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Title: The Prisoner
Author: Alice Brown
Release Date: July 10, 2009 [EBook #29366]
Language: English
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THE PRISONER
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE PRISONER
BY
ALICE BROWN
AUTHOR OF "MY LOVE AND I," "CHILDREN OF
EARTH," "ROSE MACLEOD," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1916
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1916
Reprinted June, 1916 July, 1916 Twice August, 1916.
THE PRISONER
I
There could not have been a more sympathetic moment for coming into the
country town--or, more accurately, the inconsiderable city--of Addington
than this clear twilight of a spring day. Anne and Lydia French with
their stepfather, known in domestic pleasantry as the colonel, had hit
upon a perfect combination of time and weather, and now they stood in a
dazed silence, dense to the proffers of two hackmen with the urgency of
twenty, and looked about them. That inquiring pause was as if they had
expected to find, even at the bare, sand-encircled station, the imagined
characteristics of the place they had so long visualised. The handsome
elderly man, clean-shaven, close-clipped, and, at intervals when he
recalled himself to a stand against discouragement, almost military in
his bearing, was tired, but entrenched in a patient calm. The girls were
profoundly moved in a way that looked like gratitude: perhaps, too,
exalted as if, after reverses, they had reached a passionately desired
goal. Anne was the elder sister, slender and sweet, grave with the
protective fostering instinct of mothers in a maidenly hiding, ready to
come at need. She wore her plain blue clothes as if unconscious of them
and their incomplete response to the note of time. A woman would have
detected that she trimmed her own hat, a flat, wide-brimmed straw with a
formless bow and a feather worthy only in long service. A man would
have cherished the memory of her thin rose-flushed face with the crisp
touches of sedate inquiry about the eyes. "Do you want anything?" Anne's
eyes were always asking clearly. "Let me get it for you." But even a man
thus tenderly alive to her charm would have thought her older than she
was, a sweet sisterly creature to be reverentially regarded.
Lydia was the product of a different mould. She was the woman, though a
girl in years and look, not removed by chill timidities from woman's
normal hopes, the clean animal in her curved mouth, the trick of parting
her lips for a long breath because, for the gusto of life, the ordinary
breath wouldn't always do, and showing most excellent teeth, the little
square chin, dauntless in strength, the eyes dauntless, too, and hair
all a brown gloss with high lights on it, very free about her forehead.
She was not so tall as Anne, but graciously formed and plumper.
Curiously, they did not seem racially unlike the colonel who, to their
passionate loyalties, was "father" not a line removed. In the delicacy
of his patrician type he might even have been "grandfather", for he
looked older than he was, the worsted prey of circumstance. He had met
trouble that would not be evaded, and if he might be said to have
conquered, it was only from regarding it with a perplexed immobility, so
puzzling was it in a world where honour, he thought, was absolutely
defined and a social crime as inexplicable as it was rending.
And while the three wait to have their outlines thus inadequately
sketched, the hackman waits, too, he of a more persistent hope than his
fellows who have gone heavily rolling away to the stable, it being now
six o'clock and this the last train.
Lydia was a young woman of fervid recognitions. She liked to take a day
and stamp it for her own, to say of this, perhaps: "It was the ninth of
April when we went to Addington, and it was a heavenly day. There was a
clear sky and I could see Farvie's beautiful nose and chin against it
and Anne's feather all out of curl. Dear Anne! dear Farvie! Everything
smelled of dirt, good, honest dirt, not city sculch, and I heard a
robin. Anne heard him, too. I saw her smile." But really what Anne
plucked out of the moment was a blurred feeling of peace. The day was
like a cool, soft cheek, the cheek one kisses with calm affection,
knowing it will not be turned away. It was she who first became aware of
Denny, the hackman, and said to him in her liquid voice that laid bonds
of kind responsiveness:
"Do you know the old Blake house?"
Denny nodded. He was a soft, loosely made man with a stubby moustache
picked out in red and a cheerfully dishevelled air of having been up all
night.
"The folks moved out last week," said he. "You movin' in?"
"Yes," Lydia supplied, knowing her superior capacity over the other two,
for meeting the average man. "We're moving in. Farvie, got the checks?"
Denny accepted the checks and, in a neighbourly fashion, helped the
station master in selecting the trunks, no large task when there was but
a drummer's case besides. He went about this meditatively, inwardly
searching out the way of putting the question that should elicit the
identity of his fares. There was a way, he knew. But they had seated
themselves in the hack, and now explained that if he would take two
trunks along the rest could come with the freight due at least by
to-morrow; and he had driven them through the wide street bordered with
elms and behind them what Addington knew as "house and grounds" before
he thought of a way. It was when he had bumped the trunks into the
empty hall and Lydia was paying him from a smart purse of silver given
her by her dancing pupils that he got hold of his inquisitorial outfit.
"I don't know," said Denny, "as I know you folks. Do you come from round
here?"
Lydia smiled at him pleasantly.
"Good night," said she. "Get the freight round in the morning, won't
you? and be sure you bring somebody to help open the crates."
Then Denny climbed sorrowfully up on his box, and when he looked round
he found them staring there as they had stared at the station: only now
he saw they were in a row and "holding hands".
"I think," said Lydia, in rather a hushed voice, as if she told the
others a pretty secret, "it's a very beautiful place."
"You girls haven't been here, have you?" asked the colonel.
"No," said Anne, "you'd just let it when we came to live with you."
Both girls used that delicate shading of their adoptive tie with him.
They and their mother, now these three years dead, had "come to live
with" him when they were little girls and their mother married him. They
never suggested that mother married him any time within their
remembrance. In their determined state of mind he belonged not only to
the never-ending end when he and they and mother were to meet in a
gardened heaven with running streams and bowery trees, but as well to
the vague past when they were little girls. Their own father they had
memory of only as a disturbing large person in rough tweed smelling of
office smoke, who was always trying to get somewhere before the domestic
exigencies of breakfast and carriage would let him, and who dropped dead
one day trying to do it. Anne saw him fall right in the middle of the
gravel walk, and ran to tell mother father had stubbed his toe. And when
she heard mother scream, and noted father's really humorous obstinacy
about getting up, and saw the cook even and the coachman together trying
to persuade him, she got a strong distaste for father; and when about
two years afterward she was asked if she would accept this other older
father, she agreed to him with cordial expectation. He was gentle and
had a smooth, still voice. His clothes smelled of Russia leather and
lead pencils and at first of very nice smoke: not as if he had sat in a
tight room all day and got cured in the smoke of other rank pipes like a
helpless ham, but as if a pleasant acrid perfume were his special
atmosphere.
"They haven't done much to the garden, have they?" he asked now, poking
with his stick in the beds under the windows. "I suppose you girls know
what these things are, coming up. There's a peony. I do know that. I
remember this one. It's the old dark kind, not pink. I don't much care
for a pink piny."
The big front yard sloping up to the house was almost full of shrubbery
in a state of overgrown prosperity. There were lilacs, dark with buds,
and what Anne, who was devotedly curious in matters of growing life,
thought althea, snowball and a small-leaved yellow rose. All this
runaway shrubbery looked, in a way of speaking, inpenetrable. It would
have taken so much trouble to get through that you would have felt
indiscreet in trying it. The driveway only seemed to have been brave
enough to pass it without getting choked up, a road that came in at the
big gateway, its posts marked by haughty granite balls, accomplished a
leisurely curve and went out at another similar gateway as proudly
decorated. The house held dignified seclusion there behind the
shrubbery, waiting, Lydia thought, to be found. You could not really
see it from the street: only above the first story and blurred, at that,
by rowan trees. But the two girls facing it there at near range and the
colonel with the charm of old affection playing upon him like airs of
paradise, thought the house beautiful. It was of mellow old brick with
white trimmings and a white door, and at the left, where the eastern sun
would beat, a white veranda. It came up into a kindly gambrel roof and
there were dormers. Lydia saw already how fascinating those chambers
must be. There was a trellis over the door and jessamine swinging from
it. The birds in the shrubbery were eloquent. A robin mourned on one
complaining note and Anne, wise also in the troubles of birds, looked
low for the reason and found, sitting with tail wickedly twitching at
the tip, a brindled cat. Being gentle in her ways and considering that
all things have rights, she approached him with crafty steps and a
murmured hypnotic, "kitty! kitty!" got her hands on him, and carried him
off down the drive, to drop him in the street and suggest, with a
warning pat and conciliating stroke, the desirability of home.
The colonel, following Lydia's excited interest, poked with his stick
for a minute or more at a bed under the front window, where something
lush seemed to be coming up, and Lydia, losing interest when she found
it was only pudding-bags, picked three sprays of flowering almond for
decorating purposes and drew him toward a gate at the east side of the
house where, down three rotting steps, lay level land. The end of it
next the road was an apple orchard coming into an amazingly early bloom,
a small secluded paradise. A high brick wall shut it from the road and
ran down for fifty feet or so between it and the adjoining place. There
a grey board fence took up the boundary and ran on, with a less
definite markedness to the eye, until it skirted a rise far down the
field and went on over the rise to lands unknown, at least to Lydia.
"Farvie, come!" she cried.
She pulled him down the crumbling steps to the soft sward and looked
about her with a little murmured note of happy expectation. She loved
the place at once, and gave up to the ecstasy of loving it "good and
hard," she would have said. These impulsive passions of her nature had
always made her greatest joys. They were like robust bewildering
playmates. She took them to her heart, and into her bed at night to help
her dream. There was nothing ever more warm and grateful than Lydia's
acceptances and her trust in the bright promise of the new. Anne didn't
do that kind of thing. She hesitated at thresholds and looked forward,
not distrustfully but gravely, into dim interiors.
"Farvie, dear," said Lydia, "I love it just as much now as I could in a
hundred years. It's our house. I feel as if I'd been born in it."
Farvie looked about over the orchard, under its foam of white and pink;
his eyes suffused and he put his delicate lips firmly together. But all
he said was:
"They haven't kept the trees very well pruned."
"There's Anne," said Lydia, loosing her hold of his sleeve. She ran
light-footedly back to Anne, and patted her with warm receptiveness.
"Anne, look: apple trees, pear trees, peach in that corner. See that big
bush down there."
"Quince," said Anne dreamily. She had her hat off now, and her fine soft
brown hair, in silky disorder, attracted her absent-minded care. But
Lydia had pulled out the pin of her own tight little hat with its
backward pointing quill and rumpled her hair in the doing and never
knew it; now she transfixed the hat with a joyous stab.
"Never mind your hair," said she. "What idiots we were to write to the
Inn. Why couldn't we stay here to-night? How can we leave it? We can't.
Did you ever see such a darling place? Did you ever imagine a brick wall
like that? Who built it, Farvie? Who built the brick wall?"
Farvie was standing with his hands behind him, thinking back, the girls
knew well, over the years. A mournful quiet was in his face. They could
follow for a little way the cause of his sad thoughts, and were willing,
each in her own degree of impulse, to block him in it, make running
incursions into the road, twitch him by the coat and cry, "Listen to us.
Talk to us. You can't go there where you were going. That's the road to
hateful memories. Listen to that bird and tell us about the brick wall."
Farvie was used to their invasions of his mind. He never went so far as
clearly to see them as salutary invasions to keep him from the
melancholy accidents of the road, an ambulance dashing up to lift his
bruised hopes tenderly and take them off somewhere for sanitary
treatment, or even some childish sympathy of theirs commissioned to run
up and offer him a nosegay to distract him in his walk toward old
disappointments and old cares. He only knew they were welcome visitants
in his mind. Sometimes the mind seemed to him a clean-swept place, the
shades down and no fire lighted, and these young creatures, in their
heavenly implication of doing everything for their own pleasure and not
for his, would come in, pull up the shades with a rush, light the fire
and sit down with their sewing and their quite as necessary laughter by
the hearth.
"It's a nice brick wall," said Anne, in her cool clear voice. "It
doesn't seem so much to shut other people out as to shut us in."
She slipped her hand through the colonel's arm, and they both stood
there at his elbow like rosy champions, bound to stick to him to the
last, and the bird sang and something eased up in his mind. He seemed to
be let off, in this spring twilight, from an exigent task that had shown
no signs of easing. Yet he knew he was not really let off. Only the
girls were throwing their glamour of youth and hope and bravado over the
apprehensive landscape of his fortune as to-morrow's sun would snatch a
rosier light from the apple blooms.
"My great-grandfather built the wall," said he. He was content to go
back to an older reminiscent time when there were, for him, no roads of
gloom. "He was a minister, you know: very old-fashioned even then, very
direct, knew what he wanted, saw no reason why he shouldn't have it. He
wanted a place to meditate in, walk up and down, think out his sermons.
So he built the wall. The townspeople didn't take to it much at first,
father used to say. But they got accustomed to it. He wouldn't care."
"There's a grape-vine over a trellis," said Anne softly. She spoke in a
rapt way, as if she had said, "There are angels choiring under the
trees. We can hum their songs."
"It makes an arbour. Farvie'll sit there and read his Greek," said
Lydia. "We can't leave this place to-night. It would be ridiculous, now
we've found it. It wouldn't be safe either. Places like this bust up and
blow away."
"We can get up the beds to-morrow," said Anne. "Then we never'll leave
it for a single minute as long as we live. I want to go ever the house.
Farvie, can't we go over the house?"
They went up the rotten steps, Lydia with a last proprietary look at
the orchard, as if she sealed it safe from all the spells of night, and
entered at the front door, trying, at her suggestion, to squeeze in
together three abreast, so they could own it equally. It was a still,
kind house. The last light lay sweetly in the room at the right of the
hall, a large square room with a generous fireplace well blackened and
large surfaces of old ivory paint. There was a landscape paper here, of
trees in a smoky mist and dull blue skies behind a waft of cloud. Out of
this lay the dining-room, all in green, and the windows of both rooms
looked on a gigantic lilac hedge, and beyond it the glimmer of a white
colonial house set back in its own grounds. The kitchen was in a
lean-to, a good little kitchen brown with smoke, and behind that was the
shed with dark cobwebbed rafters and corners that cried out for hoes and
garden tools. Lydia went through the rooms in a rush of happiness, Anne
in a still rapt imagining. Things always seemed to her the symbols of
dearer things. She saw shadowy shapes sitting at the table and breaking
bread together, saw moving figures in the service of the house, and
generations upon generations weaving their webs of hope and pain and
disillusionment and hope again. In the shed they stood looking out at
the back door through the rolling field, where at last a fringe of
feathery yellow made the horizon line.
"What's at the end of the field, Farvie?" Lydia asked.
"The river," said he. "Nothing but the river."
"I feel," said she, "as if we were on an island surrounded by
jumping-off places: the bushes in front, the lilac hedge on the west,
the brick wall on the east, the river at the end. Come, let's go back.
We haven't seen the other two rooms."
These were the northeast room, a library in the former time, in a dim,
pink paper with garlands, and the southeast sitting-room, in a modern
yet conforming paper of dull blue and grey.
"The hall is grey," said Lydia. "Do you notice? How well they've kept
the papers. There isn't a stain."
"Maiden ladies," said the colonel, with a sigh. "Nothing but two maiden
ladies for so long."
"Don't draw long breaths, Farvie," said Lydia. "Anne and I are maiden
ladies. You wouldn't breathe over us. We should feel terribly if you
did."
"I was thinking how still the house had been," said he. "It used to
be--ah, well! well!"
"They grew old here, didn't they?" said Anne, her mind taking the maiden
ladies into its hospitable shelter.
"They were old when they came." He was trying to put on a brisker air to
match these two runners with hope for their torch. "Old as I am now. If
their poor little property had lasted we should have had hard work to
pry them out. We should have had to let 'em potter along here. But they
seem to like their nephew, and certainly he's got money enough."
"They adore him," said Lydia, who had never seen them or the nephew.
"And they're lying in gold beds at this minute eating silver cheese off
an emerald plate and hearing the nightingales singing and saying to each
other, 'Oh, my! I _wish_ it was morning so we could get up and put on
our pan-velvet dresses and new gold shoes.'"
This effective picture Anne and the colonel received with a perfect
gravity, not really seeing it with the mind's eye. Lydia's habit of
speech demanded these isolating calms.
"I think," said Anne, "we'd better be getting to the Inn. We sha'n't
find any supper. Lydia, which bag did you pack our nighties in?"
Lydia picked out the bag, carolling, as she did so, in high bright
notes, and then remembered that she had to put on her hat. Anne had
already adjusted hers with a careful nicety.
"You know where the Inn is, don't you, Farvie?" Lydia was asking, as
they stood on the stone step, after Anne had locked the door, and gazed
about them in another of their according trances.
He smiled at them, and his eyes lighted for the first time. The smile
showed possibilities the girls had proven through their growing up
years, of humour and childish fooling.
"Why, yes," said he, "it was here when I was born."
They went down the curving driveway into the street which the two girls
presently found to be the state street of the town. The houses, each
with abundant grounds, had all a formal opulence due chiefly to the
white-pillared fronts. Anne grew dreamy. It seemed to her as if she were
walking by a line of Greek temples in an afternoon hush. The colonel was
naming the houses as they passed, with good old names. Here were the
Jarvises, here the Russells, and here the Lockes.
"But I don't know," said he, "what's become of them all."
At a corner by a mammoth elm he turned down into another street,
elm-shaded, almost as wide, and led them to the Inn, a long, low-browed
structure built in the eighteenth century and never without guests.
II
The next morning brought a confusion of arriving freight, and Denny was
supplicated to provide workmen, clever artificers in the opening of
boxes and the setting up of beds. He was fired by a zeal not all
curiosity, a true interest assuaged by certainty more enlivening yet.
"I know who ye be," he announced to the colonel. This was on his arrival
with the first load. "I ain't lived in town very long, or I should known
it afore. It's in the paper."
Mr. Blake frowned slightly and seemed to freeze all over the surface he
presented to the world. He walked away without a reply, but Lydia, who
had not heard, came up at this point to ask Denny if he knew where she
could find a maid.
"Sure I do," said Denny, who was not Irish but consorted with common
speech. "My wife's two sisters, Mary Nellen, Prince Edward girls."
"We don't want two," said Lydia. "My sister and I do a lot of the work."
"The two of them," said Denny, "come for the price of one. They're
studyin' together to set up a school in Canada, and they can't be
separated. They'd admire to be with nice folks."
"Mary? did you say?" asked Lydia.
"Mary Nellen."
"Mary and Ellen?"
"Yes, Mary Nellen. I'll send 'em up."
That afternoon they came, pleasant-faced square little trudges with
shiny black hair and round myopic eyes. This near-sightedness when they
approached the unclassified, resulted in their simultaneously making up
the most horrible faces, the mere effort of focusing. Mary Nellen--for
family affection, recognising their complete twin-ship, always blended
them--were aware of this disfiguring habit, but relegated the curing of
it to the day of their future prosperity. They couldn't afford glasses
now, they said. They'd rather put their money into books. This according
and instantaneous grimace Lydia found engaging. She could not possibly
help hiring them, and they appeared again that night with two battered
tin boxes and took up residence in the shed chamber.
There had been some consultation about the disposition of chambers. It
resolved itself into the perfectly reasonable conclusion that the
colonel must have the one he had always slept in, the southeastern
corner.
"But there's one," said Lydia, "that's sweeter than the whole house put
together. Have you fallen in love with it, Anne? It's that low, big room
back of the stairs. You go down two steps into it. There's a grape-vine
over the window. Whose chamber is that, Farvie?"
He stood perfectly still by the mantel, and the old look of
introspective pain, almost of a surprised terror, crossed his face. Then
they knew. But he delayed only a minute or so in answering.
"Why," said he, "that was Jeff's room when he lived at home."
"Then," said Anne, in her assuaging voice, "he must have it again."
"Yes," said the colonel. "I think you'd better plan it that way."
They said no more about the room, but Anne hunted out a set of Dickens
and a dog picture she had known as belonging to Jeff, who was the own
son of the colonel, and took them in there. Once she caught Lydia in the
doorway looking in, a strangled passion in her face, as if she were
going back to the page of an old grief.
"Queer, isn't it?" she asked, and Anne, knowing all that lay in the
elision, nodded silently.
Once that afternoon the great brass knocker on the front door fell, and
Mary Nellen answered and came to Lydia to say a gentleman was there.
Should he be asked in? Mary Nellen seemed to have an impression that he
was mysteriously not the sort to be admitted. Lydia went at once to the
door whence there came to Anne, listening with a worried intensity, a
subdued runnel of talk. The colonel, who had sat down by the library
window with a book he was not reading, as if he needed to soothe some
inner turmoil of his own by the touch of leathern covers, apparently did
not hear this low-toned interchange. He glanced into the orchard from
time to time, and once drummed on the window when a dog dashed across
and ran distractedly back and forth along the brick wall. When Anne
heard the front door close she met Lydia in the hall.
"Was it?" she asked.
Lydia nodded. Her face had a flush; the pupils of her eyes were large.
"Yes," said she. "His paper wanted to know whether Jeff was coming here
and who was to meet him. I said I didn't know."
"Did he ask who you were?"
"Yes. I told him I'd nothing to say. He said he understood Jeff's father
was here, and asked if he might see him. I said, No, he couldn't see
anybody."
"Was he put out?" Anne had just heard Mary Nellen use the phrase. Anne
thought it covered a good deal.
"No," said Lydia. She lifted her plump hands and threaded the hair back
from her forehead, a gesture she had when she was tired. It seemed to
spur her brain. "No," she repeated, in a slow thoughtfulness, "he was a
kind of gentleman. I had an idea he was sorry for me, for us all, I
suppose. I was sorry for him, too. He was trying to earn his living and
I wouldn't let him."
"You couldn't."
"No," said Lydia, rather drearily, "I couldn't. Do you think Farvie
heard?"
"I think not. He didn't seem to."
But it was with redoubled solicitude that they threw their joint
energies into making supper inviting, so that the colonel might at least
get a shred of easement out of a pleasant meal. Mary Nellen, who
amicably divided themselves between the task of cooking and serving,
forwarded their desires, making faces all the time at unfamiliar
sauce-pans, and quite plainly agreed with them that men were to be
comforted by such recognised device. Anne and Lydia were deft little
housewives. They had a sober recognition of the pains that go to a
well-ordered life, and were patient in service. Their father had no
habit of complaint if the machinery creaked and even caused the walls to
shudder with faulty action. Yet they knew their gentle ways contributed
to his peace.
After supper, having seen that he was seated and ready for the little
talk they usually had in the edge of the evening, Lydia wondered whether
she ought to tell him a reporter had run them down; but while she
balanced the question there came another clanging knock and Mary Nellen
beckoned her. This one was of another stamp. He had to get his story,
and he had overborne Mary Nellen and penetrated to the hall. Lydia could
hear the young inexorable voice curtly talking down Mary Nellen and she
closed the library door behind her. But when the front door had shut
after the invader and Lydia came back, again with reddened cheeks and
distended eyes, the colonel went to it and shot the bolt.
"That's enough for to-night," said he. "The next I'll see, but not till
morning."
"You know we all thought it best you shouldn't," Anne said, always
faintly interrogative. "So long as we needn't say who we are. They'd
know who you were."
"His father," said Lydia, from an indignation disproportioned to the
mild sadness she saw in the colonel's face. "That's what they'd say: his
father. I don't believe Anne and I could bear that, the way they'd say
it. I don't believe Jeff could either."
The colonel had, even in his familiar talk with them, a manner of
old-fashioned courtesy.
"I didn't think it mattered much myself who saw them," he said, "when
you proposed it. But now it has actually happened I see it's very
unfitting for you to do it, very unfitting. However, I don't believe we
shall be troubled again to-night."
But their peace had been broken. They felt irrationally like
ill-defended creatures in a state of siege. The pretty wall-paper didn't
help them out, nor any consciousness of the blossoming orchard in the
chill spring air. The colonel noted the depression in his two defenders
and, by a spurious cheerfulness, tried to bring them back to the warmer
intimacies of retrospect.
"It was in this very room," he said, "that I saw your dear mother
first."
Lydia looked up, brightly ready for diversion. Anne sat, her head bent a
little, responsive to the intention of his speech.
"I was sitting here," said he, "alone. I had, I am pretty sure, this
very book in my hand. I wasn't reading it. I couldn't read. The maid
came in and told me a lady wanted to see me."
"What time of the day was it, Farvie?" Lydia asked, with her eager
sympathy.
"It was the late afternoon," said he. "In the early spring. Perhaps it
was a day like this. I don't remember. Well, I had her come in. Before I
knew where I was, there she stood, about there, in the middle of the
floor. You know how she looked."
"She looked like Lydia," said Anne. It was not jealousy in her voice,
only yearning. It seemed very desirable to look like Lydia or their
mother.
"She was much older," said the colonel. "She looked very worried indeed.
I remember what she said, remember every word of it. She said, 'Mr.
Blake, I'm a widow, you know. And I've got two little girls. What am I
going to do with them?'"
"She did the best thing anybody could," said Lydia. "She gave us to
you."
"I have an idea I cried," said the colonel. "Really I know I did. And it
broke her all up. She'd come somehow expecting Jeff's father to account
for the whole business and assure her there might be a few cents left.
But when she saw me dribbling like a seal, she just ran forward and put
her arms round me. And she said, 'My dear! my dear!' I hear her now."
"So do I," said Anne, in her low tone. "So do I."
"And you never'd seen each other before," said Lydia, in an ecstasy of
youthful love for love. "I call that great."
"We were married in a week," said the colonel. "She'd come to ask me to
help her, do you see? but she found I was the one that needed help. And
I had an idea I might do something for her by taking the responsibility
of her two little girls. But it was no use pretending. I didn't marry
her for anything except, once I'd seen her, I couldn't live without
her."
"Wasn't mother darling!" Lydia threw at him, in a passionate sympathy.
"You're like her, Lydia," said Anne again.
But Lydia shook her head.
"I couldn't hold a candle to mother," said she. "My eyes may be like
hers. So is my forehead. So's my mouth. But I'm no more like mother----"
"It was her sympathy," said their father quietly, seeming to have
settled it all a long time before. "She was the most absolutely loving
person. You girls may be like her in that, too. I'm sure you're
inconceivably good to me."
"I'd like to love people to death," said Lydia, with the fierceness of
passion not yet named and recognised, but putting up its beautiful head
now and then to look her remindingly in the eyes. "I'd like to love
everybody. You first, Farvie, you and Anne. And Jeff. I'm going to love
Jeff like a house-a-fire. He doesn't know what it is to have a sister.
When he comes in I'm going to run up to him as if I couldn't wait to get
him into the room, and kiss him and say, 'Here we are, Jeff. I'm Lyddy.
Here's Anne.' You kiss him, too, Anne."
"Why," said Anne softly, "I wonder."
"You needn't stop to wonder," said Lydia. "You do it. He's going to
realise he's got sisters anyway--and a father."
The same thought sprang at once into their three minds. It was not
uncommon. They lived so close together, in such a unison of interests,
that their minds often beat accordingly. Anne hesitatingly voiced the
question.
"Do you think Esther'll meet him?"
"Impossible to say," the colonel returned, and Lydia's nipped lips and
warlike glance indicated that she found it hideously impossible to say.
"I intend to find out," said she.
"I have an idea," said her father, as if he were in the kindest manner
heading her off from a useless project, "that I'd better make a call on
her myself, perhaps at once."
"She wouldn't see you when you came before," Lydia reminded him, in a
hot rebellion against Jeff's wife who had not stood by him in his
downfall. In the space of time that he had been outside the line of
civilised life, an ideal of Jeff had been growing up in her own mind as
in Anne's. They saw him as the wronged young chevalier without reproach
whom a woman had forsaken in his need. Only a transcript of their
girlish dreams could have told them what they thought of Jeff. His
father's desolation without him, the crumbling of his father's life from
hale middle age to fragile eld, this whirling of the leaves of time had
seemed to bring them to a blazoned page where Jeff's rehabilitation
should be wrought out in a magnificent sequence. The finish to that
volume only: Jeff's life would begin again in the second volume, to be
annotated with the approbation of his fellows. He would be lifted on the
hands of men, their plaudits would upbear his soul, and he would at last
triumph, sealed by the sanction of his kind. They grew intoxicated over
it sometimes, in warm talks when their father was not there. He talked
very little: a few words now and then to show what he thought of Jeff, a
phrase or two where he unconsciously turned for them the page of the
past and explained obscurities in the text they couldn't possibly
elucidate alone--these they treasured and made much of, as the
antiquary interprets his stone language. He never knew what importance
they laid on every shred of evidence about Jeff. Perhaps if he had known
he would have given them clearer expositions. To him Jeff was the
dearest of sons that ever man begot, strangely pursued by a malign
destiny accomplished only through the very chivalry and softness of the
boy's nature. No hero, though; he would never have allowed his girls to
build on that. And in all this rehabilitation of Jeff, as the girls saw
it, there was one dark figure like the black-clad mourner at the grave
who seems to deny the tenet of immortality: his wife, who had not stood
by him and who was living here in Addington with her grandmother, had
insisted on living with grandmother, in fact, as a cloak for her
hardness. Sometimes they felt if they could sweep the black-clad figure
away from the grave of Jeff's hopes, Jeff, in glorious apotheosis, would
rise again.
"What a name for her--Esther!" Lydia ejaculated, with an intensity of
hatred Anne tried to waft away by a little qualifying murmur. "Esther!
Esthers are all gentle and humble and beautiful."
"She is a very pretty woman," said her father, with a wise gentleness of
his own. Lydia often saw him holding the balance for her intemperate
judgments, his grain of gold forever equalising her dross. "I think
she'd be called a beautiful woman. Jeff thought she was."
"Do you actually believe, Farvie," said Lydia, "that she hasn't been to
see him once in all these hideous years?"
"I know it," said he. "However, we mustn't blame her. She may be a timid
woman. We must stand by her and encourage her and make it easier for her
to meet him now. Jeff was very much in love with her. He'll understand
her better than we do."
"I don't understand her at all," said Lydia, "unless you're going to let
us say she's selfish and a traitor and----"
"No, no," said Anne. "We don't know her. We haven't even seen her. We
must do what Farvie says, and then what Jeff says. I feel as if Jeff had
thought things out a lot."
"Yes," said Lydia, and bit her lip on the implied reason that he'd had
plenty of time.
"Yes," said the colonel gravely, in his own way. "I'd better go over
there early to-morrow afternoon. Before the reporters get at her."
"Maybe they've done it already," Lydia suggested, and the gravity of his
face accorded in the fear that it might be so.
Lydia felt no fear: a fiery exultation, rather. She saw no reason why
Esther should be spared her share of invasion, except, indeed, as it
might add to the publicity of the thing.
"You'll tell her, Farvie," Anne hesitated, "just what we'd decided to do
about his coming--about meeting him?"
"Yes," said he. "In fact, I should consult her. She must have thought
out things for herself, just as he must. I should tell her he
particularly asked us not to meet him. But I don't think that would
apply to her. I think it would be a beautiful thing for her to do. If
reporters are there----"
"They will be," Lydia interjected savagely.
"Well, if they are, it wouldn't be a bad thing for them to report that
his wife was waiting for him. It would be right and simple and
beautiful. But if she doesn't meet him, certainly we can't. That would
give rise to all kinds of publicity and pain. I think she'll see that."
"I don't think she'll see anything," said Lydia. "She's got a heart like
a stone."
"Oh, don't say that," Anne besought her, "in advance."
"It isn't in advance," said Lydia. "It's after all these years."
III
The next day, after an early dinner--nobody in Addington dined at
night--the colonel, though not sitting down to a definite conclave, went
over with Anne and Lydia every step of his proposed call on Esther, as
if they were planning a difficult route and a diplomatic mission at the
end, and later, in a state of even more exquisite personal fitness than
usual, the call being virtually one of state, he set off to find his
daughter-in-law. Anne and Lydia walked with him down the drive. They had
the air of upholding him to the last.
The way to Esther's house, which was really her grandmother's, he had
trodden through all his earlier life. His own family and Esther's had
been neighbours intimately at one, and, turning the familiar corner, he
felt, with a poignancy cruel in its force, youth recalled and age
confirmed. Here were associations almost living, they were so vivid, yet
wraithlike in sheer removedness. It was all very subtle, in its
equal-sided force, this resurrection of the forms of youth, to be met by
the cold welcome of a change in him. The heart did quicken over its
recognition of the stability of things, but with no robust urge such as
it knew in other years; indeed it fluttered rather pathetically, as if
it begged him to put no unwonted strain upon it now, as in that time
foregone, when every beat cried out, "Heave the weight! charge up the
hill! We're equal to it. If we're not, we'll die submerged in our own
red fount." He was not taking age with any sense of egotistical
rebellion; but it irked him like an unfamiliar weight patiently borne
and for no reward. The sense of the morning of life was upon him; yet
here he was fettered to his traitorous body which was surely going to
betray him in the end. No miracle could save him from atomic downfall.
However exultantly he might live again, here he should live no more, and
though there was in him no fervency either of rebellion or belief, he
did look gravely now at the pack of mortality he carried. It was
carefully poised and handled. His life was precious to him, for he
wanted this present coil of circumstance made plain before he should go
hence and be seen no more.
The streets just now were empty. It was an hour of mid-afternoon when
ladies had not dawned, in calling raiment, upon a world of other
expectant ladies, and when the business man is under bonds to keep
sequestered with at least the pretext of arduous tasks. The colonel had
ample opportunity to linger by yards where shrubbery was coming out in
shining buds, and draw into his grave consciousness the sense of spring.
Every house had associations for him, as every foot of the road. Now he
was passing the great yellow mansion where James Reardon lived. Reardon,
of Irish blood and American public school training, had been Jeffrey's
intimate, the sophisticated elder who had shown him, with a cool
practicality that challenged emulation, the world and how it was to be
bought. When there were magnates in Addington, James had been a poor
boy. There were still magnates, and now he was one of them, so far as
club life went and monetary transactions. He had never tried to marry an
Addington girl, and therefore could not be said to have put his social
merit absolutely to the touch. But luck had always served him. Perhaps
it would even have done it there. He had gone into a broker's office,
had made a strike with his savings and then another with no warning
reversal, and got the gay habit of rolling up money like a snowball on
a damp day. When the ball got too heavy for him to handle deftly, Jim
dropped the game, only starting the ball down hill--if one may find
symbolism for sedate investments--gathering weight as it went and, it
was thought, at obstructive points persuading other little boys to push.
The colonel had often wondered if Jeffrey had been one of those little
boys. Now, at forty-five, Reardon lived a quiet, pottering life, a
bachelor with a housekeeper and servants enough to keep the big yellow
house in form. He read in a methodical way, really the same books over
and over, collected prints with a conviction that a print is a print,
exercised his big frame in the club gymnasium, took a walk of sanitary
length morning and afternoon and went abroad once in two years.
"I've got money enough," he was accustomed to say, when the adventurous
petitioned him to bolster new projects for swift returns, "all in
gilt-edged securities. That's why I don't propose to lay awake an hour
in my life, muddling over stocks. Why, it's destruction, man! it's
death. It eats up your tissues faster than old age." The eccentricity of
his verb indicated only the perfection of his tact. He had a perfect
command of the English language, but a wilful lapse into colloquialisms
endeared him, he knew, to his rougher kind. There was no more popular
man. He was blond and open-featured. He spoke in a loud yet always
sympathetic voice, and in skilfully different fashions he called every
man brother.
Yet the colonel, his fancy entering the seclusion of the yellow house,
rich in books that would have been sealed to even Jim's immediate
forebears, rich in all possible mechanical appliances for the ease of
life, speculated whether Reardon had, in the old days, been good for
Jeff. Could he, with his infernal luck, have been good for any youth of
Jeff's impetuous credulity? Mightn't Jeff have got the idea that life
is an easy job? The colonel felt now that he had always distrusted
Reardon's bluff bonhomie, his sympathetic voice, his booming implication
that he was letting you into his absolutely habitable heart. He knew,
too, that without word of his own his distrust had filtered out to Anne
and Lydia, and that they were prepared, while they stood by Jeff to
unformulated issues, to trip up Reardon, somehow bring him low and set
Jeff up impeccable. Of this he was thinking gravely now, the different
points of it starting up in his mind like sparks of light while he
regarded Reardon's neat shrubs healthily growing, as if the last drop of
fertilising had been poured into them at this spring awakening, and all
pruned to a wholesome symmetry. Then, hearing the sound of a door and
painfully averse to meeting Reardon, he went on and mounted the steps of
the great brick house where his daughter-in-law lived. And here the
adventure came to an abrupt stop. The maid, perfectly courteous and yet
with an air of readiness even he, the most unsuspecting of men, could
not fail to recognise, told him, almost before he had finished his
inquiry, that Mrs. Blake was not at home. She would not be at home that
afternoon. No, sir, not the next day. Madam Bell, Esther's grandmother,
he asked for then. No, sir, she was not at home. Looking in the smooth
sanguine face of the girl, noting mechanically her light eyelashes and
the spaces between her teeth, he knew she lied. Yet he was a courteous
gentleman, and did not report that to his inner mind. He bestowed his
card upon Sapphira, and walked away at his sedate pace, more than
anything puzzled. Esther was not proposing to take part in their coming
drama. He couldn't count on her. He was doubly sorry because this
defection was going to make Anne and Lydia hate her more than ever, and
he was averse to the intensification of hatred. He was no mollycoddle,
but he had an intuition that hatred is of no use. It hindered things,
all sorts of things: kindliness, even justice.
The girls were waiting for him at the door, but reading his face, they
seemed, while not withdrawing themselves bodily, really to slip away, in
order not even tacitly to question him. They had a marvellous
unwillingness to bring a man to the bar. There was no over-tactful
display of absence, but their minds simply would not set upon and
interrogate his, nor skulk round corners to spy upon it. But he had to
tell them, and he was anxious to get it over. Just as they seemed now
about to melt away to urgent tasks, he called them back.
"She's not at home," said he.
Anne looked a species of defeated interest. Lydia's eyes said
unmistakably, "I don't believe it." The colonel was tired enough to want
to say, "I don't either," but he never felt at liberty to encourage
Lydia's too exuberant candour.
"She's not to be at home to-morrow," he said. "It looks as if she'd gone
for--for the present," he ended lamely, put down his hat and went into
the east room and took up his brown book.
"Oh!" said Lydia.
That was all he was to hear from her, and he was glad. He hadn't any
assurance within him of the force to assuage an indignation he
understood though he couldn't feel it. That was another of the levelling
powers of age. You couldn't key your emotions up to the point where they
might shatter something or perhaps really do some good. It wasn't only
that you hadn't the blood and breath. It also didn't seem worth while.
He was angry, in a measure, with the hidden woman he couldn't get at to
bid her come and help him fight the battle that was hers even more
indubitably than his; yet he was conscious that behind her defences was
another world of passion and emotion and terribly strong desires, as
valid as his own. She had her side. He didn't know what it was. He
wanted really to avoid knowing, lest it weaken him through its appeal
for a new sympathy; but he knew the side was there. This, he said to
himself, with a half smile, was probably known as tolerance. It seemed
to him old age.
So, from their benign choice, he had really nothing to say to Lydia or
Anne. In the late afternoon Anne asked him to go to walk and show her
the town, and he put her off. He was conscious of having drowsed away in
his chair, into one of those intervals he found so inevitable, and that
were, at the same time, so irritatingly foreign to his previous habits
of life. He did not drop his pursuits definitely to take a nap. The nap
seemed to take him, even when he was on the margin of some lake or river
where he thought himself well occupied in seeing the moving to and fro
of boats, for business and pleasure, just as his own boat had gallantly
cut invisible paths on the air and water in those earlier years. The nap
would steal upon him like an amiable yet inexorable joker, and throw a
cloudy veil over his brain and eyes, and he would sink into a gulf he
had not perceived. It lay at his feet, and something was always ready to
push him into it. He thought sometimes, wondering at the inevitableness
of it, that one day the veil would prove a pall.
But after their twilight supper, he felt more in key with the tangible
world, and announced himself as ready to set forth. Lydia refused to go.
She had something to do, she said; but she walked down the driveway with
them, and waited until they had gone a rod or two along the street. The
colonel turned away from Esther's house, as Lydia knew he would. She had
not watched him for years without seeing how resolutely he put the
memory of pain or loss behind him whenever manly honour would allow.
The colonel's thin skin was his curse. Yet he wore it with a proud
indifference it took a good deal of warm affection to penetrate. Lydia
stood there and looked up and down the street. It had been a day almost
hot, surprising for the season, and she was dressed in conformity in
some kind of thin stuff with little dots of black. Her round young arms
were bare to the elbow, and there was a narrow lacy frill about her
neck. It was too warm really to need a hat or jacket, and this place was
informal enough, she thought, to do away with gloves. Having rapidly
decided that it was also a pity to cool resolution by returning to the
house for any conventional trappings, she stepped to the pavement and
went, with a light rapidity, along the road to Esther's.
She knew the way. When she reached the house she regarded it for a
moment from the opposite side of the street, and Jim Reardon, coming out
of his own gate for his evening's stroll to the Colonial Club, saw her
and crossed, instead of continuing on his own side as he ordinarily did.
She was a nymph-like vision of the twilight, and there was nothing of
the Addington girl about her unconsidered ease. Jim looked at her
deferentially, as he passed, a hand ready for his hat. But though Lydia
saw him she dismissed him as quickly, perhaps as no matter for
wonderment, and again because her mind was full of Esther. Now in the
haste that dares not linger, she crossed the street and ascended the
steps of the brick house. As she did so she was conscious of the
stillness within. It might have been a house embodied out of her own
dreams. But she did not ring, nor did she touch the circlet the brass
lion of a knocker held obligingly in his mouth. She lifted the heavy
latch, stepped in and shut the door behind her.
This was not the front entrance. The house stood on a corner, and this
door led into a little square hall with a colonial staircase of charming
right-angled turns going compactly up. Lydia looked into the room at her
right and the one at her left. They were large and nobly proportioned,
furnished in a faded harmony of antique forms. The arrangement of the
house, she fancied, might be much like the colonel's. But though she
thought like lightning in the excitement of her invasion, there was not
much clearness about it; her heart was beating too urgently, and the
blood in her ears had tightened them. No one was in the left-hand room,
no one was in the right; only there was a sign of occupancy: a
peach-coloured silk bag hung on the back of a chair and the lacy corner
of a handkerchief stood up in its ruffly throat. The bag, the
handkerchief, brought her courage back. They looked like a substantial
Esther of useless graces she had to fight. And so passionately alive was
she to everything concerning Jeffrey that it seemed base of a woman once
belonging to him to parade lacy trifles in ruffly bags when he was
condemned to coarse, hard usages. But having Esther to fight, she
stepped into that room, and immediately a warm, yet, she had time to
think, rather a discontented voice called from the room behind it:
"Is that you, Sophy?"
Lydia answered in an intemperate haste, and like many another rebel to
the English tongue, she found a proper pronoun would not serve her for
sufficient emphasis.
"No," she said, "it's me."
And she followed on the heels of her words, with a determined soft pace,
to the room of the voice, and came upon a brown-eyed, brown-haired,
rather plump creature in a white dress, who was lying in a long chair
and eating candied fruit from a silver dish. This, Lydia knew, was
Esther Blake. She had expected to feel for her the distaste of
righteousness in the face of the wrong-doer: for Esther, she knew, was
proven, by long-continued hardness of heart and behaviour, indubitably
wrong. Here was Esther, Jeff's wife, not showing more than two-thirds of
her thirty-three years, her brow unlined, her expression of a general
sweetness indicating not only that she wished to please but that she
had, in the main, been pleased. The beauty of her face was in its long
eyelashes, absurdly long, as if nature had said, "Here's a by-product we
don't know what to do with. Put it into lashes." Her hands were white
and exquisitely cared for, and she wore no wedding ring. Lydia noted
that, with an involuntary glance, but strangely it did not move her to
any access of indignation. Anger she did feel, but it was, childishly,
anger over the candied fruit. "How can you lie there and eat," she
wanted to cry, "when Jeff is where he is?"
A little flicker ran over Esther's face: it might at first have been the
ripple of an alarmed surprise, but she immediately got herself in hand.
She put her exquisite feet over the side of the chair, got up and, in
one deft motion, set the fruit on a little table and ran a hand lightly
over her soft disorder of hair.
"Do excuse me," said she. "I didn't hear you."
"My name is French," said Lydia, in an incisive haste, "Lydia French. I
came to talk with you about Jeff."
The shadow that went over Esther's face was momentary, no more than a
bird's wing over a flowery plot; but it was a shadow only. There was no
eagerness or uplift or even trouble at the name of Jeff.
"Father came this afternoon," said Lydia. "He wanted to talk things
over. He couldn't get in."
"Oh," said Esther, "I'm sorry for that. So you are one of the
step-children. Sit down, won't you. Oh, do take this chair."
Lydia was only too glad to take any chair and get the strain off her
trembling knees. It was no trivial task, she saw, to face Jeff's wife
and drag her back to wifehood. But she ignored the proffer of the softer
chair. It was easier to take a straight one and sit upright, her brown
little hands clenched tremblingly. Esther, too, took a chair the twin of
hers, as if to accept no advantage; she sat with dignity and waited
gravely. She seemed to be watchful, intent, yet bounded by reserves. It
was the attitude of waiting for attack.
"This very next week, you know, Jeff will be discharged." Lydia spoke
with the brutality born of her desperation. Still Esther watched her.
"You know, don't you?" Lydia hurled at her. She had a momentary thought,
"The woman is a fool." "From jail," she continued. "From the Federal
Prison. You know, don't you? You heard he had been pardoned?"
Esther looked at her a full minute, her face slowly suffusing. Lydia saw
the colour even flooding into her neck. Her eyes did not fill, but they
deepened in some unusual way. They seemed to be saying, defiantly
perhaps, that they could cry if they would, but they had other modes of
empery.
"You know, don't you?" Lydia repeated, but more gently. She began to
wonder now whether trouble had weakened the wife's brain, her power at
least of receptivity.
"Yes," said Esther. "I know it, of course. To-day's paper had quite a
long synopsis of the case."
Now Lydia flushed and looked defiant.
"I am glad to know that," she said. "I must burn the paper. Farvie
sha'n't see it."
"There were two reporters here yesterday," said Esther. She spoke
angrily now. Her voice hinted that this was an indignity which need not
have been put upon her.
"Did you see them?" asked Lydia, in a flash, ready to blame her whatever
she did.
But the answer was eloquent with reproach.
"Certainly I didn't see them. I have never seen any of them. When that
horrible newspaper started trying to get him pardoned, reporters came
here in shoals. I never saw them. I'd have died sooner."
"Did Jeff write you he didn't want to be pardoned? He did us."
"No. He hasn't written me for years."
She looked a baffling number of things now, voluntarily pathetic, a
little scornful, as if she washed her hands gladly of the whole affair.
"Farvie thinks," said Lydia recklessly, "that you haven't written to
him."
"How could I?" asked Esther, in a quick rebuttal which actually had a
convincing sound, "when he didn't write to me?"
"But he was in prison."
"He hasn't had everything to bear," said Esther, rising and putting some
figurines right on the mantel where they seemed to be right enough
before. "Do you know any woman whose life has been ruined as mine has?
Have you ever met one? Now have you?"
"Farvie's life is ruined," said Lydia incisively. "Jeff's life is
ruined, too. I don't know whether it's any worse for a woman than for a
man."
"Jeffrey," said Esther, "is taking the consequences of his own act."
"You don't mean to tell me you think he was to blame?" Lydia said, in a
low tone charged with her own complexity of sentiment. She was
horror-stricken chiefly. Esther saw that, and looked at her in a large
amaze.
"You don't mean to tell me you think he wasn't?" she countered.
"Why, of course he wasn't!" Lydia's cheeks were flaming. She was
impatiently conscious of this heat and her excited breath. But she had
entered the fray, and there was no returning.
"Then who was guilty?" Esther asked it almost triumphantly, as if the
point of proving herself right were more to her than the innocence of
Jeff.
"That's for us to find out," said Lydia. She looked like the apostle of
a holy war.
"But if you could find out, why haven't you done it before? Why have you
waited all these years?"
"Partly because we weren't grown up, Anne and I. And even when we were,
when we'd begun to think about it, we were giving dancing lessons, to
help out. You know Farvie put almost every cent he had into paying the
creditors, and then it was only a drop in the bucket. And besides Jeff
pleaded guilty, and he kept writing Farvie to let it all stand as it
was, and somehow, we were so sorry for Jeff we couldn't help feeling
he'd got to have his way. Even if he wanted to sacrifice himself he
ought to be allowed to, because he couldn't have his way about anything
else. At least, that was what Anne and I felt. We've talked it over a
lot. We've hardly talked of anything else. And we think Farvie feels so,
too."
"You speak as if it were a sum of money he'd stolen out of a drawer,"
said Esther. Her cheeks were red, like exquisite roses. "It wasn't a sum
of money. I read it all over in the paper the other day. He had
stockholders' money, and he plunged, it said, just before the panic. He
invested other people's money in the wrong things, and then, it said, he
tried to realise."
"I can't help it," said Lydia doggedly. "He wasn't guilty."
"Why should he have said he was guilty?" Esther put this to her with her
unchanged air of triumphant cruelty.
"He might, to save somebody else."
Esther was staring now and Lydia stared back, caught by the almost
terrified surprise in Esther's face. Did she know about Jim Reardon? But
Esther broke the silence, not in confession, if she did know: with
violence rather.
"You never will prove any such thing. Never in the world. The money was
in Jeff's hands. He hadn't even a partner."
"He had friends," said Lydia. But now she felt she had implied more than
was discreet, and she put a sign up mentally not to go that way.
Whatever Esther said, she would keep her own eyes on the sign.
IV
Still she returned to the assault. Her next question even made her raise
her brows a little, it seemed so crude and horrible; she could have
laughed outright at herself for having the nerve to put it. She couldn't
imagine what the colonel would have thought of her. Anne, she knew,
would have crumpled up into silken disaster like a flower under too
sharp a wind.
"Aren't you going to ask Jeff here to live with you?"
Esther was looking at her in a fiery amaze Lydia knew she well deserved.
"Who is this child," Esther seemed to be saying, "rising up out of
nowhere and pursuing me into my most intimate retreats?" She answered in
a careful hedging way that was not less pretty than her unconsidered
speech:
"Jeffrey and I haven't been in communication for years."
Then Lydia lost her temper and put herself in the wrong.
"Why," said she, "you said that before. Besides, it's no answer anyway.
You could have written to him, and as soon as you heard he was going to
be pardoned, you could have made your plans. Don't you mean to ask him
here?"
Esther made what sounded like an irrelevant answer, but it meant
apparently something even solemn to her.
"My grandmother," said she, "is an old lady. She's bedridden. She's
upstairs, and I keep the house very quiet on her account."
Lydia had a hot desire to speak out what she really felt: to say, "Your
grandmother's being bedridden has no more to do with it than the cat."
Lydia was prone to seek the cat for exquisite comparison. Persons, with
her, could no more sing--or dance--than the cat. She found the cat, in
the way of metaphor, a mysteriously useful animal. But the very
embroidery of Esther's mode of speech forbade her invoking that
eccentric aid. Lydia was not eager to quarrel. She would have been
horrified if circumstance had ever provoked her into a rash word to her
father, and with Anne she was a dove of peace. But Esther by a word, it
seemed, by a look, had the power of waking her to unholy revolt. She
thought it was because Esther was so manifestly not playing fair. Why
couldn't she say she wouldn't have Jeff in the house, instead of sitting
here and talking like a nurse in a sanitarium, about bedridden
grandmothers?
"It isn't because we don't want him to come to us," said Lydia.
"Farvie's been living for it all these years, and Anne and I don't talk
of anything else."
"Isn't that interesting!" said Esther, though not as if she put a
question. "And you're no relation at all." She made it, for the moment,
seem rather a breach of taste to talk of nothing else but a man to whom
Lydia wasn't a sister, and Lydia's face burned in answer. A wave of
childish misery came over her. She wished she had not come. She wished
she knew how to get away. And while she took in Esther's harmony of
dress, her own little odds and ends of finery grew painfully cheap to
her. But the telephone bell rang in the next room, and Esther rose and
excused herself. While she was gone, Lydia sat there with her little
hands gripped tightly. Now she wished she knew how to get out of the
house another way, before Esther should come back. If it were not for
the credit of the family, she would find the other way. Meantime
Esther's voice, very liquid now that she was not talking to a sister
woman, flowed in to her and filled her with a new distrust and hatred.
"Please come," said Esther. "I depend upon it. Do you mean you weren't
ever coming any more?"
When she appeared again, Lydia was quivering with a childish anger. She
had risen, and stood with her hands clasped before her. So she was in
the habit of standing before her dancing class until the music should
begin and lead her through the measures. She was delightful so and, from
long training, entirely self-possessed.
"Good-bye," said she.
"Don't go," said Esther, in a conventional prettiness, but no such
beguilement as she had wafted through the telephone. "It's been so
pleasant meeting you."
Again Lydia had her ungodly impulse to contradict, to say: "No, it
hasn't either. You know it hasn't." But she turned away and, head a
little bent, walked out of the house, saying again, "Good-bye."
When she got out into the dusk, she went slowly, to cool down and think
it over. It wouldn't do for the colonel and Anne to see her on the swell
of such excitement, especially as she had only defeat to bring them. She
had meant to go home in a triumphant carelessness and say: "Oh, yes, I
saw her. I just walked right in. That's what you ought to have done,
Farvie. But we had it out, and I think she's ready to do the decent
thing by Jeff." No such act of virtuous triumph: she had simply been a
silly girl, and Anne would find it out. Near the corner she met the man
she had seen on her way in coming, and he looked at her again with that
solicitous air of being ready to take off his hat. She went on with a
consciousness of perhaps having achieved an indiscretion in coming out
bareheaded, and the man proceeded to Esther's door. He was expected.
Esther herself let him in.
Reardon had not planned to go to see her at that hour. He had meant to
spend it at the club, feet up, trotting over the path of custom, knowing
to a dot what men he would find there and what each would say. Old Dan
Wheeler would talk about the advisability of eating sufficient
vegetables to keep your stomach well distended. Young Wheeler would
refer owlishly to the Maries and Jennies of an opera troupe recently in
Addington, and Ollie Hastings, the oldest bore, would tell long stories,
and wheeze. But Reardon was no sooner in his seat, with his glass beside
him, than he realised he was disturbed, in some unexpected way. It might
have been the pretty girl he met going into Esther's; it might have been
the thought of Esther herself, the unheard call from her. So he left his
glass untasted and telephoned her: "You all right?" To which Esther
replied in a doubtful purr. "Want me to come up?" he asked, as he
thought, against his will. And he swallowed a third of his firewater at
a gulp and went to find her. He knew what he should find,--an Esther who
bade him remember, by all the pliancy of her attractive body and every
tone of her voice, how irreconcilably hard it was that she should have a
husband pardoned out of prison, a husband of whom she was afraid.
Lydia found Anne waiting at the gate.
"Why, where've you been?" asked Anne, with all the air of a prim mother.
"Walking," said Lydia meekly.
"You'd better have come with us," said Anne. "It was very nice. Farvie
told me things."
"Yes," said Lydia, "I wish I had."
"Without your hat, too," pursued Anne anxiously. "I don't know whether
they do that here." Lydia remembered Reardon, and thought she knew.
They went to bed early, in a low state of mind. The colonel was tired,
and Anne, watching him from above as he toiled up the stairs, wondered
if he needed a little strychnia. She would remember, she thought, to
give it to him in the morning. After they had said good-night, and the
colonel, indeed, was in his bed, she heard the knocker clang and slipped
down the stairs to answer. Halfway she stopped, for Mary Nellen, candle
in hand, had arrived from the back regions, and was, with admirable
caution, opening the door a crack. But immediately she threw it wide,
and tossed her own reassurance over her shoulder, back to Anne.
"Mr. Alston Choate. To see your father."
So Anne came down the stairs, and Mr. Choate, hat in hand, apologised
for calling so late. He was extremely busy. He had to be at the office
over time, but he didn't want to-day's sun to go down and he not have
welcomed Mr. Blake. Anne had a chance, in the space of his delivering
this preamble, to think what a beautiful person he was. He had a young
face lighted by a twisted whimsical smile, and a capacious forehead,
built out a little into knobs of a noble sort, as if there were ample
chambers behind for the storing away of precedent. Altogether he would
have satisfied every æsthetic requirement: but he had a broken nose. The
portrait painter lusted for him, and then retired sorrowfully. But the
nose made him very human. Anne didn't know its eccentricity was the
result of breakage, but she saw it was quite unlike other noses and
found it superior to them.
Alston Choate spent every waking minute of his life in the practice of
law and the reading of novels; he was either digging into precedent,
expounding it, raging over its futilities, or guiltily losing himself in
the life of books. What he really loved was music and the arts, and he
dearly liked to read about the people who had leisure to follow such
lures, time to be emotional even, and indulge in pretty talk. Yet law
was the giant he had undertaken to wrestle with, and he kept his grip.
Sometime, he thought, the cases would be all tried or the feet of
litigants would seek other doors. The wave of middle age would toss him
to an island of leisure, and there he would sit down and hear music and
read long books.
As he saw Anne coming down the stairs, he thought of music personified.
A crowd of adjectives rose in his mind and, like attendant graces,
grouped themselves about her. He could imagine her sitting at archaic
instruments, calling out of them, with slim fingers, diaphanous
melodies. Yet the beauty that surrounded her like a light mantle she had
snatched up from nature to wear about her always, did not displace the
other vision of beauty in his heart. It did not even jostle it. Esther
Blake was, he knew, the sum of the ineffable feminine.
While he made that little explanation of his haste in coming and his
fear that it was an untoward time, Anne heard him with a faint smile,
all her listening in her upturned face. She was grateful to him. Her
father, she knew, would be the stronger for men's hands to hold him up.
She returned a little explanation. Father was so tired. He had gone to
bed. Then it seemed to her that Choate did a thing unsurpassed in
splendour.
"You are one of the daughters, aren't you?" he said.
"Yes," she answered. "I'm Anne."
Mary Nellen had delivered the candle to her hand, and she stood there
holding it in a serious manner, as if it lighted some ceremonial. Then
it was that Choate made the speech that clinched his hold upon her
heart.
"When do you expect your brother?"
Anne's face flooded. He was not acting as if Jeff, coming from an
unspeakable place, mustn't be mentioned. He was asking exactly as if
Jeff had been abroad and the ship was almost in. It was like a pilot
boat going out to see that he got in safely. And feeling the
circumstance greatly, she found herself answering with a slow
seriousness which did, indeed, carry much dignity.
"We are not sure. We think he may come directly through; but, on the
other hand, he may be tired and not feel up to it."
Choate smiled his irregular, queer smile. He was turning away now.
"Tell him I shall be in soon," he said. "I fancy he'll remember me.
Good-night."
Lydia was hanging over the balustrade.
"Who was it?" she asked, as Anne went up.
Anne told her and because she looked dreamy and not displeased, Lydia
asked:
"Nice?"
"Oh, yes," said Anne. "You've heard Farvie speak of him. Exactly what
Farvie said."
Lydia had gone some paces in undressing. She stood there in a white
wrapper, with her hair in its long braid, and stared at Anne for a
considering interval.
"I think I'd better tell you," said she. "I've been to see her."
There was but one person who could have been meant, and yet that was so
impossible that Anne stared and asked:
"Who?"
They had always spoken of Esther as Esther, among themselves, quite
familiarly, but now Lydia felt she would die rather than mention her
name.
"She is a hateful woman," said Lydia, "perfectly hateful."
"But what did you go for?" Anne asked, in a gentle perplexity.
"To find out," said Lydia, in a savage tearfulness, "what she means to
do."
"And what does she?"
"Nothing."
V
The house, almost of its own will, slid into order. Mary Nellen was a
wonderful person. She arranged and dusted and put questions to Anne as
to Cicero and Virgil, and then, when Anne convoyed her further, to the
colonel, and he found a worn lexicon in the attic and began to dig out
translations and chant melodious periods. The daughters could have
hugged Mary Nellen, bright-eyed and intent on advancement up the hill of
learning, for they gave him something to do to mitigate suspense until
his son should come. And one day at twilight, when they did not know it
was going to be that day at all, but when things were in a complete
state of readiness and everybody disposed to start at a sound, the front
door opened and Jeffrey, as if he must not actually enter until he was
bidden, stood there and knocked on the casing. Mary Nellen, having more
than mortal wit, seemed to guess who he was, and that the colonel must
not be startled. She appeared before Lydia in the dining-room and gave
her a signalling grimace. Lydia followed her, and met the man, now a
step inside the hall. Lydia, too, knew who it was. She felt the blood
run painfully into her face, and hoped he didn't see how confused she
was with her task of receiving him exactly right after all this time of
preparation. There was no question of kissing or in any way sealing her
sisterly devotion. She gave him a cold little hand, and he took it with
the same bewildered acquiescence. She looked at him, it seemed to her, a
long time, perhaps a full minute, and found him wholly alien to her
dreams of the wronged creature who was to be her brother. He was of a
good height, broad in the shoulders and standing well. His face held
nothing of the look she had always wrought into it from the picture of
his college year. It was rather square. The outline at least couldn't be
changed. The chin, she thought, was lovable. The eyes were large and
blue; stern, it seemed, but really from the habit of the forehead that
had been scarred with deepest lines. The high cheekbones gave him an odd
look as if she saw him in bronze. They stared at each other and Jeffrey
thought he ought to assure her he wasn't a tramp, when Lydia found her
voice.
"I'll tell Farvie," said she. She turned away from him, and immediately
whirled back again. "I've got to do it carefully. You stay here."
But in the library where the colonel sat over Mary Nellen's last classic
riddle, she couldn't break it at all.
"He's come," she said.
The colonel got up and Virgil slid to the floor.
"Where is he?" he called, in a sharp voice. It was a voice touched with
age and apprehension. The girls hadn't known how old a man he was until
they heard him calling for his son. Jeffrey heard it and came in with a
few long steps, and his father met him at the door. To the two girls
Jeff seemed astonished at the emotion he was awakening. How could he be,
they wondered, when this instant of his release had been so terrible and
so beautiful for a long time? The tears came rushing to their eyes, as
they saw Farvie. He had laid aside all his gentle restraint, and put his
shaking hands on Jeffrey's shoulders. And then he called him by the name
he had been saying over in his heart for these last lean years:
"My son! my son!"
If they had kissed, Lydia would not have been surprised. But the two
men looked at each other, the colonel took down his hands, and Jeffrey
drew forward a chair for him.
"Sit down a minute," he said, quite gently, and then the girls knew that
he really had been moved, though he hadn't shown it, and, ready to seize
upon anything to love in him, they decided they loved his voice. When
they had got away out of the room and stood close together in the
dining-room, as if he were a calamity to be fled from, that was the only
thing they could think of to break their silence.
"He's got a lovely voice," said Anne, and Lydia answered chokingly:
"Yes."
"Do you think he sings?" Anne pursued, more, Lydia knew, to loosen the
tension than anything. "Farvie never told us that."
But Lydia couldn't answer any more, and then they both became aware that
Mary Nellen had hurried out some supper from the pantry and put quite an
array of candles on the table. She had then disappeared. Mary Nellen had
great delicacy of feeling. Anne began to light the candles, and Lydia
went back to the library. The colonel and Jeffrey were sitting there
like two men with nothing in particular to say, but, because they
happened to be in the same room, exchanging commonplaces.
"Supper's in the dining-room," said Lydia, in a weak little voice.
The colonel was about to rise, but Jeffrey said:
"Not for me."
"Have you had something?" his father asked, and Jeffrey answered:
"None for me--thank you."
The last two words seemed to be an afterthought. Lydia wondered if he
hadn't felt like thanking anybody in years. There seemed to be nothing
for her to do in this rigid sort of reunion, and she went back to Anne
in the dining-room.
"He doesn't want anything," she said. "We can clear away."
They did it in their deft fashion of working together, and then sat down
in the candlelight, making no pretence of reading or talk. All the time
they could hear the two voices from the library, going on at regular
intervals. At ten o'clock they were still going on, at eleven. Lydia
felt a deadly sleepiness, but she roused then and said, in the midst of
a yawn:
"I'm afraid Farvie'll be tired."
"Yes," said Anne. "I'll go and speak to them."
She went out of the room, and crossed the hall in her delicate,
soft-stepping way. She seemed to Lydia astonishingly brave. Lydia could
hear her voice from the other room, such a kind voice but steadied with
a little clear authority.
"You mustn't get tired, Farvie."
The strange voice jumped in on the heels of hers, as if it felt it ought
to be reproved.
"Of course not. I'd no idea how late it was."
Anne turned to Jeffrey. Lydia, listening, could tell from the different
direction of the voice.
"Your room is all ready. It's your old room."
There was a pin-prick of silence and then the strange voice said
quickly: "Thank you," as if it wanted to get everything, even
civilities, quickly over.
Lydia sat still in the dining-room. The candles had guttered and gone
down, but she didn't feel it possible to move out of her lethargy. She
was not only sleepy but very tired. Yet the whole matter, she knew, was
that this undramatic homecoming had deadened all her expectations. She
had reckoned upon a brother ready to be called brother; she had meant to
devote herself to him and see Anne devote herself, with an equal mind.
And here was a gaunt creature with a sodden skin who didn't want
anything they could do. She heard him say "Good-night." There was only
one good-night, which must have been to the colonel, though Anne was
standing by, and then she heard Anne, in a little kind voice, asking her
father if he wouldn't have something hot before he went to bed. No, he
said. He should sleep. His voice sounded exhilarated, with a thrill in
it of some even gay relief, not at all like the voice that had said
good-night. And Anne lighted his candle for him and watched him up the
stairs, and Lydia felt curiously outside it all, as if they were playing
the play without her. Anne came in then and looked solicitously at the
guttered candles of which one was left with a winding-sheet, like a
tipsy host that had drunk the rest under the table, and appeared to be
comforting the others for having made such a spectacle of themselves to
no purpose. Lydia was so sleepy now that there seemed to be several
Annes and she heard herself saying fractiously:
"Oh, let's go to bed."
Through the short night she dreamed confusedly, always a dream about
offering Farvie a supper tray, and his saying: "No, I never mean to eat
again." And then the tray itself seemed to be the trouble, and it had to
be filled all over. But nobody wanted the food.
