of yours, but I won’t.”

He sat down again, heavily, and stared at the fire. She watched him with grief for a while, then exclaimed, “Rufus, there must be some way to help you! It isn’t fair for me to treat you like this, but I can’t help it.”

“Are you suggesting a divorce, Lydia?” he asked incredulously. “And on what grounds?”

Her whole face trembled, but she answered courageously, “I am sure you can get a divorce from me, Rufus. On the grounds of—desertion.”

“And expose you, and me, to notoriety? And jeers? No, Lydia. I, perhaps, as a man, would escape a lot of that. But not you.” He added, “And there is the child to be considered.”

But he was also thinking of the laughter of his “friends” at his desertion by Lydia. He was also thinking that he would have to return the “Fielding money” to Lydia in the event of a divorce.

“I’m not afraid of any notoriety or jeers, Rufus. For, you see, I don’t like people, and I’ve come to know what they are, and never in my life have I considered the opinions of others if those opinions were trivial or impudent or none of their affair. Perhaps that was selfish, in a way, for loneliness breeds selfishness, but it also made me indifferent to the passing views of strangers who are nothing to me.”

Rufus, who had always lived by and depended upon the good and admiring judgments of his fellows, and who could not endure life unless he was applauded, envied, and courted, felt that he was listening to an esoteric philosophy expressed in an alien language he only partly understood. He thought Lydia extremely peculiar and unfathomable, and then he did not entirely believe her.

“Divorce is out of the question,” he said flatly. “I am surprised you ever thought of such a disgusting thing.” He stood up again and began to walk up and down the room, frowning. He was angry, and humiliated. He said, “No, I don’t want you, Lydia, except on my own terms, and you know what they are. And we can’t possibly leave this house.”

“Why not, Rufus?” she asked pleadingly. “I never quarrel with your mother, and we are on more or less amiable terms, but still I’d like a home of my own. I never considered this my home, and now, by the terms of your father’s will, it isn’t your home, either.”

He was so stung at this, and so enraged, that he shouted, “But it will be, and perhaps not so long in the future, either!”

She stood up abruptly and her face whitened. “What are you talking about, Rufus? You can’t overthrow your father’s will; the lawyers said as much.”

He stopped near her and they looked at each other, Lydia taut and shaken, Rufus red and swollen of face, his hazel eyes on fire. He told himself, in his fury, that he hated her, hated her shallow and narrow principles, her smug judgment of him, her self-assurance that dared her to judge him at all and believe that she was right. What if he said to her that he had no intention of letting Stephen keep what he had, that he would endlessly plot, day and night, to deprive that fool of what should be his, Rufus’s, and that he would use every idiot weakness of character which his brother possessed to ruin him?

But it was his native caution, his mistrust of everybody, that held back what he wished to say. Lydia had become his enemy not only by her rejection of him but by her insistence that he abide by the terms of his father’s evil will. She was no longer to be trusted; perhaps, he thought, he had never had any real reason to trust her.

He forced himself to relax. He made himself smile, as if with amusement. “Why are you so disturbed, Liddie?” he asked softly. “I was merely saying that I regard this house as my home, and that I have already accepted Steve’s invitation to remain here. After all, I have lived in this house longer than he, and morally—you like that term, don’t you?—it is my house as well as his.”

There is something dangerous here, thought Lydia, with fearful anxiety. She regarded Rufus searchingly, but his smile was so open, so full of incipient laughter at her, that she began to feel foolish. Besides, what could Rufus do to Stephen? There was nothing he could do. She sighed. She began to move toward the door, her rosy gown trailing behind her. She hesitated on the threshold, then said gently, “Good night, Rufus,” and closed the door behind her.

Then it seemed to Rufus incredible that he had let her go, and that he had not accepted her in her gesture of consoling sympathy, and that without her there was nothing of real substance in his existence. He ran to the door, opened it, and called her name. The hall was empty. He stood there deeply shaken, and said to himself: I would have had to give up all my life, if she had heard me, and if a man gives up his life, what else is there? He shut the door.