It was then that Stephen moved away from them all and left the room, and another part of him died, as it had died with Alice’s death.
Slowly and wearily he climbed the stairs to the “guest chamber.” The house was ominously silent about him, his father gone, the friends departed, the flowers vanished with only a ghost of their lost presence permeating the empty rooms. Not even a servant was about; no lamps had as yet been lighted. Stephen walked down the long hall, which fled with mysterious shadows. He entered the chamber where he had spent so many tortured months, and the low fire on the hearth threw coppery reflections of itself over the walls and ceiling. Here he could hear the wind that blew up from the low chasm below the room; it battered on the windows in a long curtain of snow. He did not light a lamp, but stood by the window which showed him the ranks of white mountains and the black slow river between them.
There was heat in his forehead, and he leaned it against the cold glass. He tried to think, to understand, but his mind was deeply confused and wretched. Part of him still denied what he had heard in the library, but now a bitter hardness like the stone in a withered fruit thrust itself into his thoughts. He could taste that bitterness, feel that jagged hardness; and it seemed to him that he had changed very much this past year and that something had become wizened in him, something which had been whole and sound. I did not know; I did not want it, he said to himself. Why did my father do this?
Now the fever in him became stronger, and he suddenly tore at the windows and opened them and stepped out upon the narrow iron balcony which leaned over the turbulent abyss falling down to the stones and river below. The wind assaulted him; the snow blinded him. He stood there, shivering but hot, feeling the hostility and rejection of the big house behind him, and unwilling to enter it again and see the inimical faces, the averted eyes, the scorn and detestation and suspiciousness. How was he going to live with his mother and his brother in this house, which had been given to him outright?
Then he knew that this was exactly what Aaron desired: that Stephen would find the presence of his mother and brother intolerable in this house, or that they would, if he offered them shelter here, contemptuously refuse.
He stepped out into the hall again, resolute. But for some reason obscure to him, the darkness and the flitting of pale shadows in the corridor made him hesitate, confused him again. He thought to himself vaguely: I must see the child. So, instead of turning toward the great staircase, he went to the nursery. He opened the door to firelit warmth and peace. The nurse was drowsing by the window, but she had not as yet lighted a lamp. Stephen crept soundlessly toward the two cribs where the babies lay, side by side, near the fire. Little Cornelia, a year old, was awake, and sitting up playing with her small rosy hands. She was a beautiful child, all amber and burnish and dimples, and she gave her uncle a gay smile and a chuckle. She was always ready to play, for she was full of health and vitality, like her father, and for some inexplicable reason she had taken an immense fancy to Stephen. Looking at that lovely baby now, her red hair a mass of bright curls over her head, Stephen was intensely struck by renewed anger and indignation against his father. Aaron had dispossessed this laughing little one; he had humiliated and almost destroyed her father; he had shamed her mother. She laughed aloud, pulled on his hand and tried to get to her plump feet. It was then that Lydia, unseen by Stephen in the shadows on the other side of the fireplace, stood up and approached him.
Of course, she can’t bear to have me touch her child, thought Stephen humbly. He shrank away from the crib, and just stood there, his shoulders bent, his hands hanging at his side. Now mingled pity and scorn shone in Lydia’s eyes, and she said quietly, “Did you come to see little Laura, Stephen? She is asleep.” Lydia went to the other crib, bent over it, and regarded the child there with a strange and brooding expression. Stephen fumbled his way to the crib. There lay his daughter, small and slender and almost colorless in contrast with the flaming beauty of her cousin. For the first time Stephen thought with surprise: Why, she looks like Lydia! Tentatively, he touched his child’s face with his forefinger, and a deep and intolerable yearning overwhelmed him again for Alice.
He muttered urgently to Lydia, “I’m sorry; I’m terribly sorry. …”
Still regarding little Laura, Lydia did not move. Her hands were clenched rigidly on the side of the crib. “For what?” she asked. He stammered: “For my father’s will. I didn’t know, believe me.”
The nurse was rousing and getting to her feet sheepishly. Lydia turned her fine dark head and asked her to leave the room for a few moments. She waited until the woman had gone, then straightened up and stared contemplatively at Stephen. She said, “Of course you didn’t know. Did I say that you did, Stephen?”
“But my mother, and Rufus—” Stephen began in his halting voice.
Lydia was silent. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time, and was not particularly pleased at what she saw. Finally she spoke, and there was an edge to her voice: “Stephen, I once thought I knew why Alice loved and married you. I’m not sure but what she was mistaken after all.”