In the early morning she awoke with the sun full upon her, for she had
been too tired the night before to close a blind. She got out of bed and
ran to the window. The night had been so confusing that she felt in very
much of a hurry to see the day. Her room overlooked the orchard,
outlined by its high red wall. For the first time, the wall seemed to
have a purpose. A man in shirt and trousers was walking fast inside it,
and while she looked he began to run. It was Jeffrey, the real Jeffrey,
she felt sure; not the Jeffrey of last night who had been so far from
her old conception of him that she had to mould him all over now to fit
him into the orchard scene. He was running in a foolish, half-hearted
way; but suddenly he seemed to call upon his will and set his elbows and
ran hard. Lydia felt herself panting in sympathy. She had a distaste for
him, too, even with this ache of pity sharper than any she had felt
while she dreamed about him before he came. What did he want to do it
for? she thought, as she watched him run. Why need he stir up in her a
deeper sorrow than any she had felt? She stepped back from her stand
behind the curtain, and began to brush her hair. She wasn't very happy.
It was impossible to feel triumphant because he was out of prison. She
had lost a cherished dream, that was all. After this she wouldn't wake
in the morning thinking: "Some day he'll be free." She would think:
"He's come. What shall we do with him?"
When she went down she found everybody had got up early, and Mary
Nellen, with some prescience of it, had breakfast ready. Jeff, now in
his coat, stood by the dining-room door with his father, talking in a
commonplace way about the house as it used to be, and the colonel was
professing himself glad no newer fashions had made him change it in
essentials.
"Here they are," said he. "Here are the girls."
Anne, while Lydia entered from the hall, was coming the other way, from
the kitchen where she had been to match conclusions with Mary Nellen
about bacon and toast. Anne was flushed from the kitchen heat, and she
had the spirit to smile and call, "Good morning." But Lydia felt halting
and speechless. She had thought proudly of the tact she should show when
this moment came, but she met it like a child. They sat down, and Anne
poured coffee and asked how Farvie had slept. But before anybody had
begun to eat, there was a knock at the front door, and Mary Nellen,
answering it, came back to Anne, in a distinct puzzle over what was to
be done now:
"It's a newspaper man."
Lydia, in her distress, gave Jeffrey a quick look, to see if he had
heard. He put his napkin down. His jaw seemed suddenly to set.
"Reporters?" he asked his father.
The fulness had gone out of Farvie's face.
"I think you'd better let me see them," he began, but Jeffrey got up and
pushed back his chair.
"No," said he. "Go on with your breakfast."
They heard him in the hall, giving a curt greeting. "What do you want?"
it seemed to say. "Get it over."
There was a deep-toned query then, and Jeffrey answered, without
lowering his voice, in what seemed to Lydia and Anne, watching the
effect on their father, a reckless, if not a brutal, disregard of
decencies:
"Nothing to say. Yes, I understand. You fellows have got to get a story.
But you can't. I've been pardoned out, that's all. I'm here. That ends
it."
It didn't end it for them. They kept on proffering persuasive little
notes of interrogative sound, and possibly they advanced their claim to
be heard because they had their day's work to do.
"Sorry," said Jeff, yet not too curtly. "Yes, I did write for the prison
paper. Yes, it was in my hands. No, I hadn't the slightest intention of
over-turning any system. Reason for doing it? Why, because that's the
way the thing looked to me. Not on your life. I sha'n't write a word for
any paper. Sorry. Good-bye."
The front door closed. It had been standing wide, for it was a warm
morning, but Lydia could imagine he shut it now in a way to make more
certain his tormentors had gone. While he was out there her old sweet
sympathy came flooding back, but when he strode into the room and took
up his napkin again, she stole one glance at him and met his scowl and
didn't like him any more. The scowl wasn't for her. It was an
introspective scowl, born out of things he intimately knew and couldn't
communicate if he tried.
The colonel had looked quite radiantly happy that morning. Now his
colour had died down, leaving in his cheeks the clear pallor of age, and
his hands were trembling. It seemed that somebody had to speak, and he
did it, faintly.
"I hope you are not going to be pursued by that kind of thing."
"It's all in the day's work," said Jeffrey.
He was eating his breakfast with a careful attention to detail. Anne
thought he seemed like a painstaking child not altogether sure of his
manners. She thought, too, with her swift insight into the needs of man,
that he was horribly hungry. She was not, like Lydia, on the verge of
impulse all the time, but she broke out here, and then bit her lip:
"I don't believe you did have anything to eat last night."
Lydia gave a little jump in her chair. She didn't see how Anne dared
bait the scowling martyr. He looked at Anne. His scowl continued. They
began to see he perhaps couldn't smooth it out. But he smiled a little.
"Because I'm so hungry?" he asked. His voice sounded kind. "Well, I
didn't."
Lydia, now conversation had begun, wanted to be in it.
"Why not?" asked she, and Anne gave a little protesting note.
"I don't know," said Jeffrey, considering. "I didn't feel like it."
This he said awkwardly, but they all, with a rush of pity for him,
thought they knew what he meant. He had eaten his food within
restraining walls, probably in silence, and to take up the kind
ceremonial of common life was too much for him. Anne poured him another
cup of coffee.
"Seen Jim Reardon?" Jeffrey asked his father.
Anne and Lydia could scarcely forbear another glance at him. Here was
Reardon, the evil influence behind him, too soon upon the scene. They
would not have had his name mentioned until it should be brought out in
Jeffrey's vindication.
"No," said the colonel. "Alston Choate called."
"I wonder what Reardon's doing now?" Jeffrey asked.
But his father did not know.
Jeffrey finished rapidly, and then leaned back in his chair, looked out
of the window and forgot them all. Lydia felt one of her disproportioned
indignations. She was afraid the colonel was not going to have the
beautiful time with him their hopes had builded. The colonel looked
older still than he had an hour ago.
"What shall we do, my son?" he asked. "Go for a walk--in the orchard?"
A walk in the street suddenly occurred to him as the wrong thing to
offer a man returned to the battery of curious eyes.
"If you like," said Jeffrey indifferently. "Do you take one after
breakfast?"
He spoke as if it were entirely for his father, and Anne and Lydia
wondered, Anne in her kind way and the other hotly, how he could forget
that all their passionate interests were for him alone.
"Not necessarily," said the colonel. They were rising. "I was thinking
of you--my son."
"What makes you call me that?" Jeffrey asked curiously.
They were in the hall now, looking out beyond the great sun patch on the
floor, to the lilac trees.
"What did I call you?"
"Son. You never used to."
Lydia felt she couldn't be quick enough in teaching him how dull he was.
"He calls you so because he's done it in his mind," she said, "for years
and years. Your name wasn't enough. Farvie felt so--affectionate."
The last word sounded silly to her, and her cheeks were so hot they
seemed to scald her eyes and melt out tears in them. Jeffrey gave her a
little quizzical look, and slipped his arm through his father's. Anne,
at the look, was suddenly relieved. He must have some soft emotions, she
thought, behind the scowl.
"Don't you like it?" the colonel asked him. He straightened consciously
under the touch of his son's arm.
"Oh, yes," said Jeffrey. "I like it. Only you never had. Except in
letters. Come in here and I'll tell you what I'm going to do."
He had piloted the colonel into the library, and Anne and Lydia were
disappearing into the dining-room where Mary Nellen was now supreme. The
colonel called them, imperatively. There was such a note of necessity in
his voice that they felt sure he didn't know how to deal, quite by
himself, with this unknown quantity of a son.
"Girls, come here. I have to have my girls," he said to Jeffrey, "when
anything's going to be talked over. They're the head of the house and my
head, too."
The girls came proudly, if unwillingly. They knew the scowling young man
didn't need them, might not want them indeed. But they were a part of
Farvie, and he'd got to accept them until they found out, at least, how
safe Farvie was going to be in his hands. Jeffrey wasn't thinking of
them at all. He was accepting them, but they hadn't any share in his
perspective. Lydia felt they were the merest little dots there. She
giggled, one brief note to herself, and then sobered. She was as likely
to laugh as to fume, and it began to seem very funny to her that in this
drama of The Prisoner's Return she and Anne were barely to have speaking
parts. The colonel sat in his armchair at the orchard window, and
Jeffrey stood by the mantel and fingered a vase. Lydia, for the first
time seeing his hands with a recognising eye, was shocked by them. They
were not gentleman's hands, she thought. They were worn, and had
calloused stains and ill-kept nails.
"I thought you'd like to know as soon as possible what I mean to do," he
said, addressing his father.
"I'm glad you've got your plans," his father said. "I've tried to make
some, but I couldn't--couldn't."
"I want first to find out just how things are here," said Jeffrey. "I
want to know how much you've got to live on, and whether these girls
have anything, and whether they want to stay on with you or whether
they're doing it because--" Jeffrey now had a choking sense of emotions
too big for him--"because there's no other way out."
"Do you mean," said Lydia, in a burst, before Anne's warning hand could
stop her, "you want us to leave Farvie?"
The colonel looked up with a beseeching air.
"Good God, no!" said Jeffrey irritably. "I only want to know the state
of things here. So I can tell what to do."
The colonel had got hold of himself, and straightened in his chair. The
girls knew that motion. It meant, "Come, come, you derelict old body.
Get into form."
"I've tried to write you fully," he said. "I hoped I gave you a--a
picture of the way we lived."
"You did. You have," said Jeffrey, still with that air of getting
nowhere and being greatly irritated by it. "But how could I know how
much these girls are sacrificing?"
"Sacrificing?" repeated the colonel helplessly, and Lydia was on the
point of another explosion when Jeffrey himself held up his hand to her.
"Wait," he said. "Let me think. I don't know how to get on with people.
They only make me mad."
That put a different face on it. Anne knew what he meant. Here he was,
he for whom they had meant to erect arches of welcome, floored in a
moment by the perplexities of family life.
"Of course," said Anne. She often said "of course" to show her sympathy.
"You tell it your own way."
"Ah!" said Jeffrey, with a breath of gratitude. "Now you're talking.
Don't you see----" he faced Anne as the only person present whose
emotions weren't likely to get the upper hand----"don't you see I've got
to know how father's fixed before I make any plans for myself?"
Anne nodded.
"We live pretty simply," she said, "but we can live. I keep the
accounts. I can tell you how much we spend."
The colonel had got hold of himself now.
"I have twelve hundred a year," he said. "We do very well on that. I
don't actually know how, except that Anne is such a good manager. She
and Lydia have earned quite a little, dancing, but I always insisted on
their keeping that for their own use."
Here Jeffrey looked at Anne and found her pinker than she had been. Anne
was thinking she rather wished she had not been so free with her offer
of accounts.
"Dancing," said he. "Yes. You wrote me. Do you like to dance?"
He had turned upon Lydia.
"Oh, yes," said she. "It's heavenly. Anne doesn't. Except when she's
teaching children."
"What made you learn dancing?" he asked Anne.
"We wanted to do something," she said guiltily. She was afraid her
tongue was going to betray her and tell the story of the lean year after
their mother died when they found out that mother had lived a life of
magnificent deception as to the ease of housekeeping on twelve hundred a
year.
"Yes," said Jeffrey, "but dancing? Why'd you pick out that?"
"We couldn't do anything else," said Lydia impatiently. "Anne and I
don't know anything in particular." She thought he might have been
clever enough to see that, while too tactful to betray it. "But we look
nice--together--and anybody can dance."
"Oh!" said Jeffrey. His eyes had a shade less of gravity, but he kept an
unmoved seriousness of tone.
"About our living with Farvie," said Anne. "I can see you'd want to
know."
"Yes," said he, "I do."
"We love to," said Anne. "We don't know what we should do if Farvie
turned us out."
"My dear!" from the colonel.
"Why, he's our father," said Lydia, in a burst. "He's just as much our
father as he is yours."
"Good!" said Jeffrey. His voice had warmed perceptibly. "Good for you.
That's what I thought."
"If you'd rather not settle down here," said his father, in a tone of
hoping Jeff would like it very much, "we shall be glad to let the house
again and go anywhere you say. We've often talked of it, the girls and
I."
Jeffrey did not thank them for that, or seem to hear it even.
"I want," said he, "to go West."
"Well," said Farvie, with a determined cheerfulness, "I guess the
girls'll agree to that. Middle West?"
"No," said Jeffrey, "the West--if there is any West left. Somewhere
where there's space." His voice fell, on that last word. It held wonder
even. Was there such a thing, this man of four walls seemed to ask, as
space?
"You'd want to go alone," said Anne softly. She felt as if she were
breaking something to Farvie and adjuring him to bear it.
"Yes," said Jeffrey, in relief. "I've got to go alone."
"My son--" said the colonel and couldn't go on. Then he did manage.
"Aren't we going to live together?"
"Not yet," said Jeffrey. "Not yet."
The colonel had thought so much about his old age that now he was near
saying: "You know I haven't so very many years," but he held on to
himself.
"He's got to go alone," said Anne. "But he'll come back."
"Yes," said Lydia, from the habit they had learned of heartening Farvie,
"he'll come back."
But she was hotly resolving that he should learn his duty and stay here.
Let her get a word with him alone.
"What I'm going to do out there I don't know," said Jeffrey. "But I am
going to work, and I'm going to turn in enough to keep you as you ought
to be. I want to stay here a little while first."
The colonel was rejuvenated by delight. Lydia wondered how anybody could
see that look on his face and not try to keep it there.
"I've got," said Jeffrey, "to write a book."
"Oh, my son," said the colonel, "that's better than I hoped. The
newspapers have had it all, how you've changed the prison paper, and how
you built up a scheme of prison government, and I said to myself, 'When
he comes out, he'll write a book, and good will come of it, and then we
shall see that, under Providence, my son went to prison that he might do
that.'"
He was uplifted with the wonder of it. The girls felt themselves carried
along at an equal pace. This was it, they thought. It was a part of the
providences that make life splendid. Jeffrey had been martyred that he
might do a special work.
"Oh, no," said he, plainly bored by the inference. "That's not it. I'm
going to write the life of a fellow I know."
"Who was he?" Anne asked, with a serious uplift of her brows.
"A defaulter."
"In the Federal Prison?"
"Yes."
VI
He looked at them, quite unconscious of the turmoil he had wakened in
them. Lydia was ready to sound the top note of revolt. Her thoughts were
running a definite remonstrance: "Write the life of another man when you
should be getting your evidence together and proving your own innocence
and the injustice of the law?" Anne was quite ready to believe there
must be a cogent reason for writing the life of his fellow criminal, but
she wished it were not so. She, too, from long habit of thought, wanted
Jeffrey to attend to his own life now he had a chance. The colonel, she
knew, through waiting and hoping, had fallen into an attitude of mind as
wistful and expectant as hers and Lydia's. The fighting qualities, it
seemed, had been ground out of him. The fostering ones had grown
disproportionately, and sometimes, she was sure, they made him ache, in
a dull way, with ruth for everybody.
"Did the man ask you to write his life?" he inquired.
"No," said Jeffrey. "I asked him if I could. He agreed to it. Said I
might use his name. He's no family to squirm under it."
"You feel he was unjustly sentenced," the colonel concluded.
"Oh, no. He doesn't either. He mighty well deserved what he got. Been
better perhaps if he'd got more. What I had in mind was to tell how a
man came to be a robber."
Lydia winced at the word. Jeffrey had been commonly called a defaulter,
and she was imperfectly reconciled to that: certainly not to a branding
more ruthless still.
"I've watched him a good deal," said Jeffrey. "We've had some talk
together. I can see how he did what he did, and how he'd do it again.
It'll be a study in criminology."
"When does he--come out?" Anne hesitated over this. She hardly knew a
term without offence.
"Next year."
"But," said she, "you wouldn't want to publish a book about him and have
him live it down?"
"Why shouldn't I?" asked Jeffrey, turning on her. "He's willing."
"He can't be willing," Lydia broke in. "It's frightful."
"Well, he is," said Jeffrey. "There's nothing you could do to him he'd
mind, if it gave him good advertising."
"What does he want to do," asked the colonel, "when he comes out?"
"Get into the game again. Make big money. And if it's necessary, steal
it. Not that he wants to bunco. He's had his dose. He's learned it isn't
safe. But he'd make some dashing _coup_; he couldn't help it. Maybe he'd
get nabbed."
"What a horrid person!" said Lydia. "How can you have anything to do
with him?"
"Why, he's interesting," said Jeffrey, in a way she found brutal. "He's
a criminal. He's got outside."
"Outside what?" she persisted.
"Law. And he wouldn't particularly want to get back, except that it
pays. But I'm not concerned with what he does when he gets back. I want
to show how it seemed to him outside and how he got there. He's more
picturesque than I am, or I'd take myself."
Blessed Anne, who had no grasp, she thought, of abstract values, but
knew how to make a man able for his work, met the situation quietly.
"You could have the blue chamber, couldn't he, Farvie? and do your
writing there."
Lydia flashed her a reproachful glance. She would have scattered his
papers and spilled the ink, rather than have him do a deed like that. If
he did it, it was not with her good-will. Jeff had drawn his frown the
tighter.
"I don't know whether I can do it," he said. "A man has got to know how
to write."
"You wrote some remarkable things for the _Nestor_," said the colonel,
now hesitating. It had been one of the rules he and the girls had
concocted for the treatment of a returning prisoner, never to refer to
stone walls and iron bars. But surely, he felt, Jeff needed
encouragement.
Jeff was ruthless.
"That was all rot," he said.
"What was?" Lydia darted at him. "Didn't you mean what you said?"
"It was idiotic for the papers to take it up," said Jeff. "They got it
all wrong. 'There's a man,' they said, 'in the Federal Prison, Jeffrey
Blake, the defaulter. Very talented. Has revolutionised the _Nestor_,
the prison organ. Let him out, pardon him, simply because he can
write.'"
"As I understand," said his father, "you did get the name of the paper
changed."
"Well, now," said Jeff, appealingly, in a candid way, "what kind of name
was that for a prison paper? _Nestor!_ 'Who was Nestor?' says the man
that's been held up in the midst of his wine-swilling and money-getting.
Wise old man, he remembers. First-class preacher. Turn on the tap and
he'll give you a maxim. 'Gee!' says he, 'I don't want advice. I know
how I got here, and if I ever get out, I'll see to it I don't get in
again.'"
Lydia found this talk exceedingly diverting. She disapproved of it. She
had wanted Jeff to appear a dashing, large-eyed, entirely innocent young
man, his mouth, full of axioms, prepared to be the stay of Farvie's
gentle years. But this rude torrent of perverse philosophy bore her
along and she liked it, particularly because she felt she should
presently contradict and show how much better she knew herself. Anne,
too, evidently had an unlawful interest in it, and wanted him to keep on
talking. She took that transparent way of furthering the flow by asking
a question she could answer herself.
"You called it _Prison Talk_, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Jeff. "They called it _Prison Talk."_
"And all our newspapers copied your articles," said Anne, artfully
guiding him forward, "the ones you called 'The New Republic.'"
"What d'they want to copy them for?" asked Jeff. "It was a fool thing to
do. I'd simply written the letters to the men, to ask 'em if they didn't
think the very devil of prison life was that we were outside. Not
because we were inside, shut up in a jug. You could bear to be in a jug,
if that was all. But you've got to have ties. You've got to have laws
and the whole framework that's been built up from the cave man. Or
you're desperate, don't you see? You're all alone. And a man will do a
great deal not to be alone. If there's nothing for you to do but learn a
trade, and be preached at by _Nestor_, and say to yourself, 'I'm
outside'--why there's the devil in it."
He was trying to convince them as he had previously convinced others,
those others who had lived with him under the penal law. He looked at
Anne much as if she were a State or Federal Board and incidentally at
Lydia, as if he would say:
"Here's a very young and insignificant criminal. We'll return to her
presently. But she, too, is going to be convinced."
"And I don't say a man hasn't got to be infernally miserable when he's
working out his sentence. He has. I don't want you to let up on him.
Only I don't want him to get punky, so he isn't fit to come back when
his term is over. I don't believe it's going to do much for him merely
to keep the laws he's been chucked under, against his will, though he's
got to keep 'em, or they'll know the reason why."
Lydia wondered who They were. She thought They might be brutal wardens
and assembled before her, in a terrifying battalion, the strait-jackets
and tortures she'd found in some of the older English novels.
"So I said to the men: 'We've got to govern ourselves. We haven't got a
damned word'"--really abashed he looked at Anne--"I beg your pardon. 'We
haven't got a word to say in this government we're under; but say we
have. Say the only thing we can do is to give no trouble, fine
ourselves, punish ourselves if we do. The worst thing that can happen to
us,' I said, 'is to hate law. Well, the best law we've got is prison
law. It's the only law that's going to touch us now. Let's love it as if
it were our mother. And if it isn't tough enough, let's make it tougher.
Let's vote on it, and publish our votes in this paper.'"
"I was surprised," said his father, "that so much plain speaking was
allowed."
"Advertising! Of course they allowed us," said Jeff. "It advertised us
outside. Advertised the place. Officials got popular. Inside conduct
went up a hundred per cent, just as it would in school. Men are only
boys. As soon as the fellows got it into their heads we were trying to
work out a republic in a jail, they were possessed by it. I wish you
could see the letters that were sent in to the paper. You couldn't
publish 'em, some of 'em. Too illiterate. But they showed you what was
inside the fellows. Sometimes they were as smug as a prayer-meeting."
"Did this man write?" Lydia asked scornfully, with a distaste she didn't
propose to lessen. "The one you're going to do the book about?"
"Oh, he's a crook," said Jeff indifferently. "Crook all through. If we'd
been trying to build up a monarchy instead of a republic he'd have
hatched up a scheme for looting the crown jewels. Or if we'd been
founding a true and only church, he'd have suggested a trick for melting
the communion plate."
"And you want to write his life!" said Lydia's look.
But Jeff cared nothing about her look. He was, with a retrospective eye,
regarding the work he had been doing, work that had perhaps saved his
reason as well as bought his freedom. Now he was spreading it out and
letting them consider it, not for praise, but because he trusted them.
He felt a few rivets giving in the case he had hardened about himself
for so long a time. He thought he had got very hard indeed, and was even
willing to invite a knock or two, to test his induration. But there was
something curiously softening in this little group sitting in the shade
of the pleasant room while the sunshine outside played upon growing
leaves. He was conscious, wonderingly, that they all loved him very
much. His father's letters had told him that. It seemed simple and
natural, too, that these young women, who were not his sisters and who
gave him, in his rough habit of life, a curious pain with their delicacy
and softness--it seemed natural enough that they should, in a way not
understood, belong to him. He had got gradually accustomed to it, from
their growing up in his father's house from little girls to girls
dancing themselves into public favour, and then, again, he had been
living "outside" where ordinary conventions did not obtain. He had got
used to many things in his solitary thoughts that were never tested by
other minds in familiar intercourse. The two girls belonged there among
accepted things. He looked up suddenly at his father, and asked the
question they had least of all expected to hear:
"Where's Esther?"
The two girls made a movement to go, but he glanced at them frowningly,
as if they mustn't break up the talk at this moment, and they hesitated,
hand in hand.
"She's living here," said the colonel, "with her grandmother."
"Has that old harpy been over lately?"
"Madame Beattie?"
"Yes."
"Not to my knowledge."
Anne and Lydia exchanged looks. Madame Beattie was a familiar name to
them, but they had never heard she was a harpy.
"Was she Esther's aunt?" Lydia inquired, really to give the talk a jog.
She was accustomed to shake up her watch when it hesitated.
"Great-aunt," said Jeffrey. "Step-sister to Esther's grandmother. She
must be sixty-five where grandmother's a good ten years older."
"She sang," said the colonel, forgetting, as he often did, they seemed
so young, that everybody in America must at least have heard tradition
of Madame Beattie's voice. "She lived abroad."
"She had a ripping voice," said Jeff. "When she was young, of course.
That wasn't all. There was something about her that took them. But she
lost her voice, and she married Beattie, and he died. Then she came back
here and hunted up Esther."
His face settled into lines of sombre thought, puzzled thought, it
seemed to Anne. But to Lydia it looked as if this kidnapping of Madame
Beattie from the past and thrusting her into the present discussion was
only a pretext for talking about Esther. Of course, she knew, he was
wildly anxious to enter upon the subject, and there might be pain enough
in it to keep him from approaching it suddenly. Esther might be a
burning coal. Madame Beattie was the safe holder he caught up to keep
his fingers from it. But he sounded now as if he were either much
absorbed in Madame Beattie or very wily in his hiding behind her.
"I've often wondered if she came back. I've thought she might easily
have settled on Esther and sucked her dry. No news of her?"
"No news," said the colonel. "It's years since she's been here. Not
since--then."
"No," said Jeff. There was a new line of bitter amusement near his
mouth. "I know the date of her going, to a dot. The day I was arrested
she put for New York. Next week she sailed for Italy." But if Lydia was
going to feel more of her hot reversals in the face of his calling plain
names, she found him cutting them short with another question: "Seen
Esther?"
"No," said the colonel.
A red spot had sprung into his cheek. He looked harassed. Lydia sprang
into the arena, to save him, and because she was the one who had the
latest news.
"I have," she said. "I've seen her."
She knew what grave surprise was in the colonel's face. But no such
thing appeared in Jeff's. He only turned to her as if she were the next
to be interrogated.
"How does she look?" he asked.
The complete vision of her stretched at ease eating fruit out of a
silver dish, as if she had arranged herself to rouse the most violent
emotions in a little seething sister, stirred Lydia to the centre. But
not for a million dollars, she reflected, in a comparison clung to
faithfully, would she tell how beautiful Esther appeared to even the
hostile eye.
"She looked," said she coldly, "perfectly well."
"Where d'you see her?" Jeff asked.
"I went over," said Lydia. Her colour was now high. She looked as if you
might select some rare martyrdom for her--quartering or gridironing
according to the oldest recipes--and you couldn't make her tell less
than the truth, because only the truth would contribute to the downfall
of Esther. "I went in without ringing, because Farvie'd been before and
they wouldn't let him in."
"Lydia!" the colonel called remindingly.
"I found her reading--and eating." Lydia hadn't known she could be so
hateful. Still she was telling the exact truth. "We talked a few minutes
and I came away."
"Did she--" at last suddenly and painfully thrown out of his nonchalant
run of talk, he stopped.
"She's a horrid woman," said Lydia, crimson with her own daring, and got
up and ran out of the room.
Anne looked appealingly at Jeff, in a way of begging him to remember how
young Lydia was, and perhaps how spoiled. But he wasn't disturbed. He
only said to his father in a perfectly practical way:
"Women never did like her, you know."
So Anne got up and went out, thinking it was the moment for him and his
father to pace along together on this road of masculine understanding.
She found Lydia by the dining-room window, savagely drying her cheeks.
Lydia looked as if she had cried hard and scrubbed the tears off and
cried again, there was such wilful havoc in the pink smoothness of her
face.
"Isn't he hateful?" she asked Anne, with an incredulous spite in her
voice. "How could anybody that belonged to Farvie be so rough? I can't
endure him, can you?"
Anne looked distressed. When there were disagreements and cross-purposes
they made her almost ill. She would go about with a physical nausea upon
her, wishing the world could be kind.
"But he's only just--free," she said.
They were still making a great deal of that word, she and Lydia. It
seemed the top of earthly fortune to be free, and abysmal misery to have
missed it.
"I can't help it," said Lydia. "What does he want to act so for? Why
does he talk about such places, as if anybody could be in them?"
"Prisons?"
"Yes. And talking about going West as if Farvie hadn't just lived to get
him back. And about her as if she wasn't any different from what he
expected and you couldn't ask her to be anything else."
"But she's his wife," said Anne gently. "I suppose he loves her. Let's
hope he does."
"You can, if you want to," said Lydia, with a wet handkerchief making
another renovating attack on her face. "I sha'n't. She's a horrid
woman."
They parted then, for their household deeds, but all through the morning
Lydia had a fire of curiosity burning in her to know what Jeff was
doing. He ought, she knew, to be sitting by Farvie, keeping him company,
in a passionate way, to make up for the years. The years seemed
sometimes like a colossal mistake in nature that everybody had got to
make up for--make up to everybody else. Certainly she and Anne and
Farvie had got to make up to the innocent Jeff. And equally they had all
got to make up to Farvie. But going once noiselessly through the hall,
she glanced in and saw the colonel sitting alone by the window, Mary
Nellen's Virgil in his hand. He was well back from the glass, and Lydia
guessed that it was because he wanted to command the orchard and not
himself be seen. She ran up to her own room and also looked. There he
was, Jeff, striding round in the shadow of the brick wall, walking like
a man with so many laps to do before night. Sometimes he squared his
shoulders and walked hard, but as if he knew he was going to get
there--the mysterious place for which he was bound. Sometimes his
shoulders sagged, and he had to drive himself. Lydia felt, in her
throat, the aching misery of youth and wondered if she had got to cry
again, and if this hateful, wholly unsatisfactory creature was going to
keep her crying. As she watched, he stopped, and then crossed the
orchard green directly toward her. She stood still, looking down on him
fascinated, her breath trembling, as if he might glance up and ask her
what business she had staring down there, spying on him while he did
those mysterious laps he was condemned to, to make up perhaps for the
steps he had not taken on free ground in all the years.
"Got a spade?" she heard him call.
"Yes." It was Anne's voice. "Here it is."
"Why, it's new," Lydia heard him say.
He was under her window now, and she could not see him without putting
her head over the sill.
"Yes," said Anne. "I went down town and bought it."
Anne's voice sounded particularly satisfied. Lydia knew that tone. It
said Anne had been able to accomplish some fit and clever deed, to
please. It was as if a fountain, bubbling over, had said, "Have I given
you a drink, you dog, you horse, you woman with the bundle and the
child? Marvellous lucky I must be. I'll bubble some more."
Jeff himself might have understood that in Anne, for he said:
"I bet you brought it home in your hand."
"No takers," said Anne. "I bet I did."
"That heavy spade?"
"It wasn't heavy."
"You thought I'd be spading to keep from growing dotty. Good girl. Give
it here."
"But, Jeff!" Anne's voice flew after him as he went. Lydia felt herself
grow hot, knowing Anne had taken the big first step that had looked so
impossible when they saw him. She had called him Jeff. "Jeff, where are
you going to spade?"
"Up," said Jeff. "I don't care where. You always spade up, don't you?"
In a minute Lydia saw Anne, with the sun on her brown hair, the colonel,
and Jeff with the shining spade like a new sort of war weapon, going
forth to spade "up". Evidently Anne intended to have no spading at
random in a fair green orchard. She was one of the conservers of the
earth, a thrifty housewife who would have all things well done. They
looked happily intent, the three, going out to their breaking ground.
Lydia felt the tempest in her going down, and she wished she were with
them. But her temper shut her out. She felt like a little cloud driven
by some capricious wind to darken the face of earth, and not by her own
willingness.
She went down to the noon dinner quite chastened, with the expression
Anne knew, of having had a temper and got over it. The three looked as
if they had had a beautiful time, Lydia thought humbly. The colour was
in their faces. Farvie talked of seed catalogues, and it became evident
that Jeff was spading up the old vegetable garden on the orchard's edge.
Anne had a soft pink in her cheeks. They had all, it appeared, begun a
pleasant game.
Lydia kept a good deal to herself that day. She accepted a task from
Anne of looking over table linen and lining drawers with white paper.
Mary Nellen was excused from work, and sat at upper windows making a hum
of study like good little translating bees. Anne went back and forth
from china closet to piles of dishes left ready washed by Mary Nellen,
and the colonel, in the library, drowsed off the morning's work. Lydia
had a sense of peaceful tasks and tranquil pauses. Her own pulses had
quieted with the declining sun, and it seemed as if they might all be
settling into a slow-moving ease of life at last.
"Where is he?" suddenly she said to Anne, in the midst of their weaving
the household rhythm.
"Jeff?" asked Anne, not stopping. "He's spading in the garden."
"Don't you want to go out?" asked Lydia. She felt as if they had on
their hands, not a liberated prisoner, but a prisoner still bound by
their fond expectations of him. He must be beguiled, distracted from the
memory of his broken fetters.
"No," said Anne. "He'll be tired enough to sleep to-night."
"Didn't he sleep last night?" Lydia asked, that old ache beginning again
in her.
"I shouldn't think so," said Anne. "But he's well tired now".
And it was Lydia that night at ten who heard long breaths from the
little room when she went softly up the back stairs to speak to Mary
Nellen. There was a light on his table. The door was open. He sat, his
back to her, his arms on the table, his head on his arms. She heard the
long labouring breaths of a creature who could have sobbed if he had not
kept a heavy hand on himself. They were, Lydia thought, like the breaths
of a dear dog she had known who used to put his nose to the crack of the
shut door and sigh into it, "Please let me in." It seemed to her acutely
sensitive mind, prepared like a chemical film to take every impression
Jeff could cast, as if he were lying prone at the door of the cruel
beauty and breathing, "Please let me in." She wanted to put her hands on
the bowed head and comfort him. Now she knew how Anne felt, Anne, the
little mother heart, who dragged up compassion from the earth and
brought it down from the sky for unfriended creatures. And yet all the
solace Lydia had to offer was a bitter one. She would only have said:
"Don't cry for her. She isn't worth it. She's a hateful woman."
VII
Madame Beattie was near, and had that morning telegraphed Esther. The
message was explicit, and, in the point of affection, diffuse.
Old-fashioned, too: she longed to hold her niece in her arms. A more
terrified young woman could not easily have been come on that day than
Esther Blake, as she opened the envelope, afraid of detectives, of
reporters, of anything connected with a husband lately returned from
jail. But this was worse than she could have guessed. In face of an
ordinary incursion she might shut herself up in her room and send Sophy
to tell smooth fictions at the door. Reporters could hardly get at her,
and her husband himself, if he should try, could presumably be routed.
Aunt Patricia Beattie was another matter. Esther was so panicky that she
ran upstairs with the telegram and tapped at grandmother's door. Rhoda
Knox came in answer. She was a large woman of a fine presence, red
cheekbones with high lights, and smooth black hair brushed glossy and
carefully coiled. She was grandmother's attendant, helplessly hated by
grandmother but professionally unmoved by it, a general who carried on
intricate calculations to avoid what she called "steps." In the matter
of steps, she laid bonds on high and low. A deed that would have taken
her five minutes to do she passed on to the next available creature,
even if it required twenty minutes' planning to hocus him into accepting
it. She had the intent look of the schemer: yet she was one who meant
well and simply preferred by nature to be stationary. Grandmother
feared her besides hating her, though loving the order she brought to
pass.
Esther slipped by her, and went to the bed where grandmother was lying
propped on pillows, an exceedingly small old woman who was even to
life-long friends an enigma presumably without an answer. She had the
remote air of hating her state of age, which did not seem a natural
necessity but a unique calamity, a trap sprung on her and, after the
nature of traps, most unexpectedly. When she was young she had believed
the old walked into the trap deliberately because it was provided on a
path they were tired of. But she wasn't tired, and yet the trap had
clutched her. She had a small face beautifully wrought upon by lines, as
if she had given a cunning artificer the preparation of a mask she was
paying dearly for and yet didn't prize at all. An old-fashioned nightcap
with a frill covered her head, and she had tied herself so tightly into
it that he must be a bold adventurer who would get at the thoughts
inside. Her little hands were shaded by fine frills. She looked, on the
whole, like a disenchanted lingerer in the living world, a useless
creature for whom fostering had done so much that you might ask: "What
is this illustration of a clean old woman? What is it for? What does it
teach?"
Esther, with her telegram, stood beside the bed.
"Grandmother," said she, in the perfect tone she used toward her, clear
and not too loud, "Aunt Patricia Beattie is coming."
Grandmother lifted large black eyes dulled by the broken surface of age,
to Esther's face. There was no envy in the gaze but wonder chiefly.
"Is that youth?" the eyes inquired. "Useless, not especially
admirable--but curious."
Esther, waiting there for recognition, felt the discomfort grandmother
always seemed to stir into her mood. Her rose-touched skin was a little
more suffused, though not beyond a furtherance of beauty.
"Aunt Patricia is coming," she repeated. "When I heard from her last she
was in Poland."
"Her name is Martha," said grandmother. "Don't let her come in here."
She had a surprising voice, of a barbaric quality, the ring of metal.
Hearing it you were mentally translated for an instant, and thought of
far-off, palm-girt islands and savages beating strange instruments and
chanting to them uncouth syllables. "Rhoda Knox, don't let her get up
here."
"How can I keep her out?" asked Esther. "You'll have to see her. I can't
live down there alone with her. I couldn't make her happy."
A satirical light shivered across grandmother's eyes.
"Where is your husband?" she inquired. "Here?"
"Here?" repeated Esther. "In this house?"
"Yes."
"He isn't coming here. It would be very painful for him."
The time had been when grandmother, newer to life, would have asked,
"Why?" But she knew Esther minutely now; all her turns of speech and
habits of thought were as a tale long told. Once it had been a mildly
fascinating game to see through what Esther said to what she really
meant. It was easy, once you had the clue, too easy, all certainties,
with none of the hazards of a game. Esther, she knew, lived with a
lovely ideal of herself. The imaginary Esther was all sympathy; she was
even self-sacrificing. No shining quality lay in the shop window of the
world's praise but the real Esther snatched it and adorned herself with
it. The Esther that was talked in the language of the Esther that ought
to be. If she didn't want to see you, she told you it would be
inconvenient for you to come. If she wanted to tell you somebody had
praised the rose of her cheek, she told you she was so touched by
everybody's goodness in loving to give pleasure; then she proved her
point by naive repetition of the pretty speech. Sometimes she even, in
the humility of the other Esther, deprecated the flattery as insincere;
but not before she had told you what it was.
"I haven't seen her since--I haven't seen her for years," she said. "She
wasn't happy with me then. She'll be much less likely to be now."
"Older," said grandmother. "More difficult. Keep her out of here."
It seemed to Esther there was no sympathy for her in the world, even if
she got drum and fife and went out to beat it up. One empty victory she
had achieved: grandmother had at least spoken to her. Sometimes she
turned her face to the wall and lay there, not even a ruffle quivering.
Esther moved away, but Rhoda Knox was beforehand with her. Rhoda held a
letter.
"Mrs. Blake, could you take this down?" she asked, in a faultless
manner, and yet implacably. "And let it go out when somebody is going?"
Esther accepted the letter helplessly. She knew how Rhoda sat planning
to get her errands done. Yet there was never any reason why you should
not do them. She ran downstairs carrying the letter, hating it because
it had got itself carried against her will, and went at once to the
telephone. And there her voice had more than its natural appeal, because
she was so baffled and angry and pitied herself so much.
"Could you come in? I'm bothered. Yes," in answer to his question, "in
trouble, I'm afraid."
Alston Choate came at once; her voice must have told him moving things,
for he was full of warm concern. Esther met him with a dash of agitation
admirably controlled. She was not the woman to alarm a man at the start.
Let him get into a run, let him forget the spectators by the way, and
even the terrifying goal where he might be crowned victor even before he
chose. Only whip up his blood until the guidance of them both was hers,
not his. So he felt at once her need of him and at the same time her
distance from him. It was a wonderfully vivifying call: nothing to fear
from her, but exhilarating feats to be undertaken for her sake.
"I'm frightened at last," she told him. That she was a brave woman the
woman she had created for her double had persuaded her. "I had to speak
to somebody."
Choate looked really splendid in the panoply of his simplicity and
restraints and courtesy. A man can be imposing in spite of a broken
nose.
"What's gone wrong?" he asked.
"Aunt Patricia is coming."
Choate had quite forgotten Aunt Patricia. She had been too far in the
depths of Poland for Esther to summon up her shade. Possibly it was a
dangerous shade to summon, lest the substance follow. But now she
sketched Aunt Patricia with hesitating candour, but so that he lost none
of her undesirability, and he listened with a painstaking courtesy.
"You say you're afraid of her?" he said, at the end. "Let her come. She
may not want to stay."
"She is so--different," faltered Esther. She looked at him with humid
eyes. It was apparent that Aunt Patricia was different in a way not to
be commended.
Now Choate thought he saw how it was.
"You mean she's been banging about Europe," he said, "living in
_pensions_, trailing round with second-rate professionals. I get that
idea, at least. Am I right?"
"She's frightfully bohemian, of course," said Esther. "Yes, that's what
I did mean."
"But she's not young, you know," said Choate, in an indulgent kindliness
Esther was quite sure he kept for her alone. "She won't be very rackety.
People don't want the same things after they're sixty."
"She smokes," said Esther, in a burst of confidence. "She did years ago
when nice women weren't doing it."
He smiled at this, but tenderly. He didn't leave Addington very often,
but he did know what a blaze the vestals of the time keep up.
"No matter," said he, "so long as you don't."
"She drinks brandy," said Esther, "and tells things. I can't repeat what
she tells. She's different from anybody I ever met--and I don't see how
I can make her happy."
By this time Choate saw there was nothing he could do about Aunt
Patricia, and dismissed her from his orderly mind. She was not
absolutely pertinent to Esther's happiness. But he looked grave. There
was somebody, he knew, who was pertinent.
"I haven't succeeded in seeing Jeff yet," he began, with a slight
hesitation. It seemed to him it might be easier for her to hear that
name than the formal words, "your husband". She winced. Choate saw it
and pitied her, as she knew he would. "Is he coming--here?"
She looked at him with large, imploring eyes.
"Must I?" he heard her whispering, it seemed really to herself.
"I don't see how you can help it, dear," he answered. The last word
surprised him mightily. He had never called her "dear". She hadn't even
been "Esther" to him. But the warmth of his compassion and an irritation
that had been working in him with Jeff's return--something like jealousy,
it might even be--drove the little word out of doors and bade it lodge
with her and so betray him. Esther heard the word quite clearly and knew
what volumes of commentary it carried; but Choate, relieved, thought it
had passed her by. She was still beseeching him, even caressing him,
with the liquid eyes.
"You see," she said, "he and I are strangers--almost. He's been away so
long."
"You haven't seen him," said Choate, like an accusation. He had often
had to bruise that snake. He hoped she'd step on it for good.
"No," said Esther. "He didn't wish it."
Choate's sane sense told him that no man could fail to wish it. If Jeff
had forbidden her to come at the intervals when he could see his kin,
she should have battered down his denials and gone to him. She should
have left on his face the warm touch of hers and the cleansing of her
tears. Choate had a tremendous idea of the obligations of what he called
love. He hid what he thought of it in the fastnesses of a shy heart, but
he took delight and found strength, too, in the certainty that there is
unconquerable love, and that it laughs at even the locksmiths that
fasten prison doors. He knew what a pang it would have been to him if he
had seen Esther Blake going year after year to carry her hoarded
sweetness to another man. But he wished she had done it. Some hardy,
righteous fibre in him would have been appeased.
"He's happier away from me," said Esther, shaking her head. "His father
understands him. I don't. Why, before he went away we weren't so very
happy. Didn't you know that?"
Choate was glad and sorry.
"Weren't you?" he responded. "Poor child!"
"No. We'd begun to be strangers, in a way. And it's gone on and on, and
of course we're really strangers now."
The Esther she meant to be gave her a sharp little prick here--that
Esther seemed to carry a needle for the purpose of these occasional
pricks, though she used it less and less as time went on--and said to
her, "Strangers before he went away? Oh, no! I'd like to think that. It
makes the web we're spinning stronger. But I can't. No. That isn't
true."
"So you see," said the real Esther to Choate, "I can't do anything. I
sit here alone with my hands tied, and grandma upstairs--of course I
can't leave grandma--and I can't do anything. Do you think--" she looked
very challenging and pure--"do you think it would be wicked of me to
dream of a divorce?"
Choate got up and walked to the fireplace. He put both hands on the
mantel and gripped it, and Esther, with that sense of implacable mastery
women feel at moments of sexual triumph, saw the knuckles whiten.
"Wouldn't it be better," she said, "for him? I don't care for myself,
though I'm very lonely, very much at sea; but it does seem to me it
would be better for him if he could be free and build his life up again
from the beginning."
Choate answered in a choked voice that made him shake his head
impatiently:
"It isn't better for any man to be free."
"Not if he doesn't care for his wife?" the master torturer proceeded,
more and more at ease now she saw how tight she had him.
Choate turned upon her. His pale face was scarred with an emotion as
deep as the source of tears, though she exulted to see he had no tears
to show her. Men should, she felt, be strong.
"Don't you know you mustn't say that kind of thing to me?" he asked
her. "Don't you see it's a temptation? I can't listen to it. I can't
consider it for a minute."
"Is it a temptation?" she asked, in a whisper, born, it seemed, of
unacknowledged intimacies between them. The whisper said, "If it is a
temptation, it is not a temptation to you alone."
Choate was not looking at her, but he saw her, with the eyes of the
mind: the brown limpid look, the uplift of her quivering face, the curve
of her throat and the long ripple to her feet. He walked out of the
room; it was the only thing for a decent man to do, in the face of
incarnate appeal, challenge, a vitality so intense, and yet so
unconscious of itself, he knew, that it was, in its purity, almost
irresistible. In the street he was deaf to the call of a friend and
passed another without seeing him. They chaffed him about it afterward.
He was, they told him, thinking of a case.
Esther went about the house in an exhilarated lightness. She sang a
little, in a formless way. She could not manage a tune, but she had a
rhythmic style of humming that was not unpleasant to hear and gave her
occasional outlet. It was the animal in the desert droning and purring
to itself in excess of ease. She felt equal to meeting Aunt Patricia
even.
About dusk Aunt Patricia came in the mediæval cab with Denny driving.
There was no luggage. Esther hoped a great deal from that. But it proved
there was too much to come by cab, and Denny brought it afterward,
shabby trunks of a sophisticated look, spattered with labels. Madame
Beattie alighted from the cab, a large woman in worn black velvet, with
a stale perfume about her. Esther was at the door to meet her, and even
in this outer air she could hardly help putting up her nose a little at
the exotic smell. Madame Beattie was swarthy and strong-featured with a
soft wrinkled skin unnatural from over-cherishing. She had bright,
humorously satirical eyes; and her mouth was large. Therefore you were
surprised at her slight lisp, a curious childishness which Esther had
always considered pure affectation. She had forgotten it in these later
years, but now the sound of it awakened all the distaste and curiosity
she had felt of old. She had always believed if Aunt Patricia spoke out,
the lisp would go. The voice underneath the lisp was a sad thing when
you remembered it had once been "golden ". It was raucous yet husky, a
gin voice, Jeffrey had called it, adding that she had a gin cough. All
this Esther remembered as she went forward prettily and submitted to
Aunt Patricia's perfumed kiss. The ostrich feathers in the worn velvet
travelling hat cascaded over them both, and bangles clinked in a thin
discord with curious trinkets hanging from her chatelaine. Evidently the
desire to hold her niece in her arms had been for telegraphic purposes
only.
When they had gone in and Aunt Patricia was removing her gloves and
accepting tea--she said she would not take her hat off until she went
upstairs--she asked, with a cheerful boldness:
"Where's your husband?"
Esther shrank perceptibly. No one but Lydia had felt at liberty to pelt
her with the incarcerated husband, and she was not only sensitive in
fact but from an intuition of the prettiest thing to do.
"Oh, I knew he was out," said Madame Beattie. "I keep track of your
American papers. Isn't he here?"
"He's in town," said Esther, in a low voice. Her cheeks burned with
hatred of the insolence of kin which could force you into the open and
strip you naked.
"Where?"
"With his father."
"Does his father live alone?"
"No. He has step-daughters."
"Children of that woman that married him out of hand when he was over
sixty? Ridiculous business! Well, what's Jeff there for? Why isn't he
with you?"
Madame Beattie had a direct habit of address, and, although she spoke
many other languages fluently, in the best of English. There were times
when she used English with an extreme of her lisping accent, but that
was when it seemed good business so to do. This she modified if she
found herself cruising where New England standards called for plain New
England speech.
"Why isn't he with you?" she asked again.
The tea had come and Madame Beattie lifted her cup in a manner elegantly
calculated to display, though ingenuously, a hand loaded with rings.
"Dear auntie," said Esther, widening eyes that had been potent with
Alston Choate but would do slight execution among a feminine contingent,
"Jeffrey wouldn't be happy with me."
"Nonsense," said Aunt Patricia, herself taking the teapot and
strengthening her cup. "What do you mean by happy?"
"He is completely estranged," said Esther. "He is a different man from
what he used to be."
"Of course he's different. You're different. So am I. He can't take up
things where he left them, but he's got to take them up somewhere.
What's he going to do?"
"I don't know," said Esther. She drank her tea nervously. It seemed to
her she needed a vivifying draught. "Auntie, you don't quite understand.
We are divorced in every sense."
That sounded complete, and she hoped for some slight change of position
on the part of the inquisitor.
"Of course you went to see him while he was in prison?" auntie pursued
inexorably.
"No," said Esther, in a voice thrillingly sweet. "He didn't wish it."
Auntie helped herself to tea. Esther made a mental note that an extra
quantity must be brewed next time.
"You see," said Madame Beattie, putting her cup down and settling back
into her chair with an undue prominence of frontal velvet, "you have to
take these things like a woman of the world. What's all this talk about
feelings, and Jeff's being unhappy and happy? He's married you, and it's
a good thing for you both you've got each other to turn to. This kind of
sentimental talk does very well before marriage. It has its place. You'd
never marry without it. But after the first you might as well take
things as they come. There was my husband. I bore everything from him.
Then I kicked over the traces and he bore everything from me. But when
we found everybody was doing us and we should be a great deal stronger
together than apart, we came together again. And he died very happily."
Esther thought, in her physical aversion to auntie, that he must indeed
have been happy in the only escape left open to him.
"Where is Susan?" auntie inquired, after a brief interlude of coughing.
It could never be known whether her coughs were real. She had little dry
coughs of doubt, of derision, of good-natured tolerance; but perhaps she
herself couldn't have said now whether they had their origin in any
disability.
"Grandma is in her room," said Esther faintly. She felt a savage
distaste for facing the prospect of them together, auntie who would be
sure to see grandmother, and grandmother who would not be seen. "She
lies in bed."
"All the time?"
"Yes."
"Not all the time!"
"Why, yes, auntie, she lies in bed all the time."
"What for? Is she crippled, or paralysed or what?"
"She says she is old."
"Old? Susan is seventy-six. She's a fool. Doesn't she know you don't
have to give up your faculties at all unless you stop using them?"
"She says she is old," repeated Esther obstinately. It seemed to her a
sensible thing for grandmother to say. Being old kept her happily in
retirement. She wished auntie had a similar recognition of decencies.
"I'll go to my room now," said Madame Beattie. "What a nice house! This
is Susan's house, isn't it?"
"Yes." Esther had now retired to the last defences. She saw auntie
settling upon them in a jovial ease. It might have been different, she
thought, if Alston Choate had got her a divorce years ago and then
married her. "Come," she said, with an undiminished sweetness, "I'll
take you to your room."
VIII
Addington, so Jeffrey Blake remembered when he came home to it, was a
survival. Naïve constancies to custom, habits sprung out of old
conditions and logical no more, and even the cruder loyalties to the
past, lived in it unchanged. This was as his mind conceived it. His
roots had gone deeper here than he knew while he was still a part of it,
a free citizen. The first months of his married life had been spent
here, but as his prosperity burned the more brilliantly, he and Esther
had taken up city life in winter, and for the summer had bought a large
and perfectly equipped house in a colony at the shore. That, in the
crash of his fortunes, had gone with other wreckage, and now he never
thought of it with even a momentary regret. It belonged to that fevered
time when he was always going fast and faster, as if life were a
perpetual speeding in a lightning car. But of Addington he did think, in
the years that were so much drear space for reflection, and though he
felt no desire to go back, the memory of it was cool and still. The town
had distinct social strata, the happier, he felt, in that. There were
the descendants of old shipbuilders and merchants who drew their
sufficient dividends and lived on the traditions of times long past. All
these families knew and accepted one another. Their peculiarities were
no more to be questioned than the eccentric shapes of clouds. The
Daytons, who were phenomenally ugly in a bony way, were the Daytons.
Their long noses with the bulb at the base were Dayton noses. The
Madisons, in the line of male descent from distinguished blood, drank
to an appalling extent; but they were Madisons, and you didn't interdict
your daughters' marrying them. The Mastertons ate no meat, and didn't
believe in banks. They kept their money in queer corners, and there was
so much of it that they couldn't always remember where, and the
laundress had orders to turn all stockings before wetting, and did
indeed often find bills in the toe. But the laundress, being also of
Addington, though of another stratum, recognised this as a Masterton
habit, and faithfully sought their hoarded treasure for them, and
delivered it over with the accuracy of an accountant. She wouldn't have
seen how the Mastertons could help having money in their clothes unless
they should cease being Mastertons. Nor was it amazing to their peers,
meeting them in casual talk, to realise that they were walking
depositories of coin and bills. A bandit on a lonely road would, if he
were born in Addington, have forborne to rob them. These and other
personal eccentricities Jeffrey Blake remembered and knew he should find
them ticking on like faithful clocks. It was all restful to recall, but
horrible to meet. He knew perfectly what the attitude of Addington would
be to him. Because he was Addington born, it would stand by him, and
with a double loyalty for his father's sake. That loyalty, beautiful or
stupid as you might find it, he could not bear. He hoped, however, to
escape it by making his father the briefest visit possible and then
getting off to the West. Anne had reminded him that Alston Choate had
called, and he had commented briefly:
"Oh! he's a good old boy."
But she saw, with her keen eyes gifted to read the heart, that he was
glad he had not seen him. The first really embarrassing caller came the
forenoon after Madame Beattie had arrived at Esther's, Madame Beattie
herself in the village hack with Denny, uncontrollably curious, on the
box. Madame Beattie paid twenty-five cents extracted from the tinkling
chatelaine, and dismissed Denny, but he looked over his shoulder
regretfully until he had rounded the curve of the drive. Meantime she,
in her plumes and black velvet, was climbing the steps, and Jeffrey, who
was on the side veranda, heard her and took down his feet from the rail,
preparatory to flight. But she was aware of him, and stepped briskly
round the corner. Before he reached the door she was on him.
"Here, Jeff, here!" said she peremptorily and yet kindly, as you might
detain a dog, and Jeff, pausing, gazed at her in frank disconcertment
and remarked as frankly:
"The devil!"
Madame Beattie threw back her head on its stout muscular neck and
laughed, a husky laugh much like an old man's wheeze.
"No! no!" said she, approaching him and extending an ungloved hand, "not
so bad as that. How are you? Tell its auntie."
Jeffrey laughed. He took the hand for a brief grasp, and returned to the
group of chairs, where he found a comfortable rocker for her.
"How in the deuce," said he, "did you get here so quick?"
Madame Beattie rejected the rocker and took a straight chair that kept
her affluence of curves in better poise.
"Quick after what?" she inquired, with a perfect good-nature.
Jeffrey had seated himself on the rail, his hands, too, resting on it,
and he regarded her with a queer terrified amusement, as if, in
research, he had dug up a strange object he had no use for and might
find it difficult to place. Not to name: he could name her very
accurately.
"So quick after I got here," he replied, with candour. "I tell you
plainly, Madame Beattie, there isn't a cent to be got out of me. I'm
done, broke, down and out."
Madame Beattie regarded him with an unimpaired good-humour.
"Bless you, Jeff," said she, "I know that. What are you going to do, now
you're out?"
The question came as hard as a stroke after the cushioned assurance
preceding it. Jeff met it as he might have met such a query from a man
to whom he owed no veilings of hard facts.
"I don't know," said he. "If I did know I shouldn't tell you."
Madame Beattie seemed not to suspect the possibility of rebuff.
"Esther hasn't changed a particle," said she.
Jeff scowled, not at her, but absently at the side of the house, and
made no answer.
"Aren't you coming down there?" asked Madame Beattie peremptorily, with
the air of drumming him up to some task that would have to be reckoned
with in the end. "Come, Jeff, why don't you answer? Aren't you coming
down?"
Jeffrey had ceased scowling. He had smoothed his brows out with his
hand, indeed, as if their tenseness hurt him.
"Look here," said he, "you ask a lot of questions."
She laughed again, a different sort of old laugh, a fat and throaty one.
"Did I ever tell you," said she, "what the Russian grand duke said when
I asked him why he didn't marry?"
"No," said Jeff, quite peaceably now. She was safer in the company of
remembered royalties.
Madame Beattie sought among the jingling decorations of her person for
a cigarette, found it and offered him another.
"Quite good," she told him. "An Italian count keeps me supplied. I don't
know where the creature gets them."
Then, after they had lighted up, she returned to her grand duke, and
Jeff found the story sufficiently funny and laughed at it, and she
pulled another out of her well-stored memory, and he laughed at that.
Madame Beattie told her stories excellently. She knew how little weight
they carry smothered in feminine graces and coy obliquities from the
point. Graces had long ceased to interest her as among the assets of a
life where man and woman have to work to feed themselves. Now she sat
down with her brother man and emulated him in ready give and take.
Jeffrey forsook the rail which had subtly marked his distance from her;
he took a chair, and put his feet up on the rail. Madame Beattie's
neatly shod and very small feet went up on a chair, and she tipped the
one she was sitting in at a dangerous angle while she exhaled
luxuriously, and so Lydia, coming round the corner in a simple curiosity
to know who was there, found them, laughing uproariously and dim with
smoke. Lydia had her opinions about smoking. She had seen women indulge
in it at some of the functions where she and Anne danced, but she had
never found a woman of this stamp doing it with precisely this air.
Indeed, Lydia had never seen a woman of Madame Beattie's stamp in her
whole life. She stopped short, and the two could not at once get hold of
themselves in their peal of accordant mirth. But Lydia had time to see
one thing for a certainty. Jeff's face had cleared of its brooding and
its intermittent scowl. He was enjoying himself. This, she thought, in a
sudden rage of scorn, was the kind of thing he enjoyed: not Farvie, not
Anne's gentle ministrations, but the hooting of a horrible old woman.
Madame Beattie saw her and straightened some of the laughing wrinkles
round her eyes.
"Well, well!" said she. "Who's this?"
Then Jeffrey, becoming suddenly grave, as if, Lydia thought, he ought to
be ashamed of laughing in such company, sprang to his feet, and threw
away his cigarette.
"Madame Beattie," said he, "this is Miss Lydia French."
Madame Beattie did not rise, as who, indeed, so plumed and
black-velveted should for a slip of a creature trembling with futile
rage over a brother proved wanting in ideals? She extended one hand,
while the other removed the cigarette from her lips and held it at a
becoming distance.
"And who's Miss Lydia French?" said she. Then, as Lydia, pink with
embarrassment and disapproval, made no sign, she added peremptorily,
"Come here, my dear."
Lydia came. It was true that Madame Beattie had attained to privilege
through courts and high estate. When she herself had ruled by the
prerogative of a perfect throat and a mind attuned to it, she had
imbibed a sense of power which was still dividend-paying even now,
though the throat was dead to melody. When she really asked you to do
anything, you did it, that was all. She seldom asked now, because her
attitude was all careless tolerance, keen to the main chance but lax in
exacting smaller tribute, as one having had such greater toll. But
Lydia's wilful hesitation awakened her to some slight curiosity, and she
bade her the more commandingly. Lydia was standing before her, red,
unwillingly civil, and Madame Beattie reached forward and took one of
her little plump work-roughened hands, held it for a moment, as if in
guarantee of kindliness, and then dropped it.
"Now," said she, "who are you?"
Jeffrey, seeing Lydia so put about, answered for her again, but this
time in terms of a warmth which astonished him as it did Lydia.
"She is my sister Lydia."
Madame Beattie looked at him in a frank perplexity.
"Now," said she, "what do you mean by that? No, no, my dear, don't go."
Lydia had turned by the slightest movement. "You haven't any sisters,
Jeff. Oh, I remember. It was that romantic marriage." Lydia turned back
now and looked straight at her, as if to imply if there were any
qualifying of the marriage she had a word to say. "Wasn't there another
child?" Madame Beattie continued, still to Jeff.
"Anne is in the house," said he.
He had placed a chair for Lydia, with a kindly solicitude, seeing how
uncomfortable she was; but Lydia took no notice. Now she straightened
slightly, and put her pretty head up. She looked again as she did when
the music was about to begin, and her little feet, though they kept
their decorous calm, were really beating time.
"Well, you're a pretty girl," said Madame Beattie, dropping her lorgnon.
She had lifted it for a stare and taken in the whole rebellious figure.
"Esther didn't tell me you were pretty. You know Esther, don't you?"
"No," said Lydia, in a wilful stubbornness; "I don't know her."
"You've seen her, haven't you?"
"Yes, I've seen her."
"You don't like her then?" said Madame astutely. "What's the matter with
her?"
Something gave way in Lydia. The pressure of feeling was too great and
candour seethed over the top.
"She's a horrid woman."
Or was it because some inner watchman on the tower told her Jeff himself
had better hear again what one person thought of Esther? Madame Beattie
threw back her plumed head and laughed, the same laugh she had used to
annotate the stories. Lydia immediately hated herself for having
challenged it. Jeffrey, she knew, was faintly smiling, though she could
not guess his inner commentary:
"What a little devil!"
Madame Beattie now turned to him.
"Same old story, isn't it?" she stated. "Every woman of woman born is
bound to hate her."
"Yes," said Jeff.
Lydia walked away, expecting, as she went, to be called back and
resolving that no inherent power in the voice of aged hatefulness should
force her. But Madame Beattie, having placed her, had forgotten all
about her. She rose, and brushed the ashes from her velvet curves.
"Come," she was saying to Jeffrey, "walk along with me."
He obediently picked up his hat.
"I sha'n't go home with you," said he, "if that's what you mean."
She took his arm and convoyed him down the steps, leaning wearily. She
had long ago ceased to exercise happy control over useful muscles. They
even creaked in her ears and did strange things when she made requests
of them.
"You understand," said Jeffrey, when they were pursuing a slow way along
the street, he with a chafed sense of ridiculous captivity. "I sha'n't
go into the house. I won't even go to the door."
"Stuff!" said the lady. "You needn't tell me you don't want to see
Esther."
Jeff didn't tell her that. He didn't tell her anything. He stolidly
guided her along.
"There isn't a man born that wouldn't want to see Esther if he'd seen
her once," said Madame Beattie.
But this he neither combated nor confirmed, and at the corner nearest
Esther's house he stopped, lifted the hand from his arm and placed it in
a stiff rigour at her waist. He then took off his hat, prepared to stand
while she went on. And Madame Beattie laughed.
"You're a brute," said she pleasantly, "a dear, sweet brute. Well,
you'll come to it. I shall tell Esther you love her so much you hate
her, and she'll send out spies after you. Good-bye. If you don't come,
I'll come again."
Jeffrey made no answer. He watched her retreating figure until it turned
in at the gate, and then he wheeled abruptly and went back. An instinct
of flight was on him. Here in the open street he longed for walls, only
perhaps because he knew how well everybody wished him and their kindness
he could not meet.
Madame Beattie found Esther at the door, waiting. She was an excited
Esther, bright-eyed, short of breath.
"Where have you been?" she demanded.
Madame Beattie took off her hat and stabbed the pin through it. Her
toupée, deranged by the act, perceptibly slid, but though she knew it by
the feel, that eccentricity did not, in the company of a mere niece,
trouble her at all. She sank into a chair and laid her hat on the
neighbouring stand.
"Where have you been?" repeated Esther, a pulse of something like anger
beating through the words.
Madame Beattie answered idly: "Up to see Jeff."
"I knew it!" Esther breathed.
"Of course," said Madame Beattie carelessly. "Jeff and I were quite
friends in old times. I was glad I went. It cheered him up."
"Did he--" Esther paused.
"Ask for you?" supplied Madame Beattie pleasantly. "Not a word."
Here Esther's curiosity did whip her on. She had to ask:
"How does he look?"
"Oh, youngish," said Madame. "Rather flabby. Obstinate. Ugly, too."
"Ugly? Plain, do you mean?"
"No. American for ugly--obstinate, sore-headed. He's hardened. He was
rather a silly boy, I remember. Had enthusiasms. Much in love. He isn't
now. He's no use for women."
Esther looked at her in an arrested thoughtfulness. Madame Beattie could
have laughed. She had delivered the challenge Jeff had not sent, and
Esther was accepting it, wherever it might lead, to whatever duelling
ground. Esther couldn't help that. A challenge was a challenge. She had
to answer. It was a necessity of type. Madame Beattie saw the least
little flickering thought run into her eyes, and knew she was
involuntarily charting the means of summons, setting up the loom, as it
were, to weave the magic web. She got up, took her hat, gave her toupée
a little smack with the hand, and unhinged it worse than ever.
"You'll have to give him up," she said.
"Give him up!" flamed Esther. "Do you think I want--"
There she paused and Madame Beattie supplied temperately:
"No matter what you want. You couldn't have him."
Then she went toiling upstairs, her chained ornaments clinking, and only
when she had shut the door upon herself did she relax and smile over the
simplicity of even a feminine creature so versed in obliquity as
Esther. For Esther might want to escape the man who had brought disgrace
upon her, but her flying feet would do her no good, so long as the
mainspring of her life set her heart beating irrationally for conquest.
Esther had to conquer even when the event would bring disaster: like a
chieftain who would enlarge his boundaries at the risk of taking in
savages bound to sow the dragon's teeth.
IX
That evening the Blake house had the sound and look of social life,
voices in conversational interchange and lights where Mary Nellen
excitedly arrayed them. Alston Choate had come to call, and following
him appeared an elderly lady whom Jeffrey greeted with more outward
warmth than he had even shown his father. Alston Choate had walked in
with a simple directness as though he were there daily, and Anne
impulsively went forward to him. She felt she knew him very well. They
were quite friends. Alston, smiling at her and taking her hand on the
way to the colonel and Jeff, seemed to recognise that, and greeted her
less formally than the others. The colonel was moved at seeing him. The
Choates were among the best of local lineage, men and women
distinguished by clear rigidities of conduct. Their friendship was a
promissory note, bound to be honoured to the full. Lydia was for some
reason abashed, and Jeff, both she and Anne thought, not adequately
welcoming. But how could he be, Anne considered. He was in a position of
unique loneliness. He lacked fellowship. Nobody but Alston, in their
stratum at least, had come in person. No wonder he looked warily, lest
he assume too much.
Before they settled down, the elderly lady, with a thud of feet softly
shod, walked through the hall and stood at the library door regarding
them benignantly. And then Jeff, with an outspoken sound of pleasure and
surprise, got up and drew her in, and Choate smiled upon her as if she
were delightfully unlike anybody else. The colonel, with a quick, moved
look, just said her name:
"Amabel!"
