Manslaughter. Alice Duer Miller
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trying to Lydia. She wearied of them, wearied, as Mariana in the Moated Grange. She had so often asked Benny not to do this to her and after all it was her house.
"You're very hard, my dear," said her companion—"very hard and very ignorant and very young. If you could only find an interest in such work as Mrs. Galton is doing——"
"Good heavens, was this a benevolent plot on your part to find me an interest?"
Miss Bennett looked dignified and a little stubborn, as if she were accustomed to being misunderstood, as if Lydia ought to have known that she had had a reason for what she did. As a matter of fact, she had no plan; she was not a plotter. That was one of the difficulties between her and Lydia. Lydia arranged her life, controlled her time and her surroundings. Miss Bennett amiably drifted, letting events and her friends control. She could never understand why Lydia held her responsible for situations which it seemed to her simply happened, and yet she could never resist pretending that she had deliberately brought them about. She began to think now that it had been her idea, not Mrs. Galton's, to get Lydia interested in prison reform.
"No one can be happy, Lydia, without an unselfish interest, something outside of themselves."
Lydia smiled. There was something pathetic in poor little ineffective Benny trying to arrange her life for her.
"I contrive to be fairly happy, thank you, Benny. I've got to leave you, because I have an engagement at Eleanor's at four, and it's ten minutes before now."
"Lydia, it's ten miles!"
"Ten miles—ten minutes."
"You'll be killed if you drive so recklessly."
"No Benny, because I drive very well."
"You'll be arrested then."
"Even less."
"How can you be so sure?"
That was something that it was better not to tell, so Lydia went away laughing, leaving Miss Bennett to wonder, as she always did after one of these interviews, how it was possible to feel so superior to Lydia when they were apart and so ineffectual when they were together. She always came to the same conclusion—that she was betrayed by her own fineness; that she was more aware of shades, of traditions than this little daughter of a workingman. Lydia was not little. She was half a foot taller than Adeline Bennett's own modest five-feet-two, but the adjective expressed a latent wish. Miss Bennett often introduced it into her descriptions. A nice little man, a clever little woman, a dear little person were some of her favorite tags. They made her bulk larger in her own vision.
The little daughter of the workingman ran upstairs for her hat. She found her maid, Evans, engaged in polishing her jewels. The rite of polishing Miss Thorne's jewels took place in the bathroom, which was also a dressing room, containing long mirrors, a dressing table, cupboards with glass doors through which Miss Thorne's bright hats and beribboned underclothes showed faintly. It was carpeted and curtained and larger than many a hall bedroom.
Here Evans, a pale, wistful English girl, was spreading out the jewelry as she finished each piece, laying them on a white towel where the rays of the afternoon sun fell upon them—the cabochon ruby like a dome of frozen blood, the flat, clear diamond as blue as ice, and the band of emeralds and diamonds for her hair flashing rays of green and orange lights. Lydia liked her jewelry for the best of all reasons—she had bought most of it herself. She particularly liked the emerald band, which made her look like an Eastern princess in a Russian ballet, and in her opinion exactly fitted her type. But her beauty was not so easily classified as she thought. To describe her in words was to describe a picture by Cabanel of The Star of the Harem—such a picture as the galleries of the second half of the nineteenth century were sure to contain—the oval face, the splendid dark eyes, the fine black eyebrows, the raven hair; but Lydia's skin was not transparently white, and a slight heightening of her cheek bones and a thrust forward of her jaw suggested something more Indian than Eastern, something that made her seem more at home on a mountain trail than on the edge of a marble pool.
As she entered, Evans was brushing the last traces of powder from a little diamond bracelet less modern than the other pieces. Lydia took it in her hand.
"I almost forgot I had that," she said.
Three or four years before, when she had first known Bobby Dorset, when they had been very young, he had given it to her. It had been his mother's, and she had worn it constantly for a year or so. An impulse of tenderness made her slip it on her arm now, and as it clung there like a living pressure the heavy feeling of it faintly revived a whole cycle of old emotions. She thought to herself that she had some human affections after all.
"It ought to be reset, miss," said Evans. "The gold spoils the diamonds."
"You do keep my things beautifully, Evans."
The girl colored at the praise, not often given by her rapidly moving young mistress, and the muscles twitched in her throat.
"A hat—any hat, Evans."
She pulled it on with one quick, level glance in the glass, and was gone with the bracelet, half forgotten, on her arm.
During the few minutes that Lydia had been upstairs a conflict had gone on in the mind of Miss Bennett downstairs. Should she be offended or should she be superior? Was it more dignified to be angry because she really could not allow herself to be treated like that? Or should she forgive because she was obviously so much older and wiser than Lydia?
She decided—as she always did—in favor of forgiveness, and as she heard Lydia's quick light footsteps crossing the hall she called out, "Don't drive the little car too fast!"
"Not over sixty," Lydia's voice answered.
As she sprang into the gray runabout waiting at the door with its front wheels turned invitingly outward, pressed on the self-starter with her foot, slid the gears in without a sound, it looked as if she intended her reply to be taken literally. But the speedometer registered only thirty on her own drive—thirty-five as she straightened out on the highway. As she said, she never drove fast without a good reason.
Like most people of her type and situation, Lydia was habitually late. The reason she gave to herself was that she crowded a little more activity into the twenty-four hours than those who managed to be on time. But the true reason was that she preferred to be waited for rather than to run any risk of waiting herself. It seemed a distinct humiliation to her that she should await anyone else's convenience. To-day, however, she had a motive for being on time—that is to say, not more than twenty minutes late. They were going to play bridge at Eleanor's and Bobby would be there; and for some reason she never understood it fussed Bobby if she were late and everyone began abusing her behind her back; and if Bobby were fussed he lost money, and he couldn't afford to lose it. She hated Bobby to lose money—minded it for him more than he minded it for himself.
One of the facts that she saw most clearly in regard to her own life was that the man she married must be a man of importance, not only because her friends expected that of her but because she needed a purpose, a heightened interest—a great man in her life. Yet strangely enough the only men to whom her heart had ever softened were idle, worthless men, of whom Bobby was only a sample. Among women she liked the positive qualities—courage, brilliance, achievement; but among men she seemed to have selected those who needed a strong controlling hand upon their destiny. Benny said it was the maternal in her, but less friendly critics said it was the boss. Perhaps the two are not so dissociated as is generally thought. Lydia repudiated the maternal explanation without finding another. Only she knew that the very thing that made her fond of men like Bobby prevented her falling in love with them; whereas the men with whom it seemed possible to fall in love were men with whom she always quarreled, so that instead of love there was not even friendship.
Some years before she had been actually engaged to be married—though the engagement had never been announced—to an Englishman, a thin, hawk-faced man, the Marquis of Ilseboro. She was not in love with him, though he was a man with whom women did fall in love. Benny had been crazy about him. He was companionable in a silent sort of