Stephen looked at her dumbly, and each of the cruel words seemed to crash not only against his ears but his heart. “What—what are you saying, Lydia? How can you speak so? Do you know what I am going to do? I am going to ask my mother and my brother to remain in this house, with me and my child. I am going to consult with Rufus about breaking our father’s will. I am going to try to rectify this incredible wrong. What more can I do?”
Now the scorn in Lydia’s eyes was an icy blaze. She tried to speak, then compressed her lips. She moved a few paces away from him and stood with her back to him, looking at the fire. He could see that her hands were gripped together as if she were fighting for control. Her tall thin figure was outlined by the fire, and the black silk glistened softly as it fell in folds from the tight bodice, and her black hair was outlined with an umber shadow. Never before had Lydia seemed formidable to the distressed Stephen, but now she was like a stranger. Then he heard her speaking: “I had hoped you were beginning to learn, to see a little. There is a difference between an utterly amoral man and a complete fool.”
He could not understand her. He could only stand there, and she saw his gentle, haggard face, the suffering in his eyes, and the bewilderment. Her shoulders dropped as if in resignation, and her face softened as she sighed. She came to him and took his arm. “Stephen, try to see. Try not to be so enslaved to emotions. Come downstairs with me now, and talk with your mother and brother.”
Grasping Stephen as if he were a prisoner who might try to escape, she led him from the room. In silence, they went down the stairs together. Lydia did not speak until they had reached the hall, and then she said in a low and peremptory voice, “Try to remember something, Stephen. Your father left you what he did; he had a reason. It is too much to expect that you might understand that reason, but at least you can put out of your mind that it was a malevolent one,”
“What else?” he muttered, but she gave his arm a strong pull and he went with her into the drawing room where his mother and brother were sitting in a bleak and violent silence, not looking at each other. When Lydia and Stephen entered they started, exchanged charged glances, then turned away. Lydia said in a slow and distinct tone, “Stephen has something to say to you, I believe.” She dropped his arm, moved to the fireplace, and yet confronted him in upright challenge. Her eyes commanded him, gave him a warning he could not comprehend.
Sophia sat in her mound of rustling black silk, a commanding and dominant woman, her gray hair a little disheveled, her large, strong-featured face full of bitter hatred and aversion. She was ashen-pale; her hazel eyes blazed at Stephen as if all her long repudiation of him had come to a focus which would hurl him out of her sight. Rufus only sat there as if his brother were not present at all, one of his clenched fists ground into his ruddy cheek, his sleek legs coiled as though to spring and attack.
“What can he say?” cried Sophia harshly. ?
??After what he has done?” She moved her body as if to start back from a repulsive presence, and she flung up one hand, glittering with diamonds, in a somewhat histrionic gesture.
Stephen, confronted by all this savage rage and disgust for him, could not speak. What have I done to deserve this? he thought. They have always hated me. …
“I have been thinking. This is your home, Ma, and it is your home, Rufus. Rufus, your child was born here, and you have lived here with your wife. I lived here but a short time, and then when Alice and I were married, Pa gave us our old house.”
He paused, and a most shattering thought came to him: Why were Alice and I not invited to remain here? Why was it understood that we should understand that we’d not be welcome? Why did they despise Alice? Because she was good and innocent and gentle? Or because she was my wife?
Sophia and Rufus, though manifesting complete contempt, and pretense that they had not heard Stephen, had become very stiff and still in their chairs. Lydia said sharply, “Stephen! Why have you stopped talking? They are waiting to hear what you have to say.”
Alice, thought Stephen. She was exiled with disdain from this house. When she came, she came on sneering sufferance, and she was rallied and badgered. I used to see tears in her dear eyes. My little Alice. He straightened and involuntarily glanced at Lydia, and her pale face was very set and intent upon him. His voice was stronger when he went on: “It is my intention to ask you to remain in—in our—home. It is impossible that you, Ma, and you, Rufus, leave. In spite of the terms of Pa’s will, this is your home. You can’t leave.”
Sophia exclaimed with loud loathing, “Indeed, sir! Do you think for a moment that I intend to remain in a house,my house, from which I have been dispossessed? I don’t know what you did to your father, or how you cajoled him all the months you were whining and sickening after Alice died, or how you persuaded him, when he was so ill and you lured him into the guest chamber so you could pervert his mind and turn his natural affections away from his wife and his son! But you did it! How could he know, ill as he was, and not in his right and legal mind, what you were doing to him, under your hypocritical pretending that you were grieving for your wife!”
Stephen listened to this with horror. He stepped back into the shadows. For almost the first time in his life his hands turned into fists. They believe this! he said inwardly. Revulsion so tremendous rushed into every part of his body that he began to tremble and his sallow face glimmered as if with lightning.