She gave warm, quick grasps from a firm hand, gave them all round, not
seeming to know she hadn't met Anne and Lydia, and at once took off her
bonnet. It had strings and altogether belonged to an epoch at least
twenty years away. The bonnet she "laid aside" on a table with a certain
absent care, as ladies were accustomed to treat bonnets before they got
into the way of jabbing them with pins. Then she sat down, earnestly
solicitous and attentive as at a consultation. Anne thought she was the
most beautiful person she had ever seen. It was a pity Miss Amabel
Bracebridge could not have known that impetuous verdict. It would have
brought her a surprised, spontaneous laugh: nothing could have convinced
her it was not delicious foolery. She was tall and broad and heavy. When
she stood in the doorway, she seemed to fill it. Now that she sat in the
chair, she filled that, a soft, stout woman with great shoulders and a
benign face, a troubled face, as if she were used to soothing ills, yet
found for them no adequate recompense. Her dark grey dress was buttoned
in front, after the fashion of a time long past. It was so archaic in
cut, with a little ruffle at neck and sleeves, that it did more than
adequate service toward maturing her. Indeed, there was no youth about
Miss Amabel, except the youth of her eyes and smile. There were
childlike wistfulness and hope, but experience chiefly, of life, of the
unaccounted for, the unaccountable. She had, above all, an expression of
well-wishing. Now she sat and looked about her.
"Dear me!" she said, "how pleasant it is to see this house open again."
"But it's been open," Lydia impulsively reminded her.
"Yes," said Miss Amabel. "But not this way." She turned to Jeff and
regarded him anxiously. "Don't you smoke?" she asked.
He laughed again. He was exceedingly pleased, Anne saw, merely at seeing
her. Miss Amabel was exactly as he remembered her.
"Yes," said he. "Want us to?"
She put up her long eyebrows and smiled as if in some amusement at
herself.
"I've learned lately," she said, "that gentlemen are so devoted to it
they feel lost without it."
"Light up, Choate," said Jeffrey. "My sisters won't mind. Will you?" He
interrogated Anne. "They get along with me."
No, Anne didn't mind, and she rose and brought matches and little trays.
Lydia often wondered how Anne knew the exact pattern of man's
convenience. But though Choate accepted a cigar, he did not light it.
"Not now," he said, when Jeffrey offered him a light; he laid the cigar
down, tapping it once or twice with his fine hand, and Anne thought he
refrained in courtesy toward her and Lydia.
"This is very pleasant," said the colonel suddenly. "It's good to see
you, Amabel. Now I feel myself at home."
But what, after the first settling was over, had they to say? The same
thought was in all their minds. What was Jeffrey going to do? He knew
that, and moved unhappily. Whatever he was going to do, he wouldn't talk
about it. But Miss Amabel was approaching him with the clearest
simplicity.
"Jeff, my dear," she said, "I can't wait to hear about your ideal
republic."
And then, all his satisfaction gone and his scowl come back, Jeff shook
his head as if a persistent fly had lighted on him, and again he
disclaimed achievement.
"Amabel," said he, "I'm awfully sick of that, you know."
"But, dear boy, you revolutionised--" she was about to add, "the
prison," but stumbled lamely--"the place."
"The papers told us that," said Choate. It was apparent he was helping
somebody out, but whether Jeff or Miss Amabel even he couldn't have
said.
"It isn't revolutionised," said Jeff. He turned upon Choate brusquely.
"It's exactly the same."
"They say it's revolutionised," Miss Amabel offered anxiously.
"Who says so?" he countered, now turning on her.
"The papers," she told him. "You didn't write me about it. I asked you
all sorts of questions and you wouldn't say a word."
"But you wrote me," said Jeff affectionately, "every week. I got so used
to your letters I sha'n't be able to do without them; I shall have to
see you every day."
"Of course we're going to see each other," she said. "And there's such a
lot you can do."
She looked so earnestly entreating that Choate, who sat not far from
her, gave a murmured: "Ah, Miss Amabel!" In his mind the
half-despairing, wholly loving thought had been: "Good old girl! You're
spending yourself and all your money, but it's no use--no use."
She was going on with a perfect clarity of purpose.
"Oh, you know, Jeff can do more for us than anybody else."
"What do you want done for you?" he inquired.
His habit of direct attack gave Lydia a shiver. She was sure people
couldn't like it, and she was exceedingly anxious for him to be liked.
Miss Amabel turned to Farvie.
"You see," she said, "Addington is waking up. I didn't dwell very much
on it," she added, now to Jeff, "when I wrote you, because I thought
you'd like best to think of it as it was. But now--"
"Now I'm out," said Jeff brutally, "you find me equal to it."
"I think," said Miss Amabel, "you can do so much for us." Nothing
troubled her governed calm. It might almost be that, having looked from
high places into deep ones, no abyss could dizzy her. "Weedon Moore
feels as I do."
"Weedon Moore?" Jeffrey repeated, in a surprised and most uncordial
tone. He looked at Choate.
"Yes," said Choate, as if he confirmed not only the question but Jeff's
inner feeling, "he's here. He's practising law, and besides that he
edits the _Argosy_."
"Owns it, too, I think," said Farvie. "They told me so at the
news-stand."
"Well," said Choate pointedly, "it's said Miss Amabel owns it."
"Then," said Jeff, including her abruptly, "you've the whip-hand. You
can get Moore out of it. What's he in it for anyway? Did you have to
take him over with the business?"
Miss Amabel was plainly grieved.
"Now why should you want to turn him out of it?" she asked, really of
Choate who had started the attack. "Mr. Moore is a very able young man,
of the highest ideals."
Jeff laughed. It was a kindly laugh. Anne was again sure he loved Miss
Amabel.
"I can't see Moore changing much after twenty-five," he said to Choate,
who confirmed him briefly:
"Same old Weedie."
"Mr. Moore is not popular," said Miss Amabel, with dignity, turning now
to Farvie. "He never has been, here in Addington. He comes of plain
people."
"That's not it, Miss Amabel," said Choate gently. "He might have been
spawned out of the back meadows or he might have been--a Bracebridge."
He bowed to her with a charming conciliation and Miss Amabel sat a
little straighter. "If we don't accept him, it's because he's Weedon
Moore."
"We were in school with him, you know: in college, too," said Jeff, with
that gentleness men always accorded her, men of perception who saw in
her the motherhood destined to diffuse itself, often to no end: she was
so noble and at the same time so helpless in the crystal prison of her
hopes. "We knew Weedie like a book."
Miss Amabel took on an added dignity, proportioned to the discomfort of
her task. Here she was defending Weedon Moore whom her outer
sensibilities rejected the while his labelled virtues moved her soul.
Sometimes when she found herself with people like these to-night,
manifestly her own kind, she was tired of being good.
"I don't know any one," said she, "who feels the prevailing unrest more
keenly than Weedon Moore."
At that instant, Mary Nellen, her eyes brightening as these social
activities increased, appeared in the doorway, announcing doubtfully:
"Mr. Moore."
Jeffrey, as if actually startled, looked round at Choate who was
unaffectedly annoyed. Anne, rising to receive the problematic Moore,
thought they had an air of wondering how they could repel unwarranted
invasion. Miss Amabel, in a sort of protesting, delicate distress, was
loyally striving to make the invader's path plain.
"I told him I was coming," she said. "It seems he had thought of
dropping in." Then Anne went out on the heels of Mary Nellen, hearing
Miss Amabel conclude, as she left, with an apologetic note unfamiliar to
her soft voice, "He wants you to write something, Jeff, for the
_Argosy_."
Anne, even before seeing him, became conscious that Mary Nellen regarded
the newcomer as undesirable; and when she came on him standing, hat in
hand, she agreed that Weedon Moore was, in his outward integument,
exceedingly unpleasant: a short, swarthy, tubby man, always, she was to
note, dressed in smooth black, and invariably wearing or carrying, with
the gravity of a funeral mourner, what Addington knew as a "tall hat".
When the weather gave him countenance, he wore a black coat with a cape.
One flashing ring adorned his left hand, and he indulged a barbaric
taste in flowing ties. Seeing Anne, he spoke at once, and if she had not
been prepared for him she must have guessed him to be a man come on a
message of importance. There was conscious emphasis in his voice, and
there needed to be if it was to accomplish anything: a high voice,
strident, and, like the rest of him, somehow suggesting insect life. He
held out his hand and Anne most unwillingly took it.
"Miss French," said he, with no hesitation before her name, "how is
Jeff?"
The mere inquiry set Anne vainly to hoping that he need not come in. But
he gave no quarter.
"I said I'd run over to-night, paper or no paper. I'm frightfully busy,
you know, cruelly, abominably busy. But I just wanted to see Jeff."
"Won't you come in?" said Anne.
Even then he did not abandon his hat. He kept his hold on it, bearing it
before him in a way that made Anne think absurdly of shields and
bucklers. When, in the library, she turned to present him, as if he were
an unpleasant find she had got to vouch for somehow, the men were
already on their feet and Jeff was setting forward a chair. She could
not help thinking it was a clever stage business to release him from the
necessity of shaking hands. But Moore did not abet him in that
informality. His small hand was out, and he was saying in a sharp,
strained voice, exactly as if he were making a point of some kind, an
oratorical point:
"Jeff, my dear fellow! I'm tremendously glad to see you."
Anne thought Jeff might not shake hands with him at all. But she saw him
steal a shamefaced look at Miss Amabel and immediately, as if something
radical had to be done when it came to the friend of a beloved old girl
like her, strike his hand into Moore's, with an emphasis the more
pronounced for his haste to get it over. Moore seemed enraptured at the
handshake and breathless over the occasion. Having begun shaking hands
he kept on with enthusiasm: the colonel, Miss Amabel and Lydia had to
respond to an almost fervid greeting.
Only Choate proved immune. He had vouchsafed a cool: "How are you,
Weedie?" when Moore began, and that seemed all Moore was likely to
expect. Then they all sat down and there was, Lydia decided, as she
glanced from one to another, no more pleasure in it. There was talk.
Moore chatted so exuberantly, his little hands upon his fattish knees,
that he seemed to squeeze sociability out of himself in a rapture of
generous willingness to share all he had. He asked the colonel how he
liked Addington, and was not abashed at being reminded that the colonel
had known Addington for a good many years.
"Still it's changed," said Moore, regarding him almost archly.
"Addington isn't the place it was even a year ago."
"I hope we've learned something," said Miss Amabel earnestly and yet
prettily too.
"My theory of Addington," said Choate easily, "is that we all wish we
were back in the Addington of a hundred years ago."
"You'd want to be in the dominant class," said Moore. There was
something like the trammels of an unwilling respect over his manner to
Choate; yet still he managed to be rallying. "When the old merchants
were coming home with china and bales of silk and Paris shoes for madam.
And think of it," said he, raising his sparse eyebrows and looking like
a marionette moulded to express something and saying it with painful
clumsiness, almost grotesquerie, "the ships are bringing human products
now. They're bringing us citizens, bone and sinew of the republic, and
we cry back to china and bales of silk."
"I didn't answer you, Moore," said Choate, turning to him and speaking,
Lydia thought, with the slightest arrogance. "I should have wanted to
belong to the governing class--of course."
"Now!" said Miss Amabel. She spoke gently, and she was, they saw, pained
at the turn the talk had taken. "Alston, why should you say that?"
"Because I mean it," said Alston. His quietude seemed to carry a private
message to Moore, but he turned to her, as he spoke and smiled as if to
ask her not to interpret him harshly. "Of course I should have wanted to
be in the dominant class. So does everybody, really."
"No, my dear," said Miss Amabel.
"No," agreed Choate, "you don't. The others like you didn't. I won't
embarrass you by naming them. You want to sit submerged, you others, and
be choked by slime, if you must be, and have the holy city built up on
your shoulders. But the rest of us don't. Moore here doesn't, do you,
Weedie?"
Weedon gave a quick embarrassed laugh.
"You're so droll," said he.
"No," said Choate quietly, "I'm not being droll. Of course I want to
belong to the dominant class. So does the man that never dominated in
his life. He wants to overthrow the over-lords so he can rule himself.
He wants to crowd me so he can push into a place beside me."
Moore laughed with an overdone enjoyment.
"Excellent," he said, squeezing the words out of his knees. "You're such
a humourist."
If he wanted to be offensive, that was the keenest cut he could have
delivered.
"I have often thought," said the colonel, beginning in a hesitating,
deferent way that made his utterance rather notable, "that we saddle
what we call the lower orders with motives different from our own."
"Precisely," Choate clipped in. "We used to think, when they committed a
perfectly logical crime, like stealing a sheep or a loaf of bread, that
it was absolutely different from anything we could have done. Whereas in
their places we should have tried precisely the same thing. Just as
cleanliness is a matter of bathtubs and temperature. We shouldn't bathe
if we had to break the ice over a quart of water and then go out and run
a trolley car all day."
Lydia's face, its large eyes fixed upon him, said so plainly "I don't
believe it" that he laughed, with a sudden enjoyment of her, and, after
an instant of wider-eyed surprise, she laughed too.
"And here's Miss Amabel," Choate went on, in the voice it seemed he kept
for her, "going to the outer extreme and believing, because the
labouring man has been bled, that he's incapable of bleeding you. Don't
you think it, Miss Amabel. He's precisely like the rest of us. Like me.
Like Weedon here. He'll sit up on his platform and judge me like forty
thousand prophets out of Israel; but put him where I am and he'll cling
with his eyelids and stick there. Just as I shall."
Miss Amabel looked deeply troubled and also at a loss.
"I only think, Alston," she said, "that so much insight, so much of the
deepest knowledge comes of pain. And the poor have suffered pain so many
centuries. They've learned things we don't know. Look how they help one
another. Look at their self-sacrifice."
"Look at your own self-sacrifice," said Choate.
"Oh, but they know," said she. The flame of a great desire was in her
face. "I don't know what it is to be hungry. If I starved myself I
shouldn't know, because in somebody's pantry would be the bread-box I
could put my hand into. They know, Alston. It gives them insight. When
they remember the road they've travelled, they're not going to make the
mistakes we've made."
"Oh, yes, they are," said Choate. "Pardon me. There are going to be
robbers and pirates and Napoleons and get-rich-quicks born for quite a
while yet. And they're not going to be born in my class alone--nor
Weedon's."
Weedon squirmed at this, and even Jeff thought it rather a nasty cut.
But Jeff did not know yet how well Choate knew Weedon in the ways of
men. And Weedon accepted no rebuff. He turned to Jeff, distinctly
leaving Choate as one who would have his little pleasantries.
"Jeff," he said, "I want you to do something for the _Argosy_."
Jeff at once knew what.
"Queer," he said, "how you all think I've got copy out of jail."
Anne resented the word. It was not jail, she thought, a federal prison
where gentlemen, when they have done wrong or been, like Jeff, falsely
accused, may go with dignity.
"My dear," said Miss Amabel, in a manner at once all compassion and
inexorable demand, "you've got so much to tell us. You men in
that--place," she stumbled over the word and then accepted
it--"discussed the ideal republic. You made it, by discussing it."
"Yes," said Choate, in voice of curious circumspection as if he hardly
knew what form even of eulogy might hurt, "it was an astonishing piece
of business. You can't expect people not to notice a thing like that."
"I can't help it," said Jeff. "I don't want such a row made over it."
Whether the thing was too intimate, too near his heart still beating
sluggishly it might be, from prison air, could not be seen. But Miss
Amabel, exquisitely compassionate, was yet inexorable, because he had
something to give and must not withhold.
"The wonderful part of it is," she said, "that when you have built up
your ideal government, prison ceases to be prison. There won't be
punishment any more."
"Oh, don't you make that mistake," said Jeff, instantly, moved now too
vitally to keep out of it. "There are going to be punishments all along
the line. The big punishment of all, when you've broken a law, is that
you're outside. If it's a small break, you're not much over the sill. If
it's a big break, you're absolutely out. Outside, Amabel, outside!" He
never used the civil prefix before her name, and Anne wondered again
whether the intimacy of the letters accounted for this sweet
informality. "You're banished. What's worse than that?"
"Oh, but," said she, her plain, beautiful face beaming divinity on him
as one of the children of men, "I don't want them to be banished. If
anybody has sinned--has broken the law--I want him to be educated.
That's all."
"Look here," said Jeff, He bent forward to her and laid the finger of
one trade-stained hand in the other palm. "You're emasculating the whole
nation. Let us be educated, but let us take our good hard whacks."
"Hear! hear!" said Choate, speaking mildly but yet as a lawyer, who
spent his life in presenting liabilities for or against punishment.
"That's hot stuff."
"I believe in law," said Jeff rapidly. "Sometimes I think that's all I
believe in now."
Anne and Lydia looked at him in a breathless waiting upon his words. He
had begun to justify himself to their crescent belief in him, the
product of the years. His father also waited, but tremulously. Here was
the boy he had wanted back, but he had not so very much strength to
accord even a fulfilled delight. Jeff, forgetful of everybody but the
old sybil he was looking at, sure of her comprehension if not her
agreement, went on.
"I'd rather have bad laws than no laws. I believe in Sparta. I believe
in the Catholic Church, if only because it has fasts and penances. We've
got to toe the mark. If we don't, something's got to give it to us good
and hard, the harder the better, too. Are we children to be let off from
the consequences of what we've done? No, by God! We're men and we've got
to learn."
Suddenly his eyes left Miss Amabel's quickened face and he glanced about
him, aware of the startled tensity of gaze among the others. Moore,
with a little book on his knee, was writing rapidly.
"Notes?" Jeff asked him shortly. "No, you don't."
He got up and extended his hand for the book, and Moore helplessly,
after a look at Miss Amabel, as if to ask whether she meant to see him
bullied, delivered it. Jeff whirled back two leaves, tore them out,
crumpled them in his hand and tossed them into the fireplace.
"You can't do that, Moore," he said indifferently, and Choate murmured a
monosyllabic assent.
Moore never questioned the bullying he so prodigally got. He never had
at college even; he was as ready to fawn the next day. It seemed as if
the inner man were small, too small for sound resentment. Jeff sat down
again. He looked depressed, his countenance without inward light. But
Lydia and Anne had rediscovered him. Again he was their hero, reclothed
indeed in finer mail. Miss Amabel rose at once. She shook hands with the
colonel, and asked Anne and Lydia to come to see her.
"Don't you do something, you two girls?" she asked, with her inviting
smile. "I'm sure Jeff wrote me so."
"We dance," said Lydia, in a bubbling bright voice, as if she had run
forward to be sure to get the chance of answering. "Let us come and
dance for you. We can dance all sorts of things."
And Lydia was so purely childlike and dear, after this talk of
punishments and duties, that involuntarily they all laughed and she
looked abashed.
"Perhaps you know folk-dances," said Miss Amabel.
"Oh, yes," said Lydia, getting back her spirit. "There isn't one we
don't know."
And they laughed again and Miss Amabel tied on her bonnet and went away
attended by Choate, with Weedon Moore a pace behind, holding his hat,
until he got out of the house, as it might be at a grotesque funeral.
Miss Amabel had called back to Lydia:
"You must come and train my classes in their national dancing."
Lydia, behind the colonel and Jeff as they stood at the front door,
seized Anne's hand and did a few ecstatic little steps.
The colonel was bright-eyed and satisfied with his evening. "Jeff," said
he, before they turned to separate, "I always thought you were meant for
a writer."
Jeff looked at him in a dull denial, as if he wondered how any man, life
being what it is, could seek to bound the lot of another man. His face,
flushed darkly, was seamed with feeling.
"Father," said he, in a voice of mysterious reproach, "I don't know what
I was meant to be."
X
It was Lydia who found out what Jeff meant himself to be, for the next
day, in course of helping Mary Nellen, she went to his door with towels.
Mr. Jeffrey had gone out, Mary Nellen said. She had seen him spading in
the orchard, and if Miss Lydia wanted to carry up the towels! there was
the dusting, too. Lydia, at the open door, stopped, for Jeff was sitting
at his writing table, paper before him. He flicked a look at her,
absently, as at an intruder as insignificant as undesired, and because
the sacredness of his task was plain to her she took it humbly. But
Jeff, then actually seeing her, rose and put down his pen.
"I'll take those," he said.
It troubled him vaguely to find her and Anne doing tasks. He had a
worried sense that he and the colonel were living on their kind offices,
and he felt like assuring Lydia she shouldn't carry towels about for
either of them long. Then, as she did not yield them but looked,
housekeeper-wise, at the rack still loaded with its tumbled reserves, he
added:
"Give them here."
"You mustn't leave your writing," said Lydia primly if shyly, and
delivered up her charge.
Jeff stepped out after her into the hall. He had left dull issues at his
table, and Lydia seemed very sweet, her faith in him chiefly, though he
didn't want any more of it.
"Don't worry about my writing," said he.
"Oh, no," she answered, turning on him the clarity of her glance. "I
shouldn't. Authors never want it talked about."
"That's not it," said he. She found him tremendously in earnest. "I'm
not an author."
"But you will be when this is written."
"I don't know," he said, "how I can make you see. The whole thing is so
foreign to your ideas about books and life. It only happened that I met
a man--in there--" he hesitated over it, not as regarding delicacies but
only as they might affect her--"a man like a million others, some of 'em
in prison, more that ought to be. Well, he talked to me. I saw what
brought him where he was. It was picturesque."
"You want other people to understand," said Lydia, bright-eyed, now she
was following him. "For--a warning."
His frown was heavy. Now he was trying to follow her.
"No," he said, "you're off there. I don't take things that way. But I
did see it so plain I wanted everybody to see it, too. Maybe that was
why I did want to write it down. Maybe I wanted to write it for myself,
so I should see it plainer. It fascinated me."
Lydia felt a helpless yearning, because things were being so hard for
him. She wished for Anne who always knew, and with a word could help you
out when your elucidation failed.
"You see," Jeff was going on, "there's this kind of a brute born into
the world now, the kind that knows how to make money, and as soon as
he's discovered his knack, he's got the mania to make more. It's an
obligation, an obsession. Maybe it's only the game. He's in it, just as
much as if he'd got a thousand men behind him, all looting territory. It
might be for a woman. But it's the game. And it's a queer game. It cuts
him off. He's outside."
And here Lydia had a simple and very childlike thought, so inevitable to
her that she spoke without consideration.
"You were outside, too."
Jeff gave a little shake of the head, as if that didn't matter now he
was here and explaining to her.
"And the devil of it is, after they're once outside they don't know they
are."
"Do you mean, when they've done something and been found guilty and--"
"I mean all along the line. When they've begun to think they'll make
good, when they've begun to play the game."
"For money?"
"Yes, for money, for pretty gold and dirty bills and silver. That's what
it amounts to, when you get down to it, behind all the bank balances and
equities. There's a film that grows over your eyes, you look at nothing
else. You don't think about--" his voice dropped and he glanced out at
the walled orchard as if it were even a sacred place--"you don't think
about grass, and dirt, and things. You're thinking about the game."
"Well," said Lydia joyously, seeing a green pathway out, "now you've
found it's so, you don't need to think about it any more."
"That's precisely it," said he heavily. "I've got to think about it all
the time. I've got to make good."
"In the same way?" said Lydia, looking up at him childishly. "With
money?"
"Yes," said he, "with money. It's all I know. And without capital, too.
And I'm going to keep my head, and do it within the law. Yes, by God!
within the law. But I hate to do it. I hate it like the devil."
He looked so hard with resolution that she took the resolution for
pride, though she could not know whether it was a fine pride or a
heaven-defying one.
"You won't do just what you did before?" asserted Lydia, out of her
faith in him.
"Oh, yes, I shall."
She opened terrified eyes upon him.
"Be a promoter?"
"I don't know what I shall be. But I know the money game, and I shall
have to play it and make good."
She ventured a question touching on the fancies that were in her mind,
part of the bewildering drama that might attend on his return. She
faltered it out. It seemed too splendid really to assault fortune like
that. And yet perhaps not too splendid for him. This was the question.
"And pay back--" There she hesitated, and he finished for her.
"The money I lost in a hole? Well, we'll see." This last sounded
indulgent, as if he might add, "little sister ".
Lydia plucked up spirit.
"There's something else I hoped you'd do first."
"What is it?"
"I want you to prove you're innocent."
She found herself breathless over the words. They brought her very near
him, and after all she was not sure what kind of brother he was, save
that he had to be supremely loved. He looked pale to her now, of a
yellowed, unhappy hue, and he was staring at her fixedly.
"Innocent!" he repeated. "What do you mean by innocent?"
Lydia took heart again, since he really did invite her on.
"Why, of course," she said, "we all know--Farvie and Anne and I--we know
you never did it."
"Did what?"
"Lost all that money. Took it away from people."
The softness of her voice was moving to him. He saw she meant him very
well indeed.
"Lydia," said he, "I lost the money. Don't make any mistake about that."
"Yes, you were a promoter," she reminded him. "You were trying to get
something on the market." She seemed to be assuring him, in an agonised
way, of his own good faith. "And people bought shares. And you took
their money. And--" her voice broke here in a sob of irrepressible
sympathy--"and you lost it."
"Yes," said he patiently. "I found myself in a tight place and the
unexpected happened--the inconceivable. The market went to pieces. And
of course it was at the minute I was asked to account for the funds I
had. I couldn't. So I was a swindler. I was tried. I was sentenced, and
I went to prison. That's all."
"Oh," said Lydia passionately, "but do you suppose we don't know you're
not the only person concerned? Don't you suppose we know there's
somebody else to blame?"
Jeff turned on her a sudden look so like passion of a sort that she
trembled back from him. Why should he be angry with her? Did he stand by
Reardon to that extent?
"What do you mean?" he asked her. "Who's been talking to you?"
"We've all been talking," said Lydia, with a frank simplicity, "Farvie
and Anne and I. Of course we've talked. Especially Anne and I. We knew
you weren't to blame."
Jeff turned away from her and went back into his room. He shut the door,
and yet so quietly that she could not feel reproved. Only she was sad.
The way of being a sister was a harder one than she had looked for. But
she felt bound to him, even by stronger and stronger cords. He was hers,
Farvie's and Anne's and hers, however unlikely he was to take hold of
his innocence with firm hands and shake it in the public face.
Jeff, in his room, stood for a minute or more, hands in his pockets,
staring at the wall and absently thinking he remembered the paper on it
from his college days. But he recalled himself from the obvious. He
looked into his inner chamber of mind where he had forbidden himself to
glance since he had come home, lest he see there a confusion of idea and
desire that should make him the weaker in carrying out the
inevitabilities of his return. There was one thing in decency to be
expected of him at this point: to give his father a period of
satisfaction before he left him to do what he had not yet clearly
determined on. It was sufficiently convincing to tell Lydia he intended
to make good, but he had not much idea what he meant by it. He was
conscious chiefly that he felt marred somehow, jaded, harassed by life,
smeared by his experience of living in a gentlemanly jail. The fact that
he had left it did not restore to him his old feeling of owning the
earth. He had, from the moment of his conviction and sentence, been
outside, and his present liberty could not at once convey him inside.
He was, he knew, for one thing, profoundly tired. Nothing, he felt sure,
could give him back the old sense of air in his lungs. Confinement had
not deprived him of air. He had smiled grimly to himself once or twice,
as he thought what the sisters' idea of his prison was likely to be.
They probably had conjured up fetid dungeons. There were chains of a
surety, certainly a clank or two. As he remembered it, there was a
clanking in his mind, quite sufficient to fulfil the prison ideal. And
then he thought, with a sudden desire for man's company, the expectation
that would take you for granted, that he'd go down and see old Reardon.
Reardon had not been to call, but Jeff was too sick of solitariness to
mind that.
He went out without seeing anybody, the colonel, he knew, being at his
gentle task of cramming for Mary Nellen's evening lesson. Jeff had not
been in the street since the walk he had cut short with Madame Beattie.
He felt strange out in the world now, as if the light blinded him or the
sun burned him, or there were an air too chill--all, he reflected, in a
grim discovery, the consequence of being outside and not wanting houses
to see you or persons to bow and offer friendly hands. Reardon would
blow such vapours away with a breath of his bluff voice. But as he
reached the vestibule of the yellow house, Reardon himself was coming
out and Jeff, with a sick surprise, understood that Reardon was not
prepared to see him.
XI
Reardon stood there in his middle-aged ease, the picture of a man who
has nothing to do more hazardous than to take care of himself. His hands
were exceedingly well-kept. His cravat, of a dull blue, was suited to
his fresh-coloured face, and, though this is too far a quest for the
casual eye, his socks also were blue, an admirable match. Jeff was not
accustomed, certainly in these later years, to noting clothes; but he
did feel actually unkempt before this mirror of the time. Yet why? For
in the old days also Reardon had been rather vain of outward conformity.
He had striven then to make up by every last nicety of dress and manner
for the something his origin had lacked. It was not indeed the
perfection of his dress that disconcerted; it was the kind of man
Reardon had grown to be: for of him the clothes did, in their degree,
testify. Jeffrey was conscious that every muscle in Reardon's body had
its just measure of attention. Reardon had organised the care of that
being who was himself. He had provided richly for his future, wiped out
his past where it threatened to gall him, and was giving due
consideration to his present. He meant supremely to be safe, and to that
end he had entrenched himself on every side. Jeff felt a very
disorganised, haphazard sort of being indeed before so complete a
creature. And Reardon, so far from breaking into the old intimacy that
Jeff had seen still living behind them in a sunny calm, only waiting for
the gate to be opened on it again, stood there distinctly embarrassed
and nothing more.
"Jeff!" said he. "How are you?" That was not enough. He found it
lacking, and added, with a deepened shade of warmth, "How are you, old
man?"
Now he put out his hand, but it had been so long in coming that Jeff
gave no sign of seeing it.
"I'll walk along with you," he said.
"No, no." Reardon was calling upon reserves of decency and good feeling.
"You'll do nothing of the sort. Come in."
"No," said Jeff. "I was walking. I'll go along with you."
Now Reardon came down the steps and put an insistent hand on his
shoulder.
"Jeff," said he, "come on in. You surprised me. That's the truth. I
wasn't prepared. I hadn't looked for you."
Jeff went up the steps; it seemed, indeed, emotional to do less. But at
the door he halted and his eyes sought the chairs at hand.
"Can't we," said he, "sit down here?"
Reardon, with a courteous acquiescence, went past one of the chairs,
leaving it for him, and dropped into another. Jeff took his, and found
nothing to say. One of them had got to make a civil effort. Jeff,
certain he had no business there, took his hand at it.
"This was the old Pelham house?"
Reardon assented, in evident relief, at so remote a topic.
"I bought it six years ago. Had it put in perfect repair. The plumbing
cost me--well! you know what old houses are."
Jeff turned upon him.
"Jim," said he quietly, "what's the matter?"
"Nothing's the matter," said Reardon, blustering. "My dear boy! I'm no
end glad to see you."
"Oh, no," said Jeff. "No, you're not. You've kicked me out. What's the
reason? My late residence? Oh, come on, man! Didn't expect to see me?
Didn't want to? That it?"
Suddenly the telephone rang, and the English man-servant came out and
said, with a perfect decorum:
"Mrs. Blake at the telephone, sir."
Jeff was looking at Reardon when he got the message and saw his small
blue eyes suffused and the colour hot in his cheeks. The blond well-kept
man seemed to be swelling with embarrassment.
"Excuse me," he said, got up and went inside, and Blake heard his voice
in brief replies.
When he came back, he looked harassed, fatigued even. His colour had
gone down and left him middle-aged. Jeff had not only been awaiting him,
but his glance had, as well. His eyes were fixed upon the spot where
Reardon's face, when he again occupied his chair, would be ready to be
interrogated.
"What Mrs. Blake?" Jeff asked.
Reardon sat down and fussed with the answer.
"What Mrs. Blake?" he repeated, and flicked a spot of dust from his
trousered ankle lifted to inspection.
"Yes," said Jeff, with an outward quiet. "Was that my wife?"
Again the colour rose in Reardon's face. It was the signal of an emotion
that gave him courage.
"Why, yes," he said, "it was."
"What did she want?"
"Jeff," said Reardon, "it's no possible business of yours what Esther
wants."
"You call her Esther?"
"I did then."
An outraged instinct of possession was rising in Reardon. Esther
suddenly meant more to him than she had in all this time when she had
been meaning a great deal. Alston Choate had power to rouse this
primitive rage in him, but he could always conquer it by reasoning that
Alston wouldn't take her if he could get her. There were too many
inherited reserves in Alston. Actually, Reardon thought, Alston wouldn't
really want a woman he had to take unguardedly. But here was the man
who, by every rigour of conventional life, had a right to her. It could
hardly be borne. Reardon wasn't used to finding himself dominated by
primal impulses. They weren't, his middle-aged conclusions told him,
safe. But now he got away from himself slightly and the freedom of it,
while it was exciting, made him ill at ease. The impulse to speak really
got the better of him.
"Look here, Blake," he said--and both of them realised that it was the
first time he had used that surname; Jeff had always been a boy to
him--"it's very unwise of you to come back here at all."
"Very unwise?" Jeff repeated, in an unmixed amazement, "to come back to
Addington? My father's here."
"Your father needn't have been here," pursued Reardon doggedly. Entered
upon what seemed a remonstrance somebody ought to make, he was
committed, he thought, to going on. "It was an exceedingly ill-judged
move for you all, very ill-judged indeed."
Jeff sat looking at him from a sternness that made a definite setting
for the picture of his wonder. Yet he seemed bent only upon
understanding.
"I don't say you came back to make trouble," Reardon went on, pursued
now by the irritated certainty that he had adopted a course and had got
to justify it. "But you're making it."
"How am I making it?"
"Why, you're making her damned uncomfortable."
"Who?"
Reardon had boggled over the name. He hardly liked to say Esther again,
since it had been ill-received, and he certainly wouldn't say "your
wife". But he had to choose and did it at a jump.
"Esther," he said, fixing upon that as the least offensive to himself.
"How am I making my wife uncomfortable?" Jeff inquired.
"Why, here you are," Reardon blundered, "almost within a stone's throw.
She can't even go into the street without running a chance of meeting
you."
Jeff threw back his head and laughed.
"No," he said, "she can't, that's a fact. She can't go into the street
without running the risk of meeting me. But if you hadn't told me,
Reardon, I give you my word I shouldn't have thought of the risk she
runs. No, I shouldn't have thought of it."
Reardon drew a long breath. He had, it seemed to him, after all done
wisely. The note of human brotherhood came back into his voice, even an
implication that presently it might be actually soothing.
"Well, now you do see, you'll agree with me. You can't annoy a woman.
You can't keep her in a state of apprehension."
Jeff had risen, and Reardon, too, got on his feet. Jeff seemed to be
considering, and very gravely, and Reardon, frowning, watched him.
"No," said Jeff. "No. Certainly you can't annoy a woman." He turned upon
Reardon, but with no suggestion of resentment. "What makes you think I
should annoy her?"
"Why, it isn't what you'd wilfully do." Now that the danger of violence
was over, Reardon felt that he could meet his man with a perfect
reasonableness, and tell him what nobody else was likely to. "It's your
being here. She can't help going back. She remembers how things used to
be. And then she gets apprehensive."
"How they used to be," Jeff repeated thoughtfully. He sounded stupid
standing there and able, apparently, to do nothing better than repeat.
"How was that? How do you understand they used to be?"
Reardon lost patience. You could afford to, evidently, with so numb an
antagonist.
"Why, you know," he said. "You remember how things used to be."
Jeff looked full at him now, and there was a curious brightness in his
eyes.
"I don't," he said. "I should have said I did, but now I hear you talk I
give you my word I don't. You'll have to tell me."
"She never blamed you," said Reardon expansively. He was beginning to
pity Jeff, the incredible density of him, and he spoke incautiously.
"She understood the reasons for it. You were having your business
worries and you were harassed and nervous. Of course she understood. But
that didn't prevent her from being afraid of you."
"Afraid of me!" Jeff took a step forward and put one hand on a pillar of
the porch. The action looked almost as if he feared to trust himself,
finding some weakness in his legs to match this assault upon the heart.
"Esther afraid of me?"
Reardon, feeling more and more benevolent, dilated visibly.
"Most natural thing in the world. You can see how it would be. I suppose
her mind keeps harking back, going over things, you know; and here you
are on the same street, as you might say."
"No," said Jeff, stupidly, as if that were the case in point, "it isn't
the same street."
He withdrew his hand from the pillar now with a decisiveness that
indicated he had got to depend on his muscles at once, and started down
the steps. Reardon made an indeterminate movement after him and called
out something; but Jeff did not halt. He went along the driveway, past
the proudly correct shrubs and brilliant turf and into the street. He
had but the one purpose of getting to Esther as soon as possible. As he
strode along, he compassed in memory all the seasons of passion from
full bloom to withering since he saw her last. When he went away from
her to fulfil his sentence, he had felt that identity with her a man
must recognise for a wife passionately beloved. He had left her in a
state of nervous collapse, an ignoble, querulous breakdown, due, he had
to explain to himself, to her nature, delicately strung. There was
nothing heroic about the way she had taken his downfall. But the
exquisite music of her, he further tutored himself, was not set to
martial strains. She was the loveliness of the twilight, of the evening
star. And then, when his days had fallen into a pallid sequence, she had
kept silence. It was as if there had been no wife, no Esther. At first
he made wild appeals to her, to his father for the assurance that she
was living even. Then one day in the autumn when he was watching a pale
ray of sunshine that looked as if it had been strained through sorrow
before it got to him, the verdict, so far as his understanding went, was
inwardly pronounced. His mind had been working on the cruel problem and
gave him, unsought, the answer. That was what she meant to do: to
separate her lot from his. There never would be an Esther any more.
There never had been the Esther that made the music of his strong belief
in her.
At first he could have dashed himself against the walls in the impotence
of having such bereavement to bear with none of the natural outlets to
assauge it. Then beneficent healing passions came to his aid, though
not, he knew, the spiritual ones. He descended upon scorn, and finally a
cold acceptance of what she was. And then she seemed to have died, and
in the inexorable sameness of the days and nights he dismissed her
memory, and he meditated upon life and what might be made of it by men
who had still the power to make. But now hurrying to her along the quiet
street, one clarifying word explained her, and, unreasoningly, brought
back his love. She had been afraid--afraid of him who would, in the old
phrase, have, in any sense, laid down his life for her: not less
willingly, the honourable name he bore among honourable men. A sense of
renewal and bourgeoning was upon him, that feeling of waking from a
dream and finding the beloved is, after all, alive. The old simple words
came back to him that used to come in prison when they dropped molten
anguish upon his heart:
--"After long grief and pain,
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again."
At least, if he was never to feel the soft rapture of his love's
acceptance, he might find she still lived in her beauty, and any
possible life would be too short to teach her not to be afraid. He
reached the house quickly and, with the haste of his courage, went up
the steps and tried the latch. In Addington nearly every house was open
to the neighbourly hand. But of late Esther had taken to keeping her
bolt slipped. It had dated from the day Lydia made hostile entrance.
Finding he could not walk in unannounced, he stood for a moment, his
intention blank. It did not seem to him he could be named conventionally
to Esther, who was afraid of him. And then, by a hazard, Esther, who had
not been out for days, and yet had heard of nobody's meeting him abroad,
longed for the air and threw wide the door. There she was, by a
God-given chance. It was like predestined welcome, a confirming of his
hardihood. In spite of the sudden blight and shadow on her face,
instinctive recoil that meant, he knew, the closing of the door, he
grasped her hands, both her soft white hands, and seemed, to his
anguished mind, to be dragging himself in by them, and even in the face
of that look of hers was over the threshold and had closed the door.
"Esther," he said. "Esther, dear!"
The last word he had never expected to use to her, to any woman again.
Still she regarded him with that horrified aversion, not amazement, he
saw. It was as if she had perhaps expected him, had anticipated this
very moment, and yet was not ready, because, such was her hard case, no
ingenuity could possibly prepare her for it. This he saw, and it ran on
in a confirming horrible sequence from Reardon's speech.
"Esther!" he repeated. He was still holding her hands and feeling they
had no possibility of escape from each other, she in the weakness of her
fear and he in passionate ruth. "Are you afraid of me?"
That was her cue.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Were you always, dear?" he went on, carried by the tide of his
despairing love. (Or was it love? It seemed to him like love, for he had
not felt emotion such as this through the dry pangs of his isolation.)
"Years ago, when we were together--why, you weren't afraid then?"
"Oh, yes, I was," she said. Now that she could translate his emotion in
any degree, she felt the humility of his mind toward her, and began to
taste her own ascendancy. He was suing to her in some form, and the
instinct which, having something to give may yet withhold it, fed her
sense of power.
"Why, we were happy," said Jeffrey, in an agony of wonder. "That's been
my only comfort when I knew we couldn't be happy now. I made you happy,
dear."
And since he hung, in a fevered anticipation, upon her answer, she could
reply, still from that sense of being the arbitress of his peace:
"I never was happy, at the last. I was afraid."
He dropped her hands.
"What of?" he said to himself stupidly. "In God's name, what of?"
The breaking of his grasp had released also some daring in her. They
were still by the door, but he was between her and the stairs. He caught
the glance of calculation, and instinct told him if he lost her now he
should never get speech of her again.
"Don't," he said. "Don't go."
Again he laid a hand upon her wrist, and anger came into her face
instead of that first candid horror. She had heard something, a step
upstairs, and to that she cried: "Aunt Patricia!" three times, in a
piercing entreaty.
It was not Madame Beattie who came to the stair-head and looked down; it
was Rhoda Knox. After the glance she went away, though in no haste, and
summoned Madame Beattie, who appeared in a silk negligee of black and
white swirls like witch's fires and, after one indifferent look, called
jovially:
"Hullo, Jeff!"
But she came down the stairs and Esther, seeing his marauding entry
turned into something like a visit under social sanction, beat upon his
wrist with her other hand and cried two hot tears of angry impotence.
"For heaven's sake, Esther," Madame Beattie remarked, at the foot of the
stairs, "what are you acting like this for? You look like a child in a
tantrum."
Esther ceased to be in a tantrum. She had a sense of the beautiful, and
not even before these two invaders would she make herself unfitting. She
addressed Madame Beattie in a tone indicating her determination not to
speak to Jeff again.
"Tell him to let me go."
Jeff answered. Passion now had turned him cold, but he was relentless, a
man embarked on a design to which he cannot see the purpose or the end,
but who means to sail straight on.
"Esther," he said, "I'm going to see you now, for ten minutes, for half
an hour. You may keep your aunt here if you like, but if you run away
from me I shall follow you. But you won't run away. You'll stay right
here."
He dropped her wrist.
"Oh, come into the library," said Madame Beattie. "I can't stand. My
knees are creaking. Come, Esther, ask your husband in."
Madame Beattie, billowing along in the witch-patterned silk and clicking
on prodigiously high heels and Esther with her head haughtily up, led
the way, and Jeff, following them, sat down as soon as they had given
him leave by doing it, and looked about the room with a faint foolish
curiosity to note whether it, too, had changed. Madame Beattie thrust
out a pretty foot, and Esther, perched on the piano stool, looked
rigidly down at her trembling hands. She was very pale. Suddenly she
recovered herself, and turned to Madame Beattie.
"He had just come," she said. "He came in. I didn't ask him to. He had
not--" a little note like fright or triumph beat into her voice--"he had
not--kissed me."
She turned to him as if for a confirmation he could not in honesty
refuse her, and Madame Beattie burst into a laugh, one of perfect
acceptance of things as they are, human frailties among the first.
"Esther," she said, "you're a little fool. If you want a divorce what do
you give yourself away for? Your counsel wouldn't let you."
The whole implication was astounding to Jeff; but the only thing he
could fix definitely was the concrete possibility that she had counsel.
"Who is your counsel, Esther?" he asked her.
But Esther had gone farther than discretion bade.
"I am not obliged to say," she answered, with a stubbornness equal to
his own, whatever that might prove. "I am not obliged to say anything.
But I do think I have a right to ask you to tell Aunt Patricia that I
have not taken you back, in any sense whatever. Not--not condoned."
She slipped on the word and he guessed that it had been used to her and
that although she considered it of some value, she had not technically
taken it in.
"What had you to condone in me, Esther?" he asked her gently. Suddenly
she seemed to him most pathetic in her wilful folly. She had always
been, she would always be, he knew, a creature who ruled through her
weakness, found it an asset, traded on it perhaps, and whereas once this
had seemed to him enchanting, now, in the face of ill-fortune it looked
pitifully inadequate and base.
"I was afraid of you," she insisted. "I am now."
"Well!" said Jeff. He found himself smiling at Madame Beattie, and she
was answering his smile. Perhaps it was rather the conventional tribute
on his part, to conceal that he might easily have thrown himself back in
his chair behind the shelter of his hands, or gone down in any upheaval
of primal emotions; and perhaps he saw in her answer, if not sympathy,
for she was too impersonal for that, a candid understanding of the
little scene and an appreciation of its dramatic quality. "Then," said
he, after his monosyllable, "there is nothing left me but to go." When
he had risen, he stood looking down at his wife's beautiful dusky head.
Incredible to think it had ever lain on his breast, or that the fact of
its cherishing there made no difference to her embryo heart! A tinge of
irony came into his voice. "And I am willing to assure Madame Beattie,"
he proceeded, "in the way of evidence, that you have not in any sense
taken me back, nor have you condoned anything I may have done."
As he was opening the outer door, in a confusion of mind that
communicated itself disturbingly to his eyes and ears, he seemed to hear
Madame Beattie adjuring Esther ruthlessly not to be a fool.
"Why, he's a man, you little fool," he heard her say, not with passion
but a negligent scorn ample enough to cover all the failings of their
common sex. "He's more of a man than he was when he went into that
hideous place. And after all, who sent him there?"
Jeff walked out and closed the door behind him with an exaggerated care.
It hardly seemed as if he had the right, except in a salutary
humbleness, even to touch a door which shut in Esther to the gods of
home. He went back to his father's house, and there was Lydia singing as
she dusted the library. He walked in blindly not knowing whether she was
alone; but here was a face and a voice, and his heart was sore. Lydia,
at sight of him, laid down her cloth and came to meet him. Neither did
she think whether they were alone, though she did remember afterward
that Farvie had gone into the orchard for his walk. Seeing Jeff's face,
she knew some mortal hurt was at work within him, and like a child, she
went to him, and Jeff put his face down on her cheek, and his cheek, she
felt, was wet. And so they stood, their arms about each other, and
Lydia's heart beat in such a sick tumult of rage and sorrow that it
seemed to her she could not stand so and uphold the heavy weight of his
grief. In a minute she whispered to him:
"Have you seen her?"
"Yes."
"Was she--cruel?"
"Don't! don't!" Jeff said, in a broken voice.
"Do you love her?" she went on, in an inexorable fierceness.
"No! no! no!" And then a voice that did not seem to be his and yet was
his, came from him and overthrew all his old traditions of what he had
been and what he must therefore be: "I only love you."
Then, Lydia knew, when she thought of it afterward, in a burning wonder,
they kissed, and their tears and the kiss seemed as one, a bond against
the woman who had been cruel to him and an eternal pact between
themselves. And on the severing of the kiss, terrible to her in her
innocence, she flung herself away from him and ran upstairs. Her flight
was noiseless, as if now no one must know, but he heard the shutting of
a door and the sound of a turning key.
XII
That night Anne was wakened from her sleep by a wisp of a figure that
came slipping to her bedside, announced only by the cautious breathing
of her name:
"Anne! Anne!" her sister was whispering close to her cheek.
"Why, Lyd," said Anne, "what is it?"
The figure was kneeling now, and Anne tried to rise on her elbow to
invite Lydia in beside her. But Lydia put a hand on her shoulder and
held her still.
"Whisper," she said, and then was silent so long that Anne, waiting and
hearing her breathe, stared at her in the dark and wondered at her.
"What is it, lovey?" she asked at length, and Lydia's breathing hurried
into sobs, and she said Anne's name again, and then, getting a little
control of herself, asked the question that had brought her.
"Anne, when people kiss you, is it different if they are men?"
Now Anne did rise and turned the clothes back, but Lydia still knelt and
shivered.
"You've been having bad dreams," said Anne. "Come in here, lovey, and
Anne'll sing 'Lord Rendal.'"
"I mean," said Lydia, from her knees, "could anybody kiss me, except
Farvie, and not have it like Farvie--I mean have it terrible--and I kiss
him back--and--Anne, what would it mean?"
"That's a nightmare," said Anne. "Now you've got all cool and waked up,
you run back to bed, unless you'll get in here."
Lydia put a fevered little hand upon her.
"Anne, you must tell me," she said, catching her breath. "Not a
nightmare, a real kiss, and neither of us wanting to kiss anybody, and
still doing it and not being sorry. Being glad."
She sounded so like herself in one of her fiercenesses that Anne at last
believed she was wholly awake and felt a terror of her own.
"Who was it, Lydia?" she asked sternly. "Who is it you are thinking
about?"
"Nobody," said Lydia, in a sudden curt withdrawal. She rose to her feet.
"Yes, it was a nightmare."
She padded out of the room and softly closed the door, and Anne, left
sitting there, felt unreasoning alarm. She had a moment's determination
to follow her, and then she lay down again and thought achingly of Lydia
who was grown up and was yet a child. And still, Anne knew, she had to
come to woman's destiny. Lydia was so compact of sweetnesses that she
would be courted and married, and who was Anne, to know how to marry her
rightly? So she slept, after a troubled interval; but Lydia lay awake
and stared the darkness through as if it held new paths to her desire.
What was her desire? She did not know, save that it had all to do with
Jeff. He had been cruelly used. He must not be so dealt with any more.
Her passion for his well-being, germinating and growing through the
years she had not seen him, had come to flower in a hot resolve that he
should be happy now. And in some way, some headlong, resistless way, she
knew she was to make his happiness, and yet in her allegiance to him
there was trouble and pain. He had made her into a new creature. The
kiss had done it.
He would not, Lydia thought, have kissed her if it were wrong, and yet
the kiss was different from all others and she must never tell. Nor must
it come again. She was plighted to him, not as to a man free to love
her, but to his well-being; and it was all most sacred and not to be
undone. She was exalted and she was shuddering with a formless sense of
the earth sway upon her. She had ever been healthy-minded as a child;
even the pure imaginings of love had not beguiled her. But now something
had come out of the earth or the air and called to her, and she had
answered; and because it was so inevitable it was right--yet right for
only him to know. Who else could understand?
XIII
Lydia did not think she dreaded seeing him next morning. The fabric they
had begun to weave together looked too splendid for covering trivial
little fears like that. Or was it strong enough to cover anything? Yet
when he came into the room where they were at breakfast she could not
look at him with the same unwavering eyes. She had, strangely, and sadly
too, the knowledge of life. But if she had looked at him she would have
seen how he was changed. He had pulled himself together. Whether what
happened or what might happen had tutored him, he was on guard,
ready--for himself most of all. And after breakfast where Anne and the
colonel had contributed the mild commonplaces useful at least in
breaking such constraints, he followed the colonel into the library and
sat down with him. The colonel, from his chair by the window, regarded
his son in a fond approval. Even to his eyes where Jeff was always a
grateful visitant, the more so now after he had been so poignantly
desired, he was this morning the more manly and altogether fit. But Jeff
was not going to ingratiate himself.
"Father," said he, "I've got to get out."
Trouble of a wistful sort sprang into the colonel's face. But he spoke
with a reasonable mildness, desirous chiefly of meeting his boy half
way.
"You said so. But not yet, I hope."
"At once," said Jeffrey. "I am going at once. To-day perhaps. To-morrow
anyway. I've simply got to get away."
The colonel, rather impatiently, because his voice would tremble, asked
as Lydia had done:
"Have you seen Esther?"
This Jeff found unreasonably irritating. Bitter as the sight of her had
been and unspeakable her repudiation, he felt to-day as if they did not
pertain. The thing that did pertain with a biting force was to remove
himself before innocent young sisterly girls idealised him to their
harm. But he answered, and not too ungraciously:
"Yes, I've seen Esther. But that's nothing to do with it. Esther
is--what she's always been. Only I've got to get away."
The colonel, from long brooding over him, had a patience comparable only
to a mother's. He was bitterly hurt. He could not understand. But he
could at least attain the only grace possible and pretend to understand.
So he answered with a perfect gentleness:
"I see, Jeff, I see. But I wish you could find it possible to put it
off--till the end of the week, say."
"Very well," said Jeff, in a curt concession, "the end of this week."
He got up and went out of the room and the house, and the colonel,
turning to look, saw him striding down the slope to the river. Then the
elder man's hands began to tremble, and he sat pathetically subject to
the seizure. Anne, if she had found him, would have known the name of
the thing that had settled upon him. She would have called it a nervous
chill. But to him it was one of the little ways of his predestined mate,
old age. And presently, sitting there ignominiously shuddering, he began
to be amused at himself, for he had a pretty sense of humour, and to
understand himself better than he had before. Face to face with this
ironic weakness, he saw beyond the physiologic aspect of it, the more
deeply into his soul. The colonel had been perfectly sure that he had
taken exquisite care of himself, these last years, because he desired to
see his son again, and also because Jeff, while suffering penalty, must
be spared the pain of bereavement. So he had formed a habit, and now it
was his master. He had learned self-preservation, but at what a cost!
Where were the sharp sweet pangs of life that had been used to assail
him before he anchored in this calm? Daring was a lost word to him. Was
it true he was to have no more stormy risings of hot life, no more
passions of just rage or even righteous hate, because he had taught
himself to rule his blood? Now when his heart ached in anticipatory
warning over his son's going, why must he think of ways to be calm, as
if being calm were the aim of man? Laboriously he had learned how not to
waste himself, and the negation of life which is old age and then death
had fallen upon him. He laughed a little, bitterly, and Anne, coming to
find him as she did from time to time, to make sure he was comfortable,
smiled, hearing it, and asked:
"What is it, Farvie?"
He looked up into her kind face as if it were strange to him. At that
moment he and life were having it out together. Even womanly sweetness
could not come between.
"Anne," said he, "I'm an old man."
"Oh, no, Farvie!" She was smoothing his shoulder with her slender hand.
"No!"
But even she could not deny it. To her youth, he knew, he must seem old.
Yet her service, her fostering love, had only made him older. She had
copied his own attitude. She had helped him not to die, and yet to sink
into the ambling pace of these defended years.
"Damn it, Anne!" he said, with suddenly frowning brow, and now she
started. She had never heard an outbreak from courtly Farvie. "I wish
I'd been more of a man."
She did not understand him, and her eyes questioned whether he was ill.
He read the query. That was it, he thought impotently. They had all
three of them been possessed by that, the fear that he was going to be
ill.
"Yes," he said, "I wish I'd been more of a man. I should be more of a
man now."
She slipped away out of the room. He thought he had frightened her. But
in a moment she was back with some whiskey, hot, in a glass. The colonel
wanted to order her off and swear his nerves would be as taut without
it. But how could he? There was the same traitorous trembling in his
legs, and he put out his hand and took the glass, and thanked her. The
thanks sounded like the courteous, kind father she knew; but when she
had carried the glass into the kitchen she stood a moment, her hand on
the table, and thought, the lines of trouble on her forehead: what had
been the matter with him?
Jeff, when he got out of the house, walked in a savage hurry down to the
end of the lot, and there, feeling no more at ease with himself, skirted
along the bank bordered by inlets filled with weedy loveliness, and came
to the lower end of the town where the cotton mills were. He glanced up
at them as he struck into the street past their office entrance, and
wondered what the stock was quoted at now, and whether an influx of
foreigners had displaced the old workmen. It had looked likely before he
went away. But he had no interest in it. He had no interest in
Addington, he thought: only in the sad case of Lydia thrown up against
the tumultuous horde of his released emotions and hurt by them and
charmed by them and, his remorseful judgment told him, insulted by
them. He could not, even that morning, have told how he felt about
Lydia, or whether he had any feeling at all, save a proper gratitude for
her tenderness to his father. But he had found her in his path, when his
hurt soul was crying out to all fostering womanhood to save him from the
ravening claw of woman's cruelty. She had felt his need, and they had
looked at each other with eyes that pierced defences. And then,
incarnate sympathy, tender youth, she had rested in his arms, and in the
generosity of her giving and the exquisiteness of the gift, he had been
swept into that current where there is no staying except by an anguish
of denial. It was chaos within him. He did not think of his allegiance
to Esther, nor was he passionately desirous, with his whole mind, of
love for this new Lydia. He was in a whirl of emotion, and hated life
where you could never really right yourself, once you were wrong.
He kept on outside the town, and presently walked with exhilaration
because nobody knew him and he was free, and the day was of an exquisite
beauty, the topmost flower of the waxing spring. The road was marked by
elms, aisled and vaulted, and birds called enchantingly. He was able to
lay aside cool knowledge of the fight whereby all things live and, such
was the desire of his mind, to partake of pleasure, to regard them as
poets do and children and pitiful women: the birds as lumps of free
delight, winged particles of joy. The song-birds were keen participants
of sport, killing to eat, and bigger birds were killing them. But
because they sang and their feathers were newly painted, he let himself
ignore that open scandal and loved them for an angel choir.
Coming to another village, though he knew it perfectly he assumed it was
undiscovered land, and beyond it lay in a field and dozed, his hat over
his eyes, and learned how blessed it is to be alone in freedom, even
afar from Lydias and Esthers. Healing had not begun in him until that
day. Here were none to sympathise, none to summon him to new relations
or recall the old. The earth had taken him back to her bosom, to cherish
gravely, if with no actual tenderness, that he might be of the more use
to her. If he did not that afternoon hear the grass growing, at least
something rose from the mould that nourished it, into his eyes and ears
and mouth and the pores of his skin, and helped him on to health. At
five he remembered his father, who had begged him not to go away, got up
and turned back on his steps. Now he was hungry and bought rolls and
cheese at a little shop, and walked on eating them. The dusk came, and
only the robin seemed of unabated spirit, flying to topmost twigs, and
giving the evening call, the cry that was, he thought, "grief! grief!"
and the following notes like a sob.
Jeffrey came into Addington by another road, one that would take him
into town along the upland, and now he lingered purposely and chose
indirect ways because, although it was unlikely that any one would know
him, he shrank from the prospect of demanding eyes. At nine o'clock even
he was no farther than the old circus ground, and, nearing it, he heard,
through the evening stillness, a voice, loud, sharp, forensic. It was
hauntingly familiar to him, a voice he might not know at the moment, yet
one that had at least belonged to some part of his Addington life. The
response it brought from him, in assaulted nerves and repugnant ears,
was entirely distasteful. Whatever the voice was, he had at some time
hated it. Why it was continuing on that lifted note he could not guess.
With a little twitch of the lips, the sign of a grim amusement, he
thought this might even be an orator, some wardroom Demosthenes,
practising against the lonely curtain of the night.
"You have no country," the voice was bastinadoing the air. "And you
don't need one. Your country is the whole earth and it belongs to you."
Jeff halted a rod before the nearer entrance to the field. He had
suddenly the sense of presences. The nerves on his skin told him
humanity was near. He went on, with an uncalculated noiselessness, for
the moment loomed important, and since what humanity was there was
silent--all but that one hateful voice--he, approaching in ignorance,
must be still. The voice, in its strident passion, rose again.
"The country for a man to serve is the country that serves him. The
country that serves him is the one without a king. Has this country a
king? It has a thousand kings and a million more that want to be. How
many kings do you want to reign over you? How many are you going to
accept? It is in your hands."
It ceased, and another voice, lower but full of a suppressed passion,
took up the tale, though in a foreign tongue. Jeff knew the first one
now: Weedon Moore's. He read at once the difference between Moore's
voice and this that followed. Moore's had been imploring in its
assertiveness, the desire to convince. The other, in the strange
language, carried belief and sorrow even. It also longed to convince,
but out of an inner passion hot as the flame of love or grief. The moon,
riding superbly, and coming that minute out of her cloud, unveiled the
scene. An automobile had halted on a slight elevation and in it stood
Moore and a taller man gesticulating as he spoke. And about them, like a
pulsing carpet lifted and stirred by a breeze of feeling, were the men
Jeff's instinct had smelled out. They were packed into a mass. And they
were silent. Weedon Moore began again.
"Kill out this superstition of a country. Kill it out, I say. Kill out
this idea of going back to dead men for rules to live by. The dead are
dead. Their Bibles and their laws are dead. There's more life in one of
you men that has tasted it through living and suffering and being
oppressed than there is in any ten of their kings and prophets. They are
dead, I tell you. We are alive. It was their earth while they lived on
it. It's our earth to-day."
Jeff was edging nearer, skirting the high fence, and while he did it,
the warm voice of the other man took up the exposition, and now Jeff
understood that he was Moore's interpreter. By the time he had finished,
Jeff was at the thin edge of the crowd behind the car, and though one or
two men turned as he moved and glanced at him, he seemed to rouse no
uneasiness. Here, nearer them in the moonlight, he saw what they were:
workmen, foreign evidently, with bared throats and loosely worn hair,
some, their caps pushed back, others without hats at all, seeking, it
seemed, coolness in this too warm adjuration.
"Their symbol," said Moore, "is the flag. They carry it into foreign
lands. Why? For what they call religion? No. For money--money--money.
When the flag waves in a new country, blood begins to flow, the blood of
the industrial slave. Down with the flag. Our symbol is the sword."
The voice of the interpreter, in an added passion, throbbed upon the
climbing period. Moore had moved him and, forgetful of himself, he was
dramatically ready to pass his ardour on. Jeff also forgot himself. He
clove like a wedge through the thin line before him, and leaped on the
running-board.
"You fool," he heard himself yelling at Moore, who in the insecurity of
his tubbiness was jarred and almost overturned, "you're robbing them of
their country. You're taking away the thing that keeps them from
falling down on all-fours and going back to brute beasts. My God, Moore,
you're a traitor! You ought to be shot."
He had surprised them. They did not even hustle him, but there were
interrogatory syllables directed to the interpreter. Moore recovered
himself. He gave a sharp sound of distaste, and then, assuming his
civilised habit, said to Jeff in a voice of specious courtesy, yet, Jeff
knew, a voice of hate:
"These are mill operatives, Blake, labourers. They know what labour is.
They know what capitalists are. Do you want me to tell 'em who you are?"
Who you are? Jeff knew what it meant. Did he want Moore to tell them
that he was a capitalist found out and punished?
"Tell and be damned," he said. "See here!" He was addressing the
interpreter. "You understand English. Fair play. Do you take me? Fair
play is what English men and American men work for and fight for. It's
fair play to give me a chance to speak, and for you to tell these poor
devils what I say. Will you?"
The man nodded. His white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. Jeff fancied
his eyes gleamed, too. He was a swarthy creature and round his neck was
knotted a handkerchief, vivid red. Jeff, with a movement of the arm,
crowded Moore aside. Moore submitted. Used, as he was, to being swept
out of the way, all the energies that might have been remonstrant in him
had combined in a controlling calm to serve him until the day when he
should be no longer ousted. Jeff spoke, and threw his voice, he hoped,
to the outskirts of the crowd, ingenuously forgetting it was not lungs
he wanted but a bare knowledge of foreign tongues.
"This man," said he, "tells you you've no country. Don't you let him
lie to you. Here's your country under your feet. If you can't love it
enough to die for it, go back to your own country, the one you were born
in, and love that, for God's sake." He judged he had said enough to be
carried in the interpreter's memory, and turned upon him. "Go on," said
he imperatively. "Say it."
But even then he had no idea what the man would do. The atmosphere about
them was not thrilling in responsive sympathy. Silence had waited upon
Moore, and this, Jeff could not help feeling, was silence of a different
species. But the interpreter did, slowly and cautiously, it seemed,
convey his words. At least Jeff hoped he was conveying them. When his
voice ceased, Jeff took up the thread.
"He tells you you've no country. He says your country is the world.
You're not big enough to need the whole world for your country. I'm not
big enough. Only a few of them are, the prophets and the great dead men
he thinks so little of. Dig up a tract of ground and call it your
country and make it grow and bloom and have good laws--why, you fools!"
His patience broke. "You fools, you're being done. You're being led away
and played upon. A man's country isn't the spot where he can get the
best money to put into his belly. His country is his country, just as
his mother is his mother. He can worship the Virgin Mary, but he loves
his mother best."
Whether the name hit them like blasphemy, whether the interpreter caught
fire from it or Moore gave a signal, he could not tell. But suddenly he
was being hustled. He was pulled down from the car with a gentle yet
relentless force, was conscious that he was being removed and must
submit. There were sounds now, the quick syllables of the southern
races, half articulate to the uninstructed ear but full of idiom and
passion, and through his own silent struggle he was aware that the
interpreter was soothing, directing, and inexorably guiding the assault.
They took him, a resistless posse of them, beyond the gap, and the
automobile followed slowly and passed him just outside. It halted, and
Moore addressed him hesitatingly:
"I could take you back to town."
Moore didn't want to say this, but he remembered Miss Amabel and the two
charming girls, all adoring Jeff, and his ever-present control bade him
be civilised. Jeff did not answer. He was full of a choking rage and
blind desire for them to get their hands off him. Not in his
imprisonment even had he felt such debasement under control as when
these lithe creatures hurried him along. Yet he knew then that his rage
was not against them, innocent servitors of a higher power. It was
against the mean dominance of Weedon Moore.
The car passed swiftly on and down the road to town.
Then the men left him as suddenly as trained dogs whistled from their
prey. He felt as if he had been merely detained, gently on the whole, at
the point the master had designated, and looked about for the
interpreter. It seemed to him if he could have speech with that man he
could tell him in a sentence what Weedon Moore was, and charge him not
to deliver these ignorant creatures of another race into his mucky
hands. But if the interpreter was there he could not be distinguished.
Jeff called, a word or two, not knowing what to say, and no one
answered. The crowd that had been eagerly intent on a common purpose, to
get him out of the debating place, split into groups. Individuals
detached themselves, silently and swiftly, and melted away. Jeff heard
their footsteps on the road, and now the voices began, quietly but with
an eager emphasis. He was left alone by the darkened field, for even
the moon, as if she joined the general verdict, slipped under a cloud.
Jeff stood a moment nursing, not his anger, but a clearheaded certainty
that something must be done. Something always had to be done to block
Weedon Moore. It had been so in the old days when Moore was not
dangerous: only dirty. Now he was debasing the ignorant mind. He was a
demagogue. The old never-formulated love for Addington came back to Jeff
in a rush, not recognised as love an hour ago, only the careless
affection of usage, but ready, he knew, to spring into something warmer
when her dear old bulwarks were assailed. You don't usually feel a
romantic passion for your mother. You allow her to feed you and be
patronised by you and stand aside to let victorious youth pass on. But
see unworthy hands touching her worn dress--the hands of Weedon
Moore!--and you snatch it from their grasp.
