# The Steadfast Heart/Chapter 31

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
A cool breeze—one of those breezes with which the State of Michigan delights its inhabitants in the month of September—blew through the open bank window behind Gene Goff. Gene filled his lungs with it and turned his face that it might pass across his heated cheeks. He stretched his arms high above his head and yawned…. The gesture was arrested in mid-career, the yawn came to an untimely, unsatisfying end. Gene’s mouth remained open and he all but fell over backward from his tall stool, for entering the bank door were two women, one old, one young and very lovely—and that one, his eyes told him, was Lydia Canfield…. He could not believe his eyes. Even when Lydia approached the grating and smiled as only Lydia could smile, his astonishment was not abated sufficiently to allow of the ordinary function of speech.
“Is Mr. Burke in?” Lydia asked timidly.
Gene closed his mouth with a click and nodded vigorously in the affirmative—jerked his thumb ​with permission toward Angus’s door…. Lydia flushed, glanced apprehensively at the door, and turned for reinforcement to her great-aunt.
“Stop your gawping, young man,” said that imposing old lady, “and show us in…. No, you go alone, Lydia. That’ll be best. I’ll come when—and if—you want me.”
Lydia walked hesitatingly to Angus’s door and rapped timidly. His voice summoned her to enter—that voice which she had so yearned to hear. She turned the knob, pushed open the door and stepped within, flushed, trembling, happy, expectant… apprehensive. Now that she was actually coming into Angus’s presence she was afraid for the first time, fearful of what reception he might grant her…. Yet she was so eager to see him, had so counted the hours until she could reach him…. She stood just within the door waiting piteously.
“Angus,” she said. “Angus….”
She could see Angus’s hand quiver as it rested upon the arm of his chair; his eyes gazed at her hungrily; spots of white appeared at the corners of his jaw under the muscular tension…. He stared at her, neither speaking nor moving.
“Angus,” she said again softly, “I’ve come back—to you—if you want me.”
Even now he did not move or speak, but ​continued to stare at her with a queer, unwelcoming, fixed stare. She drew a quick breath of fright. How he was acting! How cold he was, and unresponsive! Where was his joy at sight of her, his glad welcome? There was no rushing to greet her, no enfolding in his arms, no murmured rapture such as she had pictured…. Angus only sat as one frozen and gave her that strange, level, forbidding stare.
“Angus,” she said a third time, “don’t—don’t you want me?”
He drew his shoulders together, clutched his coat and loosed it again. Then he stood up, took one step toward her, and halted. When he spoke his voice was without life, leaden, dull, barren of all emotion.
“You’re not coming back to me,” he said, “not to Angus Burke…. You’re coming back to the family I’ve found.” It was only by a tremendous effort, visible to Lydia, that he kept control of himself. Presently he commenced to speak again. “If you had come before I would have been glad—glad. I would have known it was to me—because you could forget everything in your love for me…. But you did not come—until I was no longer Angus Burke. You left me because my father found me—you have come back because I have found my grandfather….”
​Lydia did not understand; her eyes opened wide with fear and pain. What did he mean? What was this talk of grandfathers and of coming before? Before what?… But one thing she comprehended: Angus was refusing to receive her….
Her pride was dead; nothing but love remained, and she could plead with him, plead for her love and for her happiness. “I could not stay away any longer,” she said…. “I have been miserable… I have wanted you, Angus…. Oh, how I have wanted you!…”
He shook his head. “You did not come. You didn’t even write. You gave me no word, not a word to pin a hope upon—while things were as they were…. You didn’t care…. But now this—this news reaches you. You hear who I am, what blood is mine and what family I have the right to claim… and that brings you back…. But I am the same. Nothing has changed me. I am still Angus Burke, the same flesh and blood and mind and heart—unchanged…. Titus Burke was my father. I do not see how it can make a difference who my mother was…. No…. You should not have come…. I could respect you before—when you—were true to—what you believed….”
“Angus… Angus… what are you ​talking about? I don’t understand you. What has happened?”
Angus smiled, not bitterly, but with a sort of dumb resignation. “We can’t start over again—not now. You—went away. You would have stayed away if I had remained nothing but Titus Burke’s son—the son of a thief, the son of a man whose presence you couldn’t bear….” His voice rose a trifle with the effort he put into the control of it. “But I am the same. I tell you I am different in nothing. I am Angus Burke…. Because I have found a family, because I chance to be somebody now whose grandfather and great-grandfather were men to be proud of… that doesn’t alter me…. Nor because I will some day be rich…. That’s the point, Lydia. You aren’t coming back to me, because you love me, because you need me—but because my grandfather is Henry G. Woodhouse and my mother was his daughter…. I cannot take you back. It wouldn’t be fair… to myself.” He opened and shut his hands. “If only you had come—before….”