“‘Not in his right and legal mind,’” repeated Rufus, as if struck. He sat up in his chair and his hazel eyes, so like his mother’s, began to sparkle savagely. “Of course! He had been ill for long over a year, and had no control over his senses. Undue influence, as I said before.”
Then Lydia spoke, and her voice was as clear and sharp as an icicle: “The will was made on February 15, 1865—two years ago. Have you forgotten?”
Sophia swung around in her chair and looked at Lydia with outraged violence. Her mouth opened to shout, and then the impact of what Lydia had said came to her, and her face collapsed into deep folds and wrinkles. Rufus fell back in his chair, and his features tightened.
“You have only one quarrel, if there is a quarrel, with the codicil, leaving little Laura that twenty-five thousand dollars,” Lydia continued. “However, it can be proved that though Rufus and I have had returned to us my parents’ money, none of Alice’s share was so returned. And it was much more than twenty-five thousand dollars. It was nearly fifty.”
She swung to Stephen, who stood in shadow, and she made an eloquent gesture with her hands to him as if saying: You see how it is.
“What have I done, Lydia, to turn you against me like this?” asked Rufus of his wife, and his voice was genuinely broken and husky. “Is it too much of a man to expect that his wife be loyal to him, at least?”
“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Lydia with impatient vehemence. “Rufus, you aren’t a fool. I was just stating a truth which you apparently were attempting to ignore.”
Rufus considered this, and turned a deep red. “Yes, you are right, of course, Liddie. But somehow, the influence occurred. It was always understood—”
“By whom?” demanded Lydia. She came closer into the wide circle of firelight. “By you? By your mother?” Her face flamed with scorn.
“Pa spoke of Cornelia as his ‘heiress,’” said Rufus, and it seemed from his tone that he was pleading with his wife. “It was in this very room, on the night our child was born.”
Lydia laughed drearily. “Did it ever come to you that perhaps he was mocking you? You know how he was. He was an evil man—”
“How dare you, you wretch?” screamed Sophia, starting to her feet. “How dare you speak so of my husband?”
Now Rufus, angered, got up. “Ma! What are you calling Lydia, my wife?”
Lydia flashed him a wry but gentle look. “Never mind, Rufus. One must remember the circumstances. But I haven’t finished. I repeat that Aaron deWitt was an evil man, and he knew it, and enjoyed being evil. However, he wasn’t stupid; he had a most excellent mind, astute and comprehending. And he made Stephen his heir for what seemed to him good and sufficient reasons. I don’t intend to discuss those reasons, which are very obvious to unprejudiced people such as myself. Don’t look at me so uncomprehendingly, Rufus; don’t look so. amazed. And your father didn’t leave you penniless. We have a great deal of money, and you have a lot of stock in the company, and you are to be executive vice-president. It is your pride that has been attacked, and I sympathize though I don’t agree.”
All this time Stephen had not moved. He was lost in the shadows, his head bent. But he was thinking, and his bitterness was a deathly taste in his mouth. He said to himself: I’ve been a fool. I don’t know just how, but I have. His sorrow for Alice was like a freshly bleeding wound in him. He forgot what he had been about to offer his brother.
Sophia had fallen back into her chair, and she was sobbing desperately. “An evil man—my husband!” she cried. “My husband, my poor, betrayed husband, dying alone in his bed only three days ago! My husband, lied to, cajoled, tormented out of his wits by a thief and a rascal who used his wife’s death to gain his ends!”
Stephen stirred from the shadow and came into the firelight. He looked only at his mother and his small brown eyes were like circles of phosphorescence. “Don’t, Ma,” he said in a very strange voice. “Don’t lie any longer. And don’t ever mention Alice’s name again, ever. If you do, I shall ask you to leave this house and never put foot into it again.”
Sophia dropped her hands from her wet face and stared at him with complete amazement. Rufus, standing beside his wife, was also astonished.
“What are you saying? Are you mad? You never talked like this before,” said Rufus in a hushed tone.
“No, I never did,” said Stephen. “Because, you see, though it has always been there for anyone to observe, I was blind, and a fool.”
Sophia was enormously shaken. She still could not believe that this unobtrusive and gentle son of hers, this hesitant and retreating son who was the object of the derision of a whole city, could speak as he had done. He had dared to put on the stature of a man, and this outraged her more than anything else.
She rose dramatically, and pointed her finger at him, but she looked at Rufus. “He dares to speak so to your mother, and you do not knock him down!”
Rufus smiled, and said dryly, “You are also his mother. And his objections are only just.”
He bowed ironically at Stephen. “We accept your kind offer to remain in the house. Your hourse. And I must say, Steve, that had I been in your place, I wouldn’t have made that offer.”
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 w
ith 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.