Jeff still stood there thinking. This, the circus-ground was where he
and the other boys had trysted in a delirious ownership of every
possible "show", where they had met the East and gloated on nature's
poor eccentricities. Now here he was, a man suddenly set in his purpose
to deliver the old town from Weedon Moore. They couldn't suffer it, he
and the rest of the street of solid mansions dating back to ancient
dignities. These foreign children who had come to work for them should
not be bred in disbelief in Addington traditions which were as good as
anything America had to offer. Jeff was an aristocrat from skin to
heart, because he was sensitive, because he loved beauty and he didn't
want the other man to come too close; he didn't like tawdry ways to
press upon him. But while he had been shut into the seclusion of his own
thoughts, these past years, he had learned something. He had
strengthened passions that hardly knew they were alive until now events
awoke them. One was the worship of law, and one was that savage desire
of getting to the place where we love law so much that we welcome
punishment. He recalled himself from this dark journey back into his
cell, and threw up his head to the heavens and breathed in air. It was
the air of freedom. Yet it was only the freedom of the body. If he
forgot now the beauty of that austere goddess, the law, then was he more
a prisoner than when he had learned her face in loneliness and pain. He
walked out of the grounds and along the silent road, advised through
keen memory, by sounds and scents, of spots he had always known, and
went into the town and home. There were lights, but for all the sight of
people Addington might have been abed.
He opened the front door softly and out of the library Anne came at once
as if she had been awaiting him.
"Oh," she said, in a quick trouble breaking bounds, though gently, now
there was another to share it, "I'm afraid Farvie's sick."
XIV
"What is it?" said he. "What's the matter?"
But Anne, after a second glance at his tired face, was all concern for
him.
"Have you had something to eat?" she asked.
He put that aside, and said remindingly:
"What is it about father?"
Anne stood at the foot of the stairs. She had the air of defending the
way, lest he rush up before he was intelligently prepared.
"We don't know what it is. He went all to pieces. It was just after you
had gone. I found him there, shaking. He just said to me: 'I'll go to
bed.' So I helped him. That's all I know."
Jeff felt an instant and annoyed compunction. He had dashed off, to the
tune of his own wild mood, and left his father to the assaults of
emotions perhaps as overwhelming and with no young strength to meet
them.
"I'll go up," said he. "Did you call a doctor?"
"No. He wouldn't let me."
Jeff ran up the stairs and found Lydia in a chair outside the colonel's
door. She looked pathetically tired and anxious. And so young: if she
had arranged herself artfully to touch the sympathies she couldn't have
done it to more effect. Her round arms were bare to the elbow, her hands
were loosely clasped, and she was sitting, like a child, with her feet
drawn up under her on the rung of the chair. She looked at him in a
solemn relief but, he saw with a relief of his own, no sensitiveness to
his presence apart from the effect it might have on her father.
"He's asleep," she said, in a whisper. "I'm sitting here to listen."
Jeffrey nodded at her in a bluff way designed to express his certainty
that everything was going to be on its legs again now he had come home.
For the first time he felt like the man in the house, and the thin tonic
braced him. He opened the door of his father's room and went in. The
colonel's voice came at once:
"That you, Jeff?"
"Yes," said Jeff. He sat down by the bedside in the straight-backed
chair that had evidently been comfortable enough for the sisters'
anxious watch. "What's the matter, father?"
The colonel moved slightly nearer the edge of the bed. His eyes
brightened, Jeff noted by the light of the shaded lamp. He was glad to
get his son home again.
"Jeff," said he, "I've been lying here making up my mind I'd tell you."
Jeffrey rose and closed the door he had left open a crack out of
courtesy to the little watcher there. He came back to the bed, not with
a creaking caution, but like a man bringing a man's rude solace. He
could not believe his father was seriously undone. But, whatever was the
matter, the colonel was glad to talk. Perhaps, loyal as he was, even he
could scarcely estimate his own desire to turn from soft indulgences to
the hard contact of a man's intelligence.
"Jeff," said he, "I'm in a bad place. I've met the last enemy."
"Oh, no, you haven't," said Jeff, at random. "The last enemy is Death.
That's what they say, don't they? Well, you're years and years to the
good. Don't you worry."
"Ah, but the last enemy isn't Death," said the colonel wisely. "Don't
you think it. The last enemy is Fear. Death's only the executioner. Fear
delivers you over, and then Death has to take you, whether or no. But
Fear is the arch enemy."
Sane as he looked and spoke, this was rather impalpable, and Jeffrey
began to doubt his own fitness to deal with psychologic quibbles. But
his father gave short shrift for questioning.
"I'm afraid," he said quite simply.
"What are you afraid of?" Jeff felt he had to meet him with an equal
candour.
"Everything."
They looked at each other a moment and then Jeff essayed a mild, "Oh,
come!" because there was nothing more to the point.
"I've taken care of myself," said the colonel, with more vigour, "till
I'm punk. I can't stand a knockdown blow. I couldn't stand your going
away. I went to bed."
"Is my going a knockdown blow?"
There was something pathetic in hearing that, but pleasurable, too, in a
warm, strange way.
"Why, yes, of course it is."
"Well, then," said Jeff, "don't worry. I won't go."
"Oh, yes, you will," said the colonel instantly, "or you'll be punk. I'd
rather go with you. I told you that. But it wouldn't do. I should begin
to pull on you. And you'd mother me as they do, these dear girls."
"Yes," said Jeffrey thoughtfully. "Yes. They're dear girls."
"There's nothing like them," said the colonel. "There never was anything
like their mother." Then he stopped, remembering she was not Jeff's
mother, too. But Jeff knew all about his own mother, the speed and shine
and bewildering impulse of her, and how she was adored. But nobody
could have been soothed and brooded over by her, that gallant fiery
creature. Whatever she might have become if she had lived, love of her
then was a fight and a devotion, flowers and stars and dreams. "And it
isn't a thing for me to take, this sort of attachment, Jeff. I ought to
give it. They ought to be having the kind of time girls like. They ought
not to be coddling an old man badly hypped."
Jeff nodded here, comprehendingly. Yes, they did need the things girls
like: money, clothes, fun. But he vaulted away from that disquieting
prospect, and faced the present need.
"Have you had anything to eat?"
"Oh, yes," the colonel said. "Egg-nog. Anne makes it. Very good."
"See here," said Jeff, "don't you want to get up and slip your clothes
on, and I'll forage round and fish out cold hash or something, and we'll
have a kind of a mild spree?"
A slow smile lighted the colonel's face, rather grimly.
He admired the ease with which Jeff grasped the situation.
"Don't you start them out cooking," he advised.
"No, I'll find a ham-bone or something. Only slip into your trousers.
Get your shoes on your feet. We'll smoke a pipe together."
"You're right," said the colonel, with vigour. "We'll put on our shoes."
Jeff, on his way to the door, heard him throwing off the bedclothes. His
own was the harder part. He had to meet the tired, sweet servitors
without and announce a man's fiat. There they were, Lydia still in her
patient attitude, and Anne on the landing, her head thrown back and the
pure outline of her chin and throat like beauty carved in the air. At
the opening of the door they were awake with an instant alertness.
Lydia's feet came noiselessly to the floor, and Jeff understood, with a
pang of pity for her, that she had perched uncomfortably to keep herself
awake. This soft creature would never understand. He addressed himself
to Anne, who believed in the impeccable rights of man and could take
uncomprehended ways for granted.
"He's going to get up."
Anne made a movement toward the door.
"No," said Jeffrey. He was there before her, and, though he smiled at
her, she knew she was not to pass. "I'll see to him. You two run off to
bed."
They were both regarding him with a pale, anxious questioning. But
Anne's look cleared.
"Come, Lydia," said she, and as Lydia, cramped with sleep, trudged after
her, she added wisely, "It'll be better for them both."
When they were gone, Jeffrey did go down to the kitchen, rigid in the
order Mary Nellen always left. He entered boldly on a campaign of
ruthless ravaging, found bread and cheese and set them out, and a roast
most attractive to the eye. He lighted candles, and then a lamp with a
gay piece of red flannel in its glass body, put there by Mary Nellen,
who, though on Homeric knowledge bent, kept religiously all the ritual
of home. The colonel's slippered step was coming down the stairs.
Jeffrey went out into the hall and beckoned. He looked stealth and
mischief, and the colonel grimaced wisely at him. They went into the
kitchen and sat down to their meal like criminals. The colonel had to
eat, in vying admiration of Jeff, ravenous from his day's walk. When
they drew back, Jeff pulled out his pipe. He was not an incessant
smoker, but in this first interval of his homecoming all small
indulgences were sweet. He paused in filling, finger on the weed.
"Where's yours?" he asked.
The colonel shook his head.
"Don't smoke?" Jeff inquired.
"I haven't for a year or so." He was shamefaced over it. "The fact
is--Jeff, I'm nothing but a malingerer. I thought--my heart--"
"Very wise," said Jeffrey, his eyes half-closed in a luxurious lighting
up. "Very wise indeed. But just to-night--don't you think you'd
better have a whiff to-night?" The colonel shook his head, but Jeff sent
out an advance signal of blue smoke. "Where is it?" said he.
"Oh, I suppose it's in my bureau drawer," said the colonel, with
impatience. "Left hand. I kept it; I don't know why."
"Yes," said Jeffrey. "Of course you kept your pipe."
He ran softly upstairs, opening and shutting doors with an admirable
quiet, and put his hand on the old briarwood. From Anne's room he heard
a low crooning. She was awake then, but with mind at ease or she
wouldn't sing like that. He could imagine how Lydia had dropped off to
sleep, like a burden of sweet fragrances cast on the bosom of the night,
an unfinished prayer babbled on her lips. But to think of Lydia now was
to look trouble in the face, and he returned to his father not so
thoroughly in the spirit of a specious gaiety. It did him good, though,
to see the colonel's fingers close on the old pipe, with a motion of the
thumb, indicating a resumed habit, caressing a smooth, warm boss. The
colonel soberly but luxuriously lighted up, and they sat and puffed a
while in silence. Jeffrey drew up a chair for his father's feet and
another for his own.
"What's your idea," he said,' at length, "of Weedon Moore?"
The colonel took his pipe out and replaced it.
"Rather a dirty fellow, wasn't he?"
"Yes. That is, in college."
"What d' he do?"
The colonel had never been told at the time. He knew Moore was an
outcast from the gang.
"Everything," said Jeffrey briefly. "And told of it," he added.
The colonel nodded. Jeffrey put Moore aside for later consideration, and
made up his mind pretty generously to talk things over. The habit of his
later years had been all for silence, and the remembered confidences of
the time before had involved Esther. Of that sweet sorcery he would not
think. As he stood now, the immediate result of his disaster had been to
callous surfaces accessible to human intercourse and at the same time
cause him, in the sensitive inner case of him, to thank the ruling
powers that he need never again, seeing how ravaging it is, give himself
away. But now because his father had got to have new wine poured into
him, he was giving himself away, just as, on passionate impulse, he had
given himself away to Lydia. He put his question desperately, knowing
how inexorably it committed him.
"Do you suppose there's anything in this town for me to do?"
The colonel produced at once the possibility he had been privately
cherishing.
"Alston Choate--"
"I know," said Jeffrey. "I sha'n't go to Choate. You know what Addington
is. Before I knew it, I should be a cause. Can't you and I hatch up
something?"
The colonel hesitated.
"It would be simple enough," he said, "if I had any capital."
"You haven't," said Jeff, rather curtly, "for me to fool away. What
you've got you must save for the girls."
The same doubt was in both their minds. Would Addington let him earn his
living in the bald give and take of everyday commerce? Would it half
patronise and half distrust him? He thought, from old knowledge of it,
that Addington would behave perfectly but exasperatingly. It was
passionate in its integrity, but because he was born out of the best
traditions in it, a temporary disgrace would be condoned. If he opened a
shop, Addington would give him a tithe of its trade, from duty and, as
it would assuredly tell itself, for the sake of his father. But he
didn't want that kind of nursing. He was sick enough at the accepted
ways of life to long for wildernesses, ocean voyages on rough liners,
where every man is worked hard enough to let his messmate alone. He was
hurt, irremediably hurt, he knew, in what stands in us for the
affections. But here were affections still, inflexibly waiting. They had
to be reckoned with. They had to be nurtured and upheld, no matter how
the contacts of life hit his own skin. He tried vaguely, and still with
angry difficulty, to explain himself.
"I want to stand by you, father. But you won't get much satisfaction out
of me."
The colonel thought he should get all kinds of satisfaction. His glance
told that. How much of the contentment of it, Jeffrey wondered, with a
cynical indulgence for life as it is, came from tobacco and how much
from him?
"You see I'm not the chap I was," he blundered, trying to open his
father's eyes to the abysmal depth of his futility.
"You're older," said the colonel. "And--you'll let me say it, won't
you, Jeff?" He felt very timid before his rough-tongued, perhaps
coarsened son. "You seem to me to have got a lot out of it."
Out of his imprisonment! The red mounted to Jeffrey's forehead. He took
out his pipe, emptied it carefully and laid it down.
"Father," he said slowly, "I'm going to tell you the truth. When we're
young we're full of yeast. We know it all. We think we're going to do it
all. But we're only seething and working inside. It's a dream, I
suppose. We live in it and we think we've got it all. But it's a
horribly uncomfortable dream."
The colonel gave his little acquiescing nod.
"I wouldn't have it again," he said. "No, I wouldn't go back."
"And I give you my word," said Jeffrey, slowly thinking out his way,
though it looked to him as if there were really no way, "I'm as much at
sea as I was then. It's not the same turmoil, but it's a turmoil. I was
pulled up short. I was given plenty of time to think. Well, I
thought--when I hadn't the nerve to keep myself from doing it."
"You said some astonishing things in the prison paper," his father
ventured. The whole thing seemed so gravely admirable to him--Jeff and
the prison as the public knew them--that he wished Jeff himself could
get comfort out of it.
"Some few things I believe I settled, so far as I understand them." Jeff
was frowning at the table where his hand beat an impatient measure. "I
saw things in the large. I saw how the nations--all of 'em, in living
under present conditions--could go to hell quickest. That's what they're
bent on doing. And I saw how they could call a halt if they would. But
how to start in on my own life, I don't know. You'd think I'd had time
enough to face the thing and lick it into shape. I haven't. I don't know
any more what to do than if I'd been born yesterday--on a new
planet--and not such an easy one."
While the colonel had bewailed his own limitations a querulous
discontent had ivoried his face. Now it had cleared and left the face
sedate and firm in a gravity fitted to its nobility of line.
"Jeff," he said. He leaned over the table and touched Jeffrey's hand.
Jeff looked up.
"What is it?" he asked.
"The reason you're not prepared to go on is because you don't care. You
don't care a hang about yourself."
Jeffrey debated a moment. It was true. His troublesome self did not seem
to him of any least account.
"Well," said he, "let's go to bed."
But they shook hands before they parted, and the colonel did not put his
pipe away in the drawer. He left it on the mantel, conveniently at
hand.
XV
Next morning Anne, after listening at the colonel's door and hearing
nothing, decided not to tap. She went on downstairs to be saluted by a
sound she delighted in: a low humming. It came from the library where
her father was happily and most villainously attacking the only song he
knew: "Lord Lovell." Anne's heart cleared up like a smiling sky. She
went in to him, and he, at the window, his continued humming like the
spinning of a particularly eccentric top, turned and greeted her, and he
seemed to be very well and almost gay. He showed no sign of even
remembering yesterday, and when presently Jeffrey came in and then
Lydia, they all behaved, Anne thought, like an ordinary family with no
queer problems round the corner.
After breakfast Jeffrey turned to Lydia and said quite simply: "Come
into the orchard and walk a little."
But to Lydia, Anne saw, with a mild surprise, his asking must have meant
something not so simple. Her face flushed all over, and a misty
sweetness, like humility and gratitude, came into her eyes. Jeffrey,
too, caught that morning glow, only to find his task the sadder. How to
say things to her! and after all, what was it possible to say? They went
down into the orchard, and Lydia, by his side, paced demurely. He saw
she was trying to fit her steps to his impatient stride, and shortened
up on it. He felt very tender toward Lydia. At last, when it seemed as
if they might be out of range of the windows, and, he unreasonably felt,
more free, he broke out abruptly:
"I've got a lot of things to say to you." Lydia glanced up at him with
that wonderful, exasperating look, half humility, and waited. It seemed
to her he must have a great deal to say. "I don't believe it's possible
for you--for a girl--to understand what it would be for a man in my
place to come home and find everybody so sweet and kind. I mean you--and
Anne."
Now he felt nothing short of shame. But she took him quickly enough. He
didn't have to go far along the shameful road. She glanced round at him
again, and, knowing what the look must be, he did not meet it. He could
fancy well the hurt inquiry leaping into those innocent eyes.
"What have I done," she asked, and his mind supplied the accusatory
inference, "that you don't love me any more?"
He hastened to answer.
"You've been everything that's sweet and kind." He added, whether wisely
or not he could not tell, what seemed to him the truth: "I haven't got
hold of myself. I thought it would be an easy stunt to come back and
stay a while and then go away and get into something permanent. But it's
no such thing. Lydia, I don't understand people very well. I don't
understand myself. I'm afraid I'm a kind of blackguard."
"Oh, no," said Lydia gravely. "You're not that."
She did not understand him, but she was, in her beautiful confidence,
sure he was right. She was hurt. There was the wound in her heart, and
that new sensation of its actually bleeding; but she had a fine courge
of her own, and she knew grief over that inexplicable pang must be put
away until the sight of it could not trouble him.
"I'm going to ask you a question," said Jeffrey shortly, in his
distaste for asking it at all. "Do you want me to take father away with
me, you and Anne?"
"Are you going away?" she asked, in an irrepressible tremor.
"Answer me," said Jeffrey.
She was not merely the beautiful child he had thought her. There was
something dauntless in her, something that could endure. He felt for her
a quick passion of comradeship and the worship men have for women who
seem to them entirely beautiful and precious enough to be saved from
disillusion.
"If I took him away with me--and of course it would be made possible,"
he was blundering over this in decency--"possible for you to live in
comfort--wouldn't you and Anne like to have some life of your own? You
haven't had any. Like other girls, I mean."
She threw her own question back to him with a cool and clear decision he
hadn't known the soft, childish creature had it in her to frame.
"Does he want us to go?"
"Good God, no!" said Jeffrey, faced, in the instant, by the hideous
image of ingratitude she conjured up, his own as well as his father's.
"Do you?"
"Lydia," said he, "you don't understand. I told you you couldn't. It's
only that my sentence wasn't over when I left prison. It's got to last,
because I was in prison."
"Oh, no! no!" she cried.
"I've muddled my life from the beginning. I was always told I could do
things other fellows couldn't. Because I was brilliant. Because I knew
when to strike. Because I wasn't afraid. Well, it wasn't so. I muddled
the whole thing. And the consequence is, I've got to keep on being
muddled. It's as if you began a chemical experiment wrong. You might go
on messing with it to infinity. You wouldn't come out anywhere."
"You think it's going to be too hard for us," she said, with a
directness he thought splendid.
"Yes. It would be infernally hard. And what are you going to get out of
it? Go away, Lydia. Live your life, you and Anne, and marry decent men
and let me fight it out."
"I sha'n't marry," said Lydia. "You know that."
He could have groaned at her beautiful wild loyalty. The power of the
universe had thrown them together, and she was letting that one minute
seal her unending devotion. But her staunchness made it easier to talk
to her. She could stand a good deal, the wind and rain of cruel fact.
She wouldn't break.
"Lydia," said he, "you are beautiful to me. But I can't let you go on
seeming beautiful, if--if you're so divinely kind to me and believing,
and everything that's foolish--and dear."
"You mean," said Lydia, "you're afraid I should think wrong thoughts
about you--because there's Esther. Oh, I know there's Esther. But I
didn't mean to be wicked. And you didn't. It was so--so above things. So
above everything."
Her voice trembled too much for her to manage it. He glanced at her and
saw her lip was twitching violently, and savagely thought a man sometime
would have a right to kiss it. And yet what did he care? To kiss a
woman's lips was a madness or a splendour that passed. He knew there
might be, almost incredibly, another undying passion that did last, made
up of endurance and loyalty and the free rough fellowship between men.
This girl, this soft yet unyielding thing, was capable of that. But she
must not squander it on him who was bankrupt. Yet here she was, in her
house of dreams, tended by divine ministrants of the ideal: the old
lying servitors that let us believe life is what we make it and deaf to
the creatures raging there outside who swear it is made irrevocably for
us. He was sure they lied, these servitors in the house of maiden
dreams. Yet how to tell her so! And would he do it if he could?
"You see," he said irrelevantly, "I want you to have your life."
"It will be my life," she said. "To take care of Farvie, as we always
have. To make things nice for you in the house. I don't believe you and
Farvie'd like it at all without Anne and me."
She was announcing, he saw, quite plainly, that she didn't want a
romantic pact with him. They had met, just once, for an instant, in the
meeting of their lips, and Lydia had simply taken that shred of
triumphant life up to the mountain-top to weave her nest of it: a nest
where she was to warm all sorts of brooding wonders for him and for her
father. There was nothing to be done with her in her innocence, her
ignorance, her beauty of devotion.
"It doesn't make any difference about me," he said. "I'm out of the
running in every possible way. But it makes a lot of difference about
you and Anne."
"It doesn't make any difference to Anne," said Lydia astutely, "because
she's going to heaven, and so she doesn't care about what she has here."
He was most amusedly anxious to know whether Lydia also was going to
heaven.
"Do you care what happens to you here?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered instantly. "I care about staying with my folks."
The homely touch almost conquered him. He thought perhaps such a fierce
little barbarian might even find it better to eat bitter bread with her
own than to wander out into strange flowery paths.
"Are you going to heaven, too, Lydia?" he ventured. "With Anne?"
"I'm going everywhere my folks go," she said, with composure. "Now I
can't talk any more. I told Mary Nellen I'd dust while they do the
silver."
The atmosphere of a perfectly conventional living was about them.
Jeffrey had to adjure himself to keep awake to the difficulties he alone
had made. He had come out to confess to her the lawlessness of his mind
toward her, and she was deciding merely to go on living with him and her
father, which meant, in the first place, dusting for Mary Nellen. They
walked along the orchard in silence, and Jeffrey, with relief, also took
a side track to the obvious. Absently his eyes travelled along the
orchard's level length, and his great thought came to him. The ground
did it. The earth called to him. The dust rose up impalpably and spoke
to him.
"Lydia," said he, "I see what to do."
"What?"
The startled brightness in her eyes told him she feared his thought,
and, not knowing, as he did, how great it was, suspected him of tragic
plans for going away.
"I'll go to work on this place. I'll plough it up. I'll raise things,
and father and I'll dig."
As he watched her interrogatively the colour faded from her face. The
relief of hearing that homespun plan had chilled her blood, and she was
faint for an instant with the sickness of hearty youth that only knows
it feels odd to itself and concludes the strangeness is of the soul. But
she did not answer, for Anne was at the window, signalling.
"Come in," said Lydia. "She wants us."
Miss Amabel, in a morning elegance of black muslin and silk gloves, was
in the library. Anne looked excited and the colonel, there also, quite
pleasurably stirred. Lydia was hardly within the door when Anne threw
the news at her.
"Dancing classes!"
"At my house," said Miss Amabel. She put a warm hand on Lydia's shoulder
and looked down at her admiringly: wistfully as well. "Can anything,"
the look said, "be so young, so unthinkingly beautiful and have a right
to its own richness? How could we turn this dower into the treasury of
the poor and yet not impoverish the child herself?" "We'll have an
Italian class and a Greek. And there are others, you know, Poles,
Armenians, Syrians. We'll manage as many as we can."
They sat down to planning classes and hours, and Jeffrey, looking on,
noted how keen the two girls were, how intent and direct. They balked at
money. If the classes were for the poor, they proposed giving their time
as Miss Amabel gave her house. But she disposed of that with a
conclusive gravity, and a touch, Jeffrey was amused to see, of the
Addington manner. Miss Amabel was pure Addington in all her unconsidered
impulses. She wanted to give, not to receive. Yet if you reminded her
that giving was the prouder part, she would vacate her ground of
privilege with a perfect simplicity sweet to see. When she got up
Jeffrey rose with her, and though he took the hand she offered him, he
said:
"I'm going along with you."
And they were presently out in Addington streets, walking together
almost as it might have been when they walked from Sunday school and she
was "teacher ". He began on her at once.
"Amabel, dear, what are you running with Weedon Moore for?"
She was using her parasol for a cane, and now, in instinctive
remonstrance, she struck it the more forcibly on the sidewalk and had to
stop and pull it out from a worn space between the bricks.
"I'm glad you spoke of Weedon," she said. "It's giving me a chance to
say some things myself. You know, Jeffrey, you're very unjust to
Weedon."
"No, I'm not," said Jeff.
"Alston Choate is, too."
"Choate and I know him, better than you or any other woman can in a
thousand years."
"You think he's the same man he was in college."
"Fellows like Moore don't change. There's something inherently rotten in
'em you can't sweeten out."
"Jeffrey, I assure you he has changed. He's a power for good. And when
he gets his nomination, he'll be more of a power yet."
"Nomination. For what?"
"Mayor."
"Weedon Moore mayor of this town? Why, the cub! We'll duck him, Choate
and I." They were climbing the rise to her red brick house, large and
beautiful and kindly. It really looked much like Miss Amabel herself, a
little unkempt, but generous and belonging to an older time. They went
in and Jeffrey, while she took off her bonnet and gloves, stood looking
about him in the landscape-papered hall.
"Go into the east room, dear," said she. "Why, Jeff, what is it?"
He was standing still, looking now up the stairs.
"Oh," said he, "I believe I'm going to cry. It hasn't changed--any more
than you have. You darling!"
Miss Amabel put her hand on his shoulder, and he drew it to his lips;
and then she slipped it through his arm and they went into the east room
together, which also had not changed, and Jeff took his accustomed place
on the sofa under the portrait of the old judge, Miss Amabel's
grandfather. Jeff shook off sentiment, the softness he could not afford.
"I tell you I won't have it," he said. "Weedon Moore isn't going to be
mayor of this town. Besides he can't. He hasn't been in politics--"
"More or less," said she.
"Run for office?"
"Yes."
"Ever get any?"
"No."
"There! what d'I tell you?"
"But he has a following of his own now," said she, in a quiet triumph,
he thought. "Since he has done so much for labour."
"What's he done?"
"He has organised--"
"Strikes?"
"Yes. He's been all over the state, working."
"And talking?"
"Why, yes, Jeff! Don't be unjust. He has to talk."
"Amabel," said Jeffrey, with a sudden seriousness that drew her renewed
attention, "have you the slightest idea what kind of things Moore is
pouring into the ears of these poor devils that listen to him?"
She hesitated.
"Have you, now?" he insisted.
"Well, no, Jeffrey. I haven't heard him. There's rather a strong
prejudice here against labour meetings. So Weedon very wisely talks to
the men when he can get them alone."
"Why wisely? Why do you say that?"
"Because we want to spread knowledge without rousing prejudice. Then
there isn't so much to fight."
"What kind of knowledge is Weedon Moore spreading? Tell me that."
Her plain face glowed with the beauty of her aspiration.
"He is spreading the good tidings," she said softly, "good tidings of
great joy."
"Don't get on horseback, dear," he said, inexorably, but fondly. "I'm a
plain chap, you know. I have to have plain talk. What are the tidings?"
She looked at him in a touched solemnity.
"Don't you know, Jeff," she said, "the working-man has been going on in
misery all these centuries because he hasn't known his own power? It's
like a man's dying of thirst and not guessing the water is just inside
the rock and the rock is ready to break. He's only to look and there are
the lines of cleavage." She sought in the soft silk bag that was ever at
her hand, took out paper and pen and jotted down a line.
"What are you writing there?" Jeffrey asked, with a certainty that it
had something to do with Moore.
"What I just said," she answered, with a perfect simplicity. "About
lines of cleavage. It's a good figure of speech, and it's something the
men can understand."
"For Moore? You're writing it for Moore?"
"Yes." She slipped the pad into her bag.
"Amabel," said he, helpless between inevitable irritation and tenderest
love of her, "you are a perfectly unspoiled piece of work from the hand
of God Almighty. But if you're running with Weedon Moore, you're going
to do an awful lot of harm."
"I hope not, dear," she said gravely, but with no understanding, he saw,
that her pure intentions could lead her wrong.
"I've heard Weedon Moore talking to the men."
She gave him a look of acute interest.
"Really, Jeff? Now, where?"
"The old circus-ground. I heard him. And he's pulling down, Amabel. He's
destroying. He's giving those fellows an idea of this country that's
going to make them hate it, trample it--" He paused as if the emotion
that choked him made him the more impatient of what caused it.
"That's it," said she, her own face settling into a mournful
acquiescence. "We've earned hate. We must accept it. Till we can turn it
into love."
"But he's preaching discontent."
"Ah, Jeffrey," said she, "there's a noble discontent. Where should we be
without it?"
He got up, and shook his head at her, smilingly, tenderly. She had made
him feel old, and alien to this strange new day.
"You're impossible, dear," said he, "because you're so good. You've only
to see right things to follow them and you believe everybody's the
same."
"But why not?" she asked him quickly. "Am I to think myself better than
they are?"
"Not better. Only more prepared. By generations of integrity. Think of
that old boy up there." He glanced affectionately at the judge, a friend
since his childhood, when the painted eyes had followed him about the
room and it had been a kind of game to try vainly to escape them. "Take
a mellow soil like your inheritance and the inheritance of a lot of 'em
here in Addington. Plant kindness in it and decency and--"
"And love of man," said Miss Amabel quietly.
"Yes. Put it that way, if you like it better. I mean the determination
to play a square game. Not to gorge, but make the pile go round. Plant
in that kind of a soil and, George! what a growth you get!"
"I don't find fewer virtues among my plainer friends."
"No, no, dear! But you do find less--less background."
"That's our fault, Jeff. We've made their background. It's a factory
wall. It's the darkness of a mine."
"Exactly. Knock a window in here and there, but don't chuck the reins of
government into the poor chaps' hands and tell 'em to drive to the
devil."
Her face flamed at him, the bonfire's light when prejudice is burned.
"I know," she said, "but you're too slow. You want them educated first.
Then you'll give them something--if they deserve it."
"I won't give them my country--or Weedon Moore's country--to manhandle
till they're grown up, and fit to have a plaything and not smash it."
"I would, Jeffrey."
"You would?"
"Yes. Give them power. They'll learn by using it. But don't waste time.
Think of it! All the winters and summers while they work and work and
the rest of us eat the bread they make for us."
"But, good God, Amabel! there isn't any curse on work. If your Bible
tells you so, it's a liar. You go slow, dear old girl; go slow."
"Go slow?" said Amabel, smiling at him. "How can I? Night and day I see
those people. I hear them crying out to me."
"Well, it's uncomfortable. But it's no reason for your delivering them
over to demagogues like Weedon Moore."
"He's not a demagogue."
There was a sad bravado in her smile, and he answered with an obstinacy
he was willing she should feel.
"All the same, dear, don't you try to make him tetrarch over this town.
The old judge couldn't stand for that. If he were here to-day he
wouldn't sit down at the same table with Weedie, and he wouldn't let
you."
She followed him to the door; her comfortable hand was on his arm.
"Weedon will begin his campaign this fall," she said. Evidently she felt
bound to define her standpoint clearly.
"Where's his money?" They were at the door and Jeffrey turned upon her.
"Amabel, you're not going to stake that whelp?"
She flushed, from guilt, he knew.
"I am not doing anything unwise," she said, with the Addington dignity.
Thereupon Jeffrey went away sadly.
XVI
Jeffrey began to dig, and his father, without definite intention,
followed him about and quite eagerly accepted lighter tasks. They
consulted Denny as to recognised ways of persuading the earth, and
summoned a ploughman and his team, and all day Jeffrey walked behind the
plough, not holding it, for of that art he was ignorant, but in pure
admiration. He asked questions about planting, and the ploughman, being
deaf, answered in a forensic bellow, so that Addington, passing the
brick wall in its goings to and fro, heard, and communicated to those at
home that Jeffrey Blake, dear fellow, was going back to the land.
Jeffrey did, as he had cynically foreseen, become a cause. All persons
of social significance came to call, and were, without qualification,
kind. Sometimes he would not see them, but Anne one day told him how
wrong he was. If he hid himself he put a burden on his father, who stood
in the breach, and talked even animatedly, renewing old acquaintance
with a dignified assumption of having nothing to ignore. But when the
visitors were gone the red in his cheek paled something too much, and
Anne thought he was being unduly strained.
After that Jeffrey doggedly stayed by. He proved rather a silent host,
but he stood up to the occasion, and even answered the general query
whether he was going into business by the facer that he and his father
had gone into it. They were market-gardening. The visitors regretted
that, so far as Addington manners would permit, because they had
noticed the old orchard was being ploughed, and that of course meant
beans at least. Some of the older ladies recalled stories of dear Doctor
Blake's pacing up and down beside the wall. They believed you could even
find traces of the sacred path; but one day Jeffrey put an end to that
credulous ideal by saying you couldn't now anyway, since it had been
ploughed. Then, he saw, he hurt Addington and was himself disquieted.
Years ago he had been amused when he hit hard against it and they flew
apart equally banged; now he was grown up, whether to his advantage or
not, and it looked to him as if Addington ought by this time to be grown
up too.
It was another Addington altogether from the one he had left, though a
surface of old tradition and habit still remained to clothe it in a
semblance of past dignity and calm. Not a public cause existed in the
known world but Addington now had a taste of it, though no one but Miss
Amabel did much more than talk with fervour. The ladies who had once
gone delicately out to teas and church, as sufficient intercourse with
this world and preparation for the next, now had clubs and classes where
they pounced on subjects not even mentionable fifty years ago, and shook
them to shreds in their well-kept teeth. There was sprightly talk about
class-consciousness, and young women who, if their incomes had been
dissipated by inadequate trusteeship, would once have taught school
according to a gentle ideal, now went away and learned to be social
workers, and came back to make self-possessed speeches at the Woman's
Club and present it with new theories to worry. This all went on under
the sanction of Addington manners, and kept concert pitch rather high.
On all topics but one Addington agreed to such an extent that discussion
really became more like axioms chanted in unison; but when it came to
woman suffrage society silently but exactly split. There were those who
would stick at nothing, even casting a vote. There were those who said
casting a vote was unwomanly, and you couldn't possibly leave the baby
long enough to do it. Others among the antis were reconciled to its
coming, if it came slowly enough not to agitate us. "Of course," said
one of these, a Melvin who managed her ample fortune with the acumen of
a financier, "it will come sometime. But we are none of us ready. We
must delay it as long as we can." So she and the like-minded drove into
the country round and talked about preventing the extension of the
suffrage to women until hard-working, meagre-living people who had not
begun to think much about votes, save as a natural prerogative of man,
thought about them a great deal, and incidentally learned to organise
and lobby, and got a very good training for suffrage when it should
come. It did no harm, nor did the fervour of the other side do good. The
two parties got healthfully tired with the exercise and "go" of it all,
and at least they stirred the pot. But whatever they said or did,
suffragists and antis never, so to speak, "met". The subject, from some
occult sense of decorum, was tabu. If an anti were setting forth her
views when a suffragist entered the room she instantly ceased and began
to talk about humidity or the Balkans. A suffragist would no more have
marshalled her arguments for the overthrow of an equal than she would
have corrected a point of etiquette. But each went out with zeal into
New England villages for the conversion of social underlings.
When they elected Jeffrey into a cause they did it with a rush, and they
also elected his wife. Through her unwelcoming door poured a stream of
visitors, ostensibly to call on Madame Beattie, but really, as Esther
saw with bitterness, to recommend this froward wife to live with her
husband. Feeling ran very high there. Addington, to a woman, knew
exactly the ideal thing for Esther to have done. She should have
"received" him--that was the phrase--and helped him build up his
life--another phrase. This they delicately conveyed to her in accepted
innuendos Addington knew how to handle. Esther once told Aunt Patricia
there were women selected by the other women to "do their dirty work ".
But what she really meant was that Addington had a middle-aged few of
the old stock who, with an arrogant induration in their own position,
out of which no attacking humour could deliver them, held, as they
judged, the contract to put questions. These it was who would ask Esther
over a cup of tea: "Are you going on living in this house, my dear?" or:
"Shall you join your husband at his father's? And will his father and
the step-children stay on there?" And the other women, of a more
circuitous method or a more sensitive touch, would listen and, Esther
felt sure, discuss afterward what the inquisitors had found out: with an
amused horror of the inquisitors and a grateful relish of the result.
Esther sometimes thought she must cry aloud in answer; but though a
flush came into her face and gave her an added pathos, she managed, in a
way of gentle obstinacy, to say nothing, and still not to offend. And
Madame Beattie sat by, never saving her, as Esther knew she might, out
of her infernal cleverness, but imperturbably and lightly amused and
smoking cigarettes all over the tea things. As a matter of fact, the tea
things and their exquisite cloth were unpolluted, but Esther saw
figuratively the trail of smoke and ashes, like a nicotian Vesuvius,
over the home. She still hated cigarettes, which Addington had not yet
accepted as a feminine diversion, though she had the slight comfort of
knowing it forgave in Madame Beattie what it would not have tolerated
in an Addingtonian. "Foreign ways," the ladies would remark to one
another. "And she really is a very distinguished woman. They say she
visits everywhere abroad."
Anne and Lydia were generally approved as modest and pretty girls; and
Miss Amabel's classes in national dances became an exceedingly
interesting feature of the town life. Anne and Lydia were in this
dancing scheme all over. They were enchanted with it, the strangeness
and charm of these odd citizens of another world, and made friends with
little workwomen out of the shops, and went home with them to see old
pieces of silver and embroidery, and plan pageants--this in the limited
English common to them. Miss Amabel, too, was pleased, in her wistful
way that always seemed to be thanking you for making things come out
decently well. She had one big scheme: the building up of homespun
interests between old Addington and these new little aliens who didn't
know the Addington history or its mind and heart.
One night after a dancing class in her dining-room the girls went, with
pretty good-nights, and Anne with them. She was hurrying down town on
some forgotten errand, and refused Lydia's company. For Lydia was tired,
and left alone with Miss Amabel, she settled to an hour's laziness. She
knew Miss Amabel liked having her there, liked her perhaps better than
Anne, who was of the beautiful old Addington type and not so piquing.
Lydia had, across her good breeding, a bizarre other strain, not
bohemian, not gipsy, but of a creature who is and always will be, even
beyond youth, new to life. There were few conventions for Lydia. She did
not instinctively follow beaten paths. If the way looked feasible and
pleasant, she cut across.
"You're a little tired," said Miss Amabel, hesitating. She knew this was
violating the etiquette of dancing. To be tired, Anne said, and Lydia,
too, was because you hadn't the "method".
"It isn't the dancing," said Lydia at once, as Miss Amabel knew she
would.
"No. But you've seemed tired a good deal of the time lately. Does
anything worry you?"
"No," said Lydia soberly. She looked absent-minded, as if she sought
about for what did worry her.
"You don't think your father's working too hard, planting?"
"Oh, no! It's good for him. He gets frightfully tired. They both do. But
Farvie sleeps and eats and smokes. And laughs! That's Jeffrey. He can
always make Farvie laugh." She said the last rather wonderingly, because
she knew Jeffrey hadn't, so far as she had seen him, much light give and
take and certainly no hilarity of his own. "But I suppose," she added
wisely, as she had many times to herself, "Farvie's so pleased even to
look at him and think he's got him back."
Miss Amabel disposed a pillow more invitingly on the old sofa that had
spacious hollows in it, and Lydia obeyed the motion and lay down. It was
not, she thought, because she was tired. Only it would please Miss
Amabel. But the heart had gone out of her. If she looked as she felt,
she realised she must be wan. But it takes more than the sorrows of
youth to wash the colour out of it. She felt an impulse now to give
herself away.
"It's only," she said, "we're not getting anywhere. That worries me."
"With your work?" Miss Amabel was waving a palm-leaf fan, from no
necessity but the tranquillity induced by its rhythmic sway.
"Oh, no. About Jeffrey. Didn't you know we meant to clear him, Anne and
I?"
"Clear him, dear? What of?"
"Why, what he was accused of," said Lydia.
"But he had his trial, you know. He was found guilty. He pleaded guilty,
dear. That was why he was sentenced."
"Oh, but we all know why he pleaded guilty," said Lydia. "It was to save
somebody else."
"Not exactly to save her," said Miss Amabel. "She wouldn't have been
tried, you know. She wasn't guilty in that sense. Of course she was,
before the fact. But that's not being legally guilty. It's only morally
so."
Lydia was staring at her with wide eyes.
"Do you mean Esther?" she asked.
"Why, yes, of course I mean Esther."
"But I don't. I mean that dreadful man."
She put her feet to the floor and sat upright, smoothing her hair with
hurried fingers. At least if she could talk about it with some one who
wasn't Anne with whom she had talked for years knowing exactly what Anne
would say at every point, it seemed as if she were getting, even at a
snail's pace, upon her road. But Miss Amabel was very dense.
"My dear," said she, "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean the man that was in the scheme with him, in a way, and got out
and sold his shares while they were up, and let the crash come on
Jeffrey when he was alone."
"James Reardon?"
Lydia hated him too much to accept even a knowledge of his name.
"He was a promoter, just as Jeffrey was," she insisted, with her pretty
sulkiness. "He was the one that went West and looked after the mines.
And if there was nothing in them, he knew it. But he let Jeffrey go on
trying to--to place the shares--and when Jeffrey went under he was
safely out of the way. And he's guilty."
Miss Amabel looked at her thoughtfully and patiently.
"I'm afraid he isn't guilty in any sense the law would recognise," she
said. "You see, dear, there are things the law doesn't take into
account. It can't. You believe in Jeffrey. So do I. But I think you'll
have to realise Jeffrey lost his head. And he did do wrong."
"Oh, how can you say a thing like that?" cried Lydia, in high passion.
"And you've known him all your life."
Miss Amabel was not astute. Her nobility made it a condition of her mind
to be unsuspecting. She knew the hidden causes of Jeffrey's downfall.
She was sure his father knew, and it never seemed to her that these two
sisters were less than sisters to him. What she herself knew, they too
must have learned; out of this believing candour she spoke.
"You mustn't forget there was the necklace, and Madame Beattie expecting
to be paid."
Lydia was breathless in her extremity of surprise.
"What necklace?" asked she.
"Don't you know?"
Miss Amabel's voice rose upon the horror of her own betrayal.
"What do you mean?" Lydia was insisting, with an iteration that sounded
like repeated onslaughts, a mental pounce, to shake it out of her. "What
do you mean?"
Miss Amabel wore the dignified Addington aloofness.
"I am very sorry," said she. "I have been indiscreet."
"But you'll tell me, now you've begun," panted Lydia. "You'll have to
tell me or I shall go crazy."
"We must both control ourselves," said Miss Amabel, with a further
retreat to the decorum of another generation. "You are not going crazy,
Lydia. We are both tired and we feel the heat. And I shall not tell
you."
Lydia ran out of the room. There was no other word for the quickness of
her going. She fled like running water, and having worn no hat, she
found herself bareheaded in the street, hurrying on to Esther's. An
instinct told her she could only do her errand, make her assault, it
seemed, on those who knew what she did not, if she never paused to weigh
the difficulties: her hatreds, too, for they had to be weighed. Lydia
was sure she hated Madame Beattie and Esther. She would not willingly
speak to them, she had thought, after her last encounters. But now she
was letting the knocker fall on Esther's door, and had asked the
discreet maid with the light eyelashes, who always somehow had an air of
secret knowledge and amusement, if Madame Beattie were at home, and gave
her name. The maid, with what seemed to Lydia's raw consciousness an
ironical courtesy, invited her into the library and left her there in
its twilight tranquillity. Lydia stood still, holding one of her
pathetically small, hard-worked hands over her heart, and shortly, to
her gratitude, Sophy was back and asked her to go up to Madame Beattie's
room.
The maid accompanying her, Lydia went, with her light step, afraid of
itself lest it turn coward, and in the big dark room at the back of the
house, its gloom defined by the point of light from a shaded reading
candle, she was left, and stood still, almost wishing for Sophy whose
footfalls lessened on the stairs. There were two bits of light in the
room, the candle and Madame Beattie's face. Madame Beattie had taken off
her toupée, and for Lydia she had not troubled to put it on. She lay on
the bed against pillows, a down quilt drawn over her feet, regardless of
the seasonable warmth, and a disorder of paper-covered books about her.
One she held in her ringed hand, and now she put it down, her eyeglasses
with it, and turned the candle so that the light from the reflector fell
on Lydia's face.
"I wasn't sure which girl it was," she said, in a tone of mild
good-nature. "It's not the good one. It's you, mischief. Come and sit
down."
Madame Beattie did not apologise for giving audience in her bedchamber.
In the old royal days before the downfall of her kingdom she had
accorded it to greater than Lydia French. Lydia's breath came so fast
now that it hurt her. She stepped forward, but she did not take the low
chair which really had quite a comfortable area left beyond Madame
Beattie's corset and stockings. She stood there in the circle of light
and said desperately:
"What was it about your necklace?"
She had created an effect. Madame Beattie herself gasped.
"For God's sake, child," said she, "what do you know about my necklace?"
"I don't know anything," said Lydia. "And I want to know everything that
will help Jeff."
She broke down here, and cried bitterly. Madame Beattie lay there
looking at her, at first with sharp eyes narrowed, as if she rather
doubted whose emissary Lydia might be. Then her face settled into an
astonished yet astute calm and wariness.
"You'll have to sit down," said she. "It's a long story." So Lydia sank
upon the zone left by the corset and stockings. "Who's been talking to
you?" asked Madame Beattie: but Lydia looked at her and dumbly shook her
head. "Jeff?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"His father?"
"Farvie? Not a word."
Madame Beattie considered.
"What business is it of yours?" she asked.
Lydia winced. She was used to softness from Anne and the colonel. But
she controlled herself. If she meant to enter on the task of exonerating
Jeffrey, she must, she knew, make herself impervious to snubs.
"Anne and I are doing all we can to help Jeffrey," she said. "He doesn't
know it. Farvie doesn't know it. But there's something about a necklace.
And it had ever so much to do with Jeffrey and his case. And I want to
know."
Madame Beattie chuckled. Her worn yellowed face broke into satirical
lines, hateful ones, Lydia thought. She was like a jeering unpleasant
person carved for a cathedral and set up among the saints.
"I'll tell you about my necklace," said she. "I'm perfectly willing to.
Perhaps you can do something about it. Something for me, too."
It was a strange, vivid picture: that small arc of light augmenting the
dusk about them, and Lydia sitting rapt in expectation while Madame
Beattie's yellowed face lay upon the obscurity, an amazing portraiture
against the dark. It was a picture of a perfect consistency, of youth
and innocence and need coming to the sybil for a reading of the leaves
of life.
"You see, my dear," said Madame Beattie, "years ago I had a necklace
given me--diamonds." She said it with emotion even. No one ever heard
her rehearse her triumphs on the lyric stage. They were the foundation
of such dignity as her life had known; but the gewgaws time had flung at
her she did like, in these lean years, to finger over. "It was given me
by a Royal Personage. He had to do a great many clever things to get
ahead of his government and his exchequer to give me such a necklace.
But he did."
"Why did he?" Lydia asked.
It was an innocent question designed to keep the sybil going. Madame
Beattie's eyes narrowed slightly. You could see what she had been in the
day of her power.
"He had to," said she, with an admiringly dramatic simplicity. "I wanted
it."
"But--" began Lydia, and Madame Beattie put up a small hand with a
gesture of rebuttal.
"Well, time went on, and he needed the necklace back. However, that
doesn't belong to the story. Some years ago, just before your Jeff got
into trouble, I came over here to the States. I was singing then more or
less." A concentrated power, of even a noble sort, came into her face.
There was bitterness too, for she had to remember how disastrous a
venture it had been. "I needed money, you understand. I couldn't have
got an audience over there. I thought here they might come to hear
me--to say they'd heard me--the younger generation--and see my jewels. I
hadn't many left. I'd sold most of them. Well, I was mistaken. I
couldn't get a house. The fools!" Scorn ate up her face alive and opened
it out, a sneering mask. They were fools indeed, she knew, who would not
stir the ashes of such embers in search of one spark left. "I'm a very
strong woman. But I rather broke down then. I came here to Esther. She
was the only relation I had, except my stepsister, and she was off
travelling. Susan was always ashamed of me. She went to Europe on
purpose. Well, I came here. And Esther wished I was at the bottom of the
sea. But she liked my necklace, and she stole it."
Esther, as Lydia had seen her sitting in a long chair and eating candied
fruit, had been a figure of such civilised worth, however odious, that
Lydia said involuntarily, in a loud voice:
"She couldn't. I don't believe it."
"Oh, but she did," said Madame Beattie, looking at her with the coolness
of one who holds the cards. "She owned she did."
"To you?"
"To Jeff. He was madly in love with her then. Married, you understand,
but frightfully in love. Yes, she owned it. I always thought that was
why he wasn't sorry to go to jail. If he'd stayed out there was the
question of the necklace. And Esther. He didn't know what to do with
her."
"But he made her give it back," said Lydia, out of agonised certainty
that she must above all believe in him.
"He couldn't. She said she'd lost it."
Lydia stared at her, and her own face went white. Now the picture of
youth and age confronting each other was of the sybil dealing inexorable
hurts and youth anguished in the face of them.
"She said she'd lost it," Madame Beattie went on, in almost chuckling
enjoyment of her tale. "She said it had bewitched her. That was true
enough. She'd gone to New York. She came back by boat. Crazy thing for a
woman to do. And she said she stayed on deck late, and stood by the rail
and took the necklace out of her bag to hold it up in the moonlight. And
it slipped out of her hands."
"Into the water?"
"She said so."
"You don't believe it." Lydia read that clearly in the contemptuous old
face.
"Well, now, I ask you," said Madame Beattie, "was there ever such a
silly tale? A young woman of New England traditions--yes, they're
ridiculous, but you've got to reckon with them--she comes home on a Fall
River boat and doesn't even stay in her cabin, but hangs round on decks
and plays with priceless diamonds in the moonlight. Why, it's enough to
make the cat laugh."
Madame Beattie, in spite of her cosmopolitan reign, was at least local
enough to remember the feline similes Lydia put such dependence on, and
she used this one with relish. Lydia felt the more at home.
"But what did she do with it?" she insisted.
"I don't know," said Madame Beattie idly. "Put it in a safety deposit in
New York perhaps. Don't ask me."
"But don't you care?" cried Lydia, all of a heat of wonder--terror also
at melodramatic thieving here in simple Addington.
"I can care about things without screaming and sobbing," said Madame
Beattie briefly. "Though I sobbed a little at the time. I was a good
deal unstrung from other causes. But of course I laid it before Jeff, as
her husband--"
"He must have been heartbroken."
"Well, he was her husband. He was responsible for her, wasn't he? I told
him I wouldn't expose the creature. Only he'd have to pay me for the
necklace."
The yellow-white face wavered before Lydia. She was trying to make her
brain accept the raw material Madame Beattie was pouring into it and
evolve some product she could use.
"But he couldn't pay you. He'd just got into difficulties. You said so."
"Bless you, he hadn't got into any difficulty until Esther pushed him in
by helping herself to my necklace. He turned crazy over it. He hadn't
enough to pay for it. So he went into the market and tried a big _coup_
with all his own money and the money he was holding--people subscribed
for his mines, you know, or whatever they were--and that minute there
was a panic. And the courts, or whatever it was, got hold of him for
using the mails for fraudulent purposes or whatever, and he lost his
head. And that's all there was about it."
Lydia's thoughts were racing so fast it seemed to her that she--some
inner determined frightened self in her--was flying to overtake them.
"Then you did it," she said. "You! you forced him, you pushed him--"
"To pay me for my necklace," Madame Beattie supplied. "Of course I did.
It was a very bad move, as it proved. I was a fool; but then I might
have known. Old Lepidus told me the conjunction was bad for me."
"Who was Lepidus?"
"The astrologer. He died last month, the fool, and never knew he was
going to. But he'd encouraged me to come on my concert tour, and when
that went wrong I lost confidence. It was a bad year, a bad year."
A troop of conclusions were rushing at Lydia, all demanding to be fitted
in.
"But you've come back here," she said, incredulous that things as they
actually were could supplement the foolish tale Madame Beattie might
have stolen out of a silly book. "You think Esther did such a thing as
that, and yet you're here with her in this house."
"That's why I'm here," said Madame Beattie patiently. "Jeff's back
again, and the necklace hasn't been fully paid for. I've kept my word to
him. I haven't exposed his wife, and yet he hasn't recognised my not
doing it."
The vision of Jeffrey fleeing before the lash of this implacable
taskmaster was appalling to Lydia.
"But he can't pay you," said she. "He's no money. Not even to settle
with his creditors."
"That's it," said Madame Beattie. "He's got to make it. And I'm his
first creditor. I must be paid first."
"You haven't told him so?" said Lydia, in a manner of fending her off.
"It isn't time. He hasn't recovered his nerve. But he will, digging in
that absurd garden."
"And when you think he has, you'll tell him?"
"Why, of course." Madame Beattie reached for her book and smoothed the
pages open with a beautiful hand. "It'll do him good, too. Bring him out
of thinking he's a man of destiny, or whatever it is he thinks. You tell
him. I daresay you've got some influence with him. That's why I've gone
into it with you."
"But you said you promised him not to tell all this about Esther. And
you've told me."
"That's why. Get him to work. Spur him up. Talk about his creditors. Now
run away. I want to read."
XVII
Lydia did run away and really ran, home, to see if the dear surroundings
of her life were intact after all she had heard. Since this temporary
seclusion in a melodramatic tale, she almost felt as if she should never
again see the vision of Mary Nellen making cake or Anne brushing her
long hair and looking like a placid saint. The library was dim, but she
heard interchanging voices there, and knew Jeffrey and his father were
in tranquil talk. So she sped upstairs to Anne's room, and there Anne
was actually brushing her hair and wearing precisely that look of
evening peace Lydia had seen so many times.
"I thought I'd go to bed early," she said, laying down the brush and
gathering round her hair to braid it. "Why, Lyd!"
It was a hot young messenger invading her calm. Anne looked like one
who, the day done, was placidly awaiting night; but Lydia was the day
itself, her activities still unfinished.
"I've found it out," she announced. "All of it. She made him do it."
Then, while Anne stared at her, she sat down and told her story,
vehemently, with breaks of breathless inquiry as to what Anne might
think of a thing like this, finally with dragging utterance, for her
vitality was gone; and at the end, challenging Anne with a glance, she
turned cold: for it came over her that Anne did not believe her.
Anne began braiding her hair again. During Lydia's incredible story she
had let it slip from her hand. And Lydia could see the fingers that
braided were trembling, as Anne's voice did, too.
"What a dreadful old woman!" said Anne.
"Madame Beattie?" Lydia asked quickly. "Oh, no, she's not, Anne. I like
her."
"Like her? A woman like that? She doesn't even look clean."
Lydia answered quite eagerly.
"Oh, yes, Anne, I really like her. I thought I didn't when I heard her
talk. Sometimes I hated her. But I understand her somehow. And she's
clean. Really she is. It's the kind of clothes she wears." Lydia, to her
own surprise at this tragic moment, giggled a little here. Madame
Beattie, when in full fig, as she had first seen her, looked to her like
pictures of ancient hearses with plumes. "She's all right," said Lydia.
"She's just going to have what belongs to her, that's all. And if I were
in her place and felt as she does, I would, too."
Anne, with an air of now being ready for bed, threw the finished braid
over her back. She was looking at Lydia with her kind look, but, Lydia
could also see, compassionately.
"But, Lyd," she said, "the reason I call her a dreadful old woman is
that she's told you all this rigmarole. It makes me quite hot. She
sha'n't amuse herself by taking you in like that. I won't have it."
"Anne," said Lydia, "it's true. Don't you see it's true?"
"It's a silly story," said Anne. She could imagine certain things,
chiefly what men and women would like, in order to make them
comfortable, but she had no appetite for the incredible. "Do you suppose
Esther would have stolen her aunt's diamonds? Or was it pearls?"
"Yes, I do," said Lydia stoutly. "It's just like her."
"She might do other things, different kinds of things that are just as
bad. But stealing, Lyd! Why, think! Esther's a lady."
"Ladies are just like anybody else," said Lydia sulkily. She thought she
might have to consider that when she was alone, but at this moment the
world was against her and she had to catch up the first generality she
could find.
"And for a necklace to be so valuable," said Anne, "valuable enough for
Jeff to risk everything he had to try to pay for it--"
Lydia felt firmer ground. She read the newspapers and Anne did not.
"Now, Anne," said she, "you're 'way off. Diamonds cost thousands and
thousands of dollars, and so do pearls."
"Why, yes," said Anne, "royal jewels or something of that sort. But a
diamond necklace brought here to Addington in Madame Beattie's bag--"
Lydia got up and went over to her. Her charming face was hot with anger,
and she looked, too, so much a child that she might in a minute stamp
her foot or scream.
"Why, you simpleton!" said she.
"Lydia!" Anne threw in, the only stop-gap she could catch at in her
amaze. This was her "little sister", but of a complexion she had never
seen.
"Don't you know what kind of a person Madame Beattie is? Why, she's a
princess. She's more than a princess. She's had kings and emperors
wallowing round the floor after her, begging to kiss her hand."
Anne looked at her. Lydia afterward, in her own room, thought, with a
gale of hysterical laughter, "She just looked at me." And Anne couldn't
find a word to crush the little termagant. Everything that seemed to
pertain was either satirical, as to ask, "Did she tell you so?" or
compassionate, implying cerebral decay. But she did venture the
compassion.
"Lydia, don't you think you'd better go to bed?"
"Yes," said Lydia promptly, and went out and shut the door.
And on the way to her room, Anne noted, she was singing, or in a fashion
she had in moments of triumph, tooting through closed lips, like a
trumpet, the measures of a march. In half an hour Anne followed her, to
listen at her door. Lydia was silent. Anne hoped she was asleep.
In the morning there was the little termagant again with that same
triumph on her face, talking more than usual at the breakfast table, and
foolishly, as she hadn't since Jeffrey came. It had always been
understood that Lydia had times of foolishness; but it had seemed, after
Jeffrey appeared among them clothed in tragedy, that everything would be
henceforth on a dignified, even an austere basis. But here she was,
chaffing the colonel and chattering childish jargon to Anne. Jeffrey
looked at her, first with a tolerant surprise. Then he smiled. Seeing
her so light-hearted he was pleased. This was a Lydia he approved of. He
need neither run clear of her poetic emotions nor curse himself for
calling on them. He went out to his hoeing with an unformulated idea
that the tension of social life had let up a little.
Lydia did no dusting of tables or arranging of flowers in a vase. By a
hand upon Anne's arm she convoyed her into the hall, and said to her:
"Get your hat. We're going to see Mr. Alston Choate."
"What for?" asked Anne.
"I'm going to tell him what Madame Beattie told me." Lydia's colour was
high. She looked prodigiously excited, and as if something was so
splendid it could hardly be true. And then, as Anne continued to stare
at her with last night's stare, she added, not as if she launched a
thunderbolt, but as giving Anne something precious that would please her
very much: "I'm going to engage him for Jeffrey's case. Get your hat,
Anne. Or your parasol. My nose doesn't burn as yours does. Come, come."
She stood there impatiently tapping her foot as she used to, years ago,
when mother was slow about taking her out in the p'ram. Anne turned
away.
"You're a Silly Billy," said she. "You're not going to see Mr. Choate."
"Won't you go with me?" Lydia inquired.
"No, of course I sha'n't. And you won't go, either."
"Yes, I shall," said Lydia. "I'm gone."
And she was, out of the door and down the walk. Anne, following
helplessly a step, thought she must be running, she was so quickly lost.
But Lydia was not running. With due respect, taught her by Anne, for the
customs of Addington, she had put on her head the little
white-rose-budded hat she had snatched from the hall and fiercely pinned
it, and she was walking, though swiftly, in great decorum to Madison
Street where the bank was and the post-office and the best stores, and
upstairs in the great Choate building, the office of Alston Choate.
Lydia tapped at the office door, but no one answered. Then she began to
dislike her errand, and if it had not been for the confounding of Anne,
perhaps she would have gone home. She tapped again and hurt her
knuckles, and that brought her courage back.
"Come in," called a voice, much out of patience, it seemed. She opened
the door and there saw Alston Choate, his feet on the table, reading
"Trilby." Alston thought he had a right to at least one chapter; he had
opened his mail and dictated half a dozen letters, and the stenographer,
in another room, was writing them out. He looked up under a frowning
brow, and seeing her there, a Phillis come to town, shy, rosy,
incredible, threw his book to the table and put down his feet.
"I beg your pardon," said he, getting up, and then Lydia, seeing him in
the attitude of conventional deference, began to feel proper supremacy.
She spoke with a demure dignity of which the picturesque value was well
known to her.
"I've come to engage you for our case."
He stared at her an instant as Anne had, and she sinkingly felt he had
no confidence in her. But he recovered himself. That was not like Anne.
She had not recovered at all.
"Will you sit down?" he said.
He drew forward a chair. It faced the light, and Lydia noted, when he
had taken the opposite one, that they were in the technical position for
inquisitor and victim. He waited scrupulously, and when she had seated
herself, also sat down.
"Now," said he.
It was gravely said, and reconciled Lydia somewhat to the hardness of
her task. At least he would not really make light of her, like Anne.
Only your family could do that. She sat there charming, childlike even,
all soft surfaces and liquid gleam of eyes, so very young that she was
wistful in it. She hesitated in her beginning.
"I understand," she said, "that everything I say to you will be in
confidence. O Mr. Choate!" she implored him, with a sudden breaking of
her self-possession, "you wouldn't tell, would you?"
Alston Choate did not allow a glint to lighten the grave kindliness of
his glance. Perhaps he felt no amusement; she was his client and very
sweet.
"Never," said he, in the manner of an uncle to a child. "Tell me
anything you like. I shall respect your confidence."
"I saw Madame Beattie last night," said Lydia; and she went on to tell
what Madame Beattie had said. She warmed to it, and being of a dramatic
type, she coloured the story as Madame Beattie might have done. There
was a shade of cynicism here, a tang of worldliness there; and it
sounded like the hardest fact. But when she came to Esther, she saw his
glance quicken and fasten on hers the more keenly, and when she told him
Madame Beattie believed the necklace had not been lost at all, he was
looking at her with astonishment even.
"You say--" he began, and made her rehearse it all again in snatches. He
cross-examined her, not, it seemed, as if he wished to prove she lied,
but to take in her monstrous truth. And after they had been over it two
or three times and she felt excited and breathless and greatly fagged by
the strain of saying the same thing in different ways, she saw in his
face the look she had seen in Anne's.
"Why," she cried out, in actual pain, "you don't believe me."
Choate didn't answer that. He sat for a minute, considering gravely, and
then threw down the paper knife he had been bending while she talked. It
was ivory, and it gave a little shallow click on the table and that,
slight as it was, made her nerves jump. She felt suddenly that she was
in deeper than she had expected to be.
"Do you realise," he began gravely, "what you accuse Mrs. Blake of?"
Lydia had not been used to think of her by that name and she asked, with
lifted glance:
"Esther?"
"Yes. Mrs. Jeffrey Blake."
"She took the necklace," said Lydia. She spoke with the dull obstinacy
that made Anne shake her sometimes and then kiss her into kindness, she
was so pretty.
But Alston Choate, she saw, was not going to find it a road to
prettiness. He was after the truth like a dog on a scent, and he didn't
think he had it yet.
"Madame Beattie," he said, "tells you she believes that Esther--" his
voice slipped caressingly on the word with the lovingness of usage, and
Lydia saw he called her Esther in his thoughts--"Madame Beattie tells
you she believes that Esther did this--this incredible thing."
The judicial aspect fell away from him, and the last words carried only
the man's natural distaste. Lydia saw now that whether she was believed
or not, she was bound to be most unpopular. But she stood to her guns.
"Madame Beattie knows it. Esther owned it, I told you."
"Owned it to Madame Beattie?"
"To Jeff, anyway. Madame Beattie says so."
"Do you think for a moment she was telling you the truth?"
"But that's just the kind of women they are," said Lydia, at once
reckless and astute. "Esther's just the woman to take a necklace, and
Madame Beattie's just the woman to tell you she's taken it."
"Miss Lydia," said Choate gravely, "I'm bound to warn you in advance
that you mustn't draw that kind of inference."
Lydia lost her temper. It seemed to her she had been talking plain fact.
"I shall draw all the inferences I please," said she, "especially if
they're true. And you needn't try to mix me up by your law terms, for I
don't understand them."
"I have been particularly careful not to," said Choate rather stiffly;
but still, she saw, with an irritating proffer of compassion for her
because she didn't know any better. "I am being very unprofessional
indeed. And I still advise you, in plain language, not to draw that sort
of inference about a lady--" There he hesitated.
"About Esther?" she inquired viciously.
"Yes," said he steadily, "about Mrs. Jeffrey Blake. She is a
gentlewoman."
So Anne had said: "Esther is a lady." For the moment Lydia felt more
imbued with the impartiality of the law than both of them. Esther's
being a lady had, she thought, nothing whatever to do with her stealing
a necklace, if she happened to like necklaces. She considered herself a
lady, but she could also see herself, under temptation, doing a
desperado's deeds. Not stealing a necklace: that was tawdry larceny. But
she could see herself trapping Esther in a still place and cutting her
dusky hair off so that she'd betray no more men. For she began to
suspect that Alston Choate, too, was caught in the lure of Esther's
inexplicable charm. Lydia was at the moment of girlhood nearly done
where her accumulated experience, half of it not understood, was
prepared to spring to life and crystallise into clearest knowledge. She
was a child still, but she was ready to be a woman. Alston Choate now
was gazing at her with his charming smile, and Lydia hardened under it,
certain the smile was meant for mere persuasiveness.
"Besides," he said, "the necklace wasn't yours. You don't want to bring
Mrs. Blake to book for stealing a necklace which isn't your own?"
"But I'm not doing it for myself," said Lydia instantly. "It's for
Jeffrey."
"But, Jeffrey--" Alston paused. He wanted to put it with as little
offence as might be. "Jeffrey has been tried for a certain offence and
found guilty."
"He wasn't really guilty," said Lydia. "Can't you see he wasn't? Esther
stole the necklace, and Madame Beattie wanted it paid for, and Jeffrey
tried to do it and everything went to pieces. Can't you really see?"
She asked it anxiously, and Alston answered her with the more gentleness
because her solicitude made her so kind and fair.