Lydia rested against the door for support, fumbled at the knob…. This was terrible, unbelievable, unthinkable…. She did not understand what had happened in spite of his words, and she would have gone on her knees to him had she thought it would have availed, but she ​knew him; knew his will, the strength of his resolutions and his immovability from a position which he believed to be right. Nothing could help her now, nothing could give back to her the happiness she had thrown away. His mind was made up—he would not take her back into his heart…. His love for her was dead….
She opened the door, tottered out of the room, and hurried blindly toward great-aunt Margaret…. Her brain was in a turmoil, a confused mass of misunderstandings, miscomprehensions, vexed her. His words, save those relating to herself, she had not comprehended—his words of finding a family, of grandfathers and of wealth…. All she realized was that she stood rejected, was not to be taken back—would never be his wife as she had dreamed. She threw her arms about great-aunt Margaret’s neck and sobbed, openly and unashamed. “He won’t have me…. He’s sending me away… sending me away.”
“Huh,” great-aunt Margaret snorted. “What I expected. What any self-respecting man would do…. Sit down. I’ll see him now.”
She placed Lydia in a chair and went herself to Angus’s door which she opened without ceremony and entered without permission.
“Mr. Burke,” she said abruptly, “I’m Lydia’s great-aunt and I’ve come all the way from Paris ​to get this thing straightened out. I’m a meddlesome old woman, and I glory in it. I’m an old woman, and that means a great deal, young man…. Lydia says you won’t take her back.” She flicked the last sentence at Angus with disconcerting suddenness.
Angus shook his head. “No,” he said dully. “I can’t take her back.”
“Why?”
After a moment’s hesitation Angus replied. “You know why Lydia went away. It was because my family was—not— It was because my father, just released from prison, came to me—to die. I wouldn’t, couldn’t turn him out…. If she had come back in a month, two months, I—it would have been all right. But she didn’t come. She waited for my father to die. She waited until she heard who my mother was. That’s why she came back. It wasn’t for me…. It was only because I am Henry G. Woodhouse’s grandson…. So, you see, I couldn’t take her back.”
“Henry G. Woodhouse’s grandson!” Great-aunt Margaret’s expression was one of such genuine astonishment as to be beyond questioning. “What are you talking about, young man?”
Angus regarded her gravely, questioningly. She did not appear to be a woman who would make a lying pretense of ignorance, or who would ​act a part. To Angus she looked what she was, an aristocratic old lady, a willful old lady, an old lady who would be above meanness or intrigue, and who would sacrifice much for the thing called honor. She forestalled his reply.
“Do you mean that something has happened since Lydia went away? That—but how could you be Henry G.’s grandson? It’s impossible.”
“His daughter was my father’s wife,” said Angus, “and my mother.”
“Kate, who ran away?”
“She ran away with my father.”
Great-aunt Margaret laid her long, slender, beautifully kept hand upon Angus’s arm. “Young man,” she said, “this is the first time I have heard that fact. I did not know it. Lydia did not know it. No such word has reached us…. I give you my word of honor. Do you know where Lydia has been?”
“No.”
“She has been with me in Paris. She has had no communication whatever with Rainbow, and knew nothing of what happened here. She came back to you—to you. She believed your father still alive. She didn’t know, doesn’t realize now, that you are anybody but Angus Burke. How could she know?… You should have seen her and been with her during these long months, young man…. Then you’d know…. She ​loves you, sir. That, and no other reason, is why she came back.”
She saw that he wanted to believe, but dared not believe.
“I am telling you the truth,” she said simply. “She did not know until you told her in this room.”
She watched the movement, the alteration, of Angus Burke’s face, and. Spartan as she was, she saw him dimly through a mist. She saw a transformation, a marvelous transformation from stony grief, from heartbroken determination, to wonder, belief, joy…. She saw a face that had appeared to her at first to be dull, phlegmatic, incapable of emotions, become endowed with life, with mobility, with a wonderful sweetness and expressiveness. She witnessed the miracle of Angus Burke emerging from himself, shaking off the weight of things that had been, shaking them off forever, and coming finally, gloriously, into his own. All these things she saw, and, at last, she saw gleaming in his eyes a great relief, a joy, a hunger—a welling up from a heart which had lain cold, weighted, bitter…. She saw him start toward the door….
“I’ll call her in,” said great-aunt Margaret, and she went out of the room.
Angus stood hesitating now; afraid now, ​dubious now of what might come…. Then great-aunt Margaret led her protegée to the door, opened it and pushed her inside, herself remaining without triumphant. Angus took a step forward, his arms half lifted toward Lydia….
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t understand….”
Lydia lifted her eyes to his eyes, stood gazing, holding herself back from him until she could be sure. He approached another step, his eyes pleading…. She smiled, reached out and touched his cheek gently, timidly. “My dear…” she whispered. “Take me…. Hold me…. Never let me go again….”
THE END