"Now," said he, "this is the way it is. Jeffrey pleaded guilty and was
sentenced. If everything you say is true--we'll assume it is--he would
have been tried just the same, and he would have been sentenced just the
same. I don't say his counsel mightn't have whipped up a lot of sympathy
from the jury, but he wouldn't have got off altogether. And besides, you
wouldn't have had him escape in any such conceivable way. You wouldn't
have had him shield himself behind his wife."
Lydia was looking at him with brows drawn tight in her effort to get
quite clearly what she thought might prove at any instant a befogged
technicality. But it all sounded reasonable enough, and she gratefully
understood he was laying aside the jurist's phraseology for her sake.
"But," said she, "mightn't Esther have been tried for stealing the
necklace?"
He couldn't help laughing, she seemed so ingenuously anxious to lay
Esther by the heels. Then he sobered, for her inhumanity to Esther
seemed to him incredible.
"Why, yes," said he, "if she had been suspected, if there'd been
evidence--"
"Then I call it a wicked shame she wasn't," said Lydia. "And she's got
to be now. If it isn't my business, it's Madame Beattie's, and I'll ask
her to do it. I'll beg it of her."
With that she seemed still more dangerous to him, like an explosive put
up in so seemly a package that at first you trust it until you see how
impossible it is to handle. He spoke with a real and also a calculated
impressiveness.
"Miss Lydia, will you let me tell you something?"
She nodded, her eyes fixed on his.
"One thing my profession has taught me. It's so absolutely true a thing
that it never fails. And it's this: it is very easy to begin a course of
proceeding, but, once begun, it's another thing to stop it. Now before
you start this ball rolling--or before you egg on Madame Beattie--let's
see what you're going to get out of it."
"I don't expect to get anything," said Lydia, on fire. "I'm not doing it
for myself."
"Let's take the other people then. Your father is a man of reputation.
He's going to be horrified. Jeff is going to be broken-hearted under an
attack upon his wife."
"He doesn't love her," said Lydia eagerly. "Not one bit."
Choate himself believed that, but he stared briefly at having it thrown
at him with so deft a touch. Then he went on.
"Mrs. Blake is going to be found not guilty."
"Why is she?" asked Lydia calmly. It seemed to her the cross-questioning
was rightly on her side.
"Why, good God! because she isn't guilty!" said Alston with violence,
and did not even remember to be glad no legal brother was present to
hear so irrational an explosion. He hurried on lest she should call
satiric attention to its thinness. "And as for Madame Beattie, she'll
get nothing out of it. For the necklace being lost, she won't get that."
"Oh," said Lydia, the more coolly, as she noted she had nettled him on
the human side until the legal one was fairly hidden, "but we don't
think the necklace is lost."
"Who don't?" he asked, frowning.
"Madame Beattie and I."
"Where do you think it is then?"
"We think Esther's got it somewhere."
"But you say she lost it."
"I say she said she lost it," returned Lydia, feeling the delight of
sounding more accurate every minute. "We don't think she did lose it. We
think she lied."
Alston Choate remembered Esther as he had lately seen her, sitting in
her harmonious surroundings, all fragility of body and sweetness of
feeling, begging him to undertake the case that would deliver her from
Jeffrey because she was afraid--afraid. And here was this horribly
self-possessed little devil--he called her a little devil quite plainly
in his mind--accusing that flower of gentleness and beauty of a vulgar
crime.
"My God!" said he, under his breath.
And at that instant Anne, flushed and most sweet, hatted and gloved,
opened the door and walked in. She bowed to Alston Choate, though she
did not take his outstretched hand. He was receiving such professional
insult, Anne felt, from one of her kin that she could scarcely expect
from him the further grace of shaking hands with her. Lydia, looking at
her, saw with an impish glee that Anne, the irreproachable, was angry.
There was the spark in her eye, decision in the gesture with which she
made at once for Lydia.
"Why, Anne," said Lydia, "I never saw you mad before."
Tears came into Anne's eyes. She bit her lip. All the proprieties of
life seemed to her at stake when she must stand here before this most
dignified of men and hear Lydia turn Addington courtesies into farce.
"I came to get you," she said, to Lydia. "You must come home with me."
"I can't," said Lydia. "I am having a business talk with Mr. Choate.
I've asked him to undertake our case."
"Our case," Anne repeated, in a perfect despair. "Why, we haven't any
case."
She turned to Choate and he gave her a confirming glance.
"I've been telling your sister that, virtually," said he. "I tell her
she doesn't need my services. You may persuade her."
"Well," said Lydia cheerfully, rising, for they seemed to her much older
than she and, though not to be obeyed on that account, to be placated by
outward civilities, "I'm sorry. But if you don't take the case I shall
have to go to some one else."
"Lydia!" said Anne. Was this the soft creature who crept to her arms of
a cold night and who prettily had danced her way into public favour?
Alston Choate was looking thoughtful. It was not a story to be spread
broadcast over Addington. He temporised.
"You see," he ventured, turning again to Lydia with his delightful smile
which was, with no forethought of his own, tremendously persuasive, "you
haven't told me yet what anybody is to get out of it."
"I thought I had," said Lydia, taking heart once more. If he talked
reasonably with her, perhaps she could persuade him after all. "Why,
don't you see? it's just as easy! I do, and I've only thought of it one
night. Don't you see, Madame Beattie's here to hound Jeffrey into
paying her for the necklace. That's going to kill him, just kill him.
Anne, I should think you could see that."
Anne could see it if it were so. But Lydia, she thought, was building on
a dream. The hideous old woman with the ostrich feathers had played a
satiric joke on her, and here was Lydia in good faith assuming the joke
was real.
"And if we can get this cleared up," said Lydia calmly, feeling very
mature as she scanned their troubled faces, "Madame Beattie can just
have her necklace back, and Jeff, instead of thinking he's got to start
out with that tied round his neck, can set to work and pay his
creditors."
Alston Choate was looking at her, frowning.
"Do you realise, Miss Lydia, what amount it is Jeffrey would have to pay
his creditors? Unless he went into the market again and had a run of
unbroken luck--and he's no capital to begin on--it's a thing he simply
couldn't do. And as to the market, God forbid that he should ever think
of it."
"Yes," said Anne fervently, "God forbid that. Farvie can't say enough
against it."
Lydia's perfectly concrete faith was not impaired in the least.
"It isn't to be expected he should pay it all," said she. "He's got to
pay what he can. If he should die to-morrow with ten dollars saved
toward paying back his debts--"
"Do you happen to know what sum of money represents his debts?" Alston
threw in, as you would clutch at the bit of a runaway horse.
"I know all about it," said Lydia. She suddenly looked hot and fierce.
"I've done sums with it over and over, to see if he could afford to pay
the interest too. And it's so much it doesn't mean anything at all to me
one minute, and another time I wake up at night and feel it sitting on
me, jamming me flat. But you needn't think I'm going to stop for that.
And if you won't be my lawyer I can find somebody that will. That Mr.
Moore is a lawyer. I'll go to him."
Anne, who had been staring at Lydia with the air of never having truly
seen her, turned upon Choate, her beautiful eyes distended in a tragical
appeal.
"Oh," said she, "you'll have to help us somehow."
So Alston Choate thought. He was regarding Lydia, and he spoke with a
deference she was glad to welcome, a prospective client's due.
"I think," said he, "you had better leave the case with me."
"Yes," said Lydia. She hoped to get out of the room before Anne saw how
undone she really was. "That's nice. You think it over, and we'll have
another talk. Come along, Anne. Mary Nellen wants some lemons."
XVIII
What Alston Choate did, after ten minutes' frowning thought, was to sit
down and write a note to Madame Beattie. But as he dipped his pen he
said aloud, half admiring and inconceivably irritated: "The little
devil!" He sent the note to Madame Beattie by a boy charged to give it,
if possible, into her hand, and in an hour she was there in his office,
ostrich plumes and all. She was in high feather, not adequately to be
expressed by the plumes, and at once she told him why.
"I believe that little wild-fire's been here to see you already. Has
she? and talking about necklaces?"
Madame Beattie was sitting upright in the office chair, fanning herself
and regarding him with a smile as sympathetic as if she had been the
cause of no disturbing issue.
"You'll pardon me for asking you to come here," said Alston. "But I
didn't know how to get at you without Mrs. Blake's knowledge."
"Of course," said Madame Beattie composedly. "She was there when the
note came, and curious as a cat."
"I see," said Alston, tapping noiselessly with his helpful paper knife,
"that you guess I've heard some rumours that--pardon me, Madame
Beattie--started from you."
"Yes," said she, "that pretty imp has been here. Quite right. She's a
clever child. Let her stir up something, and they may quiet it if they
can."
"Do you mind telling me," said Alston, "what this story is--about a
necklace?"
"I've no doubt she's told you just as well as I could," said Madame
Beattie. "She sat and drank it all in. I bet ten pounds she remembered
word for word."
"As I understand, you say--"
"Don't tell me I 'say.' I had a necklace worth more money than I dared
tell that imp. She wouldn't have believed me. And my niece Esther is as
fond of baubles as I am. She stole the thing. And she said she lost it.
And it's my opinion--and it's the imp's opinion--she's got it somewhere
now."
Alston tapped noiselessly, and regarded her from under brows judicially
stern. He wished he knew recipes for frightening Madame Beattie. But, he
suspected, there weren't any. She would tell the truth or she would not,
as she preferred. He hadn't any delusions about Madame Beattie's
cherishing truth as an abstract duty. She was after results. He made a
thrust at random.
"I can't see your object in stirring up this matter. If you had any
ground of evidence you'd have made your claim and had it settled long
ago."
"Not fully," said Madame Beattie, fanning.
"Then you were paid something?"
"Something? How far do you think 'something' would go toward paying for
the loss of a diamond necklace? Evidently you don't know the history of
that necklace. If you were an older man you would. The papers were full
of it for years. It nearly caused a royal separation--they were
reconciled after--and I was nearly garroted once when the thieves
thought I had it in a hand-bag. There are historic necklaces and this is
one. Did you ever hear of Marie Antoinette's?"
"Yes," said Alston absently. He was thinking how to get at her in the
house where she lived. How would some of his novelists have written out
Madame Beattie and made her talk? "And Maupassant's." This he said
ruminatingly, but the lawyer in him here put down a mark. "Note," said
the mark, "Maupassant's necklace. She rose to that." There was no doubt
of it. A quick cross-light, like a shiver, had run across her eyes. "You
know Maupassant's story," he pursued.
"I know every word of Maupassant. Neat, very neat."
"You remember the wife lost the borrowed necklace, and she and her
husband ruined themselves to pay for it, and then they found it wasn't
diamonds at all, but paste."
"I remember," said Madame Beattie composedly. "But if it had been a
necklace such as mine an imitation would have cost a pretty penny."
"So it wasn't the necklace itself," he hazarded. "You wouldn't have
brought a priceless thing over here. It was the imitation."
Madame Beattie broke out, a shrill staccato, into something like anger.
But it might not have been anger, he knew, only a means of hostile
communication.
"You are a rude young man to put words into my mouth, a rude young man."
"I beg your pardon," said Alston. "But this is rather a serious matter.
And I do want to know, as a friend of Mrs. Jeffrey Blake."
"And counsel confided in by that imp," she supplied shrewdly.
"Yes, counsel retained by Miss Lydia French. I want to know whether you
had with you here in America the necklace given you by--" Here he
hesitated. He wondered whether, according to her standards, he was
unbearably insulting, or whether the names of royal givers could really
be mentioned.
"A certain Royal Personage," said Madame Beattie calmly.
"Or," said Alston, beginning after a safe hiatus, "whether you had had
an imitation made, and whether the necklace said to be lost was the
imitation."
"Well, then I'll tell you plainly," said Madame Beattie, in a cheerful
concession, "I didn't have an imitation made. And you're quite within
the truth with your silly 'said to be's.' For it was said to be lost.
Esther said it. And she no more lost it than she went to New York that
time to climb the Matterhorn. Do you know Esther?"
"Yes," said Alston with a calculated dignity, "I know her very well."
"Oh, I mean really know her, not enough to take her in to dinner or
snatch your hat off to her."
"Yes, I really know her."
"Then why should you assume she's not a liar?" Madame Beattie asked this
with the utmost tranquillity. It almost robbed the insult of offence.
But Alston's face arrested her, and she burst out laughing. "My dear
boy," said she, "you deal with evidence and you don't know a liar when
you see her. Esther isn't all kinds of a liar. She isn't an amusing one,
for instance. She hasn't any imagination. Now if I thought it would make
you jump, I should tell you there was a tiger sitting on the top of that
bookcase. I should do it because it would amuse me. But Esther never'd
think of such a thing." She was talking to him now with perfect
good-humour because he actually had glanced up at the bookcase, and it
was tribute to her dramatic art. "She tells only the lies she has to.
Esther's the perfect female animal hiding under things when there's
something she's afraid of in the open and then telling herself she hid
because she felt like being alone. The little imp wouldn't do that,"
said Madame Beattie admiringly. "She wouldn't be afraid of anything, or
if she was she'd fight the harder. I shouldn't want to see the blood
she'd draw."
Alston was looking at her in a fixed distaste.
"Esther is your niece," he began.
"Grandniece," interrupted Madame Beattie.
"She's of your blood. And at present you are her guest--"
"Oh, no, I'm not. The house is Susan's. Susan and I are step-sisters.
Half the house ought to have been left to me, only Grandfather Pike knew
I was worshipped, simply worshipped in Paris, and he wrote me something
scriptural about Babylon."
"At any rate," said Alston, "you are technically visiting your niece,
and you come here and tell me she is a thief and a liar."
"You sent for me," said Madame Beattie equably. "And I actually walked
over. I thought it would be good for me, but it wasn't. Isn't that a
hack out there? If it's that Denny, I think I'll get him to take me for
a little drive. Don't come down."
But Alston went in a silence he recognised as sulky, and put her into
the carriage with a perfect solicitude.
"I must ask you," he said stiffly before he closed the carriage door,
"not to mention this to Mrs. Blake."
"Bless you, no," said Madame Beattie. "I'm going to let you stir the
pot, you and that imp. Tell him to drive out into the country somewhere
for half an hour. I suppose I've got to get the air."
But he was not to escape that particular coil so soon. Back in his
office again, giving himself another ten minutes of grave amused
consideration, before he called the stenographer, he looked up, at the
opening of the door, and saw Anne. She came forward at once and without
closing the door, as if to assure him she would not keep him long. There
was no misreading the grave trouble of her face. He met her, and now
they shook hands, and after he had closed the door he set a chair for
her. But Anne refused it.
"I came to tell you how sorry I am to have troubled you so," she began.
"Of course Lydia won't go on with this. She won't be allowed to. I don't
know what could stop her," Anne admitted truthfully. "But I shall do
what I can. Farvie mustn't be told. He'd be horrified. Nor Jeff. I must
see what I can do."
"You are very much troubled," said Alston, in a tone of grave concern.
It seemed to him Anne was a perfect type of the gentlewoman of another
time, not even of his mother's perhaps, but of his grandmother's when
ladies were a mixture of fine courage and delicate reserve. That type
had, in his earliest youth, seemed inevitable. If his mother had escaped
from it, it was because she was the inexplicable wonder of womankind,
unlike the rest and rarer than all together.
Anne looked at him, pleading in her eyes.
"Terribly," she said, "terribly troubled. Lydia has always been
impulsive, but not unmanageable. And I don't in the least know what to
do."
"Suppose you leave it with me," said Alston, his deference an exquisite
balm to her hurt feeling. Then he smiled, remembering Lydia. "I don't
know what to do either," he said. "Your sister's rather terrifying. But
I think we're safe enough so long as she doesn't go to Weedon Moore."
Anne was wordlessly grateful, but he understood her and not only went to
the door with her but down the stairs as well. And she walked home
treasuring the memory of his smile.
XIX
The day Jeffrey began to spade up the ground he knew he had got hold of
something bigger than the handle of the spade. It was something rudely
beneficent, because it kept him thinking about his body and the best way
to use it, and it sent him to bed so tired he lay there aching. Not
aching for long though: now he could sleep. That seemed to him the only
use he could put himself to: he could work hard enough to forget he had
much of an identity except this physical one. He had not expected to
escape that horrible waking time between three and four in the morning
when he had seen his life as an ignorant waste of youth and power. It
was indeed confusion, nothing but that: the confusion of overwhelming
love for Esther, of a bravado of display when he made money for them
both to spend, of the arrogant sense that there was always time enough,
strength enough, sheer brilliant insight enough to dance with life and
drink with it and then have abundance of everything left. And suddenly
the clock had struck, the rout was over and there was nothing left. It
had all been forfeit. He hardly knew how he had come out of prison so
drained of courage when he had been so roistering with it before he went
in. Sometimes he had thought, at three o'clock in the morning, that it
was Esther who had drained him: she, sweet, helpless, delicate flower of
life. She had not merely been swayed by the wind that worsted him. She
had perhaps been broken by it. Or at least it had done something
inexplicable which he, entirely out of communication with her, had not
been able to understand. And he had come back to find her more lovely
than ever, and wearing no mark of the inner cruelties he had suffered
and had imagined she must share with him.
He believed that his stay in prison had given him an illuminating idea
of what hell really is: the vision of heaven and a certainty of the
closed door. Confronted with an existence pared down to the satisfying
of its necessities, he had loathed the idea of luxury while he hated the
daily meagreness. Life had stopped for him when he entered inexorable
bounds. It could not, he knew, be set going. Some clocks have merely
stopped. Others are smashed. It had been the only satisfaction of his
craving instincts to build up a scheme of conduct for the prison paper:
but it had been the vision of a man lost to the country of his dreams
and destined to eternal exile. Now all these aches and agonies of the
past were lulled by the surge of tired muscles. He worked like a fury
and the colonel, according to his strength, worked with him. They talked
little, and chiefly about the weather prospects and the ways of the
earth. Sometimes Anne would appear, and gently draw the colonel in, to
advise her about something, and being in, he was persuaded to an egg-nog
or a nap. But he also was absorbed, she saw, though he went at a slower
pace than Jeff. He who had been old seemed to be in physical revolt; he
was not sitting down to wait for death. He was going to dig the ground,
even if he dug his grave, and not look up to see what visitant was
waiting for him. It might be the earthly angel of a renewed and sturdy
life. It might be the last summoner. But death, he told himself stoutly,
though in a timorous bravado, waited for all.
Jeffrey's manuscript was laid aside. On Sundays he was too tired to
write, too sleepy at night. For Lydia and Anne, it was, so far as family
life went, a time of arrested intercourse. Their men were planting and
could not talk to them, or tired and could not talk then. The colonel
had even given up pulling out classical snags for Mary Nellen. He would
do it in the evening, he said; but every evening he was asleep. Lydia
had developed an astounding intimacy with Madame Beattie, and Anne was
troubled. She told Alston Choate, who came when he thought there was a
chance of seeing her alone, because he was whole-heartedly sorry for
her, at the mercy of the vagaries of the little devil, as he permitted
himself to call Lydia in his own mind.
"Madame Beattie," Anne said, "isn't a fit companion for a young girl.
She can't be."
Alston remembered the expression of satiric good-humour on Madame
Beattie's face, and was not prepared wholly to condemn her. He thought
she could be a good fellow by habit without much trying, and he was very
sure that, with a girl, she would play fair. But if he had heard Madame
Beattie this morning in June, as she took Lydia to drive, he might not
have felt so assured. These drives had become a matter of custom now. At
first, Madame Beattie had taken Denny and an ancient victoria, but she
tired of that.
"The man's as curious as a cat," she said to Lydia. "He can move his
ears. That's to hear better. Didn't you see him cock them round at us?
Can you drive?"
"Yes, Madame Beattie," said Lydia. "I love to."
"Then we'll have a phaeton, and you shall drive."
Nobody knew there was a phaeton left in Addington. But nobody had known
there was a victoria, and when Madame Beattie had set her mind upon
each, it was in due course forthcoming, vehicles apparently of an equal
age and the same extent of disrepair. So they set forth together, the
strange couple, and jogged, as Madame Beattie said. She would send the
unwilling Sophy, who had a theory that she was to serve Esther and
nobody else, and that scantily, over with a note. The Blake house had
no telephone. Jeff, for unformulated reasons, owned to a nervous
distaste for being summoned. And the note would say:
"Do you want to jog?"
Lydia always wanted to, and she found it the more engaging because
Madame Beattie told her it drove Esther to madness and despair.
"She's furious," said Madame Beattie, with her lisp. "It's very silly of
her. She doesn't want to go with me herself. Not that I'd have her. But
you are an imp, my dear, and I like you."
This warm morning, full of sun and birds, they were jogging up Haldon
Hill, a way they took often because it only led down again and motorists
avoided it. Madame Beattie, still thickly clad and nodded over by
plumes, lounged and held her parasol with the air of ladies in the Bois.
Lydia, sitting erect and hatless, looked straight ahead, though the
reins were loose, anxiously piercing some obscurity if she might, but
always a mental one. Her legal affairs were stock still. Alston Choate
talked with her cordially, though gravely, about her case, dissuading
her always, but she was perfectly aware he was doing nothing. When she
taxed him with it, he reminded her that he had told her there was
nothing to do. But he assured her everything would be attempted to save
her father and Anne from anxiety, and incidentally herself. About this
Madame Beattie was asking her now, as they jogged under the flicker of
leaves.
"What has that young man done for you, my dear, young Choate?"
"Nothing," said Lydia.
She put her lips together and thought what she would do if she were
Jeff.
"But isn't he agitating anything?"
"Agitating?"
"Yes. That's what he must do, you know. That's all he can do."
Lydia turned reproachful eyes upon her.
"You think so, too," she said.
"Why, yes, dear imp, I know it. Jeff's case is ancient history.
We can't do anything practical about it, so what we want is to
agitate--agitate--until he leaves his absurd plaything--carrots, is it,
or summer squash?--and gets into business in a civilised way. The man's
a genius, if only his mind wakes up. Let him think we're going to spread
the necklace story far and wide, let him see Esther about to be hauled
before public opinion--"
"He doesn't love Esther," said Lydia, and then savagely bit her lip.
"Don't you believe it," said Madame Beattie sagely. "She's only to crook
her finger. Agitate. Why, I'll do it myself. There's that dirty little
man that wants an interview for his paper. I'll give him one."
"Weedon Moore?" asked Lydia. "Anne won't let me know him."
"Well, you do know him, don't you?"
"I saw him once. But when I threaten to take Jeff's case to him, if Mr.
Choate won't stir himself, Anne says I sha'n't even speak to him. He
isn't nice, she thinks. I don't know who told her."
"Choate, my dear," said Madame Beattie. "He's afraid Moore will get hold
of you. He's blocking your game, that's all."
Madame Beattie, the next day, did go to Weedon Moore's office. He was
unprepared for her and so the more agonisingly impressed. Here was a
rough-spoken lady who, he understood, was something like a princess in
other countries, and she was offering him an interview.
Madame Beattie showed she had the formula, and could manage quite well
alone.
"The point is the necklace," said she, sitting straight and fanning
herself, regarding him with so direct a gaze that he pressed his knees
in nervous spasms. "You don't need to ask me how old I am nor whether I
like this country. The facts are that I was given a very valuable
necklace--by a Royal Personage. Bless you, man! aren't you going to take
it down?"
"Yes, yes," stammered Moore. "I beg your pardon."
He got block and pencil, and though the attitude of writing relieved him
from the necessity of looking at her, he felt the sweat break out on his
forehead and knew how it was dampening his flat hair.
"The necklace," said Madame Beattie, "became famous. I wore it just
enough to give everybody a chance to wonder whether I was to wear it or
not. The papers would say, 'Madame Beattie wore the famous necklace.'"
"Am I permitted to say--" Weedon began, and then wondered how he could
proceed.
"You can say anything I do," said Madame Beattie promptly. "No more. Of
course not anything else. What is it you want to say?"
Weedon dropped the pencil, and under the table began to squeeze
inspiration from his knees.
"Am I permitted," he continued, aghast at the liberty he was taking, "to
know the name of the giver?"
"Certainly not," said Madame Beattie, but without offence. "I told you a
Royal Personage. Besides, everybody knows. If your people here don't,
it's because the're provincial and it doesn't matter whether they know
it or not. I will continue. The necklace, I told you, became almost as
famous as I. Then there was trouble."
"When?" ventured Weedon.
"Oh, a long time after, a very long time. The Royal Personage was going
to be married and her Royal Highness--"
"Her Royal Highness?"
"Of course. Do you suppose he would have been allowed to marry a
commoner? That was always the point. She made a row, very properly. The
necklace was famous and some of the gems in it are historic. She was a
thrifty person. I don't blame her for it. She wasn't going to see
historic jewels drift back to the rue de la Paix. So they made me a
proposition."
Moore was forgetting to be shy. He licked his lips, the story promised
so enticingly.
"As I say," Madame Beattie pursued, "they made me a proposition." She
stopped and Moore, pencil poised, looked at her inquiringly. She closed
her fan, with a decisive snap, and rose. "There," said she, "you can
elaborate that. Make it as long as you please, and it'll do for one
issue."
Weedon felt as if somehow he had been done.
"But you haven't told me anything," he implored. "Everybody knows as
much as that."
"I reminded you of that," said Madame Beattie. "But I know several
things everybody doesn't know. Now you do as I tell you. Head it: 'The
True Story of Patricia Beattie's Necklace. First Instalment.' And you'll
sell a paper to every man, woman and baby in this ridiculous town. And
when the next day's paper doesn't have the second instalment, they'll
buy the next and the next to see if it's there."
"But I must have the whole in hand," pleaded Weedon.
"Well, you can't. Because I sha'n't give it to you. Not till I'm ready.
You can publish a paragraph from time to time: 'Madame Beattie under
the strain of recollection unable to continue her reminiscences. Madame
Beattie overcome by her return to the past.' I'm a better journalist
than you are."
"I'm not a journalist," Weedon ventured. "I practise law."
"Well, you run the paper, don't you? I'm going now. Good-bye."
And so imbued was he with the unassailable character of her right to
dictate, that he did publish the fragment, and Addington bought it
breathlessly and looked its amused horror over the values of the foreign
visitor.
"Of course, my dear," said the older ladies--they called each other "my
dear" a great deal, not as a term of affection, but in moments of
conviction and the desire to impress it--"of course her standards are
not ours. Nobody would expect that. But this is certainly going too far.
Esther must be very much mortified."
Esther was not only that: she was tearful with anger and even penetrated
to her grandmother's room to rehearse the circumstance, and beg Madam
Bell to send Aunt Patricia away. Madam Bell was lying with her face
turned to the wall, but the bedclothes briefly shook, as if she
chuckled.
"You must tell her to go," said Esther again. "It's your house, and it's
a scandal to have such a woman living in it. I don't care for myself,
but I do care for the dignity of the family." Esther, Madam Bell knew,
never cared for herself. She did things from the highest motives and the
most remote. "Will you," Esther insisted, "will you tell her to leave?"
"No," said grandmother, from under the bedclothes. "Go away and call
Rhoda Knox."
Esther went, angry but not disconcerted. The result of her invasion was
perhaps no more bitter than she had expected. She had sometimes talked
to grandmother for ten minutes, meltingly, adjuringly, only to be asked,
at a pause, to call Rhoda Knox. To-day Rhoda, with a letter in her hand,
was just outside the door.
"Would you mind, Mrs. Blake," she said, "asking Sophy to mail this?"
Esther did mind, but she hardly ventured to say so. With bitterness in
her heart, she took the letter and went downstairs. Everybody, this
swelling heart told her, was against her. She still did not dare
withstand Rhoda, for the woman took care of grandmother perfectly, and
if she left it would be turmoil thrice confounded. She hated Rhoda the
more, having once heard Madame Beattie's reception of a request to carry
a message when she was going downstairs.
"Certainly not," said Madame Beattie. "That's what you are here for, my
good woman. Run along and take down my cloak and put it in the
carriage."
Rhoda went quite meekly, and Esther having seen, exulted and thought she
also should dare revolt. But she never did.
And now, having gone to grandmother in her mortification and trouble,
she knew she ought to go to Madame Beattie with her anger. But she had
not the courage. She could hear the little satiric chuckle Madame
Beattie would have ready for her. And yet, she knew, it had to be done.
But first she sent for Weedon Moore. The interview had but just been
published, and Weedon, coming at dusk, was admitted by Sophy to the
dining-room, where Madame Beattie seldom went. Esther received him with
a cool dignity. She was pale. Grandmother would no doubt have said she
made herself pale in the interest of pathos; but Esther was truly
suffering. Moore, fussy, flattered, ill at ease, stood before her,
holding his hat. She did not ask him to sit down. There was an unspoken
tradition in Addington, observed by everybody but Miss Amabel, that
Moore was not, save in cases of unavoidable delay, to be asked to sit.
He passed his life, socially, in an upright posture. But Esther began at
once, fixing her mournful eyes on his.
"Mr. Moore, I am distressed about the interview in your paper."
Moore, standing, could not squeeze inspiration out of his knees, and
missed it sorely.
"Mrs. Blake," said he, "I wouldn't have distressed you for the world."
"I can't speak to my aunt about it," said Esther. "I can't trust myself.
I mustn't wound her as I should be forced to do. So I have sent for you.
Mr. Moore, has she given you other material?"
"Not a word," said Weedon earnestly. "If you could prevail upon her--"
There he stopped, remembering Esther was on the other side.
"I shall have to be very frank with you," said Esther. "But you will
remember, won't you, that it is in confidence?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Moore. He had never fully risen above former
conditions of servitude when he ran errands and shovelled paths for
Addington gentry. "You can rely on me."
"My aunt," said Esther delicately, with an air of regret and several
other picturesque emotions mingled carefully, "my aunt has one delusion.
It is connected with this necklace, which she certainly did possess at
one time. She imagines things about it, queer things, where it went and
where it is now. But you mustn't let her tell you about it, and if she
insists you mustn't allow it to get into print. It would be taking
advantage, Mr. Moore. Truly it would." And as a magnificent concession
she drew forward a chair, and Weedon, without waiting to see her placed,
sank into it and put his hands on his knees. "You must promise me,"
Esther half implored, half insisted. "It isn't I alone. It's everybody
that knows her. We can't, in justice to her, let such a thing get into
print."
Weedon was much impressed, by her beauty, her accessibility and his own
incredible position of having something to accord. But he had a system
of mental bookkeeping. There were persons who asked favours of him, whom
he put down as debtors. "Make 'em pay," was his mentally jotted note. If
he did them an obliging turn, he kept his memory alert to require the
equivalent at some other time. But he did not see how to make Esther
pay. So he could only temporise.
"I'd give anything to oblige you, Mrs. Blake," he said, "anything, I
assure you. But I have to consider the paper. I'm not alone there, you
know. It's a question of other people."
Esther was familiar with that form of withdrawal. She herself was always
escaping by it.
"But you own the paper," she combated him. "Everybody says so."
"I have met with a great deal of misrepresentation," he replied
solemnly. "Justice is no more alive to-day than liberty." Then he
remembered this was a sentence he intended to use in his speech to-night
on the old circus-ground, and added, as more apposite, "I'd give
anything to serve you, Mrs. Blake, I assure you I would. But I owe a
certain allegiance--a certain allegiance--I do, really."
With that he made his exit, backing out and bowing ridiculously over his
hat. And Esther had hardly time to weigh her defeat, for callers came.
They began early and continued through the afternoon, and they all
asked for Madame Beattie. It was a hot day and Madame Beattie, without
her toupée and with iced _eau sucrée_ beside her, was absorbedly
reading. She looked up briefly, when Sophy conveyed to her the summons
to meet lingering ladies below, and only bade her: "Excuse me to them.
Say I'm very much engaged."
Then she went on reading. Esther, when the message was suavely but
rather maliciously delivered by Sophy, who had a proper animosity for
her social betters, hardly knew whether it was easier to meet the
invaders alone or run the risk of further disclosure if Madame Beattie
appeared. For though no word was spoken of diamonds or interviews or
newspapers, she could follow, with a hot sensitiveness, the curiosity
flaring all over the room, like a sky licked by harmless lightnings.
When a lady equipped in all the panoply of feminine convention asked for
grandmother's health, she knew the thought underneath, decently
suppressed, was an interest, no less eager for being unspoken, in
grandmother's attitude toward the interview. Sometimes she wanted to
answer the silent question with a brutal candour, to say: "No,
grandmother doesn't care. She was perfectly horrible about it. She only
laughed." And when the stream of callers had slackened somewhat she
telephoned Alston Choate, and asked if he would come to see her that
evening at nine. She couldn't appoint an earlier hour because she wasn't
free. And immediately after that, Reardon telephoned her and asked if he
might come, rather late, he hesitated, to be sure of finding her alone.
And when she had to put him off to the next night, he spoke of the
interview as "unpardonable ". He was coming, no doubt, to bring his
condolence.
XX
Jeffrey himself had not seen the interview. He had only a mild interest
in Addington newspapers, and Anne had carefully secreted the family copy
lest the colonel should come on it. But on the afternoon when Esther was
receiving subtly sympathetic townswomen, Jeffrey, between the rows of
springing corn, heard steps and looked up from his hoeing. It was Lydia,
the _Argosy_ in hand. She was flushed not only with triumph because
something had begun at last, but before this difficulty of entering on
the tale with Jeff. Pretty child! his heart quickened at sight of her in
her blue dress, sweet arms and neck bare because Lydia so loved freedom.
But, in that his heart did respond to her, he spoke the more brusquely,
showing he had no right to find her fair.
"What is it?"
Lydia, in a hurry, the only way she knew of doing it, extended the
paper, previously folded to expose the headline of Madame Beattie's
name. Jeff, his hoe at rest in one hand, took the paper and looked at it
frowningly, incredulously. Then he read. A word or two escaped him near
the end. Lydia did not quite hear what the word was, but she thought he
was appropriately swearing. Her eyes glistened. She had begun to
agitate. Jeff had finished and crushed the paper violently together,
with no regard to folds.
"Oh, don't," said Lydia. "You can't get any more. They couldn't print
them fast enough."
Jeff passed it to her with a curt gesture of relinquishing any last
interest in it.
"That's Moore," he said. "It's like him."
Lydia was at once relieved. She had been afraid he wasn't going to
discuss it at all.
"You don't blame her, do you?" she prompted.
"Madame Beattie?" He was thinking hard and scowling. "No."
"Anne blames her. She says no lady would have done it."
"Oh, you can't call names. That's Madame Beattie," said Jeff absently.
"She's neither principles nor morals nor the kind of shame other women
feel. You can't judge Madame Beattie."
"So I say," returned Lydia, inwardly delighted and resolving to lose no
time in telling Anne. "I like her. She's nice. She's clever. She knows
how to manage people. O Jeff, I wish you'd talk with her."
"About this?" He was still speaking absently. "It wouldn't do any good.
If it amuses her or satisfies her devilish feeling toward Esther to go
on talking and that slob will get it into print--and he will--you can't
stop her."
"What do you mean by her feeling toward Esther?" Lydia's heart beat so
that she drew a long breath to get it into swing again.
"We can't go into that," said Jeff. "It runs back a long way. Only
everything she can do to worry Esther or frighten her--why, she'd do it,
that's all. That's Madame Beattie."
Lydia knew this was the path that led to the necklace. Why couldn't she
tell him she knew the story and enlist him on Madame Beattie's side and
hers, the side that was fighting for him and nothing else? But she did
not dare. All she could do was to say, her hands cold against each other
and her voice choked:
"O Jeff, I wish you'd give this up."
"What?"
He was recalled now from memories the printed paper had wakened in him,
and looking at her kindly. At least Lydia was sure he was, because his
voice sounded so dear. She could not know his eyes were full of an
adoring gentleness over her who seemed to him half child, half maiden,
and tumultuously compassionate. She made a little timid gesture of the
hand over the small area about them.
"This," she said. "You mustn't stay here and hoe corn. You must get into
business and show people--"
Her voice choked. It refused absurdly to go on.
"Why, Lydia," said he, "I thought you knew. This is the only way for a
man to keep alive. When I've got a hoe in my hand--" He could not quite
explain it. He had always had a flow of words on paper, but since he had
believed his life was finished his tongue had been more and more
lethargic. It would not obey his brain because, after all, what could
the brain report of his distrustful heart? Lydia had a moment of bitter
mortification because she had not seemed to understand. Anne understood,
she knew, and had tried, with infinite patience, to help on this queer
experiment, both for Jeff's sake and Farvie's. Tears rushed to her eyes.
"I can't help it," she said. "I want you to be doing something real."
"Lydia!" said Jeff. His kind, persuasive voice was recalling her to some
ground of conviction where she could share his certainty that things
were going as well as they could. "This is almost the only real thing in
the world--the ground. About everything else is a game. This isn't a
game. It's making something grow that won't hurt anybody when it's
grown. I can't harm anybody by planting corn. And I can sell the corn,"
said Jeff, with a lighter shade of voice. Lydia knew he was smiling to
please her. "Denny's going to peddle it out for me at backdoors. I'd do
it myself, only I'm afraid they'd buy to help on 'poor Jeffrey Blake'."
When he spoke of the ground Lydia gave the loose dirt a little scornful
kick and got the powdered dust into her neat stockings. She, too, loved
the ground and all the sweet usages of homely life; but not if they kept
him from a spectacular triumph. She was desperate enough to venture her
one big plea.
"Jeff, you know you've got a lot of money to earn--to pay back--"
And there she stopped. He was regarding her gravely, but the moment he
spoke she knew it was not in any offence.
"Lydia, I give you my word I couldn't do the kind of thing you want me
to. I've found that out at last. You'd like me to cut into the market
and make a lot of money and throw it back at the people I owe. I
couldn't do it. My brain wouldn't let me. It's stopped--stopped short. A
man knows when he's done for. I'm absolutely and entirely done. All I
hope for is to keep father from finding it out. He seems to be getting
his nerve back, and if he really does that I may be able to go away and
do something besides dig. But it won't be anything spectacular, Lydia.
It isn't in me."
Lydia turned away from him, and he could fancy the bright tears dropping
as she walked. "Oh, dear!" he heard her say. "Oh, dear!"
"Lydia!" he called, in an impatience of tenderness and misery. "Come
back here. Don't you know I'd do anything on earth I could for you? But
there's nothing I can do. You wouldn't ask a lame man to dance. There!
that shows you. When it comes to dancing you can understand. I'm a
cripple, Lydia. Don't you see?"
She had turned obediently, and now she smeared the tears away with one
small hand.
"You don't understand," she said. "You don't understand a thing. We've
thought of it all this time, Anne and I, how you'd come out and be
proved not guilty--"
"But, Lydia," he said gravely, "I was guilty. And besides being guilty
of things the courts condemned me for, I was guilty of things I had to
condemn myself for afterward. I wasn't a criminal merely. I was a waster
and a fool."
"Yes," said Lydia, looking at him boldly, "and if you were guilty who
made you so? Who pushed you on?"
She had never entirely abandoned her theory of Reardon. He and Esther,
in her suspicion, stood side by side. Looking at him, she rejoiced in
what she thought his confirmation. The red had run into his face and he
looked at her with brightened eyes.
"You don't know anything about it," he said harshly. "I did what I did.
And I got my medicine. And if there's a decent impulse left in me
to-day, it was because I got it."
Lydia walked away through the soft dirt and felt as if she were dancing.
He had looked guilty when she had asked him who pushed him on. He and
she both knew it was Esther, and a little more likelihood of Madame
Beattie's blackguarding Esther in print must rouse him to command the
situation.
Jeffrey finished his row, and then hurried into the house. It was the
late afternoon, and he went to his room and dressed, in time for supper.
Lydia, glancing at him as he left the table, thought exultantly: "I've
stirred him up, at least. Now what is he going to do?"
Jeffrey went strolling down the drive, and quickened his steps when the
shrubbery had him well hidden from the windows. Something assured him it
was likely Weedon Moore lived still in the little sharp-gabled house on
a side street where he had years ago. His mother had been with him then,
and Jeff remembered Miss Amabel had scrupulously asked for her when
Moore came to call. The little house was unchanged, brightly painted,
gay in diamond trellis-work and picked out with scarlet tubs of
hydrangea in the yard. A car stood at the gate, and Weedon, buttoning
his coat, was stepping in. The car ran past, and Jeff saw that the man
beside Moore was the interpreter of that night at the old circus-ground.
"So," he thought, "more ginger for the labouring man."
He turned about and walking thoughtfully, balked of his design,
reflected with distaste that grew into indignation on Moore's incredible
leadership. It seemed monstrous. Here was ignorance fallen into the
hands of the demagogue. It was an outrage on the decencies. And then
Madame Beattie waved to him from Denny's hack, and he stepped into the
road to speak to her.
"I was going to see you," she said. "Get in here."
Jeff got in and disposed his length as best he might in the cramped
interior, redolent now of varied scents, all delicate but mingled to a
suffocating potency.
"Tell him to drive along outside the town," she bade. "Were you going to
see me?"
"No," said Jeffrey, after executing her order. "I've told you I can't go
to see you."
"Because Esther made that row? absurd! It's Susan's house."
"I'm not likely to go into it," said Jeff drily, "unless I am
summoned."
"She's a fool."
"But I don't mind telling you where I was going," said Jeff. "I was
going to lick Weedon Moore--or the equivalent."
"Not on account of my interview?" said Madame Beattie, laughing very far
down in her anatomy. Her deep laugh, Jeff always felt, could only have
been attained by adequate support in the diaphragm. "Bless you, dear
boy, you needn't blame him. I went to him. Went to his office. Blame
me."
"Oh, I blame you all right," said Jeff, "but you're not a responsible
person. A chap that owns a paper is."
"I wish you'd met him," she said, in great enjoyment. "Where'd he go,
Jeffrey? Can't we find him now?"
"I suspect he went to the old circus-ground. I caught him there talking
to Poles and Finns and Italians and Greeks, telling them the country was
no good and they owned it."
"Why, the fellow can't speak to them." Madame Beattie, being a fluent
linguist, had natural scorn of a tubby little New Englander who said
"ma'am ".
"Oh, he had an interpreter."
"We'll drive along there," said Madame Beattie. "You tell Denny. I
should dearly like to see them. Poles, do you say? I didn't know there
were such people in town."
Jeffrey, rather curious himself, told Denny, and they bowled cumbrously
along. He felt in a way obliged to proffer a word or two about the
interview.
"What the devil made you do it anyway?" he asked her; but Madame Beattie
chuckled and would not answer.
XXI
All the way along, in the warm twilight, Madame Beattie was gay over the
prospect of being fought for. With the utmost precision and unflagging
spirit she arranged a plausible cause for combat, and Jeffrey, not in
the least intending to play his allotted part, yet enjoyed the moment
fully.
"You shall do it," Madame Beattie assured him, as if she permitted him
to enter upon a task for which there was wide competition. "You shall
thrash him, and he will put it in his paper, and the European papers
will copy."
"I haven't much idea the _Argosy_ is read in foreign capitals," Jeff
felt bound to assure her.
"Oh, but we can cable it. The French journals--they used to be very good
to me."
With that her face darkened, not in a softening melancholy, but old
bitterness and defeat. She was not always able to ignore the contrast
between the spring of youth and this meagre eld. Jeffrey saw the
tremendous recognition she assuredly had had, grown through the illusive
fructifying of memory into something overwhelming, and he was glad
starved vanity might once more be fed. She seemed to him a most piteous
spectacle, youth and power in ruins, and age too poor to nourish even a
vine to drape the crumbling walls.
"Patricia Beattie," she continued, "again a _casus belli_. Combat
between two men--" "There won't be any combat," Jeff reminded her. "If I
kick Weedie, he'll take it lying down. That's Weedie."
"I shall stand by," said Madame Beattie. "If you go too far I shall
interfere. So you can go as far as you like."
"I do rather want to know what Weedie's at," said Jeff. "But I sha'n't
kick him. He doesn't deserve it at one time any more than another,
though he has different degrees of making himself offensive."
She was ingenuously disappointed. She even reproached him:
"You said you were going to do it."
"That was in my haste," said Jeffrey. "I can't lick him with a woman
standing by. I should feel like a fool."
Denny was drawing up at the circus-ground.
"Well," said Madame Beattie, "you've disappointed me tremendously.
That's all I can say."
It was dark now, and though the season was more advanced, Jeffrey could
imagine that this was the moment of his arrival that other night, save
that he was not now footsore or dull in the mind. But the same dusk of
crowding forms lay thickly on the field, and there, he knew, was the
stationary car; there were the two figures standing in it, Moore and his
interpreter. He could fill out the picture with a perfect accuracy,
Moore gesticulating and throwing frenzy into his high-pitched voice,
which now came stridently. Madame Beattie breathed out excitement.
Nothing so spiced had ever befallen her in Addington.
"Is he actually speaking?" she asked, in a hoarse whisper. "They say
insects make noises with their hind legs. It's more like that than a
voice. Take me round there, Jeffrey."
He was quite willing. With a good old pal like this to egg you on, he
thought, there actually was some fun left. So he handed her out, and
told Denny to wait for them, and they skirted the high board fence to
the gap in the back. Madame Beattie, holding up her long dress in one
hand and tripping quite nimbly, was clinging to his arm. By the gap they
halted for her to recover breath; she drew her hand from Jeff's arm,
opened her little bag, took out a bit of powder paper and mechanically
rubbed her face. Jeff looked on indulgently. He knew she did not expect
to need an enhanced complexion in this obscurity. The act refreshed her,
that was all.
Weedon, it was easy to note, was battering down tradition.
"They talk about their laws," he shrilled. "I am a lawyer, and I tell
you it breaks my heart every time I go back to worm-eaten precedent. But
I have to do it, because, if I didn't talk that language the judges
wouldn't understand me. Do you know what precedent is? It is the opinion
of some man a hundred years ago on a case tried a hundred years ago. Do
we want that kind of an opinion? No. We want our own opinions on cases
that are tried to-day."
The warm rapid voice of the interpreter came in here, and Madame
Beattie, who was standing apart from Jeffrey, touched his arm. He bent
to listen.
"The man's a fool," said she.
"No," said Jeffrey, "he's not a fool. He knows mighty well what he's
saying and how it'll take."
"If I had all the lawbooks in the world," said Weedon, "I'd pile them up
here on this ground we've made free ground because we have free speech
on it, and I'd touch a match to them, and by the light they made we'd
sit down here and frame our own laws. And they would be laws for the
rich as well as the poor. Columbus did one good thing for us. He
discovered a new world. The capitalists have done their best to spoil
it, and turn it into a world as rotten as the old ones. But Columbus
showed us you can find a new world if you try. And we're going to have a
new world out of this one yet. New laws, new laws, I tell you, new
laws!"
He screamed it at the end, this passion for new laws, and the
interpreter, though he had too just an instinct to take so high a key,
followed him with an able crescendo. Weedie thought he had his audience
in hand, though it was the interpreter who really had it, and he
ventured another stroke:
"I don't want them to tell me what some man taught in Bible days. I want
to know what a man thinks right here in Addington. I don't want them to
tell me what they thought in Greece and Rome. Greece and Rome are dead.
The only part of them that's alive is the Greece and Rome of to-day."
When the interpreter passed this on, he stopped at a dissentient murmur.
There were those who knew the bright history of their natal country and
adored it.
"Oh, the man's a fool," said Madame Beattie again. "I'm going in there."
She took up the tail of her gown, put her feather-crowned head through
the gap in the fence and drew her august person after, and Jeffrey
followed her. He had a gay sense of irresponsibility, of seeking the
event. He was grateful to Madame Beattie. They went on, and as it was
that other night, some withdrew to leave a pathway and others stared,
but, finding no specific reason, did not hinder them. Madame Beattie
spoke once or twice, a brief mandate in a foreign tongue, and that, Jeff
noted, was effective. She stepped up on the running-board of the car and
laid her hand on the interpreter's arm.
"You may go, my friend," said she, quite affectionately. "I do not need
you." Then she said something, possibly the same thing, Jeff thought,
in another language, and the man laughed. Madame Beattie, without
showing sign of recognising Moore, who was at her elbow, bent forward
into the darkness and gave a shrill call. The crowd gathered nearer. Its
breath was but one breath. The blackness of the assemblage was as if you
poured ink into water and made it dense. Jeffrey felt at once how
sympathetic they were with her. What was the cry she gave? Was it some
international password or a gipsy note of universal import? Had she
called them friend in a tongue they knew? Now she began speaking,
huskily at first, with tumultuous syllables and wide open vowels, and at
the first pause they cheered. The inky multitude that had kept silence,
by preconcerted plan, while Weedon Moore talked to them, lost control of
itself and yelled. She went on speaking and they crashed in on her
pauses with more plaudits, and presently she laid her hand on Jeffrey's
shoulder and said to him:
"Come up here beside me."
He shook his head. He was highly entertained, but the mysterious game
was hers and Weedie's. She gave an order, it seemed, in a foreign
tongue, and the thing was managed. The interpreter had stepped from the
car, and now gentle yet forcible hands lifted down Weedon Moore, and set
him beside it and other hands as gently set up Jeffrey in his place.
There he stood with her in a dramatic isolation, but so great was the
carrying power of her mystery that he did not feel himself a fool. It
was quite natural to be there for some unknown purpose, at one with her
and that warmly breathing mass: for no purpose, perhaps, save that they
were all human and meant the same thing, a general good-will. She went
on speaking, and Jeffrey knew there was fire in her words. He bent to
the interpreter beside the car and asked, at the man's ear:
"What is she saying?"
The interpreter turned and looked him in the face. They were not more
than three inches apart, and Jeffrey, gazing into the passionate black
eyes, tasting, as it were, the odour of the handsome creature and
feeling his breath, was not repelled, but had a sudden shyness before
him, as if the man's opinion of him were an attack on his inmost self,
an attack of adoring admiration.
"What is she saying?" he repeated, and for answer the interpreter
snatched one of Jeff's hands and seemed about to kiss it.
"For God's sake, don't do that," Jeff heard himself saying, and withdrew
his hand and straightened at a safe distance from the adoring face, and
he heard Madame Beattie going on in her fiery periods. Whatever she was
saying, they loved it, loved it to the point of madness. They cheered
her, and the interpreter did not check them, but cheered too. To Jeffrey
it was all a medley of strange thoughts. Here he was, in the crowd and
not of it, greatly moved and yet not as the others were, because he did
not understand. And though the voice and the answering enthusiasm went
on for a long time, and still he did not understand, he was not tired
but exhilarated only. The moon, the drifting clouds, the dramatic voice
playing upon the hearts of the multitude, their hot responses, all this
gave him a sense of augmented life and the feel of his own past youth.
Suddenly he fancied Madame Beattie's voice failed a little; something
ebbed in it, not so much force as quality.
"That's all," she said, in a quick aside to him. "Let's go." She gave an
order, in English now, and a figure started out of the crowd and cranked
the car.
"We can't go in this," Jeffrey said to her. "This is Moore's car."
But Madame Beattie had seated herself majestically. Her feathers even
were portentous in the moonlight, like the plumage of some gigantic
bird. She gave another order, whereupon the man who had cranked the
machine took his place in it, and the crowd parted for them to pass.
Jeffrey was amused and dashed. He couldn't leave her, nor could they
sail away in Weedon's car. He put a hand on her arm.
"See here, Madame Beattie," said he, "we can't do this. We must get out
at the gate, at least."
But Madame Beattie was bowing graciously to right and left. Once she
rose for an instant and addressed a curt sentence to the crowd, and in
answer they cheered, a full-mouthed chorus of one word in different
tongues.
"What are they yelling?" Jeffrey asked.
"It's for you," Madame Beattie said composedly. "They're cheering you."
"Me? How do you know? That's not my name."
"No. It's The Prisoner. They're calling you The Prisoner."
They were at the gate now, and turned into the road and, with a free
course before him, the man put on speed and they were away. Jeffrey bent
forward to him, but Madame Beattie pulled him back.
"What are you doing?" she inquired. "We're going home."
"This is Moore's car," Jeffrey reminded her.
"No, it isn't. It's the proletariat's car." She rolled the _r_
surprisingly. "Do you suppose he comes out here to corrupt those poor
devils without making them pay for being corrupted? Jeffrey, take off
your coat."
"What for?" He had resigned himself to his position. It was a fit part
of the whole eccentric pastime, and after all it was only Weedie's car.
"I shall take cold. I got very warm speaking. My voice--"
To neither of them now was it absurd. Though it was years since she had
had a voice the habit of a passionate care was still alive in her.
Jeffrey had come on another rug, and wrapped it round her. He went back
to his first wonder.
"But what is there in being a prisoner to start up such a row?"
Madame Beattie had retired into the rug. She sunk her chin in it and
would talk no more. Without further interchange they drew up at her
house. Jeffrey got out and helped her, and she stood for a moment,
pressing her hand on his arm, heavily, as an old woman leans.
"Ah, Jeffrey," said she rapidly, in a low but quite a naked tone with no
lisping ornament, "this is a night. To think I should have to come back
here to this God-forsaken spot for a minute of the old game. Hundreds
hanging on my voice--" he fancied she had forgotten now whether she had
not sung to them--"and feeling what I told them to feel. They're capital
people. We'll talk to them again."
She had turned toward the door and now she came back and struck his arm
violently with her hand.
"Jeff," said she passionately, "you're a fool. You've still got your
youth and you won't use it. And the world looks like this--" she glanced
up at the radiant sky. "Even in Addington, the moon is after us trying
to seduce us to the old pleasures. You've got youth. Use it. For God's
sake, use it."
Now she did go up the steps and having rung the bell for her, ignoring
the grim knocker that looked as if it would take more than one summons
to get past its guard, Jeff told the man to drive back for Mr. Moore.
The car had gone, and still Madame Beattie rang. She knew and Jeffrey
suspected suddenly that Esther was paying her out for illicit roaming.
Suddenly Madame Beattie raised her voice and called twice:
"Esther! Esther!"
The sound echoed in the silent street, appallingly to one who knew what
Addington streets were and what proprieties lined them. Then the door
did open. Jeffrey fancied the smooth-faced maid had slipped the bolt.
Esther, from what he knew of her, was not by to face the music. He heard
the door shut cautiously and walked away, but not to go immediately
home. What did Madame Beattie mean by telling him to use his youth? All
he wanted was to hold commerce with the earth and dig hard enough to
keep himself tired so that he might sleep. For since he had come out of
prison he was every day more subject to this besetment of recalling the
past. It was growing upon him that he had always made wrong choices.
Youth, what seemed to him through the vista of vanished time a childhood
even, when he was but little over twenty, had been a delirium of
expectation in a world that was merely a gay-coloured spot where, if you
were reasonably fit, as youth should be, you could always snatch the
choicest fruit from the highest bough. Then he had met Esther, and the
world stopped being a playground and became an ordered pageant, and he
was the moving power, trying to make it move faster or more lightly, to
please Esther who was sitting in front to see it move, and who was of a
decided mind in pageants. It was always Esther who was to be pleased.
These things he had not thought of willingly during his imprisonment,
because it was necessary not to think, lest the discovery of the right
causes that brought him there should turn his brain. But now he had
leisure and freedom and a measure of solitude, and it began to strike
him that heretofore, being in the pageant and seeing it move, he had
not enjoyed it over much. There had been a good deal of laughter and
light and colour--there had to be, since these were the fruits Esther
lived on--but there had been no affectionate converse with the world.
Strange old Madame Beattie! she had brought him the world to-night. She
had taken strangers from its furthest quarters and welded them into a
little community that laughed and shouted and thought according things.
That they had hailed him, even as a prisoner, brought him a little
warmth. It was mysterious, but it seemed they somehow liked him, and he
went into the quiet house and to bed with the feeling of having touched
a hand.
XXII
Within a week Jeffrey, going down town in his blue blouse to do an
errand at the stores, twice met squads of workmen coming from the
mill--warm-coloured, swarthy men, most of them young. He was looking at
them in a sudden curiosity as to their making part of Weedon Moore's
audience, when bright pleasure rippled over the dark faces. They knew
him; they were mysteriously glad to see him. Caps were snatched off.
Jeffrey snatched at his in return. There was a gleam of white teeth all
through the squad; as he passed in the ample way they made for him, he
felt foolishly as if they were going to stretch out kind detaining
hands. They looked so tropically warm and moved, he hardly knew what
greeting he might receive. "What have I done?" he thought. "Are they
going to kiss me?" He wished he could see Madame Beattie and ask her
what she had really caused to happen.
But on a later afternoon, at his work in the field, he saw Miss Amabel
carefully treading among corn hills, very hot though in her summer silk
and with a parasol. She always did feel the heat but patiently, as one
under bonds of meekness to the God who sent it; but to-day her
discomfort was within. Jeffrey threw down his hoe and wiped his face.
There was a bench under the beech tree shade. He had put it there so
that his father might be beguiled into resting after work. When she
reached the edge of the corn, he advanced and took her parasol and held
it over her.
"Ladies shouldn't come out here," he said. "They must send Mary Nellen
to fetch me in."
Miss Amabel sat down on the bench and did a little extra breathing,
while she looked at him affectionately.
"You are a good boy, Jeff," said she, at length, "whatever you've been
doing."
"I've been hoeing," said Jeff. "Here, let me."
He took her large fine handkerchief, still in its crisp folds, and with
an absurd and yet pretty care wiped her face with it. He wiped it all
over, the moist forehead, the firm chin where beads stood glistening,
and Miss Amabel let him, saying only as he finished:
"Father used to perspire on his chin."
"There," said Jeffrey. He folded the handkerchief and returned it to its
bag. "Now you're a nice dry child. I suppose you've got your shoes full
of dirt. Mine are when I've been out here."
"Never mind my shoes," said she. "Jeff, how nice you are. How much you
are to-day like what you used to be when you were a boy."
"I feel rather like it nowadays," said Jeff, "I don't know why. Except
that I come out here and play by myself and they all let me alone."
"But you mustn't play tricks," said Miss Amabel. "You must be good and
not play tricks on other people."
Jeff drew up his knees and clasped his hands about them. His eyes were
on the corn shimmering in the heat.
"What's in your bonnet, dear?" said he. "I hear a buzz."
"What happened the other night?" she asked. "It came to my ears, I won't
say how."
"Weedie told you. Weedie always told."
"I don't say it was Mr. Weedon Moore."
She was speaking with dignity, and Jeffrey laughed and unclasped his
hands to pat her on the arm.
"I wonder why it makes you so mad to have me call him Weedie."
She answered rather hotly, for her.
"You wouldn't do it, any of you, if you weren't disparaging him."
"Oh, we might. Out of affection. Weedie! good old Weedie! can't you hear
us saying that?"
"No, I can't. You wouldn't say it that way. Don't chaff me, Jeff. What
do they say now--'jolly' me? Don't do that."
Again Jeffrey gave her a light touch of affectionate intimacy.
"What is it?" said he. "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to let Weedon Moore talk to people who are more ignorant
than the rest of us, and tell them things they ought to know. About the
country, about everything."
"You don't want me to spoil Weedie's game."
"It isn't a game, Jeff. That young man is giving up his time, and with
the purest motives, to fitting our foreign population for the duties of
citizenship. He doesn't disturb the public peace. He takes the men away
after their day's work--"
"Under cover of the dark."
"He doesn't run any risk of annoying people by assembling in the
streets."
"Weedie doesn't want any decent man to know his game, whatever his game
is."
"I won't answer that, Jeffrey. But I feel bound to say you are
ungenerous. You've an old grudge against Weedon Moore. You all have,
all you boys who were brought up with him. So you break up the meeting."
"Now, see here, Amabel," said Jeff, "we haven't a grudge against him.
Anyhow, leave me out. Take a fellow like Alston Choate. If he's got a
grudge against Moore, doesn't it mean something?"
"You hated him when you were boys," said Amabel. "Those things last.
Nothing is so hard to kill as prejudice."
"As to the other night," said Jeffrey, "I give you my word it was as
great a surprise to me as it was to Moore. I hadn't the slightest
intention of breaking up the meeting."
"Yet you went there and you took that impossible Martha Beattie with
you--"
"Patricia, not Martha."
"I have nothing to do with names she assumed for the stage. She was
Martha Shepherd when she lived in Addington. No doubt she is entitled to
be called Beattie; but Martha is her Christian name."
"Now you're malicious yourself," said Jeff, enjoying the human warmth of
her. "I never knew you to be so hateful. Why can't you live and let
live? If I'm to let your Weedie alone, can't you keep your hands off
poor old Madame Beattie?"
Miss Amabel turned upon him a look where just reproof struggled with
wounded pride.
"Jeffrey, I didn't think you'd be insincere with me."
"Hang it, Amabel, I'm not. You're one of the few unbroken idols I've
got. Sterling down to the toes. Didn't you know it?"
"And yet you did take Madame Beattie to Moore's rally."
"Rally? So that's what he calls it."
"And you did prompt her to talk to those men in their language--several
languages, I understand, quick as lightning, one after the other--and to
say things that counteracted at once all Mr. Moore's influence."
"Now," said Jeffrey, in a high degree of interest, "we're getting
somewhere. What did I say to them? What did I say through Madame
Beattie?"
"We don't know."
"Ask Moore."
"Mr. Moore doesn't know."
"He can ask his interpreter, can't he?"
"Andrea? He won't tell."
Jeffrey released his knees and lay back against the bench. He gave a
hoot of delighted laughter, and Lydia, watching them from the window,
thought of Miss Amabel with a wistful envy and wondered how she did it.
"Weedie's own henchman won't go back on her," he exclaimed, in an
incredulous pleasure. "Now what spell has that extraordinary old woman
over the south of Europe?"
"South of Europe?"
"Why, yes, the population you've got here. It's south of Europe chiefly,
isn't it? eastern Europe?--the part Weedie hasn't turned into ward
politicians yet. Who is Andrea? This is the first time I have heard his
honourable name. Weedon's interpreter."
"He has the fruit store on Mill Street."
"Ah! Amabel, do you know what this interview has done for me? It's given
me a perfectly overwhelming desire to speak the tongues."
"Foreign languages, Jeff?"
"Any language that will help me beat Weedie at his game, or give me a
look at the cards old Madame Beattie holds. I feel a fool. Why can't I
know what they're talking about when they can kick up row enough under
my very nose to make you come and rag me like this?"
"Jeff," said Miss Amabel, "unless you are prepared to go into social
work seriously and see things as Mr. Moore sees them--"
Jeff gave a little crow of derision and she coloured. "It wouldn't hurt
you, Jeff, to see some things as he does. The necessity of getting into
touch with our foreign population--"
"I'll do that all right," said Jeffrey. "That's precisely what I mean.
I'm going to learn foreign tongues and talk to 'em."
"They say Madame Beattie speaks a dozen or so and I don't know how many
dialects."
"Oh, I can't compete with Madame Beattie. She's got the devil on her
side."
Miss Amabel rose to her feet and stood regarding him sorrowfully. He
looked up at her with a glance full of affection, yet too merry for her
heavy mood. Then he got on his feet and took her parasol.
"You haven't noticed the corn," said he. "Don't you know you must praise
the work of a man's hands?"
"I don't know whether it's a good thing for you or not," said she. "Yes,
it must have been, so far. You're tanned."
"I feel fit enough."
"You don't look over twenty."
"Oh, I'm over twenty, thank you," said Jeff. A shadow settled on his
face; it even touched his eyes, mysteriously, and dulled them. "I'm not
tanned all through."
"But you're only doing this for a time?"
"I don't know, Amabel. I give you my word I don't know the next step
after to-day--or this hill of corn--or that."
"If you wanted capital, Jeff--"
He took up a fold of her little shoulder ruffle and put it to his lips,
and Lydia saw and wondered.
"No, dear," said he. "I sha'n't need your money. Only don't you let
Weedie have it, to muddle away in politics."
She was turning at the edge of the corn and looking at him perplexedly.
Her mission hadn't succeeded, but she loved him and wanted to make that
manifest.
"I can't bear to have you doing irresponsible things with Madame
Beattie. She's not fit--"
"Not fit for me to play with? Madame Beattie won't hurt me."
"She may hurt Lydia."
"Lydia!"
The word leaped out of some deep responsiveness she did not understand.
"Don't you know how much they are together? They go driving."
"Well, what's that? Madame Beattie's a good old sport. She won't harm
Lydia."
But instead of keeping up his work, he went on to the house with her.
Miss Amabel would not go in and when he had said good-bye to
her--affectionately, charmingly, as if to assure her that, after all,
she needn't fear him even with Weedie who wasn't important enough to
slay--he entered the house in definite search of Lydia. He went to the
library, and there she was, in the window niche, where she sat to watch
him. Day by day Lydia sat there when he was in the garden and she was
not busy and he knew it was a favourite seat of hers for, glancing over
his rows of corn, he could see the top of her head bent over a book. He
did not know how long she pored over a page with eyes that saw him, a
wraith of him hovering over the print, nor that when their passionate
depths grew hungrier for the actual sight of him, how she threw one
glance at his working figure and bent to her book again. As he came
suddenly in upon her she sprang up and faced him, the book closed upon a
trembling finger.
"Lydia," said he, "you're great chums with Madame Beattie, aren't you?"
Lydia gave a little sigh of a relief she hardly understood. What she
expected him to ask her she did not know, but there were strange warm
feelings in her heart she would not have shown to Jeff. She could have
shown them before that minute--when he had said the thing that ought not
even to be remembered: "I only love you." Before that, she thought, she
had been quite simply his sister. Now she was a watchful servitor of a
more fervid sort. Jeffrey thought she was afraid of being scolded about
her queer old crony.
"Sit down," he said. "There's nothing to be ashamed of in liking Madame
Beattie. You do like her, don't you?"
"Oh, yes," said Lydia. "I like her very much."
She had sunk back in her chair and closed the book though she kept it in
her lap. Jeffrey sat astride a chair and folded his arms on the top.
Some of the blinds had been closed to keep out the heat, and the dusk
hid the deep, crisp lines of his face. Under his moist tossed hair it
was a young face, as Miss Amabel had told him, and his attitude became a
boy.
"Lydia," said he, "what do you two talk about?"
"Madame Beattie and I?"
"Yes. In those long drives, for instance, what do you say?"
Lydia looked at him, her eyes narrowed slightly, and Jeffrey knew she
did not want to tell. When Esther didn't want to tell, a certain soft
glaze came over her eyes. Jeffrey had seen the glaze for a number of
years before he knew what it meant. And when he found out, though it had
been a good deal of a shock, he hardly thought the worse of Esther. He
generalised quite freely and concluded that you couldn't expect the same
standards of women as from men; and after that he was a little nervous
and rather careful about the questions he asked. But Lydia's eyes had no
glaze. They were desperate rather, the eyes of a little wild thing that
is going to be frightened and possibly caught. Jeffrey felt quite
excited, he was so curious to know what form the lie would take.
"Politics," said Lydia.
Jeffrey broke out into a laugh.
"Oh, come off!" said he. "Politics. Not much you don't."
Lydia laughed, too, in a sudden relief and pleasure. She didn't like her
lie, it seemed.
"No," said she, "we don't. But I tell Anne if people ask questions it's
at their own risk. They must take what they get."
"Anne wouldn't tell a lie," said Jeffrey.
She flared up at him.
"I wouldn't either. I never do. You took me by surprise."
"Does Madame Beattie talk to you about her life abroad?"
He ventured this. But she was gazing at him in the clearest candour.
"Oh, no." "About what, Lydia? Tell me. It bothers me."
"Did Miss Amabel bother you?" The charming face was fiery.
"I don't need Amabel to tell me you're taking long drives with Madame
Beattie. She's a battered old party, Lydia. She's seen lots of things
you don't want even to hear about."
She was gazing at him now in quite a dignified surprise.
"If you mean things that are not nice," she said, "I shouldn't listen to
them. But she wouldn't want me to. Madame Beattie is--" She saw no
adequate way to put it.
But Jeffrey understood her. He, too, believed Madame Beattie had a
decency of her own.
"Never mind," said he. "Only I want to keep you as you are. So would
father. And Anne."
Lydia sat straight in her chair, her cheeks scarlet from excitement, her
eyes speaking with the full power of their limpid beauty. What if she
were to tell him how they talked of Esther and her cruelty, and of him
and his misfortunes, and of the need of his at once setting out to
reconstruct his life? But it would not do. This youth here astride the
chair didn't seem like the Jeff who was woven into all she could imagine
of tragedy and pain. He looked like the Jeff she had heard the colonel
tell about, who had been reckless and impulsive and splendid, and had
been believed in always and then had grown up into a man who made and
lost money and was punished for it. He was speaking now in his new
coaxing voice.
"There's one thing you could tell me. That wouldn't do any harm."
"What?" asked Lydia.
"Your old crony must have mentioned the night we ran away with Weedon
Moore's automobile."
"Oh, yes," said Lydia. Her eyes were eloquent now. "She told me."
"Did she tell you what she said to Weedon's crowd, to turn them round
like a flock of sheep and bring them over to us?"
"Oh, yes, she told me."
"What was it?"
But Lydia again looked obstinate, though she ventured a little plea of
her own.
"Jeff, you must go into politics."
"Not on your life."
"The way is all prepared."
"Who prepared it? Madame Beattie?"
"You are going," said Lydia, this irrepressibly and against her
judgment, "to be the most popular man in Addington."
"Gammon!" This he didn't think very much of. If this was how Lydia and
Madame Beattie spent their hours of talk, let them, the innocents. It
did nobody harm. But he was still conscious of a strong desire: to
protect Lydia, in her child's innocence, from evil. He wondered if she
were not busy enough, that she had time to take up Madame Beattie. Yet
she and Anne seemed as industrious as little ants.
"Lydia," said he, "what if I should have an Italian fruit-seller come up
here to the house and teach Italian to you and me--and maybe Anne?"
"Andrea?" she asked.
"Do you know him?"
"Madame Beattie does." She coloured slightly, as if all Madame Beattie's
little secrets were to be guarded.
"We'll have him up here if he'll come, and we'll learn to pass the bread
in Italian. Shall we?"
"I'd love to," said Lydia. "We're learning now, Anne and I."
"Of Andrea?"
"Oh, no. But we're picking up words as fast as we can, all kinds of
dialects. From the classes, you know, Miss Amabel's classes. It's
ridiculous to be seeing these foreigners twice a week and not understand
them or not have them half understand us."
"It's ridiculous anyway," said Jeffrey absently. He was regarding the
shine on Lydia's brown hair. "What's the use of Addington's being
overrun with Italy and Greece and Poland and Russia? We could get men
enough to work in the shops, good straight stock."
"Well," said Lydia conclusively, "we've got them now. They're here. So
we might as well learn to understand them and make them understand us."
Jeff smiled at her, the little soft young thing who seemed so practical.
Lydia looked like a child, but she spoke like the calm house mother who
had had quartered on her a larger family than the house would hold and
yet knew the invaders must be accommodated in decent comfort somewhere.
He sat there and stared at her until she grew red and fidgety. He seemed
to be questioning something in her inner mind.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Nothing," said Jeff, and got up and went away to his own room. He had
been thinking of her clear beauties of simple youthful outline and pure
restraints, and wondering why the world wasn't made so that he could
take her little brown hand in his and walk off with her and sit all day
on a piney bank and listen to birds and find out what she thought about
the prettiness of things. She was not his sister, she was not his child,
though the child in her so persuaded him; and in spite of the dewy
memory of her kiss she could not be his love. Yet she was most dear to
him.
He threw himself down on the sofa and clasped his hands under his head,
and he laughed suddenly because he was taking refuge in the thought of
Esther. That Esther had become sanctuary from his thoughts of Lydia was
an ironic fact indeed, enough to make mirth crack its cheeks. But since
he was bound to Esther, the more he thought of her the better. He was
not consciously comparing them, the child Lydia and the equipped siren,
to Esther's harm. Only he knew at last what Esther was. She was Circe on
her island. Its lights hung high above the wave, the sound of its music
beat across the foam. Reardon heard the music; so did Alston Choate.
Jeffrey knew that, in the one time he had heard Choate speak of her, a
time when he had been in a way compelled to; and though it was the
simplest commonplace, something new was beating in his voice. Choate had
heard Esther's music, he had seen the dancing lights, and Esther had
been willing he and all men should. There was no mariner who sailed the
seas so insignificant as not to be hailed by Esther. That was the
trouble. Circe's isle was there, and she was glad they knew it. Jeffrey
did not go so far as to think she wanted inevitably to turn them into
beasts, but he knew she was virtually telling them she had the power.
That had been one of the first horrors of his disenchantment, when she
had placed herself far enough away from him by neither writing to him
nor visiting him; then he had seen her outside the glamour of her
presence. Once he had been proud when the eyes of all men followed her.
That was in the day of his lust for power and life, when her empery
seemed equal in degree to his. Something brutal used to come up in him
when men looked boldly at her, and while he wanted to quench the assault
of their hot eyes it was always with the equal brutality: "She's mine."
That was while he thought she walked unconscious of the insult. But when
he knew she called it tribute, a rage more just than jealousy came up
in him, and he hated something in her as he hated the men desiring her.
Yet now the thought of her was his refuge. She was not his, but he was
hers to the end of earthly time. There was no task for him to do but
somehow to shield Lydia from the welling of her wonderful devotion to
him. If Esther was Circe on her island, Lydia was the nymph in a clear
mountain brook of some undiscovered wood where the birds came to bathe,
but no hoof had ever muddied the streams. If she had, out of her
hero-worship, conceived a passion for him, he had an equal passion for
her, of protectingness and sad certainty that he could do no better than
ensure her distance from him.
XXIII
Jeffrey, in his working clothes, went down to Mill Street and found
Andrea presiding over a shop exhaling the odour of pineapple and
entrancing to the eye, with its piled ovals and spheres of red and
yellow, its diversities of hue and surface. It was a fruit shop, and God
had made the fruit beautiful and Andrea had disposed it so. His wife,
too, was there, a round, dark creature in a plaid skirt and a shirt
waist with islands of lace over a full bosom, her black hair braided and
put round and round her head, and a saving touch of long earrings to
tell you she was still all peasant underneath. A soft round-faced boy
was in charge, and ran out to tell Jeffrey prices. But they all knew
him. Jeffrey felt the puzzle begin all over when Andrea came hurrying
out, like a genial host at an inn, hands outstretched, and his wife
followed him. They looked even adoring, and again Jeffrey wondered, so
droll was their excess of welcome, if he were going to be embraced. The
boy, too, was radiant, and, like an acolyte at some ritual, more humbly
though exquisitely proffered his own fit portion of worship. Jeffrey, it
being the least he could offer, shook hands all round. Then he asked
Andrea:
"Who do you think I am? What did Madame Beattie tell you?"
Andrea spread his hands dramatically, palms outward, and implied
brokenly that though he understood English he did not speak it to such
an extent as would warrant him in trying to explain what was best left
alone. He would only repeat a word over and over, always with an access
of affection, and when Jeffrey asked:
"Does that mean 'prisoner'?" he owned it did. It seemed to hold for the
three the sum of human perfectibility. Jeffrey was The Prisoner, and
therefore they loved him. He gave up trying to find out more; it seemed
to him he could guess the riddle better if he had a word or two of
Andrea's language to help him, and he asked summarily if they couldn't
have some lessons together. Wouldn't Andrea come up to the house and
talk Italian? Andrea blossomed out in gleam of teeth and incredible
shininess of eyes. He would come. That night? Yes, he would come that
night. So Jeffrey shook hands again all round and went away, curiously
ill at ease until he had turned the corner; the warmth of their
adoration seemed burning into his back.
But that night Andrea did not come. The family had assembled, Anne a
little timid before new learning, Lydia sitting on the edge of her chair
determined to be phenomenal because Jeffrey must be pleased, and even
Mary Nellen with writing pads and pencils at the table to scrape up such
of the linguistic leavings as they might. At nine o'clock the general
attention began to relax, and Lydia widely yawned. Jeffrey, looking at
her, caught the soft redness of her mouth and thought, forgetful of
Circe's island where he had taken refuge, how sweet the little barbarian
was.
But nobody next day could tell him why Andrea had not come, not even
Andrea himself. Jeffrey sought him out at the fruit-stand and Andrea
again shone with welcome. But he implied, in painfully halting English,
that he could not give lessons at all. Nor could any of his countrymen
in Addington.
Jeffrey stood upon no ceremony with him.
"Why the devil," said he, "do you talk to me as if you'd begun English
yesterday? You forget I've heard you translating bunkum up on the
circus-ground."
Andrea's eyes shone the more enchantingly. He was shameless, though. He
took nothing back, and even offered Jeffrey an enormous pineapple, with
the air of wanting to show his good-will and expecting it to be received
with an equal open-heartedness. Jeffrey walked away with the pineapple,
beaten, and reflecting soberly, his brow tightened into a knot. Things
were going on just outside his horizon, and he wasn't to know. Who did
know? Madame Beattie, certainly. The old witch was at the bottom of it.
She had, for purposes of her own, wound the foreign population round her
finger, and she was going to unwind them when the time came to spin a
web. A web of many colours, he knew it would be, doubtless strong in
some spots and snarled in others. Madame Beattie was not the person to
spin a web of ordinary life.
He went on in his blue working clothes, absently taking off his hat to
the ladies he met who looked inquiringly at him and then quite eagerly
bowed. Jeff was impatient of these recognitions. The ladies were even
too gracious. They were anxious to stand by him in the old Addington
way, and as for him, he wanted chiefly to hoe his corn and live unseen.
But his feet did not take him home. They led him down the street and up
the stairs into Alston Choate's office, and there, hugging his
pineapple, he entered, and found Alston sitting by the window in the
afternoon light, his feet on a chair and a novel in his hand. This back
window of the office looked down over the river, and beyond a line of
willows to peaceful flats, and now the low sun was touching up the scene
with afternoon peace. Alston, at sight of him, took his legs down
promptly. He, too, was more eager in welcome because Jeffrey was a
marked figure, and went so seldom up other men's stairs. Alston threw
his book on the table, and Jeffrey set his pineapple beside it.
"There's a breeze over here," said Alston, and they took chairs by the
window.
For a minute Jeffrey looked out over the low-lying scene. He drew a
quick breath. This was the first time he had overlooked the old
playground since he had left Addington for his grown-up life.
"We used to sail the old scow down there," he said. "Remember?"
Choate nodded.
"She's down there now in one of the yards, filled with red geraniums."
They sat for a while in the silence of men who find it unexpectedly
restful to be together and need not even say so. Yet they were not here
at all. They were boys of Addington, trotting along side by side in the
inherited games of Addington. Alston offered Jeffrey a smoke, and Jeff
refused it.
"See here," said he, "what's Madame Beattie up to?"
Choate turned a startled glance on him. He did not see how Jeffrey, a
stranger in his wife's house, should know anything at all was up.
"She's been making things rather lively," he owned. "Who told you?"
"Told me? I was in it, at the beginning. She and I drove out by chance,
to hear Moore doing his stunt in the circus-ground. That began it. But
now, it seems, she's got some devil's influence over Moore's gang. She's
told 'em something queer about me."
"She's told 'em something that makes things infernally uncomfortable for
other people," said Choate bluntly. "Did you know she had squads of
them--Italians, Poles, Abyssinians, for all I know, playing on
dulcimers--she's had them come up at night and visit her in her bedroom.
They jabber and hoot and smoke, I believe. She's established an informal
club--in that house."
Alston's irritation was extreme. It was true Addington to refer to
foreign tongues as jabber, and "that house", Jeffrey saw, was a stiff
paraphrase for Esther's dwelling-place. He perceived here the same angry
partisanship Reardon had betrayed. This was the jealous fire kindled
invariably in men at Esther's name.
"How do you know?" he asked.
Alston hesitated. He looked, not abashed, but worried, as if he did not
see precisely the road of good manners in giving a man more news about
his wife than the man was able to get by himself.
"Did Esther tell you?" Jeff inquired.
"Yes. She told me."
"When?"
"Several times. She has been very uncomfortable. She has needed
counsel."
Choate had gone on piling up what might have been excuses for Esther,
from an irritated sense that he was being too closely cross-examined. He
had done a good deal of it himself in the way of his profession, and he
was aware that it always led to conclusions the victim had not foreseen
and was seldom willing to face. And he had in his mind not wholly
recognised yet unwelcome feelings about Esther. They were not feelings
such as he would have allowed himself if he had known her as a young
woman living with her husband in the accepted way. He did not permit
himself to state that Esther herself might not, in that case, have
mingled for him the atmosphere she breathed about him now. But Jeffrey
did not pursue the dangerous road of too great candour. He veered, and
asked, as if that might settle a good many questions:
"What's the matter with this town, anyway?"
"Addington?" said Choate. "You find it changed?"
"Changed! I believe you. Addington used to be a perfect picture--like a
summer landscape--you know the kind. You walked into the picture the
minute you heard the name of Addington. It was full of nice trees and
had a stream and cows with yellow light on them. When you got into
Addington you could take a long breath."
For the first time in his talk with anybody since he came home Jeff was
feeling lubricated. He couldn't express himself carelessly to his
father, who took him with a pathetic seriousness, nor to the girls, to
whom he was that horribly uncomfortable effigy, a hero. But here was
another fellow who, he would have said, didn't care a hang, and Jeff
could talk to him.
"There's no such picture now," Alston assured him. "The Addington we
knew was Victorian."
"Yes. It hadn't changed in fifty years. What's it changing for now?"
"My dear boy," said Alston seriously, because he had got on one of his
own hobbies that he couldn't ride in Addington for fear of knocking
ladies off their legs, "don't you know what's changing the entire world?
It's the birth of compassion."
"Compassion?"
"Yes. Sympathy, ruth, pity. I looked up the synonyms the other day. But
we're at the crude, early stages of it, and it's devilish uncomfortable.
Everybody's so sorry for everybody that we can't tell the kitchen maid
to scour the knives without explaining."
Jeff was rather bewildered.
"Are we so compassionate as all that?" he asked.
"Not really. It's my impression most of us aren't compassionate at all."
"Amabel is."
"Oh, yes, Amabel and Francis of Assisi and a few others. But the rest of
us have caught the patter and it makes us 'feel good'. We wallow in it.
We feel warm and self-righteous--comfy, mother says, when she wants to
tuck me up at night same as she used to after I'd been in swimming and
got licked. Yes, we're compassionate and we feel comfy."
"But what's Weedon Moore got to do with it? Is Weedie compassionate?"
"Oh, Weedie's working Amabel and telling the mill hands they're great
fellows and very much abused and ought to own the earth. Weedie wants
their votes."
"Then Weedie is up for office? Amabel told me so, but I didn't think
Addington'd stand for it. Time was when, if a man like Weedie had put up
his head, nobody'd have taken the trouble to bash it. We should have
laughed."
"We don't laugh now," said Choate gravely. There was even warning in his
voice. "Not since Weedie and his like have told the working class it
owns the earth."
"And doesn't it?"
"Yes. In numbers. It can vote itself right into destruction--which is
what it's doing."
"And Weedie wants to be mayor."
"God knows what he wants. Mayor, and then governor and--I wouldn't
undertake to say where Weedie'd be willing to stop. Not short of an
ambassadorship."
"Choate," said Jeffrey cheerfully, "you're an alarmist."
"Oh, no, I'm not. A man like Weedie can get anywhere, because he's no
scruples and he can rake in mere numbers to back him. And it's all
right. This is a democracy. If the majority of the people want a
demagogue to rule over them, they've a perfect right to go to the devil
their own way."
"But where's he get his infernal influence? Weedie Moore!"
"He gets it by telling every man what the man wants to hear. He gets
hold of the ignorant alien, and tells him he is a king in his own right.
He tells him Weedie'll get him shorter and shorter hours, and make him a
present of the machinery he runs--or let him break it--and the poor
devil believes him. Weedie has told him that's the kind of a country
this is. And nobody else is taking the trouble to tell him anything
else."
"Well, for God's sake, why don't they?"
"Because we're riddled with compassion, I tell you. If we see a man
poorer than we are, we get so apologetic we send him bouquets--our women
do."
"Is that what the women here are doing?"
"Oh, yes. If there's a strike over at Long Meadow they put on their furs
and go over and call on a few operatives and find eight living in one
room, in a happy thrift, and they come back and hold an indignation
meeting and 'protest'."
"You're not precisely a sentimentalist, are you?" said Jeff. He was
seeing Choate in the new Addington as Choate presented it.
"No, by George! I want to see things clarified and the good
old-fashioned virtues come back into their place--justice and
common-sense. Compassion is something to die for. But you can't build
states out of it alone. It makes me sick--sick, when I see men getting
dry-rot."
Jeff's face was a map of dark emotion. His mind went back over the past
years. He had not been made soft by the nemesis that laid him by the
heels. He had been terribly hardened in some ways, so calloused that it
sometimes seemed to him he had not the actual nerve surface for feeling
anything. The lambent glow of beauty might fall upon him unheeded; even
its lightnings might not penetrate his shell. But that had been better
than the dry-rot of an escape from righteous punishment.
"You know, Choate," said he, "I believe the first thing for a man to
learn is that he can't dodge penalties."
"I believe you. Though if he dodges, he doesn't get off. That's the
other penalty, rot inside the rind. All the palliatives in the
world--the lying securities and false peace--all of them together aren't
worth the muscle of one man going out to bang another man for just
cause. And getting banged!"
Jeff was looking at him quizzically.
"Where do you live," said he, "in the new Addington or the old one?"
Choate answered rather wearily, as if he had asked himself that question
and found the answer disheartening.
"Don't know. Guess I'm a non-resident everywhere. I curse about
Addington by the hour--the new Addington. But it's come, and come to
stay."
"You going to let Moore administer it?"
"If he's elected."
"He can't be elected. We won't have it. What you going to do?"
"Nothing, in politics," said Alston. "They're too vile for a decent man
to touch."
Jeffrey thought he had heard the sound of that before. Even in the older
days there had been some among the ultra-conservative who refused to
pollute their ideals by dropping a ballot. But it hadn't mattered much
then. Public government had been as dual in its nature as good and
evil, sometimes swaying to the side of one party, sometimes the other;
but always, such had been traditionary influence, the best man of a
party had been nominated. Then there was no talk of Weedon Moores.
"Do you suppose Weedie's going on with his circus-ground rallies?" he
asked.
"They say not."
"Who?"
"Oh, I've kept a pretty close inquiry afoot. I'm told the men won't go."
"Why not?"
"Madame Beattie won't let them."
"The devil she won't! What's the old witch's spell?"
"I don't know. Esther--" he caught himself up--"Mrs. Blake doesn't know.
She only knows, as I tell you, the men come to the house, and talk
things over. And I hear from reliable sources, Weedie summons them and
the men simply won't go. So I assume Madame Beattie forbids it."
"It's not possible." Jeff had withdrawn his gaze from the old playground
and sat staring thoughtfully at his legs, stretched to their fullest
length. "I rather wish I could talk with her," he said, "Madame Beattie.
I don't see how I can though, unless I go there."
"Jeff," said Alston, earnestly, "you mustn't do that."
He spoke unguardedly, and now that the words were out, he would have
recalled them. But he made the best of a rash matter, and when Jeff
frowned up at him, met the look with one as steady.
"Why mustn't I?" asked Jeff.
It was very quietly said.
"I beg your pardon," Choate answered. "I spoke on impulse."
"Yes. But I think you'd better go on."
Alston kept silence. He was looking out of the window now, pale and
immovably obstinate.
"Do you, by any chance," said Jeff, "think Esther is afraid of me?"
Choate faced round upon him, immediately grateful to him.
"That's it," he said. "You've said it. And since it's so, and you
recognise it, why, you see, Jeff, you really mustn't, you know."
"Mustn't go there?" said Jeff almost foolishly, the thing seemed to him
so queer. "Mustn't see my wife, because she says she is afraid of me?"
"Because she _is_ afraid of you," corrected Choate impulsively, in what
he might have told himself was his liking for the right word. But he had
a savage satisfaction in saying it. For the instant it made it seem as
if he were defending Esther.
"I'd give a good deal," said Jeff slowly, "to hear just how Esther told
you she was afraid of me. When was it, for example?"
"It was at no one time," said Choate unwillingly. Yet it seemed to him
Jeff did deserve candour at all their hands.
"You mean it's been a good many times?"
"I mean I've been, in a way, her adviser since--"
"Since I've been in jail. That's very good of you, Choate. But do you
gather Esther has told other people she is afraid of me, or that she has
told you only?"
"Why, man," said Choate impatiently, "I tell you I've been her adviser.
Our relations are those of client and counsel. Of course she's said it
to nobody but me."
"Not to Reardon," Jeff's inner voice was commenting satirically. "What
would you think if you knew she had said it to Reardon, too? And how
many more? She has spun her pretty web, and you're a prisoner. So is
Reardon. You've each a special web. You are not allowed to meet."
He laughed out, and Alston looked at him in a sudden offence. It seemed
to Alston that he had been sacrificing all sorts of delicacies that Jeff
might be justly used, and the laugh belittled them both. But Jeff at
that instant saw, not Alston, but a new vision of life. It might have
been that a tide had rushed in and wiped away even the prints of
Esther's little feet. It might have been that a wind blew in at the
windows of his mind and beat its great wings in the corners of it and
winnowed out the chaff. As he saw life then his judgments softened and
his irritations cooled. Nothing was left but the vision of life itself,
the uncomprehended beneficence, the consoler, the illimitable beauty we
look in the face and do not see. For an instant perhaps he had caught
the true proportions of things and knew at last what was worth weeping
over and what was matter for a healthy mirth. It was all mirth perhaps,
this show of things Lord God had set us in. He had not meant us to take
it dumbly. He had hoped we should see at every turn how queer it is, and
yet how orderly, and get our comfort out of that. He had put laughter
behind every door we open, to welcome us. Grief was there, too, but if
we fully understood Lord God and His world, there would be no grief:
only patience and a gay waiting on His time. And all this came out of
seeing Alston Choate, who thought he was a free man, hobbled by Esther's
web.
Jeffrey got up and Alston looked at him in some concern, he was so
queer, flushed, laughing a little, and with a wandering eye. At the door
he stopped.
"About Weedie," he said. "We shall have to do something to Weedie.
Something radical. He's not going to be mayor of Addington. And I rather
think you'll have to get into politics. You'd be mayor yourself if you'd
get busy."
Jeffrey had no impulse to-day to go and ask Esther if she were afraid of
him as he had when Reardon told him the same tale. He wasn't thinking of
Esther now. He was hugging his idea to his breast and hurrying with it,
either to entrust it to somebody or to wrap it up in the safety of pen
and ink while it was so warm. And when he got home he came on Lydia,
sitting on the front steps, singing to herself and cuddling a kitten in
the curve of her arm. Lydia with no cares, either of the house or her
dancing class or Jeff's future, but given up to the idleness of a summer
afternoon, was one of the most pleasing sights ever put into the hollow
of a lovely world. Jeffrey saw her, as he was to see everything now,
through the medium of his new knowledge. He saw to her heart and found
how sweet it was, and how full of love for him. He saw Circe's island,
and knew, since the international codes hold good, he must remember his
allegiance to it. He still owned property there; he must pay his taxes.
But this Eden's garden which was Lydia was his chosen home. He was glad
to see it so. He must, he knew, hereafter see things as they are. And
they would not be tragic to him. They would be curious and funny and
dear: for they all wore the mantle of life. He sat down on a lower step,
and Lydia looked at him gravely, yet with pleasure, too.
"Lydia," said he, "do you know what they're calling me, these foreigners
Madame Beattie's training with?"
She nodded.
"The Prisoner," said Jeff. "That's what I am--The Prisoner."
She hastened to reassure him.
"They don't do it to be hateful. It's in love. That's what they mean it
in--love."
Jeff made a little gesture of the hand, as if he tossed off something so
lightly won.
"Never mind how they mean it. That's not what I'm coming to. It's that
they call me The Prisoner. Well, ten minutes ago it just occurred to me
that we're all prisoners. I saw it as it might be a picture of life and
all of us moving in it. Alston Choate's a prisoner to Esther. So's
Reardon. Only it's not to Esther they're prisoners. It's to the big
force behind her, the sorcery of nature, don't you see? Blind nature."
She was looking at him with the terrified patience of one compelled to
listen and yet afraid of hearing what threatens the safe crystal of her
own bright dream: that apprehensive look of woman, patient in listening,
but beseeching the speaker voicelessly not to kill warm personal
certainties with the abstractions he thinks he has discovered. Jeffrey
did not understand the look. He was enamoured of his abstraction.
"And all the mill hands have been slaves to Weedon Moore because he told
them lies, and now they're prisoners to Madame Beattie because she's
telling them another kind of lie, God knows what. And Addington is
prisoner to catch-words."
"But what are we prisoner to?" Lydia asked sharply, as if these things
were terrifying. "Is Farvie a prisoner?"
"Why, father, God bless him!" said Jeff, moved at once, remembering what
his father had to fight, "he's prisoner to his fear of death."
"And Anne? and I?"
Jeff sat looking at her in an abstracted thoughtfulness.
"Anne?" he repeated. "You? I don't know. I shouldn't dare to say. I've
no rights over Anne. She's so good I'm shy of her. But if I find you're
a prisoner, Lydia, I mean you shall be liberated. If nature drives you
on as it drives the rest of us to worship something--somebody--blindly,
and he's not worth it, you bet your life I'll save you."
She leaned back against the step above, her face suddenly sick and
miserable. What if she didn't want to be saved? the sick face asked him.
Lydia was a truth-teller. She loved Jeff, and she plainly owned it to
herself and felt surprisingly at ease over it. She was born to the
dictates of nice tradition, but when that inner warmth told her she
loved Jeff, even though he was bound to Esther, she didn't even hear
tradition, if it spoke. All she could possibly do for Jeff, who
unconsciously appealed to her every instant he looked at her with that
deep frown between his brows, seemed little indeed. Should she say she
loved him? That would be easy. But were his generalities about life
strong enough to push her and her humilities aside? That was hard to
bear.
"And," he was saying, "once we know we're prisoners, We can be free."
"How?" said Lydia hopefully. "Can we do the things we like?"
"No, by God! there's only one way of getting free, and that's by putting
yourself under the law."
Lydia's heart fell beyond plummet's sounding. She did not want to put
herself under any stricter law than that of heart's devotion. She had
been listening to it a great deal, of late. They were sweet things it
told her, and not wicked things, she thought, but all of humble service
and unasked rewards.
Jeff was roaming on, beguiled by his new thoughts and the sound of his
own voice.
"It's perfectly true what I used to write in that beggarly prison paper.
The only way to be really free is to be bound--by law. It's the big
paradox. Do you know what I'm going to do?"
She shook her head. He was probably, her apprehensive look said, going
to do something that would take him out of the pretty paradise where she
longed to set him galloping on the road to things men ought to have.
"I am going in to tear up the stuff I'm writing about that man I knew
there in the prison. What does God Almighty care about him? I'm going to
write a book and call it 'Prisoners,' and show how I was a prisoner
myself, to money, and luxury, and the game and--" he would not mention
Esther, but Lydia knew where his mind stumbled over the thought of
her--"and how I got my medicine. And how other fellows will have to take
theirs, these fellows Weedie's gulling and Addington, because it's a
fool wrapped up in its own conceit and stroking the lion's cub till it's
grown big enough to eat us."
He got up and Lydia called to him:
"What is the lion's cub?"
"Why, it's the people. And Weedon Moore is showing it how hungry it is
by chucking the raw meat at it and the saucers of blood. And pretty soon
it'll eat us and eat Weedie too."
He went in and up the stairs and Lydia fancied she heard the tearing of
papers in his room.
XXIV
The dry branch has come alive. The young Jeff Lydia had known through
Farvie was here, miraculously full of hope and laughter. Jeff was as
different after that day as a man could be if he had been buried and
revived and cast his grave-clothes off. He measured everything by his
new idea and the answers came out pat. The creative impulse shot up in
him and grew. He knew what it was to be a prisoner under penalty, every
cruel phase of it; and now that he saw everybody else in bonds, one to
an unbalanced law of life we call our destiny, one to cant, one to
greed, one to untended impulse, he was afire to let the prisoners out.
If they knew they were bound they could throw off these besetments of
mortality and walk in beauty. Old Addington, the beloved, must free
herself. Too long had she been held by the traditions she had erected
into forms of worship. The traditions lasted still, though now nobody
truly believed in them. She was beating her shawms and cymbals in the
old way, but to a new tune, and the tune was not the song of liberty, he
believed, but a child's lullaby. In that older time she had decently
covered discomfiting facts, asserted that she believed revealed
religion, and blessed God, in an ingenuous candour, for setting her feet
in paths where she could walk decorously. But now that she was really
considering new gods he wanted her to take herself in hand and find out
what she really worshipped. What was God and what was Baal? Had she the
nerve to burn her sacrifices and see? He began to understand her better
every day he lived with her. Poor old Addington! she had been suddenly
assaulted by the clamour of the times; it told her shameful things were
happening, and she had, with her old duteous responsiveness, snatched at
remedies. The rich, she found, had robbed the poor. Therefore let there
be no more poverty, though not on that account less riches. And here the
demagogue arose and bade her shirk no issue, even the red flag. God
Himself, the demagogue informed her, gives in His march of time
spectacular illustration of temporal vanity. The earthquake ruins us,
the flood engulfs us, fire and water are His ministers to level the pomp
of power. Therefore, said the demagogue, forget the sweet abidingness of
home, the brooding peace of edifices, the symbolic uses of matter to
show us, though we live but in tents of a night, that therein is a sign
of the Eternal City. Down with property. Addington had learned to
distrust one sort of individual, and she instantly believed she could
trust the other individual who was as unlike him as possible. Because
Dives had been numb to human needs, Lazarus was the new-discovered
leader. And the pitiful part of it all was that though Addington used
the alphabet and spoke the language of "social unrest", it did it merely
with the relish of playing with a new thing. It didn't make a jot of
difference in its daily living. It didn't exert itself over its local
government, it didn't see the Weedon Moores were honeycombing the soil
with sedition. It talked, and talked, and knew the earth would last its
time.
When Jeffrey tore up the life of his fellow prisoner he did it as if he
tore his own past with it. He sat down to write his new book which was,
in a way, an autobiography. He had read the enduring ones. He used to
think they were crudely honest, and he meant now to tell the truth as
brutally as the older men: how, in his seething youth, when he scarcely
knew the face of evil in his arrogant confidence that he was strong
enough to ride it bareback without falling off, if it would bring him to
his ends, he leaped into the money game. And at that point, he owned
ingenuously, he would have to be briefly insincere. He could unroll his
own past, but not Esther's. The minute the stage needed her he realised
he could never summon her. He might betray himself, not her. It was she,
the voice incarnate of greed and sensuous delight, that had whipped him
along his breathless course, and now he had to conceal her behind a
wilful lie and say they were his own delights that lured him.
He sat there in his room writing on fiery nights when the moths crowded
outside the screen and small sounds urged the freedom and soft
beguilement of the season, even in the bounds of streets. The colonel,
downstairs, sat in a determined patience over Mary Nellen's linguistic
knots, what time he was awake long enough to tackle them, and wished
Jeff would bring down his work where he could be glanced at occasionally
even if he were not to be spoken to. The colonel had thought he wanted
nothing but to efface himself for his son, and yet the yearning of life
within him made him desire to live a little longer even by sapping that
young energy. Only Lydia knew what Jeff was doing, and she gloried in
it. He was writing a book, mysterious work to her who could only compass
notes of social import, and even then had some ado to spell. But she
read his progress by the light in his eyes, his free bearing and his
broken silence. For now Jeff talked. He talked a great deal. He chaffed
his father and even Anne, and left Lydia out, to her own pain. Why
should he have kissed her that long ago day if he didn't love her, and
why shouldn't he have kept on loving her? Lydia was asking herself the
oldest question in the woman's book of life, and nobody had told her
that nature only had the answer. "If you didn't mean it why did you do
it?" This was the question Lydia heard no answer to.
Jeff was perpetually dwelling upon Addington, torn between the factions
of the new and old. He asked Lydia seriously what she should recommend
doing, to make good citizens out of bamboozled aliens. Lydia had but one
answer. She should, she said, teach them to dance. Then you could get
acquainted with them. You couldn't get acquainted if you set them down
to language lessons or religious teaching, or tried to make them read
the Constitution. If people had some fun together, Lydia thought, they
pretty soon got to understand one another because they were doing a
thing they liked, and one couldn't do it so well alone. That was her
recipe. Jeff didn't take much stock in it. He was not wise enough to
remember how eloquent are the mouths of babes. He went to Miss Amabel as
being an expert in sympathy, and found her shy of him. She was on the
veranda, shelling peas, and in her checked muslin with father's portrait
braided round with mother's hair pinning together her embroidered
collar. To Jeff, clad in his blue working-clothes, she looked like
motherhood and sainthood blended. He sat himself down on the lower step,
clasped his knees and watched her, following the movements of her plump
hands.
"We can't get too homesick for old Addington while we have you to look
at," said he.
She stopped working for one pod's space and looked at him.
"Are you homesick for old Addington?" she asked. "Alston Choate says
that. He says it's a homesick world."
"He's dead right," said Jeff.
"What do you want of old Addington?" said she. "What do we need we
haven't got?"
Jeff thought of several words, but they wouldn't answer. Beauty? No, old
Addington was oftener funny than not. There was no beauty in a pint-pot.
Even the echoes there rang thin. Peace? But he was the last man to go to
sleep over the task of the day.
"I just want old Addington," he said. "Anyway I want to drop in to it as
you'd drop into the movies. I want to hesitate on the brink of doing
things that shock people. Nobody's shocked at anything now. I want to
see the blush of modesty. Amabel, it's all faded out."
She looked at him, distressed.
"Jeff," said she, "do you think our young people are not--what they
were?"
He loved her beautiful indirection.
"I don't want 'em to be what they were," said he, "if they have to lie
to do it. I don't know exactly what I do want. Only I'm homesick for old
Addington. Amabel, what should you say to my going into kindergarten
work?"
"You always did joke me," said she. "Get a rise out of me? Is that what
you call it?"
"I'm as sober as an owl," said Jeff. "I want these pesky Poles and
Syrians and all the rest of them to learn what they're up against when
they come over here to run the government. I'm on the verge, Amabel, of
hiring a hall and an interpreter, and teaching 'em something about
American history, if there's anything to teach that isn't disgraceful."
"And yet," said she, "when Weedon Moore talks to those same men you go
and break up the meeting."
"But bless you, dear old girl," said Jeff, "Weedon was teaching 'em the
rules for wearing the red flag. And I'm going to give 'em a straight
tip about Old Glory. When I've got through with 'em, you won't know 'em
from New Englanders dyed in the wool."
She meditated.
"If only you and Weedon would talk it over," she ventured, "and combine
your forces. You're both so clever, Jeff."
"Combine with Weedie? Not on your life. Why, I'm Weedie's antidote. He
preaches riot and sedition, and I'm the dose taken as soon as you can
get it down."
Then she looked at him, though affectionately, in sad doubt, and Jeff
saw he had, in some way, been supplanted in her confidence though not in
her affection. He wouldn't push it. Amabel was too precious to be lost
for kindergarten work.
When they had talked a little more, but about topics less dangerous, the
garden and the drought, he went away; but Amabel padded after him, bowl
in hand.
"Jeff," said she, "you must let me say how glad I am you and Weedon are
really seeing things from the same point of view."
"Don't make any mistake about that," said Jeff. "He's trying to bust
Addington, and Tin trying to save it. And to do that I've got to bust
Weedie himself."
He went home then and put his case to Lydia, and asked her why, if Miss
Amabel was so willing to teach the alien boy to read and teach the alien
girl to sew, she should be so cold to his pedagogical ambitions. Lydia
was curiously irresponsive, but at dusk she slipped away to Madame
Beattie's. To Lydia, what used to be Esther's house had now become
simply Madame Beattie's. She had her own shy way of getting in, so that
she need not come on Esther nor trouble the decorous maid. Perhaps Lydia
was a little afraid of Sophy, who spoke so smoothly and looked such
cool hostility. So she tapped at the kitchen door and a large cook of
sound principles who loved neither Esther nor Sophy, let her in and
passed her up the back stairs. Esther had strangely never noted this
adventurous way of entering. She was rather unobservant about some
things, and she would never have suspected a lady born of coming in by
the kitchen for any reason whatever. Esther, too, had some of the
Addington traditions ingrain.
Madame Beattie was in bed, where she usually was when not in mischief,
the summer breeze touching her toupée as tenderly as it might a young
girl's flossy crown. She always had a cool drink by her, and she was
always reading. Sometimes she put out her little ringed hand and moved
the glass to hear the clink of ice, and she did it now as Lydia came in.
Lydia liked the clink. It sounded festive to her. That was the word she
had for all the irresponsible exuberance Madame Beattie presented her
with, of boundless areas where you could be gay. Madame Beattie shut her
book and motioned to the door. But Lydia was already closing it. That
was the first thing when they had their gossips. Lydia came then and
perched on the foot of the bed. Her promotion from chair to bed marked
the progress of their intimacy.
"Madame Beattie," said she, "I wish you and I could go abroad together."
Madame Beattie grinned at her, with a perfect appreciation.
"You wouldn't like it," said she.
"I should like it," said Lydia. Yet she knew she did not want to go
abroad. This was only an expression of her pleasure in sitting on a bed
and chatting with a game old lady. What she wanted was to mull along
here in Addington with occasional side dashes into the realms of
discontent, and plan for Jeff's well-being. "He wants to give lectures,"
said she. "To them."
The foreign contingent was always known to her and Madame Beattie as
They.
"The fool!" said Madame Beattie cheerfully. "What for?"
"To teach them to be good."
"What does he want to muddle with that for?"
"Why, Madame Beattie, you know yourself you're talking to them and
telling them things."
"But that isn't dressing 'em in Governor Winthrop's knee breeches," said
Madame Beattie, "and making Puritans of 'em. I'm just filling 'em up
with Jeff Blake, so they'll follow him and make a ringleader of him
whether he wants it or not. They'll push and push and not see they're
pushing, and before he knows it he'll be down stage, with all his
war-paint on. You never saw Jeff catch fire."
"No," said Lydia, lying. The day he took her hands and told her what she
still believed at moments--he had caught fire then.
"When he catches fire, he'll burn up whatever's at hand," said the old
lady, with relish. "Get his blood started, throw him into politics, and
in a minute we shall have him in business, and playing the old game."
"Do you want him to play the old game?" asked Lydia.
"I want him to make some money."
"To pay his creditors."
"Pay your grandmother! pay for my necklace. Lydia, I've scared her out
of her boots."
"Esther?" Lydia whispered.
Madame Beattie whispered, too, now, and a cross-light played over her
eyes.
"Yes. I've searched her room. And she knows it. She thinks I'm searching
for the necklace."
"And aren't you?"
"Bless you, no. I shouldn't find it. She's got it safely hid. But when
she finds her upper bureau drawer gone over--Esther's very
methodical--and the next day her second drawer and the next day the
shelves in her closet, why, then--"
"What then?" asked Lydia, breathless.
"Then, my dear, she'll get so nervous she'll put the necklace into a
little bag and tell me she is called to New York. And she'll take the
bag with her, if she's not prevented."
"What should prevent her? the police?"
"No, my dear, for after all I don't want the necklace so much as I want
somebody to pay me solid money for it. But when the little bag appears,
this is what I shall say to Esther, perhaps while she's on her way
downstairs to the carriage. 'Esther,' I shall say, 'get back to your
room and take that little bag with you. And make up to handsome Jeff and
tell him he's got to stir himself and pay me something on account. And
you can keep the diamonds, my dear, if you see Jeff pays me something.'"
"She'd rather give you the diamonds," said Lydia.
"My dear, she sets her life by them. Do you know what she's doing when
she goes to her room early and locks the door? She's sitting before the
glass with that necklace on, cursing God because there's no man to see
her."
"You can't know that," said Lydia.
She was trembling all over.
"My dear, I know women. When you're as old as I am, you will, too: even
the kind of woman Esther is. That type hasn't changed since the
creation, as they call it."
"But I don't like it," said Lydia. "I don't think it's fair. She hates
Jeff--"
"Nonsense. She doesn't hate any man. Jeff's poor, that's all."
"She does hate him, and yet you're going to make him pay money so she
can keep diamond necklaces she never ought to have had."
"Make him pay money for anything," said the old witch astutely, "money
he's got or money he hasn't got. Set his blood to moving, I tell you,
and before he knows it he'll be tussling for dear life and stamping on
the next man and getting to the top."
Lydia didn't want him to tussle, but she did want him at the top. She
had not told Madame Beattie about the manuscript growing and growing on
Jeff's table every night. It was his secret, his and hers, she reasoned;
she hugged the knowledge to her heart.
"That's all," said Madame Beattie, in that royal way of terminating
interviews when she wanted to get back to literature. "Only when he
begins to address his workingmen you tell me."
Lydia, on her way downstairs, passed Esther's room and even stood a
second breathlessly taking in its exquisite order. Here was the bower
where the enchantress slept, and where she touched up her beauty by the
secret processes Lydia, being very young and of a pollen-like freshness,
despised. This was not just of Lydia. Esther took no more than a normal
care of her complexion, and her personal habits were beyond praise.
Lydia stood there staring, her breath coming quick. Was the necklace
really there? If she saw it what could she do? If the little bag with
the necklace inside it sat there waiting to be taken to New York, what
could she do then? She fled softly down the stairs.
Addington was a good deal touched when Jeffrey Blake took the old town
hall and put a notice in the paper saying he would give a talk there on
American History in the administration of George Washington. He would
speak in English and parts of the lecture would be translated, if
necessary, by an able interpreter. Ladies considered seriously whether
they ought not to go, to encourage him, and his father was sure it was
his own right and privilege. But Jeff choked that off. He settled the
matter at the supper table.
"Look here," said he, "I'm going down there to make an ass of myself.
Don't you come. I won't have it."
So the three stayed at home, and sat up for him and he told them, when
he came in, at a little after ten, that there had been five Italians
present and one of them had slept. Two ladies, deputed by the Woman's
Club, had also come, and he wished to thunder women would mind their
business and stay at home. But there was the fighting glint in his eye.
His father remembered it, and Lydia was learning to know it now. He
would give his next lecture, he said, unless nobody was there but the
Woman's Club. He drew the line. And next day Lydia slipped away to
Madame Beattie and told her the second lecture would be on the following
Wednesday night.
That night Jeff stood up before his audience of three, no ladies this
time. But Andrea was not there. Jeff thought a minute and decided there
was no need of him.
"Will you tell me," said he, looking down from the shallow platform at
his three men, "why I'm not talking in English anyway? You vote, don't
you? You read English. Well, then, listen to it."
But he was not permitted to begin at once. There was a stir without and
the sound of feet. The door opened and men tramped in, men and men,
more than the little hall would hold, and packed themselves in the
aisles and at the back. And with the foremost, one who carried himself
proudly as if he were extremely honored, came Madame Beattie in a
long-tailed velvet gown with a shining gold circlet across her forehead,
and a plethora of jewels on her ungloved hands. She kept straight on,
and mounted the platform beside Jeff, and there she bowed to her
audience and was cheered. When she spoke to Jeff, it was with a perfect
self-possession, an implied mastery of him and the event.
"I'll interpret."
After all, why not fall in with her, old mistress of guile? He began
quite robustly and thought he was doing very well. In twenty minutes he
was, he thought, speaking excellently. The men were warmly pleased. They
sat up and smiled and glistened at him. Once he stopped short and threw
Madame Beattie a quick aside.
"What are they laughing at?"
"I have to put it picturesquely," said Madame Beattie, in a stately
calm. "That's the only way they'll understand. Go on."
It is said in Addington that those lectures lasted even until eleven
o'clock at night, and there were petitions that The Prisoner should go
to the old hall and talk every evening, instead of twice a week. The
Woman's Club said Madame Beattie was a dear to interpret for him, and
some of the members who had not studied any language since the
seventies, when they learned the rudiments of German, to read Faust,
judged it would be a good idea to hear her for practice. But somebody
told her that, and she discouraged it. She was obliged, she said, to
skip hastily from one dialect to another and they would only be
confused; therefore they thought it better, after all, to remain
undisturbed in their respective calm. Jeff sailed securely on through
Lincoln's administration to the present day, and took up the tariff
even, in an elementary fashion. There he was obliged to be drily
technical at points, and he wondered how Madame Beattie could accurately
reproduce him, much less to a response of eager faces. But then Jeff
knew she was an old witch. He knew she had hypnotised wives that hated
her and husbands sworn to cast her off. He knew she had sung after she
had no voice, and bamboozled even the critics, all but one who wrote for
an evening paper and so didn't do his notice until next day. And he saw
no reason why she should not make even the tariff a primrose path.
Madame Beattie loved it all. Also, there was the exquisite pleasure,
when she got home late, of making Sophy let her in and mix her a
refreshing drink, and of meeting Esther the next day at dinner and
telling her what a good house they had. Business, Madame Beattie called
it, splendid business, and Esther hated her for that, too. It sounded
like shoes or hosiery. But Ether didn't dare gainsay her, for fear she
would put out a palmist's sign, or a notice of séances at twenty-five
cents a head. Esther knew she could get no help from grandmother. When
she sought it, with tears in her eyes, begging grandmother to turn the
unprincipled old witch out for good, grandmother only pulled the sheet
up to her ears and breathed stertorously.
But Madame Beattie was tired, though this was the flowering of her later
life.
"My God!" she said to Lydia one night, before getting up to dress for a
lecture, "I'm pretty nearly--what is it they call it--all in? I may drop
dead. I shouldn't wonder if I did. If I do, you take Jeff into the joke.
Nobody'd appreciate it more than Jeff."
"You don't think the men like him the less for it?" said Lydia.
"Oh, God bless me, no. They adore him. They think he's a god because he
tells their folk tales and their stories. I give you my word, Lydia, I'd
no idea I knew so many things."
"What did you tell last night?" said Lydia.
"Oh, stories, stories, stories. To-night I may spice it up a little with
modern middle-Europe scandal. Dear souls! they love it."
"What does Jeff think they're listening to?" asked Lydia.
"The trusts, last time," said Madame Beattie. "My Holy Father! that's
what he thinks. The trusts!"
XXV
The colonel thrived, about this time, on that fallacious feeling, born
of hope eternal, that he was growing young. It is one of the
precautionary lies of nature, to keep us going, that, the instant we are
tinkered in any part, we ignore its merely being fitted up for shortened
use. Hope eternal tells us how much stronger it is than it was before.
If you rub unguent into your scanty hair you can feel it grow, as a poet
hears the grass. A nostrum on your toil-hardened hands brings back, to
keen anticipation, the skin of youth. All mankind is prepared to a
perfect degree of sensitiveness for response to the quack doctor's art.
We believe so fast that he need hardly do more than open his mouth to
cry his wares. The colonel, doing a good day's work and getting tired
enough to sleep at night, felt, on waking, as if life were to last the
measure of his extremest appetite. The household went on wings, so
clever and silent was Anne in administration and so efficient Mary
Nellen. Only Anne was troubled in her soul because Lydia would go
slipping away for these secret sessions with Madame Beattie. She even
proposed going with her once or twice, but Lydia said she had put it off
for that night; and next time she slipped away more cleverly. Once in
these calls Lydia met Esther at the head of the stairs, and they said
"How do you do?" in an uncomfortable way, Esther with reproving dignity
and Lydia in a bravado that looked like insolence. And then Esther sent
for Alston Choate, and in the evening he came.
Esther was a pathetic pale creature, as she met him in the dusk of the
candle-lighted room, little more than a child, he thought, as he noted
her round arms and neck within the film of her white dress. Esther did
not need to assume a pathos for the moment's needs. She was very sorry
for herself. They sat there by the windows, looking out under the shade
of the elms, and for a little neither spoke. Esther had some primitive
feminine impulses to put down. Alston had an extreme of pity that gave
him fervencies of his own. To Esther it was as natural as breathing to
ask a man to fight her battles for her, and to cling to him while she
told him what battles were to be fought. Alston had the chafed feeling
of one who cannot follow with an unmixed ardency the lines his heart
would lead him. He was always angry, chiefly because she had to suffer
so, after the hideousness of her undeserved destiny, and yet he saw no
way to help that might not make a greater hardship for her. At last she
spoke, using his name, and his heart leaped to it.
"Alston, what am I going to do?"
"Things going badly?" he asked her, in a voice moved enough to hearten
her. "What is it that's different?"
"Everything. Aunt Patricia has those horrible men come here and talk
with her--"
"It's ridiculous of her," said Alston, "but there's no harm in it.
They're not a bad lot, and she's an old lady, and she won't stay here
forever."
"Oh, yes, she will. She gets her food, at least, and I don't believe she
could pay for even that abroad. And this sort of thing amuses her. It's
like gipsies or circus people or something. It's horrible."
"What does your grandmother say?"
"Nothing."
"She must stand for it, in a way, or Madame Beattie couldn't do it."
"I don't believe grandmother understands fully. She's so old."
"She isn't tremendously old."
"Oh, but she looks so. When you see her in her nightcap--it's horrible,
the whole thing, grandmother and all, and here I am shut up with it."
"I'm sorry," said Alston, in a low tone. "I'm devilish sorry."
"And I want to go away," said Esther, her voice rising hysterically, so
that Alston nervously hoped she wouldn't cry. "But I can't do that. I
haven't enough to live on, away from here, and I'm afraid."
"Esther," said he, daring at last to bring out the doubt that assailed
him when he mused over her by himself, "just what do you mean by saying
you are afraid?"
"You know," said Esther, almost in a whisper. She had herself in hand
now.
"Yes. But tell me again. Tell me explicitly."
"I'm afraid," said Esther, "of him."
"Of your husband? If that's it, say it."
"I'm afraid of Jeff. He's been in here. I told you so. He took hold of
me. He dragged me by my wrists. Alston, how can you make me tell you!"
The appeal sickened him. He got up and walked away to the mantel where
the candles were, and stood there leaning against the shelf. He heard
her catch her breath, and knew she was near sobs. He came back to his
chair, and his voice had resumed so much of its judicial tone that her
breath grew stiller in accord.
"Esther," said he, "you'd better tell me everything."
"I can't," said she, "everything. You are--" the rest came in a
startling gush of words--"you are the last man I could tell."
It was a confession, a surrender, and he felt the tremendous weight of
it. Was he the last man she could tell? Was she then, poor child,
withholding herself from him as he, in decency, was aloof from her? He
pulled himself together.
"Perhaps I can't do anything for you," he said, "in my own person. But I
can see that other people do. I can see that you have counsel."
"Alston," said she, in what seemed to him a beautiful simplicity, "why
can't you do anything for me?"
This was so divinely childlike and direct that he had to tell her.
"Esther, don't you see? If you have grounds for action against your
husband, could I be the man to try your case? Could I? When you have
just said I am the last man you could tell? I can't get you a
divorce----" he stopped there. He couldn't possibly add, "and then marry
you afterward."
"I see," said Esther, yet raging against him inwardly. "You can't help
me."
"I can help you," said Alston. "But you must be frank with me. I must
know whether you have any case at all. Now answer me quite simply and
plainly. Does Jeff support you?"
"Oh, no," said Esther.
"He gives you no money whatever?"
"None."
"Then he's a bigger rascal than I've been able to think him."
"I believe----" said Esther, and stopped.
"What do you believe?"
"I think the money must come from his father. He sends it to me."
"Then there is money?"
"Why, yes," said Esther irritably, "there's some money, or how could I
live?"
"But you told me there was none."
"How do you think I could live here with grandmother and expect her to
dress me? Grandmother's very old. She doesn't see the need of things."
"It isn't a question of what you can live on," said Alston. "It's a
question of Jeff's allowing you money, or not allowing you money. Does
he, or does he not?"
"His father sends me some," said Esther, in a voice almost inaudible. It
sounded sulky.
"Regularly?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Don't you know?"
"Yes. He sends it regularly."
"How often?"
"Four times a year."
"Haven't you every reason to believe that money is from Jeff?"
"No," said Esther. "I haven't any reason to think so at all. His father
signs the cheques."
"Isn't it probable that his father would do that when Jeff was in
prison, and that he should continue doing it now?"
Esther did not answer. There was something in the silence of the room,
something in the peculiar feel of the atmosphere that made Alston
certain she had balked. He recognised that pause in the human animal
under inquisition, and for a wonder, since he had never been wound up to
breaking point himself, knew how it felt. The machinery in the brain had
suddenly stopped. He was not surprised that Esther could not go on. It
was not obstinacy that deterred her. It was panic. He had put her, he
knew, to too harsh a test. Now he had to soothe her affrighted mind and
bring it back to its clear uses; and since he could honestly do it, as
the lawyer exercising professional medicine, he gave himself gladly to
the task.
"Esther," he said, "it is infernal to ask you these personal questions.
But you will have to bring yourself to answer them if we are to decide
whether you have any case and whether I can send you to another man. But
if you do engage counsel, you'll have to talk to him freely. You'll have
to answer all sorts of questions. It's a pretty comprehensive thing to
admit the law into your private life, because you've got to give it
every right there. You'll be questioned. And you'll have to answer."
Esther sat looking at him steadily. As she looked, her pale cheek seemed
to fill and flush and a light ran into her eyes, until the glow spilled
over and dazzled him, like something wavering between him and her. He
had never seen that light in her eyes, nor indeed the eyes of any woman,
nor would he have said that he could bear to see it there unsummoned.
Yet had he not summoned it unconsciously, hard as he was trying to play
the honest game between an unattached woman and a man who sees her
fetters where she has ceased to see them, but can only feel them gall
her? Had not the inner spirit of him been speaking through all this
interview to the inner spirit of her, and was she not willing now to let
it cry out and say to him, "I am here "? Esther was willing to cry out.
In the bewilderment of it, he did not know whether it was superb of her,
though he would have felt it in another woman to be shameless. The
lustrous lights of her eyes dwelt upon him, unwavering. Then her lips
confirmed them.
"Well," said Esther, "isn't it worth it?"
Alston got up and rather blindly went out of the room. In the street,
after the summer breeze had been touching his forehead and yet not
cooling it, he realised he was carrying his hat in his hand, and put it
on hastily. He was Addington to the backbone, when he was not roaming
the fields of fiction, and one of the rules of Addington was against
looking queer. He walked to his office and let himself in. The windows
were closed and the room had the crude odour of public life: dust, stale
tobacco and books. He threw up the windows and hesitated an instant by
the gas jet. It was his habit, when the outer world pressed him too
heavily, to plunge instantly into a book. But books were no anodyne for
the turmoil of this night. Nor was the light upon these familiar
furnishings. He sat down by the window, laid his arms on the sill and
looked out over the meadows, unseen now but throwing their damp
exhalations up to him through the dark. His heart beat hard, and in the
physical vigour of its revolt he felt a fierce pleasure; but he was
shamed all through in some way he felt he could not meet. Had he seen a
new Esther to-night, an Esther that had not seemed to exist under the
soft lashes of the woman he thought he knew so well? He had a stiffly
drawn picture of what a woman ought to be. She really conformed to
Addington ideals. He believed firmly that the austere and noble dwelt
within woman as Addington had framed her. It would have given him no
pleasure to find a savage hidden under pretty wiles. But Alston believed
so sincerely in the control of man over the forces of life, of which
woman was one, that, if Esther had stepped backward from her bright
estate into a barbarous challenge, it was his fault, he owned, not hers.
He should have guided her so that she stayed within hallowed precincts.
He should have upheld her so that she did not stumble over these
pitfalls of the earth. It is a pity those ideals of old Addington that
made Alston Choate believe in women as little lower than the angels
and, if they proved themselves lower, not really culpable because they
are children and not rightly guided--it is a pity that garden cannot
keep on blooming even out of the midden of the earth. But he had kept
the garden blooming. Addington had a tremendous grip on him. It was not
that he had never seen other customs, other manners. He had travelled a
reasonable amount for an Addington man, but always he had been able to
believe that Eden is what it was when there was but one man in it and
one woman. There was, of course, too, the serpent. But Alston was
fastidious, and he kept his mind as far away from the serpent as
possible. He thought of his mother and sister, and instantly ceased
thinking of them, because to them Esther was probably a sweet person,
and he knew they would not have recognised the Esther he saw to-night.
Perhaps, though he did not know this, his mother might.
Mrs. Choate was a large, almost masculine looking woman, very plain
indeed, Addington owned, but with beautiful manners. She was not like
Alston, not like his sister, who had a highbred charm, something in the
way of Alston's own. Mother was different. She was of the Griswolds who
had land in Cuba and other islands, and were said to have kept slaves
there while the Choates were pouring blood into the abolitionist cause.
There was a something about mother quite different from anybody in
Addington. She conformed beautifully, but you would have felt she
understood your not conforming. She never came to grief over the
neutralities of the place, and you realised it was because she expressed
so few opinions. You might have said she had taken Addington for what it
was and exhausted it long ago. Her gaze was an absent, yet, of late
years, a placid one. She might have been dwelling upon far-off islands
which excited in her no desire to be there. She was too cognisant of
the infinite riches of time that may be supposed to make up eternity. If
she was becalmed here in Addington, some far-off day a wind would fill
her sails and she might seek the farther seas. And, like her son, she
read novels.
Alston, going home at midnight, saw the pale glimmer in her room and
knew she was at it there. He went directly upstairs and stopped at her
door, open into the hall. He was not conscious of having anything to
say. Only he did feel a curious hesitation for the moment. Here in
Addington was an Esther whom he had just met for the first time. Here
was another woman who had not one of Esther's graces, but whom he adored
because she was the most beautiful of mothers. Would she be horrified at
the little strange animal that had looked at him out of Esther's eyes?
He had never seen his mother shocked at anything. But that, he told
himself, was because she was so calm. The Woman's Club of Addington
could have told him it was because she had poise. She looked up, as he
stood in the doorway, and laid her book face downward on the bed.
Usually when he came in like this she moved the reading candle round, so
that the hood should shield his eyes. But to-night she gently turned it
toward him, and Alston did not realise that was because his fagged face
and disordered hair had made her anxious to understand the quicker what
had happened to him.
I "Sit down," she said.
And then, having fairly seen him, she did turn the hood. Alston dropped
into the chair by the bedside and looked at her. She was a plain woman,
it is true, but of heroic lines. Her iron-grey hair was brushed smoothly
back into its two braids, and her nightgown, with its tiny edge, was of
the most pronouncedly sensible cut, of high neck and long sleeves. Yet
there was nothing uncouth about her in her elderly ease of dress and
manner. She was a wholesome woman, and the heart of her son turned
pathetically to her.
"Mary gone to bed?" he asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Choate. "She was tired. She's been rehearsing a dance
with those French girls and their class."
Alston lay back in his chair, regarding her with hot, tired eyes. He
wanted to know what she thought of a great many things: chiefly whether
a woman who had married Jeff Blake need be afraid of him. But there was
a well-defined code between his mother and himself. He was not willing
to trap her into honest answers where he couldn't put honest questions.
"Mother," said he, and didn't know why he began or indeed that he was
going to say just that at all, "do you ever wish you could run away?"
She gave the corner of the book a pat with one beautiful hand.
"I do run away," she said. "I was a good many miles from here when you
came in. And I shall be again when you are gone. Among the rogues, such
as we don't see."
"What is it?"
"Mysteries of Paris."
"That's our vice, isn't it," said Alston, "yours and mine, novel
reading?"
"You're marked with it," said she.
There was something in the quiet tone that arrested him and made him
look at her more sharply. The tone seemed to say she had not only read
novels for a long time, but she had had to read them from a grave
design. "It does very well for me," she said, "but it easily mightn't
for you. Alston, why don't you run away?"
Alston stared at her.
"Would you like to go abroad?" he asked her then, "with Mary? Would you
like me to take you?"
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Choate. "Mary wouldn't want to. She's bewitched with
those French girls. And I don't want to. I couldn't go the only way I'd
like."
"You could go any way you chose," said Alston, touched. He knew there
was a war chest, and it irked him to think his mother wouldn't have it
tapped for her.
"Oh, no," said she. "I should need to be slim and light, and put on
short petticoats and ride horses and get away from tigers. I don't want
to shoot them, but I'd rather like to get away from them."
"Mother," said Alston, "what's come over you? Is it this book?"
She laughed, in an easy good-humour.
"Books don't come over me," said she. "I believe it's that old Madame
Beattie."
"What's Madame Beattie done that any--" he paused; Esther's wrongs at
Madame Beattie's hands were too red before him--"that any lady would be
willing to do?"
"I really don't know, Alston," said his mother frankly. "It's only that
when I think of that old party going out every night--"
"Not every night."
"Well, when she likes, and getting up on a platform and telling goodness
knows what to the descendants of the oldest civilisations, and their
bringing her home on their shoulders--"
"No, no, mother, they don't do that."
"I tell you what it makes me feel, Alston: it makes me feel _fat_."
"Madame Beattie weighs twenty pounds more than you do, and she's not so
tall by three inches."
"And then I realise that when women say they want to vote, it isn't
because they're all piously set on saving the country. It's because
they've peeped over the fence and got an idea of the game, and they're
crazy to be in it."
"But, mother, there's no game, except a dirty one of graft and politics.
There's nothing in it."
"No," said Mrs. Choate. "There isn't in most games. But people play
them."
"You don't think Amabel is in it for the game?"
"Oh, no! Amabel's a saint. It wouldn't take more than a basket of wood
and a bunch of matches to make her a martyr."
"But, mother," said Alston, "you belong to the antis."
"Do I?" asked his mother. "Yes, I believe I do."
"Do you mean to say you're not sincere?"
"Why, yes, of course I'm sincere. So are they. Only, doesn't it occur to
you they're having just as much fun organising and stirring the pot as
if it was the other pot they were stirring? Besides they attitudinise
while they stir, and say they're womanly. And they like that, too."
"Do you think they're in it for the game?"
"No, no, Alston, not consciously. Nobody's in it for the game except
your Weedon Moores. Any more than a nice girl puts on a ribbon to trap
her lover. Only nature's behind the girl, and nature's behind the game.
She's behind all games. But as to the antis--" said Mrs. Choate
impatiently, "they've gone on putting down cards since the rules were
changed."
Alston rose and stood looking down at her. She glanced up brightly, met
his eyes and laughed.
"All is," said she, in a current phrase even cultured Addington had
caught from its "help" from the rural radius outside, "I just happened
to feel like telling you if you want to run away, you go. And if I
weighed a hundred and ten and were forty-five, I'd go with you.
Actually, I should advise you, if you're going to stay here, to stir
the pot a little now it's begun to boil so hard."
"Get into politics?" he asked, remembering Jeff.
"Maybe."
She smiled at him, pleasantly, not as a mother smiles, but an implacable
mistress of destiny. In spite of her large tolerance, there were moments
when she did speak. So she had looked when he said, as a boy, that he
shouldn't go to gymnasium, and she had told him he would. And he went.
Again, when he was in college and had fallen in with a set of
ultra-moderns and swamped himself in decoration and the beguilements of
a spurious art, he had seen that look; then she had told him the
classics were not to be neglected. Now here was the look again. Alston
began to have an uncomfortable sense that he might have to run for
office in spite of every predilection he ventured to cherish. He could
have thrown himself on the floor and bellowed to be let alone.
"But keep your head, dear," she was saying. "Keep your head. Don't let
any man--or woman either--lose it for you. That's the game, Alston,
really."
It was such a warm impetuous tone it brought them almost too suddenly
and too close together. Alston meant to kiss her, as he did almost every
night, but he awkwardly could not. He went out of the room in a shy
haste, and when he dropped off to sleep he was thinking, not of Esther,
but of his mother. Even so he did not suspect that his mother knew he
had come from Esther and how fast his blood was running.
XXVI
Jeff, writing hard on his book to tell men they were prisoners and had
to get free, was tremendously happy. He thought he saw the whole game
now, the big game these tiny issues reflected in a million mirrors. You
were given life and incalculable opportunity. But you were allowed to go
it blind. They never really interfered with you, the terrible They up
there: for he could not help believing there was an Umpire of the game,
though nobody, it seemed, was permitted to see the score until long
afterward, when the trumpery rewards had been distributed. (Some of them
were not trumpery; they were as big as the heavens and the sea.) He
found a great many things to laugh over, sane, kind laughter, in the way
the game was played there in Addington. Religion especially seemed to
him the big absurd paradox. Here were ingenuous worshippers preserving a
form of observance as primitive as the burnt-offerings before a god of
bronze or wood. They went to church and placated their god, and swore
they believed certain things the acts of their lives repudiated. They
made a festival at Christmas time and worshipped at the manger and
declared God had come to dwell among men. They honored Joseph who was
the spouse of Mary, and who was a carpenter, and on the twenty-sixth of
December they nodded with condescension to their own carpenter, if they
met him in the street, or they failed to see him at all. And their
carpenter, who was doing his level best to prevent them from grinding
the face of labour, himself ground the face of his brother carpenter if
his brother did not heartily co-operate in keeping hours down and
prices up. And everybody was behaving from the prettiest of motives;
that was the joke of it. They not only said their prayers before going
out to trip up the competitor who was lying in wait to trip up them;
they actually believed in the efficacy of the prayer. They glorified an
arch apostle of impudence who pricked bubbles for them--a modern
literary light--but they went on blowing their bubbles just the same,
and when the apostle of impudence pricked them again they only said:
"Oh, it's so amusing!" and blew more. And even the apostle of impudence
wasn't so busy pricking bubbles that he didn't have time to blow bubbles
of his own, and even he didn't know how thin and hollow his own bubbles
were, which was the reason they could float so high. He saw the sun on
them and thought they were the lanterns that lighted up the show. Jeff
believed he had discovered the clever little trick at the bottom of the
game, the trick that should give over to your grasp the right handle at
last. This was that every man, once knowing he was a prisoner, should
laugh at his fetters and break them by his own muscle.
"The trouble is," he said, at breakfast, when Mary Nellen was bringing
in the waffles, "we're all such liars."
The colonel sat there in a mild peaceableness, quite another man under
the tan of his honest intimacy with the sun. He had been up hoeing an
hour before breakfast, and helped himself to waffles liberally, while
Mary Nellen looked, with all her intellectual aspirations in her eyes,
at Jeff.
"No, no," said the colonel. He was conscious of very kindly feelings
within himself, and believed in nearly everybody but Esther. She, he
thought, might have a chance of salvation if she could be reborn,
physically hideous, into a world obtuse to her.
"Liars!" said Jeff mildly. "We're doing the things we're expected to do,
righteous or not. And we're saying the things we don't believe."
"That's nothing but kindness," said the colonel. Mary Nellen made a
pretence of business at the side table, and listened greedily. She would
take what she had gathered to the kitchen and discuss it to rags. She
found the atmosphere very stimulating. "If I asked Lydia here whether
she found my hair thin, Lydia would say she thought it beautiful hair,
wouldn't you, Lyddy? She couldn't in decency tell me I'm as bald as a
rat."
"It is beautiful," said Lydia. "It doesn't need to be thick."
Jeff had refused waffles. He thrust his hands in his pockets and leaned
back, regarding his father with a smile. The lines in his face, Lydia
thought, fascinated, were smoothed out, all but the channels in the
forehead and the cleft between his brows. That last would never go.
"I am simply," said Jeff, "so tickled I can hardly contain myself. I
have discovered something."
"What?" said Lydia.
"The world," said Jeff. "Here it is. It's mine. I can have it to play
with. It's yours. You can play, too. So can that black-eyed army Madame
Beattie has mobilised. So can she."
Anne was looking at him in a serious anxiety.
"With conditions as they are--" said she, and Jeff interrupted her
without scruple.
"That's the point. With conditions as they are, we've got to dig into
things and mine out pleasures, and shake them in the faces of the mob
and the mob will follow us."
The colonel had ceased eating waffles. His thin hand, not so delicate
now that it had learned the touch of toil, trembled a little as it held
his fork.
"Jeff," said he, "what do you want to do?"
"I want," said Jeff, "to keep this town out of the clutch of Weedie
Moore."
"You can't do it. Not so long as Amabel is backing him. She's got
unlimited cash, and she thinks he's God Almighty and she wants him to be
mayor."
"It's a far cry," said Jeff, "from God Almighty to mayor. But Alston
Choate is going to be nominated for mayor, and he's going to get it."
"He won't take it," said Anne impulsively, and bit her lip.
"How do you know?" asked Jeff.
"He hates politics."
"He hates Addington more as it is."
They got up and moved to the library, standing about for a moment, while
Farvie held the morning paper for a cursory glance, before separating
for their different deeds. When Farvie and Anne had gone Jeff took up
the paper and Lydia lingered. Jeff felt the force of her silent waiting.
It seemed to bore a hole through the paper itself and knock at his brain
to be let in. He threw the paper down.
"Well?" said he.
Lydia was all alive. Her small face seemed drawn to a point of
eagerness. She spoke.
"Alston Choate isn't the man for mayor."
"Who is?"
"You."
Jeff slowly smiled at her.
"I?" he said. "How many votes do you think I'd get?"
"All the foreign vote. And the best streets wouldn't vote at all."
"Why?"
She bit her lip. She had not meant to say it.
"No," said Jeff, interpreting for her, "maybe they wouldn't. That's like
Addington. It wouldn't stand for me, but it would be too well-bred to
stand against me. No, Lyddy, I shouldn't get a show. And I don't want a
show. All I want is to bust Weedon Moore."
Lydia looked the unmovable obstinacy she felt stiffening every fibre of
her.
"You're all wrong," she said. "You could have anything you wanted."
"Who says so?"
"Madame Beattie."
"I wish," said Jeff, "that old harpy would go to Elba or Siberia or the
devil. I'm not going to run for office."
"What are you going to do?" asked Lydia, in a small voice. She was
resting a hand on the table, and the hand trembled.
"It's a question of what I won't do, at present. I won't go down there
to the hall and make an ass of myself talking history and be dished by
that old marplot. But if I can get hold of the same men--having
previously gagged Madame Beattie or deported her--I'll make them act
some plays."
"What kind of plays?"
"Shakespeare, maybe."
"They can't do that. They don't know enough."
"They know enough to understand that old rascal's game, whatever it is,
and hoot with her when she's done me. And she's given me the tip, with
her dramatics up there on the platform, and the way they answered.
They're children, and they want to play. She had the cleverness to see
it. And they shall play with me."
"But they won't act Shakespeare," said Lydia. "They only care about
their own countries. That's why they love Madame Beattie."
"What are their countries, Lydia?"
"Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia--oh, a lot more."
"Aren't they voting here in this country?"
"Why, yes, ever so many of them."
"Then," said Jeff, "this is their country, and this is their language,
and they've got to learn some English plays and act them as God pleases.
But act them they shall. Or their children shall. And you may give my
compliments to Madame Beattie and tell her if she blocks my game I'll
block hers. She'll understand. And they've got to learn what England was
and what America meant to be till she got on the rocks."
"Jeff," said Lydia, venturing, "aren't you going into business?"
"I am in business," said Jeff. "It's my business to bail out the
scuppers here in Addington and bust Weedie Moore."
"If you went into business," said Lydia, "and made money you could--"
"I could pay off my creditors? No, I couldn't, Lydia. I could as easily
lift this house."
"But you could pay something--"
"Something on a dollar? Lydia, I've been a thief, a plain common thief.
I stole a chicken, say. Well, the chicken got snatched away somehow and
scrambled for, and eaten. Anyway, the chicken isn't. And you want me to
steal another--"
"No, no."
"Yes, you do. I should have to steal it. I haven't time enough in my
whole life to get another chicken as big and as fat, unless I steal it.
No, Lydia, I can't do it. If you make me try, I shall blow my nut off,
that's all."
Lydia was terrified and he reassured her.
"No. Don't worry. I sha'n't let go my grip on the earth. When I walk now
I'm actually sticking my claws into her. I've found out what she is."
But Lydia still looked at him, hungry for his happiness, and he
despairingly tried to show her his true mind.
"You mustn't think for a minute I can wipe out my old score and show you
a perfectly clean slate with a nice scrollwork round it. Can't do it,
Lydia. I sha'n't come in for any of the prizes. I've got to be a very
ordinary, insignificant person from now on."
That hurt her and it did no good. She didn't believe him.
Not many days from this Jeff started out talking to men. He frankly
wanted something and asked for it. Addington, he told them, if they
built more factories and put in big industries, as they were trying to
do, was going to call in more and more foreign workmen. It was going to
be a melting-pot of small size. That was a current catchword. Jeff used
it as glibly as the women of the clubs. The pot was going to seethe and
bubble over and some demagogue--he did not mention Weedie--was going to
stir it, and the Addington of our fathers would be lost. The business
men looked at him with the slow smile of the sane for the fanatic and
answered from the fatuous optimism of the man who expects the world to
last at least his time. Some of them said something about "this great
country", as if it were chartered by the Almighty to stand the assaults
of other races, and when he reminded them that Addington was not trying
to amalgamate its aliens with its own ideals, and was giving them over
instead to Weedon Moore, they laughed at him.
"What's Weedon Moore?" one man said. "A dirty little shyster. Let him
talk. He can't do any harm."
"Do you know what he's telling them?" Jeff inquired.
They supposed they did. He was probably asking them to vote for him.
"Not a bit of it," said Jeff. "He'll do that later. He's telling them
they hold the key of the treasury and they've only to turn it to be
inside. He's giving no credit to brains and leadership and tradition and
law and punishment for keeping the world moving. He's telling the man
with the hod and the man with the pickaxe that simply by virtue of the
hod and the pickaxe the world is his: not a fraction of it, mind you,
but the earth. To kick into space, if he likes. And kick Addington with
it."
They smoothed him down after one fashion or another, and put their feet
up and offered him a cigar and wanted to hear all about his prison
experiences, but hardly liked to ask, and so he went away in a queer
coma of disappointment. They had not turned him out, but they didn't
know what he was talking about. Every man of them was trying either to
save the dollar he had or to make another dollar to keep it warm. Jeff
went home sore at heart; but when he had plucked up hope again out of
his sense of the ironies of things, he went back and saw the same men
and hammered at them. He explained, with a categorical clearness, that
he knew the West couldn't throw over the East now she'd taken it aboard.
Perhaps we'd got to learn our lesson from it. Just as it might be it
could learn something from us; and since it was here in our precincts,
it had got to learn. We couldn't do our new citizens the deadly wrong of
allowing the seeds of anarchy to be planted in them before they even got
over the effects of the voyage. If there were any virtue left in the
republic, the fair ideal of it should be stamped upon them as they came,
before they were taught to riot over the rights no man on earth could
have unless men are going to fight out the old brute battle for bare
supremacy.
Then one day a man said to him, "Oh, you're an idealist!" and all his
antagonists breathed more freely because they had a catchword. They
looked at him, illuminated, and repeated it.
One man, a big coal dealer down by the wharves, did more or less agree
with him.
"It's this damned immigration," he said. "They make stump speeches and
talk about the open door, but they don't know enough to shut the door
when the shebang's full."
It was the first pat retort of any sort Jeff had got.
"I'm not going back so far as that," he leaped at the chance of
answering. "I don't want to wait for legislation to crawl along and shut
the stable door. I only say, we've invited in a lot of foreigners. We've
got to teach 'em to be citizens. They've got to take the country on our
plan, and be one of us."
But the coal man had tipped back in his chair against the coal shed and
was scraping his nails with his pocket knife. He did it with exquisite
care, and his half-closed eyes had a look of sleepy contentment; he
might have been shaping a peaceful destiny. His glimmer of
responsiveness had died.
"I don't know what you're goin' to do about it," he said.
"We're going to put in a decent man for mayor," said Jeff. "And we're
going to keep Weedon Moore out."
"Moore ain't no good," said the coal man. "But I dunno's he'd do any
harm."
The eyes of them all were holden, Jeff thought. They were prisoners to
their own greed and their own stupidity. So he sat down and ran them
into his book, as blind custodians of the public weal. His book was
being written fast. He hardly knew what kind of book it was, whether it
wasn't a queer story of a wandering type, because he had to put what he
thought into the mouths of people. He had no doubt of being able to sell
it. When he first came out of prison three publishing firms of the
greatest enterprise had asked him to write his prison experiences. To
one of these he wrote now that the book was three-quarters done, and
asked what the firm wanted to do about it. The next day came an
up-to-date young man, and smoked cigarettes incessantly on the veranda
while he asked questions. What kind of a book was it? Jeff brought out
three or four chapters, and the young man whirled over the leaves with a
practised and lightning-like faculty, his spectacled eyes probing as he
turned.
"Sorry," said he. "Not a word about your own experiences."
"It isn't my prison experience," said Jeff. "It's my life here. It's
everybody's life on the planet."
"Couldn't sell a hundred copies," said the young man. Jeff looked at him
in admiration, he was so cocky and so sure. "People don't want to be
told they're prisoners. They want you to say you were a prisoner, and
tell how innocent you were and how the innocent never get a show and the
guilty go scot free."
"How do you think it's written?" Jeff ventured to ask.
"Admirably. But this isn't an age when a man can sit down and write what
he likes and tell the publisher he can take it and be damned. The
publisher knows mighty well what the public wants. He's going to give it
to 'em, too."
"You'd say it won't sell."
"My dear fellow, I know. I'm feeling the pulse of the public all the
time. It's my business."
Jeff put out his hands for the sheets and the censor gave them up
willingly.
"I'm frightfully disappointed," he said, taking off his eyeglasses to
wipe them on his handkerchief and looking so babyishly ingenuous that
Jeff broke into a laugh. "I thought we should get something 'live out of
you, something we could push with conviction, you know. But we can't
this; we simply can't." He had on his glasses now, and the
all-knowingness had come mysteriously back. His eyes seemed to shoot
arrows, and clutch and hold you so that you wanted to be shot by them
again. "Tell you what, though. We might do this. It's a crazy book, you
know."
"Is it?" Jeff inquired.
"Oh, absolutely. Daffy. They'd put it in the eccentric section of a
library, with books on perpetual motion and the fourth dimension. But if
you'd let us publish your name--"
"Decidedly."
"And do a little preliminary advertising. How prison life had undermined
your health and even touched your reason, so you weren't absolutely--you
understand? _Then_ we'd publish it as an eccentric book by an eccentric
fellow, a victim of prison regulations."
Jeff laid his papers down on the table beside him and set a glass on
them to keep them from blowing away.
"No," said he. "I never was saner in my life. I'm about the only sane
man in this town, because I've discovered we're all mad and the rest of
'em don't know it."
"That very remark!" said the young man, in unmixed approval. "Don't you
see what that would do in an ad? My dear chap, they all think the other
man's daffy."
Jeff carried the manuscript into the house, and asked the wise young
judge to come out and see his late corn, and offered him a platter of
it if he'd stay to supper. And he actually did, and proved to be a very
good fellow indeed, born in the country, and knowing all its ways, only
gifted with a diabolical talent for adapting himself to all sorts of
places and getting on. He was quite shy in the face of Anne and Lydia.
All his cockiness left him before their sober graces, and when Jeff took
him to the station he had lost, for the moment, his rapier-like action
of intellect for an almost maudlin gratitude over the family he had been
privileged to meet.
Anne and Lydia had paid him only an absent-minded courtesy. They were on
the point of giving an evening of folk-dancing, under Miss Amabel's
patronage, and young foreigners were dropping in all the time now to ask
questions and make plans. And whoever they were, these soft-eyed aliens,
they looked at Jeff with the look he knew. To them also he was The
Prisoner.
XXVII
With these folk dances began what has been known ever since as the
Dramatic Movement in Addington. On this first night the proudly
despairing ticket-seller began to repeat by seven o'clock: "Every seat
taken." Many stood and more were turned away. But the families of the
sons and daughters who were dancing were clever enough to come early,
and filled the body of the hall. Jeff was among them. He, too, had gone
early, with Anne and Lydia, to carry properties and help them with the
stage. And when he wasn't needed behind the scenes, he went out and sat
among the gay contingent from Mill End, magnificent creatures by
physical inheritance, the men still rough round the edges from the day's
work, but the women gay in shawls and beads and shiny combs. Andrea was
there and bent forward until Jeff should recognise him, and again Jeff
realised that smiles lit up the place for him. Even the murmured name
ran round among the rows. They were telling one another, here was The
Prisoner. Whatever virtue there was in being a prisoner, it had earned
him adoring friends.
He sat there wondering over it, and conventional Addington came in
behind and took the vacant places. Jeff was glad not to be among them.
He didn't want their sophisticated views. This wasn't a pageant for
critical comment. It was Miss Amabel's pathetic scheme for bringing the
East and the West together and, in an exquisite hospitality, making the
East at home.
But when the curtain went up, he opened his eyes to the scene and
ceased thinking of philanthropy and Miss Amabel. Here was beauty, the
beauty of grace and traditionary form. They were dancing the tarantella.
Jeff had seen it in Italy, more than one night after the gay little
dinners Esther had loved to arrange when they were abroad. She had
refused all the innocent bohemianisms of foreign travel; she had taken
her own atmosphere of expensive conventionalities with her, and they had
seen Europe through that medium. In all their travelling they had never
touched racial intimacies. They were like a prince and princess convoyed
along in a royal progress, seeing only what is fitting for royal eyes to
see. The tarantella then was no more than an interlude in a play.
To-night it was no such spectacle. Jeff, who had a pretty imagination of
his own, felt hot waves of homesickness for the beauties of foreign
lands, and yet not those lands as he had seen them unrolled for the
perusal of the traveller. He sat in a dream of the heaven of beauty that
lies across the sea, and he felt toward the men who had left it to come
here to better themselves a compassion in the measure of his compassion
for himself. How bare his own life had been, even when the world opened
before him her illuminated page! He had not really enjoyed these
exquisite delights of hers; he had not even prepared himself for
enjoying. He had kept his eyes fixed on the game that ensures mere
luxury, and he had let Esther go out into the market and buy for them
both the only sort of happiness her eyes could see. He loved this
dancing rout. He envied these boys and girls their passion and facility.
They were, the most ignorant of them, of another stripe from arid New
Englanders encased in their temperamental calm, the women, in a
laughable self-satisfaction, leading the intellectual life and their men
set on "making good". The poorest child of the East and South had an
inheritance that made him responsive, fluent, even while it left him
hot-headed and even froward. There was something, he saw, in this idea
of the melting-pot, if only the mingling could be managed by gods that
saw the future. You couldn't make a wonder of a bell if you poured your
metal into an imperfect mould. The mould must be flawless and the metal
cunningly mixed; and then how clear the tone, how resonant! It wasn't
the tarantella only that led him this long wandering. It was the quality
of the dancers; and through all the changing steps and measures Anne and
Lydia, too, were moving, Lydia a joyous leader in the temperamental rush
and swing.
Mrs. Choate, stately in dark silk and lace and quite unlike the
revolutionary matron who had lain in bed and let her soul loose with the
"Mysteries of Paris," sat between her son and daughter and was silent
though she grew bright-eyed. Mary whispered to her:
"Anne looks very sweet, doesn't she? but not at all like a dancer."
"Sweet," said the mother.
"Anne doesn't belong there, does she?" said Alston.
"No," said the mother. "Lydia does."
"Yes."
Alston, too, was moved by the spectacle, but he thought dove-like Anne
far finer in the rout than gipsy Lydia. His mother followed his thoughts
exactly, but while she placidly agreed, it was Lydia she inwardly
envied, Lydia who had youth and a hot heart and not too much scruple to
keep her from giving each their way.
When it was over, Jeff waited for Anne and Lydia, to carry home their
parcels. He stood for a moment beside Andrea, and Andrea regarded him
with that absurd devotion he exuded for The Prisoner. Jeff smiled at him
even affectionately, though quizzically. He wished he knew what picture
of him was under Andrea's skull. A sudden impulse seized him to make the
man his confidant.
"Andrea," said he, "I want you fellows to act plays with me."
Andrea looked enchanted.
"What play?" he asked.
"Shakespeare," said Jeff. "In English. That's your language, Andrea, if
you're going to live here."
Andrea's face died into a dull denial. A sort of glaze even seemed to
settle over the surface of his eyes. He gave a perfunctory grunt, and
Jeff caught him up on it.
"Won't she allow it?" he hazarded. "Madame Beattie?"
Andrea was really caught and quite evidently relieved, too, if Jeff
understood so well. He smiled again. His eyes took on their wonted
shining. Jeff, relying on Anne's and Lydia's delay, stayed not an
instant, but ran out of the side door and along to the front where
Madame Beattie, he knew, was making a stately progress, accepting
greetings in a magnificent calm. He got to the door as she did, and she
gave him the same royal recognition. She was dressed in black, her head
draped with lace, and she really did look a distinguished personage. But
Jeff was not to be put off with a mere greeting. He called her name.
"You may take me home," she said.
"I can't," said Jeff ruthlessly, when he had got her out of earshot.
"I'm going to carry things for Anne."
"No, you're not." She put her hand through his arm and leaned heavily
and luxuriously. "Good Lord, Jeff, why can't New Englanders dance like
those shoemakers' daughters? What is it in this climate that dries up
the blood?"
"Madame Beattie," said Jeff, "you've got to give away the game. You've
got to tell me how you've hypnotised every man Jack of those people
there to-night so they won't do a reasonable thing I ask 'em unless
they've had your permission."
"What do you want to do?" But she was pleased. There was somebody under
her foot.
"I want to rehearse some plays in English. And I gather from the leader
of the clan--"
"Andrea?"
"Yes, Andrea. They won't do it unless you tell them to."
"Of course they won't," said Madame Beattie.
"Then why won't they? What's your infernal spell?"
"It's the spell of the East. And you can't tempt them with anything that
comes out of the West."
"Their food comes out of the West," said Jeff, smarting.
"Oh, that! Well, that's about all you can give them. That's what they
come for."
"All of them? Good God!"
"Not good God at all. Don't you know what a man is led by? His belly.
But they don't all come for that. Some come for--" She laughed, a rather
cackling laugh.
"What?" Jeff asked her sternly. He shook her arm involuntarily.
"Freedom. That's talked about still. And a lot of demagogues like your
Weedon Moore get hold of 'em and debauch 'em and make 'em drunk."
"Drunk?"
"No, no. Not on liquor. Better if they did. But they tell 'em they're
gods and all they've got to do is to climb up on a throne and crown
themselves."
"Then why won't you," said Jeff, in wrath, "let me knock something else
into their heads. You can't do it by facts. There aren't many facts
just now that aren't shameful. Why can't you let me do it by poetry?"
Madame Beattie stopped in the street and gazed up at the bright heaven.
She was remembering how the stars looked in Italy when she was young and
sure her voice would sound quite over the world. She seldom challenged
the stars now, they moved her so, in an almost terrible way. What had
she made of life, they austerely asked her, she who had been driven by
them to love and all the excellencies of youth? But then, in answer, she
would ask them what they had done for her.
"Jeff," said she, "you couldn't do it in a million years. They'll do
anything for me, because I bring their own homes to them, but they
couldn't make themselves over, even for me."
"They like me," said Jeff, "for some mysterious reason."
"They like you because I've told them to."
"I don't believe it." But in his heart he did.
"Jeff," said she, "life isn't a matter of fact, it's a matter of
feeling. You can't persuade men and women born in Italy and Greece and
Syria and Russia that they're happy in this little bare town. It doesn't
smell right to them. Their hearts are somewhere else. And they want
nothing so much in the world as to get a breath from there or hear a
story or see somebody that's lived there. Lived--not stayed in a
_pension_."
"Do they feel so when they've seen their sisters and cousins and aunts
carved up into little pieces there?" Jeff asked scoffingly. But she was
hypnotising him, too. He could believe they did.
"What have you to offer 'em, Jeff, besides wages and a prospect of not
being assassinated? That's something, but by God! it isn't everything."
She swore quite simply because out in the night even in the straight
street of a New England town she felt like it and was carelessly willing
to abide by the chance of God's objecting.
"But I don't see," said Jeff, "why you won't let me have my try at it."
He was waiting for her to signify her readiness to go on, and now she
did.
"Because now, Jeff, they do think you're a god. If they saw you trying
to produce the Merchant of Venice they'd be bored and they wouldn't
think so any more."
"Have you any objection," said Jeff, "to my trying to produce the
Merchant of Venice with English-speaking children of foreigners?"
"Not a grain," said Madame Beattie cordially. "There's your chance. Or
you can get up a pageant, if you like-, another summer. But you'll have
to let these people act their own historic events in their own way. And,
Jeff, don't be a fool." They were standing before her door and Esther at
the darkened window above was looking down on them. Esther had not gone
to the dances because she knew who would be there. She told herself she
was afraid of seeing Jeff and because she had said it often enough she
believed it. "Tell Lydia to come to see me to-morrow," said Madame
Beattie. Sophy had opened the door. It came open quite easily now since
the night Madame Beattie had called Esther's name aloud in the street.
Jeff took off his hat and turned away. He did not mean to tell Lydia.
She saw enough of Madame Beattie, without instigation.
XXVIII
Lydia needed no reminder to go to Madame Beattie. The next day, in the
early afternoon, she was taking her unabashed course by the back stairs
to Madame Beattie's bedchamber. She would not allow herself to be
embarrassed or ashamed. If Esther treated Madame Beattie with a proper
hospitality, she reasoned when her mind misgave her, it would not be
necessary to enter by a furtive way. Madame Beattie was dressed and in a
high state of exhilaration. She beckoned Lydia to her where she sat by a
window commanding the street, and laid a hand upon her wrist.
"I've actually done it," said she. "I've got on her nerves. She's going
away."
The clouds over Lydia seemed to lift. Yet it was incredible that Esther,
this charming sinister figure always in the background or else blocking
everybody's natural movements, should really take herself elsewhere.
"It's only to New York," said Madame Beattie. "She tells me that much.
But she's going because I've ransacked her room till she sees I'm bound
to find the necklace."
Lydia was tired from the night before; her vitality was low enough to
waken in her the involuntary rebuttal, "I don't believe there is any
necklace." But she only passed a hand over her forehead and pushed up
her hair and then drew a little chair to Madame Beattie's side.
"So you think she'll come back?" she asked drearily.
"Of course. She's only going for a couple of days. You don't suppose
she'd leave me here to conspire with Susan? She'll put the necklace into
a safe. That's all."
"But you mustn't let her, must you?"
"Oh, I sha'n't let her. Of course I sha'n't."
"What shall you do?"
"She's not going till night. She takes Sophy, of course."
"But what can you do?"
"I shall consult that dirty little man. He's a lawyer and he's not in
love with her."
"Mr. Moore? You haven't much time, Madame Beattie. She'll be going."
"That's why I'm dressed," said Madame Beattie. "I shall go in a minute.
He can give me a warrant or something to search her things."
Lydia went at once, with a noiseless foot. She felt a sudden distaste
for the accomplished fact of Esther face to face with justice. Yet she
did not flinch in her certainty that nemesis must be obeyed and even
aided. Only the secrecy of it led her to a hatred of her own silent ways
in the house, and as she often did, she turned to her right instead of
to her left and walked to the front stairs. There at her hand was
Esther's room, the door wide open. Downstairs she could hear her voice
in colloquy with Sophy. Rhoda's voice, on this floor, made some curt
remark. Everybody was accounted for. Lydia's heart was choking her, but
she stepped softly into Esther's room. It seemed to her, in her
quickened feeling, that she could see clairvoyantly through the matter
that kept her from her quest. A travelling bag, open, stood on the
floor. There was a hand-bag on the bed, and Lydia, as if taking a
predestined step, went to it, slipped the clasp and looked. A purse was
there, a tiny mirror, a book that might have been an address book, and
in the bottom a roll of tissue paper. Nothing could have stopped her
now. She had to know what was in the roll. It was a lumpy parcel, thrown
together in haste as if, perhaps, Esther had thought of making it look
as if it were of no account. She tore it open and found, with no
surprise, as if this were an old dream, the hard brightness of the
jewels.
"There it is," she whispered to herself, with the scant breath her
choking heart would lend her. "Oh, there it is!"
She rolled the necklace in its paper and closed the bag. With no
precaution she walked out of the room and down the stairs. The voices
still went on, Esther's and Sophy's from the library, and she did not
know whether Madame Beattie had already left the house. But opening the
front door, still with no precaution, she closed it sharply behind her
and walked along the street in sunshine that hurt her eyes.
Lydia went straight home, not thinking at all about what she had done,
but wondering what she should do now. Suddenly she felt the
unfriendliness of the world. Madame Beattie, her ally up to this moment,
was now a foe. For whether justly or not, Madame Beattie would claim the
necklace, and how could Lydia know Jeff had not already paid her for it?
And Anne, soft, sweet Anne, what would she do if Lydia threw it in her
lap and said, "Look! I took it out of Esther's bag." She was thinking
very clearly, it seemed to her, and the solution that looked most like a
high business sagacity made it likely that she ought to carry it to
Alston Choate. He was her lawyer. And yet indeed he was not, for he did
nothing for her. He was only playing with her, to please Anne. But all
the while she was debating her feet carried her to the only person she
had known they would inevitably seek. She went directly upstairs to
Jeffrey's room where he might be writing at that hour.
He was there. His day's work had gone well. He was beginning to have the
sense the writer sometimes has, in a fortunate hour, of divine intention
in his task. Jeff was enjoying an egoistic interlude of feeling that the
things which had happened to him had been personally intended to bring
him to a certain deed. The richness of the world was crowding on him,
the bigness of it, the dangers. He could scarcely choose, among such
diversities, what to say. And dominating everything he had to say in the
compass of this one book was the sense of life, life at its full, and
the stupidity of calling such a world bare of wonders. And to him in his
half creative, half exulting dream came Lydia, her face drawn to an
extremity of what looked like apprehension. Or was it triumph? She might
have been under the influence of a drug that had induced in her a wild
excitement and at the same time strung her nerves to highest pitch.
Jeff, looking up at her, pushed his papers back.
"What is it?" he asked.
Lydia, for answer, moved up to his table and placed the parcel there
before him. It was the more shapeless and disordered from the warm
clutch of her despairing hand. He took it up and carelessly unrolled it.
The paper lay open in his palm; he saw and dropped the necklace to the
table. There it lay, glittering up at him. Lydia might have expected
some wondering or tragic exclamation; but she did not get it. He was
astonished. He said quite simply:
"Aunt Patricia's necklace." Then he looked up at her, and their eyes
met, hers with desperate expectation and his holding her gaze in an
unmoved questioning. "Did she give it to you?" he asked, and she shook
her head with a negation almost imperceptible. "No," said Jeffrey to
himself. "She didn't have it. Who did have it?"
He let it lie on the table before him and gazed at the bauble in a
strong distaste. Here it was again, a nothingness coming between him and
his vision of the real things of the earth. It seemed singularly trivial
to him, and yet powerful, too, because he knew how it had moved men's
minds.
"Where did you get it?" he asked, looking up at Lydia.
Something inside her throat had swollen. She swallowed over it with
difficulty before she spoke. But she did speak.
"I took it."
"Took it?"
He got up, and, with a belated courtesy, pulled forward a chair. But
Lydia did not see it. Her eyes were fixed on his face, as if in its
changes would lie her destiny.
"You mean you found it."
"No. I didn't find it. I took it."
"You must have found it first."
"I looked for it," said Lydia.
"Where?"
"In Esther's bag."
Jeffrey stood staring at her, and Lydia unwinkingly stared at him. She
was conscious of but one desire: that he would not scowl so. And yet she
knew it was the effort of attention and no hostile sign. He spoke now,
and gently because he saw how great a strain she was under.
"You'll have to tell me about it, Lydia. Where was the bag?"
"It was on her bed," said Lydia. "I went into the room and saw it there.
Madame Beattie told me she was going to New York--"
"That Madame Beattie was?"
"No. Esther. To hide the necklace. So Madame Beattie shouldn't get it.
And I saw the bag. And I knew the necklace must be in it. So I took it."
By this time her hands were shaking and her lips chattered piteously.
Jeffrey was wholly perplexed, but bitterly sorry for her.
"What made you bring it here, dear?" said he.
Lydia caught at the endearing word, and something like a spasm moved her
face.
"I had to," said she. "It has made all the trouble."
"But I don't want it," said Jeffrey. "Whatever trouble it made is over
and done with. However this came into Esther's hands--"
"Oh, I know how that was," said Lydia. "She stole it. Madame Beattie
says so."
"And whatever she is going to do with it now--that isn't a matter for me
to meddle with."
"Don't you care?" said Lydia, in a passionate outcry. "Now you've got it
in your hand, don't you care?"
"Why," said Jeff, "what could I do with it?"
"If you know it's Madame Beattie's, you can take it to her and tell her
she can go back to Europe and stop hounding you for money."
"How do you know she's hounded me?"
"She says so. She wants you to get into politics and into business and
pay her back."
"But that's what you've wanted me to do yourself."
"Oh," said Lydia, in a great breath of despairing love, "I want you to
do what you want to. I want you to sit here at this table and write.
Because then you look happy. And you don't look so any other time."
Jeff stood gazing at her in a compassion that brought a smart to his
eyes. This, a sad certainty told him, was love, the love that is
unthinking. She was suffocated by the pure desire to give the earth to
him and herself with it. What disaster might come from it to her or to
the earth, her lulled brain did not consider. The self-immolation of
passion had benumbed her. And now she looked at him beseechingly, as if
to beg him only not to scorn her gift. Her emotion transferred itself to
him. He must be the one to act; but disappointingly, he knew, with the
mind coming in to school disastrous feeling and warn it not again to
scale such heights or drop into such depths.
"Lydia," said he, "you must leave this thing here with me."
His hand indicated by a motion the hateful bauble that lay there
glittering at them.
"Why, yes," said she. "I've left it with you."
"I mean you must leave it altogether, the decision what to do with it,
even the fact of your having had anything whatever to do with it
yourself."
Lydia nodded, watching him. It had not occurred to her that there need
be any concealment. She had meant to indicate that to herself when she
walked so boldly down the front stairs and clanged the door and went
along the street with the parcel plainly in her hand. If there was a
slight drop in her expectation now, she did not show it. What she had
indeed believed was that Jeff would greet the necklace with an
incredulous joy and flaunt it in the face of Esther who had stolen it,
while he gave it back to Madame Beattie, who had preyed on him.
"Do you understand?" said he. "You mustn't speak of it."
"I shall have to tell," said Lydia, "if anybody asks me. If I didn't it
would be--queer."
"It's a great deal more than queer," said Jeff.
He smiled now, and she drew a happy breath. And he was amused, in a grim
way. He had been, for a long time, calling himself plain thief, and
taking no credit because his theft was what might have seemed a crime of
passion of a sort. He had put himself "outside ", and now this child had
committed a crime of passion and she was outside, too. Her ignorant
daring frightened him. At any instant she might declare her guilt. She
needed to be brought face to face, for her own safety, with the names of
things.
"Lydia," said he, "you know what it would be called--this taking
something out of another woman's bag?"
"No," said Lydia.
"Theft," said he. He meant to have no mercy on her until he had roused
her dormant caution. "If you take what is not yours you are a thief."
"But," said Lydia, "I took it from Esther and it wasn't hers, either."
She was unshaken in her candour, but he noted the trembling of her lip
and he could go no further.
"Leave it with me," he said. "And promise me one thing. Don't speak to
anybody about it."
"Unless they ask me," said Lydia.
"Not even if they ask you. Go to your room and shut yourself in. And
don't talk to anybody till I see you again."
She turned obediently, and her slender back moved him with a compassion
it would have been madness to recognise. The plain man in him was in
physical rebellion against the rules of life that made it criminal to
take a sweet creature like this into your arms to comfort her when she
most needed it and pour out upon her your gratitude and adoration.
Jeff took the necklace and its bed of crumpled paper with it, wrapped it
up and, holding it in his hand as Lydia had done, walked downstairs, got
his hat and went off to Esther's. What he could do there he did not
fully know, save to fulfil the immediate need of putting the jewels into
some hand more ready for them than his own. He had no slightest wish to
settle the rights of the case in any way whatever. "Then," his mind was
saying in spite of him, "Esther did have the necklace." But even that he
was horribly unwilling to face. There was no Esther now; but he hated,
from a species of decency, to drag out the bright dream that had been
Esther and smear it over with these blackening certainties. "Let be,"
his young self cried to him. "She was at least a part of youth, and
youth was dear." Why should she be pilloried since youth must stand
fettered with her for the old wrongs that were a part of the old
imagined sweetness? The sweetnesses and the wrongs had grown together
like roots inextricably mingled. To tear out the weeds you would rend
also the roots they twined among.
In a stern musing he was at Esther's door before he had decided what to
say, had knocked and Sophy, large-eyed and shaken out of her specious
calm, had admitted him. She did not question him nor did Jeffrey even
ask for Esther. With the opening of the door he heard voices, and now
the sound of an angry crying, and Sophy herself had the air of an
unwilling servitor at a strange occasion. Jeffrey, standing in the
doorway of the library, faced the group there. Esther was seated on a
low chair, her face crumpled and red, as if she had just wiped it free
of tears. The handkerchief, clutched into a ball in her angry fist, gave
further evidence. Madame Beattie, enormously amused, sat in the handsome
straight-backed chair that became her most, and unaffectedly and broadly
smiled. And Alston Choate, rather pale in a sternness of judicial
consideration, stood, hands in his pockets, and regarded them. At
Jeffrey's entrance they looked up at him and Esther instantly sprang to
her feet and retreated to a position at the right of Choate, where he
might be conceived of as standing in the position of tacitly protecting
her. Jeff, the little parcel in his hand, advanced upon them.
"Here is the necklace," said he, in a perfectly commonplace tone. "I
suppose that's what you are talking about."
Esther's eyes, by the burning force he felt in them, seemed to draw his,
and he looked at her, as if to inquire what was to be done with it now
it was here. Esther did not wait for any one to put that question. She
spoke sharply, as if the words leaped to utterance.
"The necklace was stolen. It was taken out of this house. Who took it?"
Jeffrey had not for a moment wondered whether he might be asked. But now
he saw Lydia as he had left her, in her childish misery, and answered
instantly: "I took it."
Alston Choate gave a little exclamation, of amazement, of disgust. Then
he drew the matter into his own judicial hands. "Where did you take it
from?" he asked.
Jeffrey looked at him in a grave consideration. Alston Choate seemed to
him a negligible quantity; so did Esther and so did Madame Beattie. All
he wanted was to clear the slender shoulders of poor savage, wretched
Lydia at home.
"Do you mind telling me, Jeffrey?" Alston was asking, in quite a human
way considering that he embodied the majesty of the law. "You couldn't
have walked into this house and taken a thing which didn't belong to you
and carried it away."
His tone was rather a chaffing one, a recall to the intercourse of
everyday life. "Be advised," it said. "Don't carry a dull joke too far."
"Certainly I took it," said Jeffrey, smiling at Alston broadly. He was
amused now, little more. He saw how his background of wholesale thievery
would serve him in the general eye. Not old Alston's. He did not think
for a moment Alston would believe him, but it seemed more or less of a
grim joke to ask him to. "Don't you know," he said, "I'm an ex-convict?
Once a jailbird, always a jailbird. Remember your novels, Choate. You
know more about 'em than you do about law anyway."
Then he saw, with a shock, that Alston really did believe him. He also
knew at the same instant why. Esther was pouring the unspoken flood of
her persuasion upon him. Jeff could almost feel the whiff and wind of
the temperamental rush. He knew how Esther's belief set upon you like an
army with banners when she wanted you also to believe. And still he held
the little crumpled packet in his hand.
"Will you open it?" Alston asked him, with a gentleness of courtesy that
indicated he was sorry indeed, and Jeffrey laid it on the table,
unrolled the paper and let the bauble lie there drinking in the light
and throwing it off again a million times enhanced. Alston advanced to
it and gravely looked down upon it without touching it. Madame Beattie
turned upon it a cursory gaze, and gave a nod that seemed to accept its
identity. But Esther did not look at all. She put her hand on the table
to sustain herself, and her burning eyes never once left Alston's face.
He looked round at her.
"Is this it?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure," said Esther.
She seemed to ask how a woman could doubt the identity of a trinket she
had clasped about her neck a thousand times, and pored over while it lay
in some hidden nest.
"Ask her," said Madame Beattie, in her tiniest lisp, "if the necklace is
hers."
There flashed into Alston Choate's mind the picture of Lydia, as she
came to his office that day in the early summer, to bring her childish
accusation against Esther. The incident had been neatly pigeonholed, but
only as it affected Anne. It could not affect Esther, he had known then,
with a leap at certainty measured by his belief in her. The belief had
been big enough to offset all possible evidence.
"Ask her," said Madame Beattie, with relish, "where she got it."
When Esther had cried a little at the beginning of the interview, the
low lamenting had moved him beyond hope of endurance, and he had
wondered what he could do if she kept on crying. But now she drew
herself up and looked, not at him, but at Madame Beattie.
"How dare you?" she said, in a low tone, not convincingly to the ears of
those who had heard it said better on the stage, yet with a reproving
passion adequate to the case.
But Alston asked no further questions. Madame Beattie went amicably on.
"Mr. Choate, this matter of the necklace is a family affair. Why don't
you run away and let Jeffrey and his wife--and me, you know--let us
settle it?"
Alston, dismissed, forgot he had been summoned and that Esther might be
still depending on him. He turned about to the door, but she recalled
him.
"Don't go," she said. The words were all in one breath. "Don't go far. I
am afraid."
He hesitated, and Jeffrey said equably but still with a grim amusement:
"I think you'd better go."
So he went out of the room and Esther was left between her two
inquisitors.
XXIX
That she did look upon Jeff as her tormentor he could see. She took a
darting step to the door, but he was closing it.
"Wait a minute," he said. "There are one or two things we've got to get
at. Where did you find the necklace?"
She met his look immovably, in the softest obstinacy. It smote him like
a blow. There was something implacable in it, too, an aversion almost as
fierce as hate.
"This is the necklace," he went on. "It was lost, you know. Where did
you find it, Esther?"
But suddenly Esther remembered she had a counter charge to make.
"You have broken into this house," she said, "and taken it. If it is
Aunt Patricia's, you have taken it from her."
"No," said Aunt Patricia easily, "it isn't altogether mine. Jeff made me
a payment on it a good many years ago."
Esther turned upon her.
"He paid you for it? When?"
"He paid me something," said Madame Beattie. "Not the value of the
necklace. That was when you stole it, Esther. He meant to pay me the
full value. He will, in time. But he paid me what he could to keep you
from being found out. Hush money, Esther."
Queer things were going on in Jeff's mind. The necklace, no matter what
its market price, seemed to him of no value whatever in itself. There
it lay, a glittering gaud; but he had seen a piece of glass that threw
out colours as divinely. Certainly the dew was brighter. But as
evidence, it was very important indeed. The world was a place, he
realised, where we play with counters such as this. They enable us to
speak a language. When Esther had stolen it, the loss had not been so
much the loss of the gems as of his large trust in her. When Madame
Beattie had threatened him with exposing her he had not paid her what he
could because the gems were priceless, but that Esther's reputation was.
And so he had learned that Madame Beattie was unscrupulous. What was he
learning now? Nothing new about Madame Beattie, but something astounding
about Esther. The first upheaval of his faith had merely caused him to
adjust himself to a new sort of Esther, though only to the old idea of
women as most other men had had the sense to take them: children,
destitute of moral sense and its practical applications, immature
mammals desperately in love with enhancing baubles. He had not believed
then that Esther lied to him. She had, he was too sure for questioning,
actually lost the thing. But she had not lost it. She had hidden it,
with an inexplicable purpose, for all these years.
"Esther!" he said. She lifted her head slightly, but gave no other sign
of hearing. "We'll give this back to Madame Beattie."
"No, you won't, Jeff," said Madame Beattie. "I'd rather have the money
for it. Just as soon as you get into the swing again, you'll pay me a
little on the transaction."
"Sell the damned thing then, if you don't want it and do want money,"
said Jeff. "You've got it back."
"I can't sell it." She had half closed her eyes, and her lips gave an
unctious little relish to the words.
"Why can't you?"
"My dear Jeffrey, because, when the Royal Personage who gave it to me
was married, I signed certain papers in connection with this necklace
and I can't sell it, either as a whole or piecemeal. I assure you I
can't."
"Very well," said Jeff. "That's probably poppycock, invented for the
occasion. But you've got your necklace. There it is. Make the most of
it. I never shall pay you another cent."
"Oh, yes, you will," said Madame Beattie. She was unclasping and
clasping a bracelet on her small wrist, and she looked up at him idly
and in a perfect enjoyment of the scene. "Don't you want to pay me for
not continuing my reminiscences in that horrid little man's paper?
Here's the second chapter of the necklace. It was stolen. You come
walking in here and say you've stolen it again. But where from? Out of
Esther's hand-bag. Do you want the dirty little man to print that?
Necklace found in Mrs. Jeffrey Blake's hand-bag?"
Jeff was looking at her sharply.
"I never said I took it from a hand-bag," he rejoined.
Madame Beattie broke down and laughed. She gave the bracelet a final
snap.
"You're quite a clever boy," said she. "Alston Choate wouldn't have seen
that if he'd hammered at it a week. Yes, it was in Esther's bag. I don't
care much how it got out. The question is, how did it get in? How are
you going to shield Esther?"
He was aware that Esther was looking at him in a breathless waiting. The
hatred, he knew, must have gone out of her face. She was the abject
human animal beseeching mercy from the stronger. That she could ask him
whom she had repudiated to stand by her in her distress, hurt him like a
personal degradation. But he was sorry for her, and he would fight. He
answered roughly, at a venture, and he felt her start. Yet the roughness
was not for her.
"No. I shall do nothing whatever," he said, and heard her little cry and
Madame Beattie's assured tone following it, with an uncertainty whether
he had done well.
"You're quite decided?" Madame Beattie was giving him one more chance.
"You're going to let Esther serve her time in the dirty little man's
paper? It'll be something more than publicity here. My word! Her name
will fly over the globe."
He heard Esther's quick breathing nearer and nearer, and then he felt
her hand on his arm. She had crept closer, involuntarily, he could
believe, but drawn by the instinct to be saved. He felt his own heart
beating thickly, with sorrow for her, an agonising ruth that she should
have to sue to him. But he spoke sharply, not looking at her, his eyes
on Madame Beattie's.
"I shall not assume the slightest responsibility in the matter. I have
told you I took the necklace. You can say that in Weedon Moore's paper
till you are both of you--" he paused.
The hand was resting on his arm, and Esther's breathing presence choked
him with a sense of the strangeness of things and the poignant suffering
in mere life.
"I sha'n't mention you," said Madame Beattie. "I know who took the
necklace."
"What?"
His movement must have shaken the touch on his arm, for Esther's hand
fell.
"You don't suppose I'm a fool, do you?" inquired Madame Beattie. "I knew
it was going to happen. I saw the whole thing."
"Then," said Esther, slipping away from him a pace, "you didn't do it
after all."
If he had not been so shaken by Madame Beattie's words he could have
laughed with the grim humour of it. Esther was sorry he had not done it.
"So," said Madame Beattie, "you'd better think twice about it. I'll give
you time. But I shall assuredly publish the name of the person who took
the necklace out of Esther's bag, as well as the fact that it had to be
in Esther's bag or it couldn't have been taken out. Two thieves, Jeff.
You'd better think twice."
"Yes," said Jeff. "I will think. Is it understood?" He walked over to
her and stood there looking down at her.
She glanced pleasantly up at him.
"Of course, my dear boy," she said. "I shouldn't dream of saying a
word--till you've thought twice. But you must think quick, Jeff. I can't
wait forever."
"I swear," said Jeff, "you are--" Neither words nor breath failed him,
but he was afraid of his own passion.
Madame Beattie laughed.
"Jeff," said she, "I've no visible means of support. If I had I should
be as mild--you can't think!"
He turned and, without a look at Esther, strode out of the room. Esther
hardly waited for the door to close behind him before she fell upon
Madame Beattie.
"Who did it?" she cried. "That woman?"
Madame Beattie was exploring a little box for a tablet, which she took
composedly.
"What woman?" she asked.
"That woman upstairs."
"Rhoda Knox? God bless me, no! Rhoda Knox wouldn't steal a button. She's
New England to the bone."
"Sophy?"
"Esther, you're a fool. Why don't you let me manage Jeff in my own way?
You won't manage him yourself." She got up with a clashing of little
chains and yawned broadly. "Don't forget Alston Choate sitting in the
dining-room waiting like a messenger boy."
"In the dining-room?"
"Yes. Did you think he'd go? He's waiting there to hear Jeff assault
you, and come to the rescue. You told him you were afraid." She was on
her way to the door, but she turned. "I may as well take this," she said
idly, and swept the necklace into her hand. She held it up and shook it
in the light, and Esther's eyes, as she knew they would, dwelt on it
with a hungry passion.
"You are taking it away," said Esther. "You've no right to. He said he
had paid you money on it when it was lost. If he did, it belongs to him.
And I'm his wife."
"I might as well take it with me," said Madame Beattie. "You don't act
as if you were his wife."
A quick madness shot into Esther's brain and overwhelmed it, anger, or
fright, she could not tell what. She did not cry out because she knew
Alston Choate was in the next room, but she spoke sobbingly:
"He did take it out of my bag. You have planned it between you to get it
back into your hands."
Madame Beattie laughed pleasantly and went upstairs. And Esther crossed
the little hall and stood in the dining-room door looking at Alston
Choate. As she looked, her heart rose, for she saw conquest easy, in his
bowed head, his frowning glance. He had not wanted to stay, his attitude
told her; he was even yet raging against staying. But he could not leave
her. Passion in him was fighting side by side with feminine
implacability in her against the better part of him. She went forward
and stood before him droopingly, a most engaging picture of the purely
feminine. But he did not look at her, and she had to throw what argument
she might into her voice.
"You were so good to stay," she said, with a little tired sigh. "They've
gone. Come back into the other room."
He rose heavily and followed her, but in the library he did not sit
down. Esther sank into a low chair, leaned back in it and closed her
eyes. She really needed to give way a little. Her nerves were trembling
from the shock of more than one attack on them; fear, anger, these were
what her husband and Madame Beattie had roused in her. Jeffrey was
refusing to help her, and she hated him. But here was another man deftly
moved to her proximity by the ever careful hand of providence that had
made the creatures for her.
Alston stood by the mantel, leaning one elbow on it, with a strange
implication of wanting to put his head down and hide his face.
"Esther!" said he. There was no pretence now of being on terms too
distant to let him use her name.
She looked up at him, softly and appealingly, though he was not looking
at her. But Esther, if she had played Othello, would have blacked
herself all over. Alston began again in a voice of what sounded like an
extreme of irritation.
"For God's sake, tell me about this thing."
"You know all I do," she said brokenly.
"I don't know anything," said Choate. "You tell me your husband----"
"Don't call him that," she entreated.
"Your husband entered this house and took the necklace. I want to know
where he took it from."
"She told you," said Esther scornfully.
He gained a little courage now and ventured to look at her. If she could
repel Madame Beattie's insinuation, it must mean she had something on
her side. And when he looked he wondered, in a rush of pity, how he
could have felt anything for that crushed figure but ruth and love. So
when he spoke again his voice was gentler, and Esther's courage leaped
to meet it.
"I am told the necklace was in your bag. How did it get there?"
"I don't know," said Esther, in a perfect clarity.
His new formed hope crumbled. He could hear inexorably, like a counter
cry, Lydia's voice, saying, "She stole it." Had Esther stolen it? But
Esther did not know Lydia had said it, or that it had ever been said to
him at all, and she was daring more than she would have dared if she had
known of that antagonist.
"It is a plot between them," she said boldly.
"Between whom?"
"Aunt Patricia and him."
"What is the plot?"
"I don't know."
"If you think there was a plot, you must have made up your mind what the
plot was and what they were to gain by it. What do you believe the plot
to have been?"
This was all very stupid, Esther felt, when he might be assuring her of
his unchanged and practical devotion.
"Oh, I don't know," she said irritably. "How should I know?"
"You wouldn't think there was a plot without having some idea of what it
was," he was insisting, in what she thought his stupid way. "What is
your idea it was?"
This was really, she saw, the same question over again, which was
another instance of his heavy literalness. She had to answer, she knew
now, unless she was to dismiss him, disaffected.
"She put the necklace in my bag," she ventured, with uncertainty as to
the value of the statement and yet no diminution of boldness in making
it.
"What for?"
"To have him steal it, I suppose."
"To have him steal her own necklace? Couldn't she have given it to him?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Esther. "She is half crazy. Don't you see she
is? She might have had a hundred reasons. She might have thought if he
tried to steal it he'd get caught, and she could blackmail him."
"But how was he to know she had put it in the bag?"
"I don't know." Esther was settling into the stolidity of the obstinate
when they are crowded too far; yet she still remembered she must not
cease to be engaging.
"Why was it better to have him find it in your bag than anywhere else in
the house?" he was hammering on.
"I don't know," said Esther again, and now she gave a little sigh.
That, she thought, should have recalled him to his male responsibility
not to trap and torture. But she had begun to wonder how she could
escape when the door opened and Jeff came in. Alston turned to meet him,
and, with Esther, was amazed at his altered look. Jeff was like a man
who had had a rage and got over it, who had even heard good news, or had
in some way been recalled. And he had. On the way home, when he had
nearly reached there, in haste to find Lydia and tell her the necklace
was back in Madame Beattie's hands, he had suddenly remembered that he
was a prisoner and that all men were prisoners until they knew they
were, and it became at once imperative to get back to Esther and see if
he could let her out. And the effect of this was to make his face to
shine as that of one who was already released from bondage. To Esther
he looked young, like the Jeff she used to know.
"Don't go, Choate," he said, when Alston picked himself up from the
mantel and straightened, as if his next move might be to walk away. "I
wanted to see Esther, but I'd rather see you both. I've been thinking
about this infernal necklace, and I realise it's of no value at all."
Choate's mind leaped at once to the jewels in Maupassant's story, and
Madame Beattie's quick disclaimer when he ventured to hint the necklace
might be paste. Did Jeff know it was actually of no value?
Jeff began to walk about the room, expressing himself eagerly as if it
were difficult to do it at all and it certainly could not be done if he
sat.
"I mean," said he, "the only value of anything tangible is to help you
get at something that isn't tangible. The necklace, in itself, isn't
worth anything. It glitters. But if we were blind we shouldn't see it
glitter."
"We could sell it," said Choate drily, "or its owner could, to help us
live and support being blind."
Esther looked from one to the other. Jeffrey seemed to her quite mad.
She had known him to talk in erratic ways before he went into business
and had no time to talk, but that had been a wildness incident to youth.
But Choate was meeting him in some sort of understanding, and she
decided she could only listen attentively and see what Choate might find
in him.
"It's almost impossible to say what I want to," said Jeff. The sweat
broke out on his forehead and he plunged his hands in his pockets and
stood in an obstinate wrestling with his thought. "I mean, this
necklace, as an object, is of no more importance, really, than that
doorstone out there. But the infernal thing has captured us. It's made
us prisoner. And we've got to free ourselves."
Now Esther was entirely certain he was mad. Being mad, she did not see
that he could say anything she need combat. But her own name arrested
her and sent the blood up into her face.
"Esther," said he, "you're a prisoner to it because you've fallen in
love with its glitter, and you think if you wore it you'd be lovelier.
So it's made you a prisoner to the female instinct for adornment."
Alston was watching him sharply now. He was wondering whether Jeff was
going to accuse her of appropriating it in the beginning.
"Choate is a prisoner," said Jeff earnestly and with such simplicity
that even Choate, with his fastidious hatred of familiarity, could not
resent it. "He's a prisoner to your charm. But here's where the necklace
comes in again. If he could find out you'd done unworthy things to get
it your charm would be broken and he'd be free."
This was so true that Choate could only stare at him and wish he would
either give over or brutally tell him whether he was to be free.
"Madame Beattie uses the necklace as a means of livelihood," said Jeff.
He was growing quite happy in the way his mind was leading him, because
it did seem to be getting him somewhere, where all the links would hold.
"Because she can get more out of it, in some mysterious way I haven't
fathomed, than by selling it. And so she's prisoner to it, too."
"I shall be able to tell what the reason is," said Choate, "before long,
I fancy. I've sent for the history of the Beattie necklace. I know a man
in Paris who is getting it for me."
"Good!" said Jeff. "Now I propose we all escape from the necklace. We're
prisoners, and let's be free."
"How are you a prisoner?" Alston asked him.
Jeff smiled at him.
"Why," said he, "if, as I told you, I took the necklace from this house,
I'm a criminal, and the necklace has laid me by the heels. Who's got it
now?"
This he asked of Esther and she returned bitterly:
"Aunt Patricia's got it. She walked out of the room with it, shaking it
in the sun."
"Good!" said Jeff again. "Let her have it. Let her shake it in the sun.
But we three can escape. Have we escaped? Choate, have you?"
He looked at Choate so seriously that Choate had to take it with an
equal gravity. He knew how ridiculous the situation could be made by a
word or two. But Jeff was making it entirely sane and even epic.
"We know perfectly well," said Jeff, "that the law wouldn't have much to
do if all offenders and all witnesses told the truth. They don't,
because they're prisoners--prisoners to fear and prisoners to
selfishness and hunger. But if we three told each other the truth--and
ourselves, too--we could be free this instant. You, Esther, if you would
tell Choate here how you've loved that necklace and what you've done for
it, why, you'd free him."
Esther cried out here, a little sharp cry of rage against him.
"I see," said she, "it's only an attack on me. That's where all your
talk is leading."
"No, no," said Jeff earnestly. "I assure you it isn't. But if you owned
that, Esther, you'd be ashamed to want glittering things. And Choate
would get over wanting you. And that's what he'd better do."
The impudence of it, Choate knew, was only equalled by its coolness.
Jeff was at this moment believing so intently in himself that he could
have made anybody--but an angry woman--believe also. Jeff was telling
him that he mustn't love Esther, and virtually also that this was
because Esther was not worthy to be loved. But if Choate's only armor
was silence, Esther had gathered herself to snatch at something more
effectual.
"You say we're all prisoners to something," she said to Jeffrey. Her
face was livid now with anger and her eyes glowed upon him. "How about
you? You came into this house and took the necklace. Was that being a
prisoner to it? How about your being free?"
Choate turned his eyes away from her face as if it hurt him. The taunt
hurt him, too, like unclean words from lips beloved. But he looked
involuntarily at Jeff to see how he had taken them. Jeff stood in
silence looking gravely at Esther, but yet as if he did not see her. He
appeared to be thinking deeply. But presently he spoke, and as if still
from deep reflection.
"It's true, Esther. I'm a prisoner, too. I'm trying to see how I can get
out."
Choate spoke here, adopting the terms of Jeff's own fancy.
"If you want us all to understand each other, you could tell Esther why
you took the necklace. You could tell us both. We seem to be thrown
together over this."
"Yes," said Jeff. "I could. I must. And yet I can't." He looked up at
Alston with a smile so whimsical that involuntarily Alston met it with a
glimmer of a smile. "Choate, it looks as if I should have to be a
prisoner a little longer--perhaps for life."
He went toward the door like a man bound on an urgent errand, and
involuntarily Alston turned to follow him. The sight hurt Esther like an
indignity. They had forgotten her. Their man's country called them to
settle man's deeds, and the accordance of their going lashed her brain
to quick revolt. It had been working, that shrewd, small brain, through
all their talk, ever since Madame Beattie had denied Jeff's having taken
the necklace, and now it offered its result.
"You didn't take it at all," she called after them. "It was that girl
that's had the entry to this house. It's Lydia French."
XXX
At the words Alston turned to Jeff in an involuntary questioning. Jeff
was inscrutable. His face, as Alston saw it, the lines of the mouth, the
down-dropped gaze, was sad, tender even, as if he were merely sorry.
They walked along the street together and it was Choate who began
awkwardly.
"Miss Lydia came to me, some weeks ago, about these jewels."
Here Jeff stopped him, breaking in upon him indeed when he had got thus
far.
"Alston, let's go down under the old willow and smoke a pipe."
Alston was rather dashed at having the tentative introduction of Lydia
at once cut off, and yet the proposition seemed to him natural. Indeed,
as they turned into Mill Street it occurred to him that Jeff might be
providing solitude and a fitting place to talk. As they went down the
old street, unchanged even to the hollows worn under foot in the course
of the years, something stole over them and softened imperceptibly the
harsh moment. There was Ma'am Fowler's where they used to come to buy
doughnuts. There was the house where the crippled boy lived, and sat at
the window waving signals to the other boys as they went past. At the
same window a man sat now. Jeff was pretty sure it was the boy grown up,
and yet was too absorbed in his thought of Lydia to ask. He didn't
really care. But it was soothing to find the atmosphere of the place
enveloped him like a charm. It wasn't possible they were so old, or
that they had been mightily excited a minute before over a foolish
thing. Presently after leaving the houses they turned off the road and
crossed the shelving sward to the old willow, and there on a bench
hacked by their own jackknives they sat down to smoke. Jeff remembered
it was he who had thought to give the bench a back. He had nailed the
board from tree to tree. It was here now or its fellow--he liked to
think it was his own board--and he leaned against it and lighted up. The
day's perturbation had taken Choate in another way. He didn't want to
smoke. But he rolled a cigarette with care and pretended to take much
interest in it. He felt it was for Jeff to begin. Jeff sat silent a
while, his eyes upon the field across the flats where the boys were
playing ball. Yet in the end he did begin.
"That necklace, Choate," said he, "is a regular little devil of a
necklace. Do you realise how much mischief it's already done?"
Between Esther's asseverations and Lydia's theories Choate's mind was in
a good deal of a fog. He thought it best to give a perfunctory grunt and
hope Jeff would go on.
"And after all," said Jeff, "as I said, the devilish thing isn't of the
slightest real value in itself. It can, in an indirect way, send a
fellow to prison. It can excite an amount of longing in a woman's mind
colossal enough to make one of the biggest motives possible for any sort
of crime. Because it glitters, simply because it glitters. It can cause
another woman who has done caring for glitter, to depend on it for a
living."
"You mean Madame Beattie," said Alston. "If it's her necklace and she
can sell it, why doesn't she do it? Royal personages don't account for
that."
But Jeff went on with his ruminating.
"Alston," said he, "did it ever occur to you that, with the secrets of
nature laid open before us as they are now--even though the page isn't
even half turned--does it occur to you we needn't be at the mercy of
sex? Any of us, I mean, men and women both. Have we got to get drunk
when it assaults us? Have we got to be the cave man and carry off the
woman? And lie to ourselves throughout? Have we got to say, 'I covet
this woman because she is all beauty'? Can't we keep the lookout up in
the cockloft and let him judge, and if he says, 'That isn't beauty, old
man'--believe him?"
"But sometimes," said Alston, "it is beauty."
He knew what road Jeff was on. Jeff was speaking out his plain thought
and at the same time assuring them both that they needn't, either of
them, be submerged by Esther, because real beauty wasn't in her. If they
ate the fruit of her witchery it would be to their own damnation, and
they would deserve what they got.
"Yes," said Jeff, "sometimes it is real beauty. But even then the thing
that grows out of sex madness is better than the madness itself.
Sometimes I think the only time some fellows feel alive is when they're
in love. That's what's given us such an idea of it. But when I think of
a man and woman planking along together through the dust and mud--good
comrades, you know--that's the best of it."
"Of course," said Alston stiffly, "that's the point. That's what it
leads to."
"Ah, but with some of them, you'd never get there; they're not made for
wives--or sisters--or mothers. And no man, if he saw what he was going
into, would dance their dance. He wouldn't choose it, that is, when he
thinks back to it."
Alston took out his match-box, and felt his fingers quiver on it. He
was enraged with himself for minding. This was the warning then. He was
told, almost in exact words, not to covet his neighbour's wife,
cautioned like a boy not to snatch at forbidden fruit, and even,
unthinkably, that the fruit was, besides not being his, rotten. And at
his heart he knew the warning was fair and true. Esther had dealt a blow
to his fastidious idealities. Her deceit had slain something. She had
not so much betrayed it to him by facts, for facts he could, if passion
were strong enough, put aside. But his inner heart searching for her
heart, like a hand seeking a beloved hand, had found an emptiness. He
was so bruised now that he wanted to hit out and hurt Jeff, perhaps, at
least force him to naked warfare.
"You want me to believe," he said, "that--Esther--" he stumbled over the
word, but at such a pass he would not speak of her more
decorously--"years ago took Madame Beattie's necklace."
Jeff was watching the boys across the flats, critically and with a real
interest.
"She did," he said.
Alston bolstered himself with a fictitious anger.
"And you can tell me of it," he blustered.
"You asked me."
"You believe she did?"
"It's true," said Jeff, with the utmost quietness. "I never have said it
before. Not to my father even. But he knows. He did naturally, in the
flurry of that time."
"Yet you tell me because I ask you."
Alston seemed to be bitterly defending Esther.
"Not precisely," said Jeff. "Because you're bewitched by her. You must
get over that."
The distance wavered before Choate's eyes, He hated Jeffrey childishly
because he could be so calm.
"You needn't worry," he said. "She is as completely separated from me as
if--as if you had never been away from her."
"That's it," said Jeff. "You can't marry her unless she's divorced from
me. She's welcome to that--the divorce, I mean. But you can't go
drivelling on having frenzies over her. Good God, Choate, don't you see
what you're doing? You're wasting yourself. Shake it off. You don't want
Esther. She's shocked you out of your boots already. And she doesn't
know there's anything to be shocked at. You're Addington to the bone,
and Esther's a primitive squaw. You've nothing whatever to do with one
another, you two. It's absurd."
Choate sat looking at the landscape which no longer wavered. The boys
ran fairly straight now. Suddenly he began to laugh. He laughed
gaspingly, hysterically, and Jeff regarded him from time to time
tolerantly and smoked.
"I know what you're thinking," he said, when Alston stopped, with a last
splutter, and wiped his eyes. "You're thinking, between us we've broken
all the codes. I have vilified my wife. I've warned you against her and
you haven't resented it. It shows the value of extreme common-sense in
affairs of the heart. It shows also that I haven't an illusion left
about Esther, and that you haven't either. And if we say another word
about it we shall have to get up and fight, to save our self-respect."
So Alston did now light his cigarette and they went on smoking. They
talked about the boys at their game and only when the players came down
to the scow, presumably to push over and buy doughnuts of Ma'am Fowler,
did they get up to go. As they turned away from the scene of boyish
intimacies, involuntarily they stiffened into another manner; there was
even some implication of mutual dislike in it, of guardedness, one
against the other. But when they parted at the corner of the street
Alston, out of his perplexity, ventured a question.
"I should be very glad to be told if, as you say, you took the necklace
out of Esther's bag, why you took it."
"Sorry," said Jeff. "You deserve to be told the whole business. But you
can't be."
So he went home, knowing he was going to an inquiring Lydia. And how
would an exalted common-sense work if presented to Lydia? He thought of
it all the way. How would it do if, in these big crises of the heart,
men and women actually told each other what they thought? It was not the
way of nature as she stood by their side prompting them to their most
picturesque attitude, that her work might be accomplished, saying to the
man, "Prove yourself a devil of a fellow because the girl desires a
hero," and to the girl, "Be modesty and gentleness ineffable because
that is the complexion a hero loves." And the man actually believes he
is a hero and the girl doesn't know she is hiding herself behind a veil
too dazzling to let him see her as she is. How would it be if they
outwitted nature at her little game and gave each other the fealty of
blood brothers, the interchange of the true word?
Lydia came to the supper table with the rest. She was rather quiet and
absorbed and not especially alive to Jeff's coming in. No quick glance
questioned him about the state of things as he had left them. But after
supper she lingered behind the others and asked him directly:
"Couldn't we go out somewhere and talk?"
"Yes," said he. "We could walk down to the river."
They started at once, and Anne, seeing them go, sighed deeply. Lydia was
shut away from her lately. Anne missed her.
Lydia and Jeff went down the narrow path at the back of the house, a
path that had never, so persistent was it, got quite grown over in the
years when the maiden ladies lived here. Perhaps boys had kept it alive,
running that way. At the foot and on the river bank were bushes, alder
and a wilderness of small trees bound by wild grape-vines into a wall.
Through these Lydia led the way to the fallen birch by the waterside.
She turned and faced Jeffrey in the gathering dusk. He fancied her face
looked paler than it should.
"Does she know it?" asked Lydia.
"Who?"
"Esther. Does she know I stole it out of the bag?"
"Yes," said Jeff. Suddenly he determined to tell the truth to Lydia. She
looked worthy of it. He wouldn't save her pain that belonged to the
tangle where they groped. He and she would share the pain together. "She
guessed it. Nobody told her she was right."
"Then," said Lydia, "I must go away."
"Go away?"
"To save Farvie and Anne. They mustn't know it. I wanted to go this
afternoon, just as soon as you took the necklace away from me and I
realised what people would say. But I knew that would be silly. People
can't run away and leave notes behind. But I can tell Anne I want to go
to New York and get pupils. And I could get them. I can do housework,
too."
She was an absolutely composed Lydia. She had forestalled him in her
colossal common-sense.
"But, Lydia," said he, "you don't need to. Madame Beattie has her
necklace. I gave it back into her hand. I daresay the old harpy will
want hush money, but that's not your business. It's mine. I can't give
her any if I would, and she knows it. She'll simply light here like a
bird of prey for a while and harry me for money to shield Esther, to
shield you, and when she finds she can't get it she'll sail peacefully
off."
"Madame Beattie wouldn't do anything hateful to me," said Lydia.
"Oh, yes, she would, if she could get an income out of it. She wouldn't
mean to be hateful. That night-hawk isn't hateful when it spears a
mole."
"Do you mean," said Lydia, "that just because Madame Beattie has her
necklace back, they couldn't arrest me? Because if they could I've
certainly got to go away. I can't kill Farvie and Anne."
"Nobody will arrest anybody," said Jeff. "You are absolutely out of it.
And you must keep your mouth tight and stay out."
"But you said Esther knew I did it."
"She guessed. Let her keep on guessing. Let Madame Beattie keep on. I
have told them I did it and I shall keep on telling them so."
Lydia turned upon him.
"You told them that? Oh, I can't have it. I won't. I shall go to them at
once."
She had even turned to fly to them.
"No," said Jeff. "Stay here, Lydia. That damnable necklace has made
trouble enough. It goes slipping through our lives like a detestable
snake, and now it's stopped with its original owner, I propose it shall
stay stopped. It's like a property in a play. It goes about from hand to
hand to hand, to bring out something in the play. And after all the play
isn't about the necklace. It's about us--us--you and Esther and Choate
and Madame Beattie and me. It's betraying us to ourselves. If it hadn't
been for the necklace in the first place and Esther's coveting it, I
might have been a greasy citizen of Addington instead of a queer half
labourer and half loafer; my father wouldn't have lost his nerve,
Choate wouldn't have been in love with Esther, and you wouldn't have
been doing divine childish things to bail me out of my destiny."
Lydia selected from this the fact that hit her hardest.
"Is Alston Choate in love with Esther?"
"He thinks he is."
"Then I must tell Anne."
"For God's sake, no! Lydia, I'm talking to you down here in the dusk as
if you were the sky or that star up there. The star doesn't tell."
"But Anne worships him."
"Do you mean she's in love with Choate?"
"No," said Lydia, "I don't mean that. I mean she thinks he's the most
beautiful person she ever saw."
"Then let her keep on thinking so," said Jeff. "And sometime he'll think
that of her."
Lydia was indignant.
"If you think Anne----" she began, and he stopped her.
"No, no. Anne is a young angel. Only a feeling of that kind--Lydia, I am
furious because I can't talk to you as I want to."
"Why can't you?" asked Lydia.
"Because it isn't possible, between men and women. Unless they've got a
right to. Unless they can throw even their shams and vanities away, and
live in each other's minds. I am married to Esther. If I tell you I
won't ask you into my mind because I am married to her you'll think I am
a hero. And if I do ask you in, you'll come--for you are very brave--and
you'll see things I don't want you to see."
"You mean," said Lydia, "see that you know I am in love with you. Well,
I'm not, Jeff, not in the way people talk about. Not that way."
His quick sense of her meanings supplied what she did not say: not
Esther's way. She scorned that, with a youthful scorn, the feline
domination of Esther. If that was being in love she would have none of
it. But Jeff was not actually thinking of her. He was listening to some
voice inside himself, an interrogatory voice, an irresponsible one, not
warning him but telling him:
"You do care. You care about Lydia. That's what you're
facing--love--love of Lydia."
It was disconcerting. It was the last thing for a man held by the leg in
several ways to contemplate. And yet there it was. He had entered again
into youth and was rushing along on the river that buoys up even a leaf
for a time and feels so strong against the leaf's frail texture that
every voyaging fibre trusts it joyously. The summer air felt sweet to
him. There were wild perfumes in it and the smell of water and of earth.
"Lydia!" he said, and again he spoke her name.
"Yes," said Lydia. "What is it?"
She stood there apart from him, a slim thing, her white scarf held
tight, actually, to his quickened sense, as if she kept the veil of her
virginity wrapped about her sternly. For the moment he did not feel the
despair of his greater age, of his tawdry past or his fettered present.
He was young and the night air was as innocently sweet to him as if he
had never loved a woman and been repulsed by her and dwelt for years in
the anguish of his own recoil.
"Lydia," he said, "what if you and I should tell each other the truth?"
"We do," said Lydia simply. "I tell you the truth anyway. And you could
me. But you don't understand me quite. You think I'd die for you. Yes, I
would. But I shouldn't think twice about wanting to be happier with you.
I'm happy enough now."
A thousand thoughts rushed to his lips, to tell her she did not know how
happy they could be. But he held them back. All the sweet intimacies of
life ran before him, life here in Addington, secure, based on old
traditions, if she were his wife and they had so much happiness they
could afford to be careless about it as other married folk were
careless. There might not be daily banquets of delight, but cool fruits,
the morning and the evening, the still course of being that seemed to
him now, after his seething first youth, the actual paradise. But Lydia
was going on, an erect slim figure in her enfolding scarf.
"And you mustn't be sorry I stole the necklace--except for Anne and
Farvie, if she does anything to me." "She" was always Esther, he had
learned. "I'm glad, because it makes us both alike."
"You and me?"
"Yes. You took something that makes you call yourself a thief. Now I'm a
thief. We're just alike. You said, when you first came home, doing a
thing like that, breaking law, makes you feel outside."
"It isn't only feeling outside," he made haste to tell her. "You are
outside. You're outside the social covenant men have made. It's a good
righteous covenant, Lydia. It was come to through blood and misery. It's
pretty bad to be outside."
"Well," said Lydia, "I'm outside anyway. With you. And I'm glad of it.
You won't feel so lonesome now."
Jeff's eyes began to brim.
"You little hateful thing," he said. "You've made me cry."
"Got a hanky?" Lydia inquired solicitously.
"Yes. Besides, it isn't a hanky cry, unless you make it worse. Lydia, I
wish you and Anne would go away and let father and me muddle along
alone."
"Do you," said Lydia joyously. "Then you do like me. You like me
awfully. You think you'll tell me so if I stay round."
"Do I, you little prying thing?" He thought he could establish some
ground of understanding between them if he abused her. "You're a good
little sister, Lydia, but you're a terrifying one."
"No," said Lydia. "I'm not a sister." She let the enfolding scarf go and
the breeze took its ends and made them ripple. "Anne's a sister. She
likes you almost as well as she does Farvie. But she does like Farvie
best. I don't like Farvie best. I like you best of all the world. And I
love to. I'm determined to. You ought to be liked over and over, because
you've had so much taken away from you. Why, that's what I'm for, Jeff.
That's what I was born for. Just to like you."
He took a step toward her, and the rippling scarf seemed to beckon him
on. Lydia stepped back. "But if you touched me, Jeff," she said, "if you
kissed me, I'd kill you. I'm glad you did it once when you didn't think.
But if we did it once more----"
She stopped and he heard her breath and then the click of her teeth as
if she broke the words in two.
"Don't be afraid, Lydia," he said. "I won't."
"I'm not afraid," she flashed.
"And don't talk of killing."
"You thought I'd kill myself. No. What would it matter about me? If I
could make you a little happier--not so lonesome--why, you might kiss
me. All day long. But you'd care afterward. You'd say you were outside."
There was an exquisite pity in the words. She was older than he in her
passion for him, stronger in her mastery of it, and she loved him
overwhelmingly and knew she loved him. "Now you see," said Lydia
quietly. "You know the whole. You can call me your sister, if you want
to. I don't care what you call me. I suppose some sisters like their
brothers more than anybody else in the world. But not as I like you.
Nobody ever liked anybody as I like you. And when you put your arms down
on the table and lay your head on them, you can think of that."
"How do you know I put my head on the table?" said Jeff. It was
wholesome to him to sound rough to her.
"Why, of course you do," she said. "You did, one of those first days. I
wish you didn't. It makes me want to run out doors and scream because I
can't come in and 'poor' your hair."
"I won't do it again," said Jeff. "Lydia, I can't say one of the things
I want to. Not one of them."
"I don't expect you to," said Lydia. "I understand you and me too. All I
wanted was for you to understand me."
"I do," said Jeff. "And I'll stand up to it. Shake hands, Lydia."
"No," said Lydia, "I don't want to shake hands." She folded the scarf
again about her, tighter, it seemed, than it was before. "You and I
don't need signs and ceremonies. Now I'm going back and read to Farvie.
You go to walk, Jeff. Walk a mile. Walk a dozen miles. If we had horses
we'd get on 'em bareback and ride and ride."
Jeff stood and watched her while he could see the white scarf through
the dusk. Then he turned to go along the river path, but he stopped. He,
too, thought of galloping horses, devouring distance with her beside him
through the night. He began to strip off his clothes and Lydia, on the
rise, heard his splash in the river. She laughed, a wild little laugh.
She was glad he was conquering space in some way, his muscles taut and
rejoicing. Lydia had attained woman's lot at a bound. All she wanted was
for him to have the full glories of a man.
XXXI
Alston Choate went home much later consciously to his mother, and she
comforted him though he could not tell her why he needed it. She and
Mary were sitting on the back veranda, looking across the slope of the
river, doing nothing, because it was dusk, and dropping a word here and
there about the summer air and the night. Alston put down his hat and,
as he sat, pushed up his hair with the worried gesture both women knew.
Mary at once went in to get him a cool drink, her never-failing service,
and his mother turned an instant toward him expectantly and then away
again. He caught the movement. He knew she was leaving him alone.
"Mother," he said, "you never were disgusted through and through. With
yourself."
"Oh, yes," said she. "It's more or less my normal state. I'm disgusted
because I haven't courage. If I'd had courage, I should have escaped all
the things that make me bad company for myself now."
Alston, in his quickened mood, wondered what it was she had wanted to
escape. Was it Addington? Was it his father even, a courteous Addington
man much like what Alston was afraid he might be in the end, when he was
elderly and pottered down town with a cane? He hated to be what he was
afraid he inevitably must. It came upon him with renewed impetus, now
that he had left Esther with a faint disgust at her, and only a wearied
acquiescence in the memory that she had once charmed him. He wished he
were less fastidious even. How much more of a man he should have felt
if he had clung to his passion for her and answered Jeffrey with the
oath or blow that more elemental men found fitting in their rivalry.
"Mother," said he, "does civilisation rot us after all? Have we got to
be savages to find out what's in us?"
"Something seems to rot us round the edges," said the mother. "But
that's because there don't appear to be any big calls while we're so
comfortable. You can't get up in the midst of dinner and give a war-cry
to prove you're a big chief. It would be silly. You'd be surprised,
dear, to know how I go seething along and can't find anything to burn
up--anything that ought to be burned. Sometimes when Mary and I sit
crocheting together I wonder whether she won't smell a scorch."
He thought of the night when she had lain in bed and told how she was
travelling miles from Addington in her novel.
"You never owned these things before, mother," he said. "What makes you
now?"
"That I'm a buccaneer? Maybe because you've got to the same point
yourself. You half hate our little piffling customs, and yet they've
bound you hand and foot because they're what you're used to. And they're
the very devil, Alston, unless you're strong enough to fight against 'em
and live laborious days."
"What's the matter with us? Is it Addington?"
"Good old Addington! Not Addington, any more than the world. It's grown
too fat and selfish. Pretty soon somebody's going to upset the balance
and then we shall fight and the stern virtues will come back."
"You old Tartar," said Alston, "have we really got to fight?"
"We've got to be punished anyhow," said his mother. "And I suppose the
only punishment we should feel is the punishment of money and blood."
"Let's run away, mother," said Alston. "Let's pick up Mary and run away
to Europe."
"Oh, no," said she. "They're going to fight harder than we are. Don't
you see there's an ogre over there grinning at them and sharpening his
claws? They've got to fight Germany."
"England can manage Germany," said Alston, "through the pocket.
Industrial wars are the only ones we shall ever see."
"If you can bank on that you're not so clever as I am," said his mother.
"I see the cloud rising. Every morning it lies there thick along the
east. There's going to be war, and whether we're righteous enough to
stand up against the ogre, God knows."
Alston was impressed, in spite of himself. His mother was not given to
prophecy or passionate asseveration.
"But anyhow," said she, "you can't run away, for they're going to ask
you to stand for mayor."
"The dickens they are! Who said so?"
"Amabel. She was in here this afternoon, as guileless as a child. Weedon
Moore told her they were going to ask you to stand and she hoped you
wouldn't."
"Why?"
"Because Moore's the rival candidate, and she thinks he has an influence
with the working-man. She thinks the general cause of humanity would be
better served by Moore. That's Amabel."
"She needn't worry," said Alston, getting up. "I shouldn't take it."
"Alston," said his mother, "there's your chance. Go out into the
rough-and-tumble. Get on a soap box. Tell the working-man something that
will make him think you haven't lived in a library all your life. It
may not do him any good, but it'll save your soul alive."
She had at last surprised him. He was used to her well-bred acquiescence
in his well-bred actions. She knew he invited only the choice between
two equally irreproachable goods: not between the good and evil. Alston
had a vague uncomfortable besetment that his mother would have had a
warmer hope for him if he had been tempted of demons, tortured by
doubts. Then she would have bade him take refuge on heights, even have
dragged him there. But she knew he was living serenely on a plain.
Alston thought there ought to be some sympathy accorded men who liked
living on a plain.
"Good Lord!" said he, looking down at her and liking her better with
every word she said. "You scare me out of my boots. You're a firebrand
on a mountain."
"No," said his mother. "I'm a decent Addington matron with not a
hundredth part of a chance of jolting the earth unless you do it for me.
I can't jolt for myself because I'm an anti. There's Mary. Hear the ice
clink. I'll draw in my horns. Mary'd take my temperature."
Alston stayed soberly at home and read a book that evening, his nerves
on edge, listening for a telephone call. It did not come, but still he
knew Esther was willing him to her.
Esther sat by the window downstairs, in the dusk, in a fever of desire
to know what, since the afternoon, he was thinking of her, and for the
first time there was a little fleeting doubt in her heart whether she
could make him think something else. As to Alston, she had the
hesitations of an imperfect understanding. There were chambers where he
habitually dwelt, and these she never entered at all. His senses were
keenly yet fastidiously alive. They could never be approached save
through shaded avenues she found it dull to traverse, and where she
never really kept her way without great circumspection. The passion of
men was, in her eyes, something practically valuable. She did not go out
to meet it through an overwhelming impetus of her own. It was a way of
controlling them, of buying what they had to give: comforts and pretty
luxuries. She would have liked to live like an adored child, all her
whims supplied, all her vanities fed. And here in this little circle of
Addington Alston Choate was the one creature who could lift her out of
her barren life and give her ease at every point with the recognition of
the most captious world.
And she was willing him. As the evening wore on, she found she was
breathing hard and her wrists were beating with loathing of her own
situation and hatred of those who had made it for her, if she could
allow herself to think she hated. For Esther had still to preserve the
certainty that she was good. Madame Beattie, up there with her
night-light and her book, she knew she hated. Of Jeff she did not dare
to think, he made her wrists beat so, and of Alston Choate she knew it
was deliberately cruel of him not to come. And then as if her need of
something kind and unquestioning had summoned him, a step fell on the
walk, and she saw Reardon, and went herself to let him in. There he was,
florid, large, and a little anxious.
"I felt," said he, "as if something had happened to you."
She stood there under the dim hall-light, a girlish creature in her
white dress, but with wonderful colour blooming in her cheeks. He could
not know that hate had brought it there. She seemed to him the flower of
her own beauty, rich, overpowering. She held the door open for him, and
when he had followed her into the library, she turned and put both her
hands upon his arm, her soft nearness like a perfume and a breath. To
Reardon, she was immeasurably beautiful and as far as that above him.
His heart beating terribly in his ears, he drew her to him sure that, in
her aloofness, she would reprove him. But Esther, to his infinite joy
and amazement, melted into his arms and clung there.
"God!" said Reardon. She heard him saying it more than once as if
entirely to himself and no smaller word would do. "You don't--" he said
to her then, "you don't--care about me? It ain't possible." Reardon had
reverted to oldest associations and forgotten his verb.
She did not tell him whether she cared about him. She did not need to.
The constraining of her touch was enough, and presently they were
sitting face to face, he holding her hands and leaning to hear her
whispered words. For she had immediately her question ready:
"Do you think I ought to live like this--afraid?"
"Afraid?" asked Reardon. "Of him?"
"Yes. He came this afternoon. There is nobody to stand between us. I am
afraid."
Reardon made the only answer possible, and felt the thrill of his own
adequacy.
"I'll stand between you."
"But you can't," she said. "You've no right."
"There's but one thing for you to do," said Reardon. "Tell what you're
telling me to a lawyer. And I'll--" he hesitated. He hardly knew how to
put it so that her sense of fitness should not be offended. "I'll find
the money," he ended lamely.
The small hands stayed willingly in his. Reardon was a happy man, but at
the same time he was curiously ashamed. He was a clean man who ate
moderately and slept well and had the proper amount of exercise, and
this excess of emotion jarred him in a way that irritated him. He did
blame Jeff, who was at the bottom of this beautiful creature's misery.
Still, if Jeff had not left her, she would not be sitting here now with
the white hands in his. But he was conscious of a disturbing element of
the unlawful, like eating a hurtful dish at dinner. Reardon had lived
too long in a cultivating of the middle way to embark with joyousness on
illicit possessing. As the traditions of Addington were wafting Alston
Choate away from this primitive little Circe on her isle, so his
acquired habits of safe and healthful living were wafting him. If his
inner refusals could have been spoken crudely out they would have
amounted to a miserable plea:
"Look here. It ain't because I don't want you. But there's Jeff."
For Reardon was not only a good fellow, but he had gazed with a wistful
awe on the traditions of Addington's upper class. He had tried honestly
to look like the men born to it; he never owned even to himself that he
felt ill at ease in it. Yet he did regard it with a reverence the men
that made it were far from feeling, and he knew something was due it. He
drew back, releasing gently the white hands that lay in his. He wanted
to kiss them, but he was not even yet sure they were enough his to
justify it. He cleared his throat.
"The man for you to go to," said he, "is Alston Choate. I don't like
him, but he's square as a die. And if you can get yourself where it'll
be possible to speak to you without knowing there's another man stepping
between--" he hesitated, his own heart beating for her and the decencies
of Addington holding him back. "Hang it, Esther," he burst forth, "you
know where I stand."
"Do I?" said Esther.
She rose, and, looking wan, gave him her hand. And Reardon got out of
the room, feeling rather more of a sneak than Alston had when he went
away. Esther stood still until she heard the door close behind him. Then
she ran out of the room and upstairs, to hide herself, if she could,
from the exasperated thought of the men who had failed her. She hated
them all. They owed her something, protection, or cherishing tenderness.
She could not know it was Addington that had got hold of them in one way
or another and kept them doggedly faithful to its own ideals. As she was
stepping along the hall, Madame Beattie called her.
"Esther, stop a minute. I want you."
Esther paused, and then came slowly to the door and stood there. She
looked like a sulky child, with the beauty of the child and the charm.
She hated Madame Beattie too much to gaze directly at her, but she knew
what she should see if she did look: an old woman absolutely brazen in
her defiance of the softening arts of dress, divested of every
bewildering subterfuge, sitting in a circle of candlelight in the
adequate company of her book.
"Esther," said Madame Beattie, "you may have the necklace."
Then Esther did glance quickly at her. She wondered what Madame Beattie
thought she could get out of giving up the adored gewgaw into other
hands.
"I don't want it," said Madame Beattie. "I'd much rather have the money
for it. Get the money and bring it to me."
Esther curled her lip a little in the scorn she really felt. She could
not conceive of any woman's being so lost to woman's perquisites as to
confess baldly her need of money above trinkets.
"But you'd better go to the right man for it," said Madame Beattie. "It
isn't Alston Choate. Jeff's the man, my dear. He's cleverer than the
devil if you once get him started. Not that I think you could. He's
done with you, I fancy."
Esther, still speechless, wondered if she could. It was a challenge of
precisely the force Madame Beattie meant it to be.
XXXII
The next morning, a sweet one of warmth and gently drifting leaves,
Esther went to call on Lydia, and Madame Beattie, with a satirical grin,
looked after her from the window. Madame Beattie's understanding of the
human mind had given her a dramatic hold on the world when the world
loved her, and it was mechanically serving her now in these little deeds
that were only of a mean importance, though, from the force of habit,
she played the game so hard. Esther was very fresh and pretty in her
white dress with an artful parasol that cast a freshening glow. She had
the right expression, too, the calmness of one who makes a commonplace
morning call.
And it was not Lydia who saw her coming. It was Jeff, in his working
blouse and shabby trousers, standing on a cool corner of the veranda and
finishing his morning smoke before he went out to picking early apples.
Esther knew at precisely what instant he caught sight of her, and saw
him knock out his pipe into the garden bed below the veranda and lay it
on the rail. Then he waited for her, and she was almost amusedly
prepared for his large-eyed wonder and the set of the jaw which betrayed
his certainty of having something difficult to meet. It was not thus he
had been used to greet her on sweet October mornings in those other
days. Suddenly he turned with a quick gesture of the hand as if he were
warning some one back, and Esther, almost at the steps, understood that
he had heard Lydia coming and had tried to stop her. Lydia evidently
had not understood and ran innocently out on some errand of her own.
Seeing Esther, she halted an appreciable instant. Then something as
quickly settled itself in her mind, and she advanced and stood at the
side of Jeff. Esther furled her parasol and came up the steps, and her
face did not for an instant change in its sweet seriousness. She looked
at Lydia with a faint, almost, it might seem, a pitying smile.
"I thought," said she, "after what I said, I ought to come, to reassure
you."
Neither Jeff nor Lydia seemed likely to move, and Esther stood there
looking from one to the other with her concerned air of having something
to do for them. It was only a moment, yet it seemed to Lydia as if they
had been communing a long time, in some hidden fashion, and learning
amazingly to understand each other. That is, she was understanding
Esther, and the outcome terrified her. Esther seemed more dangerous than
ever, bearing gifts. But Lydia could almost always do the sensible thing
in an emergency and keep emotion to be quelled in solitude.
"Come in," said she, "and sit down. Jeff, won't you move the chairs into
the shady corner? We'd better not go into the library. Farvie's there."
Jeff awoke from his tranced surprise and the two women followed him to
the seclusion of the vines. There Esther took the chair he set for her,
and looked gravely at Lydia, as she said:
"I was very hasty. I told him--" She indicated Jeff with a little
gesture. It seemed she found some significance in the informality of the
pronoun--"I told him I had found out who took the necklace. I knew of
course he would tell you. And I came to keep you from being troubled."
"Lydia," said Jeff, with the effect of stepping quickly in between them,
"go into the house. This is something that doesn't concern you in the
least."
Lydia, very pale now, was looking at Esther, in a fixed antagonism. Her
hands were tightly clasped. She looked like a creature braced against a
blow. But Esther seemed of all imaginable persons the least likely to
deliver a blow of any sort. She was gracefully relaxed in her chair, one
delicate hand holding the parasol and the other resting, with the
fingers upcurled like lily petals, on her knee.
"No," said Lydia, not looking at Jeff, though she answered him, "I
sha'n't go in. It does concern me. That's what she came for. She's told
you so. To accuse me of taking it."
With the last words, a little scorn ran into her voice. It was a scorn
of what Esther might do, and it warmed her and made her suddenly feel
equal to the moment.
"No," said Esther, in her softest tone, a sympathetic tone, full of a
grave concern. "It was only to confess I ought not to have said it.
Whatever I knew, I ought to have kept it to myself. For there was the
necklace. You had sent it back. You had done wrong, but what better
could you do than send it back? And I understand--" she glowed a little
now, turning to Jeff--"I understand how wonderful it was of you to take
it on yourself."
Jeff was frowning, and though facing her, looking no further than the
lily-petalled hand. Esther was quite sure he was dwelling on the hand
with inevitable appreciation. She had a feeling that he was frowning
because it distracted him from his task of pleasing Lydia and at the
same time meeting her own sympathetic tribute. But he was not. Esther
knew a great many things about men, but she was naïvely unconscious of
their complete detachment from feminine allurements when they are
summoned to affairs.
"Esther," said Jeff, before Lydia could speak, "just why are you here?"
"I told you," said Esther, with a pretty air of pained surprise. "To
tell Lydia she mustn't be unhappy."
Then Lydia found her tongue.
"I'm not unhappy," she said, with a brutality of incisiveness which
offers the bare fact with no concern for its effect. "I took the
necklace. But I don't know," said Lydia, with one of her happy
convictions that she really had a legal mind and might well follow its
inspirations, "I don't know whether it is stealing to take a thing away
from a person who has stolen it herself."
"Lydia!" said Jeff warningly.
He hardly knew why he was stopping her. Certainly not in compassion for
Esther; she, at this moment, was merely an irritating cause of a spoiled
morning. But Lydia, he felt, like a careering force that had slipped
control, must be checked before she did serious harm.
"You know," said Lydia, now looking Esther calmly in the eye, "you know
you were the first to steal the necklace. You stole it years ago, from
Madame Beattie. No, I don't know whether it's stealing to take it from
you when you'd no business to have it anyway. I must ask some one."
Lydia was no longer pale with apprehension. The rose was on her cheek.
Her eyes glowed with mischief and the lust of battle. Once she darted a
little smiling look at Jeff. "Come on," it seemed to say. "I can't be
worse off than I am. Let's put her through her paces and get something
out of it--fun, at least."
Esther looked back at her in that pained forbearance which clothed her
like a transfiguring atmosphere. Then she drew a sharp breath.
"Jeff!" she said, turning to him.
The red had mounted to his forehead. He admired Lydia, and with some
wild impulse of his own, loved her bravado.
"Oh, come, Lydia," he said. "We can't talk like that. If Esther means to
be civil--"
Yet he did not think Esther meant to be civil. Only he was hard pushed
between the two, and said the thing that came to him. But it came empty
and went empty to them, and he knew it.
"She doesn't mean to be civil," said Lydia, still in her wicked
enjoyment. "I don't know what she does mean, but it's not to be nice to
me. And I don't know what she's come for--" here her old vision of Jeff
languishing unvisited in the dungeon of her fancy rose suddenly before
her and she ended hotly--"after all this time."
Again Esther turned to Jeff and spoke his name, as if summoning him in a
situation she could not, however courageous, meet alone. But Lydia had
thought of something else.
"I don't know what you can do to me," she said, "and I don't much care.
Except for Farvie and Anne. But I know this. If you can arrest me for
stealing from you something you'd stolen before, why then I shall say
right off I did it. And when I do it, I shall tell all I know about the
necklace and how you took it from Madame Beattie--and oh, my soul!" said
Lydia, rising from her chair and putting her finger tips together in an
unconsidered gesture, "there's Madame Beattie now."
Esther too rose, murder in her heart but still a solicitous sadness in
her eyes, and turned, following Lydia's gaze, to the steps where Denny
had drawn up and Madame Beattie was alighting from the victoria. Jeff,
going forward to meet her, took courage since Denny was not driving
away. Whatever Madame Beattie had come to do, she meant to make quick
work of it.
"Jeff," said Esther, at his elbow, "Jeff, I must go. This is too painful
for everybody. I can't bear it."
"That's right," said Jeff in the kindness of sudden relief. "Run along."
Madame Beattie had decided otherwise. At the top of the steps in her
panoply of black chiffon, velvet, ostrich feathers--clothes so rich in
the beginning and so well made that they seemed always too unchanged to
be thrown away and so went on in a squalid perpetuity--she laid a hand
on Esther's wrist.
"Come, come, Esther," said she, "don't run away. I came to see you as
much as anybody."
Esther longed to shake off the masterful old hand, but she would not. A
sad passivity became her best unless she relinquished every possible
result of the last ten minutes. And it must have had some result. Jeff
had, at least, been partly won. Surely there was an implied intimacy in
his quick undertone when he had bade her run along. So Madame Beattie
went on cheerfully leading her captive and yet, with an art Esther hated
her for, seeming to keep the wrist to lean on, and Lydia, who had
brought another chair, greeted the new visitor with an unaffected
pleasure. She still liked her so much that it was not probable anything
Madame Beattie could say or do would break the tie. And Madame Beattie
liked her: only less than the assurance of her own daily comfort. The
pure stream of affection had got itself sadly sullied in these later
years. She hardly thought now of the way it started among green hills
under a morning sun.
She seated herself, still not releasing Esther until she also had sunk
into a chair by her side, and refreshed herself from a little
viniagrette. Then she winked her eyes open in a way she had, as if
returning from distant considerations and said cheerfully:
"I suppose you're talking about that stupid necklace."
Lydia broke into a little laugh, she did not in the least know why,
except that Madame Beattie was always so amusing to her. Madame Beattie
gave her a nod as if in acknowledgment of the tribute of applause,
continuing:
"Now I've come to be disagreeable. Esther has been agreeable, I've no
doubt. Jeff, I hope you're being nice to her."
A startled look came into Lydia's eyes. Why should Madame Beattie want
Jeff to be nice to her when she knew how false Esther had been and would
always be?
"Esther," continued Madame Beattie, "has been a silly child. She took my
necklace, years ago, and Jeff very chivalrously engaged to pay me for it
and--"
"That will do," said Jeff harshly. "We all know what happened years ago.
Anyhow Esther does. And I do. We'll leave Lydia out of this. I don't
know what you've come here to say, Madame Beattie, but whatever it is, I
prefer it should be said to me. I'm the only one it concerns."
"No, you're not," said Lydia, swelling with rage at everybody who would
keep her from him. "I'm concerned. I'm concerned more than anybody."
Esther glanced up at her quickly and Madame Beattie shook her head.
"You've been a silly child, too," she said. "You took the necklace to
give it back to me. Through Jeff, I understand."
"No, I didn't," said Lydia, in a passion to tell the truth at a moment
when it seemed to her they were all willing, for one result or another,
to turn and twist it. "I gave it back to Jeff so he could carry it to
you and say, 'Here it is. I've paid you a lot of money on it--'"
"Who told you that?" flashed Esther. She had forgotten her patient calm.
"I told her," said Madame Beattie. "Don't be jealous, Esther. Jeff never
would have told her in the world. He's as dumb as a fish."
"And so he could say to you," Lydia went on breathlessly, "'Here's the
horrid thing. And now you've got it I don't owe you money but'"--here
one of her legal inspirations came to her and she added
triumphantly--"'if anything, you owe me.'"
"You're a good imp," said Madame Beattie, in careless commendation, "but
if everybody told the truth as you do there wouldn't be any drama. Now
I'm going to tell the truth. This is just what I propose doing, and what
I mean somebody else shall do. I've got the necklace. Good! But I don't
want it. I want money."
"I have told you," said Jeff, "to sell it. If it's worth what you say--"
"I have told you," said Madame Beattie, "that I can't. It is a question
of honour," she ended somewhat pompously. Yet it was only a dramatic
pomposity. Jeff saw that. "When it was given me by a certain Royal
Personage," she continued and Jeff swore under his breath. He was tired
of the Royal Personage--"I signed an agreement that the necklace should
be preserved intact and that I would never let it go into other hands.
We've been all over that."
Jeff moved uneasily in his chair. He thought there were things he might
say to Madame Beattie if the others were not present.
"But," said Madame Beattie dramatically, "Esther stole it. Lydia here,
from the sweetest and most ridiculous of motives, stole it from Esther.
Nobody knows that but us three and that cold-blooded fish, Alston
Choate. He won't tell. But unless Jeff--you, Jeff dear--unless Jeff
makes himself responsible for my future, I propose to tell the whole
story of the necklace in print and make these two young women wish I
hadn't. Better protect them, Jeff. Better make yourself responsible for
Aunt Patricia."
"You propose telling it in print," said Jeff slowly. "You said so
yesterday. But I ought to have warned you then that Weedon Moore won't
print it--not after I've seen him. He knows I'd wring his neck."
"There are plenty of channels," said Madame Beattie, with an unmoved
authority. "Journals here, journals abroad. Why, Jeff!" suddenly her
voice rose in a shrill note and startled them. Her face convulsed and a
deeper hue ran into it. "I'm a personage, Jeff. The world is my friend.
You seem to think because I've lost my voice I'm not Patricia Beattie.
But I am. I am Patricia Beattie. And I have power."
Lydia made a movement toward her and laid her hands together,
impetuously, in applause. Whether Madame Beattie were willing, as it had
seemed a second ago, to sacrifice her for the sake of squeezing money
out of Jeff, she did not care. Something dramatic in her discerned its
like in the other woman and responded. But Jeff, startled for an
instant, felt only the brutal impulse to tell Madame Beattie if the
world were so much her friend, it might support her. And here appeared
the last person any of them desired to see if they were to fight matters
to a finish: the colonel in his morning calm, his finger, even so early,
between the leaves of a book. As the year had waned and there was not
so much outside work to do he had betaken himself to his gentler
pursuits, and in the renewed health of his muscles felt himself a better
man. He had his turn of being startled, there was no doubt of that.
Esther here! his eyes were all for her. It meant something significant,
they seemed to say. Why, except for an emphatic reason, should she,
after this absence, have come to Jeff? He even seemed to be ignoring
Madame Beattie as he stepped forward to Esther, with outstretched hand.
There was a welcome in his manner, a pleasure it smote Lydia's heart to
see. She knew what the scene meant to him: some shadowy renewal of the
old certainties that had made Jeff's life like other men's. For an
instant under the spell of the colonel's belief, she saw Jeff going back
and loving Esther as if the break had never been. It seemed incredible
that any one could look at her as the colonel was looking now, with
warmth, even with gratitude, after she had been so hateful. And Esther
was receiving it all with the prettiest grace. She might even have been
pinning the olive leaf into her dress.
"Well," said he. "Well!"
Lydia was maliciously glad that even he could find nothing more to say.
"What a pleasant morning," he ended lamely yet safely, and conceived the
brilliant addition, "You'll stay to dinner." As he said it he was
conscious, too late, that dinner was several hours away. And meantime
Esther stood and looked up in his eyes with an expression for which
Lydia at once mentally found a name: soulful, that was what it was, she
viciously decided.
Madame Beattie gave a little ironic crow of laughter.
"Sit down, Esther," she said, "and let Mr. Blake shake hands with me.
No, I can't stay to dinner. Esther may, if she likes, but I've business
on my hands. It's with that dirty little man Jeff's got such a prejudice
against."
"Not Weedon Moore," conjectured the colonel. "If you've any law
business, Madame Beattie, you'd far better go to Alston Choate. Moore's
no kind of a man."
"He's the right kind for me," said Madame Beattie. "No manners, no
traditions, no scruples. It's a dirty job I've got for him, and it takes
a dirty man to do it."
She had risen now, and was smiling placidly up at the colonel. He
frowned at her, involuntarily. He was ready to accept Madame Beattie's
knowing neither good nor evil, but she seemed to him singularly
unpleasant in flaunting that lack of bias. She was quite conscious of
his distaste, but it didn't trouble her. Unproductive opinions were
nothing to her now, especially in Addington.
"You're not going, too," said the colonel, as Esther rose and followed
her. "I hoped--" But what he hoped he kept himself from saying.
"I must," said Esther, with a little deprecatory look and another
significant one at Madame Beattie's back. "Good-bye."
She threw Lydia, in her scornful silence there in the background, a
smile and nod.
"But--" the colonel began. Again he had to stop. How could he ask her to
come again when he was in the dark about her reason for coming at all?
"I have to go," she said. "I really have to, this time."
Meantime Jeff, handing Madame Beattie into the carriage, had had his
word with her.
"You'll do nothing until I see you."
"If you see me moderately soon," said Madame Beattie pleasantly.
"Esther, are you coming?"
"No," said Esther, with a scrupulous politeness. "No, thank you. I shall
walk."
But before she went, and well in the rear of the carriage, so that even
Denny should not see, she gave Jeff one look, a suffused, appealing look
that bade him remember how unhappy she was, how unprotected and, most of
all, how feminine. She and the carriage also had in the next instant
gone, and Jeff went stolidly back up the steps. There was sweat on his
forehead and he drew his breath like a man dead-tired.
"My son," began the colonel.
"Don't," said Jeff shortly. He knew what his father would like to do:
ask, in the sincerest sympathy, why Esther had come, discuss it and
decide with him whether she was to come again and stay, whether it would
be ill or well for him. The red mounted to the colonel's forehead, and
Jeff put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't help remembering that his
father had called him "son" in a poignancy of sympathy all through the
trials of the past, and it hurt to hear it now. It linked that time with
this, as Madame Beattie, in her unabashed self-seeking, linked it.
Perhaps he was never to escape. A prisoner, that was what he was. They
were all prisoners, Madame Beattie to her squalid love of gain, Esther
to her elementary love of herself, Lydia--he looked at her as she stood
still in the background like a handmaid waiting. Why, Lydia was a
prisoner, as he had thought before, only not, as he had believed then,
to the glamour of love, but love, actual love for him, the kind that
stands the stress of all the homely services and disillusioning. A smile
broke over his face, and Lydia, incredulously accepting it, gave a
little sob that couldn't be prevented in time, and took one dancing
step. She ran up to the colonel, and pulled him away from Jeff. It
seemed as if she were about to make him dance, too.
"Don't bother him, Farvie," said she. "He's out of prison! he's out of
prison!"
She had said it, the cruel word, and Jeff knew she could not possibly
have ventured it if she did not see in him something fortunate and
free.
XXXIII
"Jeff!" said the colonel. Esther's coming seemed so portentous that he
could not brook imperfect knowledge of it. "Jeff, did Esther come to--"
He paused there. What could Esther, in the circumstances, do? Make
advances? Ask to be forgiven?
But Jeff was meeting the half question comprehensively.
"I don't quite know what she came for."
"Couldn't you have persuaded her," said the colonel, hesitating, "to
stay?"
"No," said Jeff. "Esther doesn't want to stay. We mustn't think of
that."
"I am sorry," said the colonel, and Lydia understood him perfectly. He
was not sorry Esther had gone. But he was sorry the whole business had
been so muddled from the start, and that Jeff's life could not have
moved on like Addington lives in general: placid, all of a piece. Lydia
thought this yearning of his for the complete and perfect was because he
was old. She felt quite capable of taking Jeff's life as it was, and
fitting it together in a striking pattern.
"Come in, Farvie," she said. "You haven't corrected Mary Nellen's
translation."
Jeff was being left alone for his own good, and he smiled after the kind
little schemer, before he took his hat and went down town to find Weedon
Moore. As he went, withdrawn into a solitariness of his own, so that he
only absently answered the bows of those he met, he thought curiously
about his own life. And he was thinking as his father had: his life was
not of a pattern. It was a succession of disjointed happenings. There
was the first wild frothing of the yeast of youth. There was the nemesis
who didn't like youth to make such a fool of itself. She had to throw
him into prison. While he was there he had actually seemed to do things
that affected prison discipline. He was mentioned outside. He was even,
because he could write, absurdly pardoned. It had seemed to him then
desirable to write the life of a gentleman criminal, but in that he had
quite lost interest. Then he had had his great idea of liberty: the
freedom of the will that saved men from being prisoners. But the squalid
tasks remained to him even while he bragged of being free: to warn Moore
away from meddling with women's names, no matter how Madame Beattie
might invite him to do her malicious will, to warn Madame Beattie even,
in some fashion, and to protect Lydia. Of Esther he could not think,
save in a tiring, bewildered way. She seemed, from the old habit of
possession justified by a social tie, somehow a part of him, a burden of
which he could never rid himself and therefore to be borne patiently,
since he could not know whether the burden were actually his or not. And
he began to be conscious after that morning when Esther had looked at
him with primitive woman's summons to the protecting male that Esther
was calling him. Sometimes it actually tired him as if he were running
in answer to the call, whether toward it or away from it he could not
tell. All the paths were mazes and the lines of them bewildering to his
eyes. He would wake in the night and wish there were one straight path.
If he could have known that at this time Reardon and Alston Choate had
also, in differing ways, this same consciousness of Esther's calling it
could not have surprised him. He would not have known, in his own
turmoil, whether to urge them to go or not to go. Esther did not seem
to him a disturbing force, only a disconcerting one. You might have to
meet it to have done with it.
But now at Weedon's office door he paused a moment, hearing a voice, the
little man's own, slightly declamatory, even in private, and went in.
And he wished he had not gone, for Miss Amabel sat at the table, signing
papers, and he instantly guessed the signatures were not in the
pursuance of her business but to the advantage of Weedon Moore. Whatever
she might be doing, she was not confused at seeing him. Her designs
could be shouted on the housetops. But Moore gave him a foolishly
cordial greeting mingled with a confused blotting of signatures and a
hasty shuffling of the papers.
"Sit down, sit down," he said. "You haven't looked me up before, not
since--"
"No," said Jeff. "Not since I came back. I don't think I ever did. I've
come now in reference to a rather scandalous business."
Miss Amabel moved her chair back. She was about to rise.
"No, please," said Jeff. "Don't go. I'd rather like you to know that I'm
making certain threats to Moore here, in case I have to carry them out.
I'd rather you'd know I have some grounds. I never want you to think the
worst of me."
"I always think the best of you," said Miss Amabel, with dignity yet
helplessly. She sat there in an attitude of waiting, her grave glance
going from one to the other, as she tried to understand.
"Madame Beattie," said Jeff curtly to Moore, "is likely to give you some
personal details of her life. If you print them you'll settle with me
afterward."
"O Jeffrey!" said Miss Amabel. "Why put it so unpleasantly? Mr. Moore
would never print anything which could annoy you or any one. We mustn't
assume he would."
Moore, standing, one fat and not overclean hand on the table, looked a
passionate gratitude to her. He seemed about to gush into protest. Of
course he wouldn't. Of course he would publish only what was of the
highest character and also what everybody wanted him to.
"That's all," said Jeff. He, too, was standing and he now turned to go.
"I wish--" said Miss Amabel impulsively. She got on her feet and stood
there a minute, a stately figure in spite of her blurred lines. "I wish
we could have your cooperation, Jeff. Mr. Moore is going to run for
mayor."
"So I hear," said Jeff, and his mind added, "And you are financing his
campaign, you old dear, and only a minute ago you were signing over
securities."
"It means so much," said Miss Amabel, "to have a man who is a friend of
labour. We ought to combine on that. It's enough to heal our
differences."
"Pardon me," said Jeff. "I have to go. But mayn't I take you home?"
"No," said Amabel; "I've another bit of business to settle. But think it
over, Jeff. We can't afford to let personal issues influence us when the
interest of the town is at stake."
"Surely not," said Jeff. "Addington forever!"
As he went down the stairs he smiled a little, remembering Weedie had
not spoken a word after his first greeting. But Jeff didn't waste much
thought on Weedie. He believed, at the crisis, Weedie could be managed.
Miss Amabel had startled his mind broad awake to what she called the
great issues and what he felt were vital ones. He went on over the
bridge, and up the stairs of the old Choate Building to Alston's
office, and, from some sudden hesitancy, tapped on the door.
"Come in," called Alston, and he went.
Alston sat at the table, not reading a novel as Lydia and too many of
his clients had found him, but idle, with not even a book at hand. There
were packets of papers, in a methodical sequence, but everything on the
table bore the aspect of an order not akin to work. Choate looked pale
and harassed. "You?" said his upward glance. "You, of all the people
I've been thinking of? What are you here for?"
There was though, in the look, a faint relief. Perhaps he thought
something connected with the harassing appeal of Esther, the brutalising
stir of her in the air, could be cleared up. Jeff was to surprise him.
"Choate," said he, "have you been asked to run for mayor?"
Choate frowned. He wasn't thinking of public office.
"I've been--approached," he said, as if the word made it the more
remote.
"What did you say?"
"Said I wouldn't. Jeff, I believe you started the confounded thing."
"I've talked a lot," said Jeff. "But any fool knows you've got to do it.
Choate, you're about the only hope of tradition and decency here in
Addington. Don't you know that?"
"I'm a weak man," said Alston, looking up at him unhappily. "I don't
half care for these things. I like the decent thing done, but, Jeff, I
don't want to pitch into the dirty business and call names and be called
names and uncover smells. I'd rather quit the whole business and go to
Europe."
"And let Addington go to pot? Why, we'd all rather go to Europe, if
Addington could be kept on her pins without us. But she can't. We've got
to see the old girl through."
"She's gone to pot anyway," said Choate. "So's the country. There aren't
any Americans now. They're blasted aliens."
"Ain't you an American?" asked Jeff, forgetting his grammar. "I am. And
I'm going to die in my tracks before I'm downed."
"You will be downed."
"I don't care. I don't care whether in a hundred years' time it's stated
in the history books that there was once a little tribe called New
Englanders and if you want to learn about 'em the philologists send you
to the inscriptions of Mary Wilkins and Robert Frost."
(This was before Robert Frost had come into his fame, but New England
had printed a verse or two and then forgotten them.)
"I didn't know you were such a fellow," said Choate, really interested,
in an impersonal way. "You go to my head."
"Sometimes I think," said Jeff, not half noticing him, "that what really
was doing in me in jail was country--country--patriotism, a kind of
irrational thing--sort of mother love applied to the soil--the thing men
die for. Call it liberty, if you want to, but it's all boiled down now
to Addington. Choate, don't you see Addington took hold on eternal
things? Don't you know how deep her roots go? She was settled by
English. You and I are English. We aren't going to let east of Europe or
south of Europe or middle Europe come over here and turn old Addington
into something that's not Anglo-Saxon. O Choate, wake up. Come alive.
Stop being temperate. Run for mayor and beat Weedie out of his skin."
"Dear fellow," said Choate, looking at him as if for an instant he too
were willing to speak out, "you live in a country where the majority
rules. And the majority has a perfect right to the government it wants.
And you will be voted down by ten aliens this year and a hundred next,
and so on, because the beastly capitalist wants more and more aliens
imported to do his work and the beastly politician wants them all thrown
into citizenship neck and heels, so he can have more votes. You're
defeated, Jeff, before you begin. You're defeated by sheer numbers."
"Then, for God's sake," said Jeff, "take your alien and make an American
of him."
"You can't. Could I take you to Italy and make an Italian of you, or to
Germany and make a German? You might do something with their children."
"They talk about the melting-pot," said Jeff rather helplessly.
"They do. It's a part of our rank sentimentalism. You can pour your
nationalities in but they'll no more combine than Tarquin's and
Lucretia's blood. No, Jeff. America's gone, the vision, as she was in
the beginning. They've throttled her among them."
Jeff stood looking at him, flushed, dogged, defiant. He had a vivid
beauty at the moment, and Alston woke to a startled sense of what the
young Jeff used to be. But this was better. There was something beaten
into this face finer far than youth.
Jeff seemed to be meeting him as if their minds were at grapples.
"The handful of us, old New England, the sprinkling of us that's left,
we've got to repel invasion. The aliens are upon us."
"They've even brought their insect pests," put in Alston.
"Folks," said Jeff, "that know no more about the passions and
faithfulnesses this government was founded on than a Hottentot going
into his neighbour's territory."
"Oh, come," said Alston, "give 'em a fair show. They've come for
liberty. You've got to take their word for it."
"Some of 'em have come to avoid being skinned alive, by Islam, some to
get money enough to go back with and be _rentiers_. The Germans have
come to show us the beatitude of their specially anointed way of life."
"Well," said Alston curtly, "we've got 'em. And they've got us. You
can't leaven the whole lump."
"I can't look much beyond Addington," said Jeff. "I believe I'm dotty
over the old girl. I don't want her to go back to being Victorian, but I
want her to be right--honest, you know, and standing for decent things.
That's why you're going to be mayor."
Alston made no answer, but when, in a few weeks' time, some citizens of
weight came to ask him again if he would accept the nomination, he said,
without parley, that he would. And it was not Jeff that had constrained
him; it was the look in his mother's eyes.
XXXIV
The late autumn had a profusion of exhilarating days. The crops kept
Jeff in the garden and brought his father out for his quota of pottering
care. When the land was cleared for ploughing and even the pile of
rubbish burned, Jeff got to feeling detached again, discontented even,
and went for long tramps, sometimes with Alston Choate. Esther, seeing
them go by, looked after them in a consternation real enough to blanch
her damask cheek. What was the bond between them? Whatever bond they had
formed must be to the exclusion of her and her dear wishes, and their
amity enraged her.
Once, in walking, she saw Jeff turn in at Miss Amabel's gate, and she
did not swerve but actually finished her walk and came back that way
praying, with the concentration of thought which is an assault of will,
that he might be coming out and meet her. And it happened according to
her desire. There, at the gate was Jeff, handsomer, according to a
woman's jealous eye, than she had ever seen him, fresh-coloured, his
face set in a determination that was not feigned, hard, fit for any
muscular task more than the average man might do. Esther was looking her
prettiest. She continued to look her prettiest now, so far as woman's
art could serve her, for she could not know what moment might summon her
to bring her own special strength to bear. Jeff, at sight of her, took
off his hat, but stopped short standing inside the gate. Esther
understood. He wasn't going to commit her to walk with him where
Addington might see. She, too, stopped, her heart beating as fast as she
could have desired and giving her a bright accession of colour. Esther
greatly prized her damask cheek.
Jeff, feeling himself summoned, then came forward. He looked at her
gravely, and he was at a loss. How to address her! But Esther, with a
beguiling accent of gentleness, began.
"Isn't it strange?" she said, wistfully and even humbly, as if it were
not a question but a reflection of her own, not necessarily to be
answered.
"What is strange?" asked Jeff, with a kindly note she found reassuring.
"You and me," said Esther, "standing here, when--I don't believe you
were going to speak."
Her poor little smile looked piteous to him and the lift of her brows.
Jeff was sorry for her, sorry for them both. At that moment he was not
summoning energy to distrust her, and this was as she hoped.
"I'm sorry, Esther," he said impulsively. "I did mean to speak. It
wasn't that. I only don't mean to make you--in other folks' eyes, you
know--seem to be having anything to do with me when--when you don't want
to."
"When I don't want to!" Esther repeated. There was musing in the soft
voice, a kind of wonder.
"It's an infernal shame," said Jeff. He was glad to tell her he hated
the privation she had to bear of having cast him off and yet facing her
broken life without him. "I know what kind of time you have as well as
you could tell me. You've got Madame Beattie quartered on you. There's
grandmother upstairs. No comfort in her. No companionship. I've often
thought you don't go out as much as you might for fear of meeting me.
You needn't feel that. If I see it's going to happen I can save you
that, at least."
Esther stood looking up at him, her lips parted, as if she drank what he
had to say through them, and drank it thirstily.
"How good you are!" she said. "O Jeff, how good! When I've--" There she
paused, still watching him. But Esther had the woman's instinctive trick
of being able to watch accurately while she did it passionately.
Jeff flushed to his hair, but her cleverness did not lead her to the
springs of his emotion. He was ashamed, not of her, but of himself.
"You're off," he said, "all wrong. I do want to save you from this
horrible mix-up I've made for you. But I'm not good, Esther. I'm not the
faithful chap it makes me seem. I'm different. You wouldn't know me. I
don't believe we ever knew each other very well."
Something like terror came into her beautiful eyes. Was he, that inner
terror asked her, trying to explain that she had lost him? Although she
might not want him, she had always thought he would be there.
"You mean--" she began, and strove to keep a grip on herself and decide
temperately whether this would be best to say. But some galled feeling
got the better of her. The smart was too much. Hurt vanity made her
wince and cry out with the passion of a normal jealousy. "You mean," she
continued, "you are in love with another woman."
It was a hit. He had deserved it, he knew, and he straightened under it.
Let him not, his alarmed senses told him, even think of Lydia, lest
these cruelly clever eyes see Lydia in his, Lydia in his hurried breath,
even if he could keep Lydia from his tongue.
"Esther," he said, "don't say such a thing. Don't think it. What right
have I to look at another woman while you are alive? How could I insult
a woman--" He stopped, his own honest heart knocking against his words.
He had dared. He had swept his house of life and let Lydia in.
"Yes," said Esther thoughtfully, and, it seemed, hurt to the soul, "you
love somebody else. O Jeff, I didn't think--" She lifted widened eyes to
his. Afterward he could have sworn they were wet with tears. "I stand in
your way, don't I? What can I do, not to stand in your way?"
"Do?" said Jeff, in a rage at all the passions between men and women.
"Do? You can stop talking sentiment about me and putting words into my
mouth. You can make over your life, if you know how, and I'll help you
do it, if I can. I thought you were trying to free yourself. You can do
that. I won't lift a hand. You can say you're afraid of me, as you have
before. God knows whether you are. If you are, you're out of your mind.
But you can say it, and I won't deny you've just cause. You mustn't be a
prisoner to me."
"Jeff!" said Esther.
"What is it?" he asked.
She spoke tremblingly, weakly really as if she had not the strength to
speak, and he came a step nearer and laid his hand on the granite
gatepost. It was so hard it gave him courage. There were blood-red vines
on it, and when he disturbed their stems they loosened leaves and let
them drift over his hand.
"Now I see," said Esther, "how really alone I am. I thought I was when
you were away, but it was nothing to this."
She walked on, listlessly, aimlessly even though she kept the path and
she was going on her way as she had elected to before she saw him. But
to Jeff she seemed to be a drifting thing. A delicate butterfly floated
past him, weakened by the coldness of last night and fluttering on into
a night as cold.
"Esther," he called, and hurried after her. "You don't want me to walk
with you?" he asked impatiently. "You don't want Addington to say we've
made it up?"
"I don't care about Addington," said Esther. "It can say what it
pleases--if you're kind to me."
"Kind!" said Jeff. "I could have you trounced. You don't play fair. What
do you mean by mixing me all up with pity and things--" Esther's lids
were not allowed to lift, but her heart gave a little responsive bound.
So she had mixed him up!--"Getting the facts all wrong," Jeff went on
irritably. "You ignore everything you've felt before to-day. And you
begin to-day and say I've not been kind to you."
Now Esther looked at him. She smiled.
"Scold away," she said. "I've wanted you to scold me. I haven't been so
happy for months."
"Of course I scold you," said Jeff. "I want to see you happy. I want to
see you rid of me and beginning your life all over, so far as you can.
You're not the sort to live alone. It's an outrage against nature. A
woman like you--"
But Esther never discovered what he meant by "a woman like you." He had
gone a little further than her brain would take her. Did he mean a woman
altogether charming, like her--or? She dropped the inquiry very soon,
because it seemed to lead nowhere and it was pleasanter to think the
things that do not worry one.
Jeff remembered afterward that he had known from the beginning of the
walk with her that they should meet all Addington. But it was not the
Addington he had irritably dreaded. It was Lydia. His heart died as he
saw her coming, and his brain called on every reserve within him to keep
Esther from knowing that here was his heart's lady, this brave creature
whose honour was untainted, who had a woman's daring and a man's
endurance. He even, after that first alarm of a glance, held his eyes
from seeing her and he kept on scolding Esther.
"What's the use," he said, "talking like that?" And then his mind told
him there must be no confusion in what he said. He was defending Lydia.
He was pulling over her the green leaves of secrecy. "I advise you," he
said, "to get away from here. Get away from Madame Beattie--get away
from grandmother--" Lydia was very near now. He felt he could afford to
see her. "Ah, Lydia!" he said casually, and took off his hat.
They were past her, but not before Esther had asked, in answer:
"Where shall we go? I mean--" she caught herself up from her wilful
stumbling--"where could I go--alone?"
They were at her own gate, and Jeff stopped with her. Since they left
Lydia he had held his hat in his hand, and Esther, looking up at him saw
that he had paled under his tan. The merciless woman in her took stock
of that, rejoicing. Jeff smiled at her faintly, he was so infinitely
glad to leave her.
"We must think," he said. "You must think. Esther, about money, I'll
try--I don't know yet what I can earn--but we'll see. Oh, hang it! these
things can't be said."
He turned upon the words and strode off and Esther, without looking
after him, went in and at once upstairs.
"Good girl!" Madame Beattie called to her, from her room. "Well begun is
half done."
Esther did not answer. Neither did she take the trouble to hate Aunt
Patricia for saying it. She went instantly to her glass, and smiled into
it. The person who smiled back at her was young and very engaging.
Esther liked her. She thought she could trust her to do the best thing
possible.
Jeff went home and stood just inside his gateway to wait for Lydia. He
judged that she had been going to Amabel's, and now, her thoughts thrown
out of focus by meeting him with Esther, she would give up her visit and
come home to be sad a little by herself. He was right. She came soon,
walking fast, after her habit, a determined figure. He had had time to
read her face before she drew its veil of proud composure, and he found
in it what he had expected: young sorrow, the anguish of the heart
stricken and with no acquired power of staunching its own wounds. When
she saw him her face hardly changed, except that the mournful eyes
sought his. Had Esther got power over him? the eyes asked, and not out
of jealousy, he believed. The little creature was like a cherishing
mother. If Esther had gained power she would fight it to the uttermost,
not to possess him but to save his intimate self. Esther might pursue it
into fastnesses, but it should be saved. To Jeff, in that instant of
meeting the questioning eyes, she seemed an amazing person, capable of
exacting a tremendous loyalty. He didn't feel like explaining to her
that Esther hadn't got him in the least. The clarity of understanding
between them was inexpressibly precious to him. He wouldn't break it by
muddling assertions.
"I've been to Amabel's," he said. "You were going there, too, weren't
you?"
Lydia's face relaxed and cleared a little. She looked relieved, perhaps
from the mere kindness of his voice.
"I didn't go," she said. "I didn't feel like it."
"No," said Jeff. "But now we're home again, both of us, and we're glad.
Couldn't we cut round this way and sit under the wall a little before
Anne sees us and makes us eat things?"
He took her hand, this time of intention to make her feel befriended in
the intimacy of their common home, and they skirted the fence and went
across the orchard to the bench by the brick wall. As they sat there and
Jeff gave back her little hand he suddenly heard quick breaths from her
and then a sob or two.
"Lydia," said he. "Lydia."
"I know it," said Lydia.
She sought out her handkerchief and seemed to attack her face with it,
she was so angry at the tears.
"You're not hurt," said Jeff. "Truly you're not hurt, Lydia. There's
been nothing to hurt you."
Soon her breath stopped catching, and she gave her eyes a final
desperate scrub. By that time Jeff had begun to talk about the land and
what he hoped to do with it next year. He meant at least to prune the
orchard and maybe set out dwarfs. At first Lydia did not half listen,
knowing his purpose in distracting her. Then she began to answer. Once
she laughed when he told her the colonel, in learning to dig potatoes,
had sliced them with the hoe. Father, he told her, was what might be
called a library agriculturist. He was reading agricultural papers now.
He could answer almost any question you asked. As for bugs and their
natural antidotes, he knew them like a book. He even called himself an
agronomist. But when it came to potatoes! By and by they were talking
together and he had succeeded in giving her that homely sense of
intimacy he had been striving for. She forgot the pang that pierced her
when she saw him walking beside the woman who owned him through the
law. He was theirs, hers and her father's and Anne's, because they knew
him as he was and were desperately seeking to succour his maimed life.
But as she was going to sleep a curious question asked itself of Lydia.
Didn't she want him to go back to his wife and be happy with her, if
that could be? Lydia had no secrets from herself, no emotional veilings.
She told herself at once that she didn't want it at all. No Esther made
good as she was fair, by some apt miracle, could be trusted with the man
she had hurt. According to Lydia, Esther had not in her even the seeds
of such compassion as Jeff deserved.
XXXV
When the cold weather came and Alston Choate and Weedon Moore became
rival candidates for the mayoralty of Addington, strange things began to
happen. Choate, cursing his lot inwardly, but outwardly deferential to
his mother who had really brought it on him, began to fulfil every last
requirement of the zealous candidate. He even learned to make speeches,
not the lucid exponents of the law that belonged to his court career,
but prompt addresses, apparently unconsidered, at short notice. The one
innovation he drew the line at was the flattering recognition of men he
had never, in the beaten way of life, recognised before. He could not,
he said, kiss babies. But he would tell the town what he thought it
needed, coached, he ironically added when he spoke the expansive truth
at home, by his mother and Jeff. They were ready to bring kindling to
boil the pot, Mrs. Choate in her grand manner of beckoning the ancient
virtues back, Jeff, as Alston told, him, hammer and tongs. Jeff also
began to make speeches, because, at one juncture when Alston gave out
from hoarseness--his mother said it was a psychological hoarseness at a
moment when he realised overwhelmingly how he hated it all--Jeff had
taken his place and "got" the men, labourers all of them, as Alston
never had.
"It's a mistake," said Mrs. Choate afterward when he came to the house
to report, and ask how Alston was, and the three sat eating one of
Mary's quick suppers. "You're really the candidate. Those men know it.
They know it's you behind Alston, and they're going to take him
patiently because you tell them to. But they don't half want him."
Jeff was very fine now in his robustness, fit and strong, no fat on him
and good blood racing well. He was eating bread and butter heartily,
while he waited for Mary to serve him savoury things, and Mrs. Choate
looked discontentedly at Mary bending over his plate, all hospitality,
with the greater solicitude because he was helping Alston out. Mrs.
Choate wished the nugatory Esther were out of the way, and she could
marry Mary off to Jeff. Mary, pale, yet wholesome, fair-haired, with the
definite Choate profile, and dressed in her favourite smoke colour and
pale violet, her mother loved conscientiously, if impatiently. But she
wished Mary, who had not one errant inclination, might come to her some
day and say, "Mother, I am desperately enamoured of an Italian
fruit-seller with Italy in his eyes." Mrs. Choate would have explained
to her, with a masterly common-sense, that such vagrom impulses meant,
followed to conclusions, shipwreck on the rocks of class
misunderstanding; but it would have warmed her heart to Mary to have so
to explain. But here was Mary to whom no eccentricity ever had to be
elucidated. She could not even have imagined a fruit-seller outside his
heaven-decreed occupation of selling fruit. Mrs. Choate smiled a little
to herself, wondering what Mary would say if she could know her mother
was willing to consign the inconvenient Esther to perpetual limbo and
marry her to handsome Jeff. "Mother!" she could imagine her horrified
cry. It would all be in that.
Jeff was more interested in his eating than in answering Mrs. Choate
with more than an encouraging:
"We've got 'em, I think. But I wish," he said, "we had more time to
follow up Weedie. What's he saying to 'em?"
"Ask Madame Beattie," said Alston, with more distaste than he could keep
out of his voice. "I saw her last night on the outskirts of his crowd,
sitting in Denny's hack."
"Speaking?" asked Jeff. "She'd have spoken, if she got half a chance."
Alston laughed quietly.
"Moore got the better of her. He was in his car. All he had to do was to
make off. She made after him, but he's got the whip-hand, with a car."
The next night, doubtless taught the advisability of vying with her
enemy, Madame Beattie, to the disgust of Esther, came down cloaked and
muffled to the chin and took the one automobile to be had for hire in
Addington. She was whirled away, where Esther had no idea. She was
whirled back again at something after ten, hoarse yet immensely tickled.
But Reardon knew what she had done and he telephoned it to Esther. She
was making speeches of her own, stopping at street corners wherever she
could gather a group, but especially running down to the little streets
by the water where the foreign labourers came swarming out and cheered
her.
"It's disgraceful," said Esther, almost crying into the telephone. "What
is she saying to them?"
"Nobody knows, except it's political. We assume that," said Reardon.
"All kinds of lingo. They tell me she knows more languages than a
college professor."
"Find out," Esther besought him. "Ask her. Ask whom you shall vote for.
It'll get her started."
That seemed to Reardon a valuable idea, and he actually did ask her,
lingering before the door one night when she came out to take her car.
He put her into it with a florid courtesy she accepted as her due--it
was the best, she thought, the man had to offer--and then said to her
jocosely:
"Well, Madame Beattie, who shall I vote for?"
Madame Beattie looked at him an instant with a quizzical comprehension
it was too dark for him to see.
"I can tell whom you'd better not vote for," she said. "Don't vote for
Esther. Tell him to go on."
Reardon did tell the man and then stood there on the pavement a moment,
struck by the certainty that he had been warned. She seemed to him to
know everything. She must know he was somehow likely to get into trouble
over Esther. Reardon was bewitched with Esther, but he did so want to be
safe. Nevertheless, led by man's destiny, he walked up to the door and
Esther, as before, let him in. He thought it only fair to tell her he
had found out nothing, and he meant, in a confused way, to let her see
that things must be "all right" between them. By this he meant that they
must both be safe. But once within beside her perfumed presence--yet
Esther used no vulgar helps to provoke the senses--he forgot that he
must be safe, and took her into his arms. He had been so certain of his
stability, after his recoil from Madame Beattie, that he neglected to
resist himself. And Esther did not help him. She clung to him and the
perfume mounted to his brain. What was it? Not, even he knew, a cunning
of the toilet; only the whole warm breath of her.
"Look here," said Reardon, shaken, "what we going to do?"
"You must tell me," she whispered. "How could I tell you?"
Reardon afterward had an idea that he broke into rough beseeching of her
to get free, to take his money, everything he had, and buy her freedom
somehow. Then, he said, in an awkwardness he cursed himself for, they
could begin to talk. And as she withdrew from him at sound of Rhoda
Knox above, he opened the door and ran away from her, to the ordered
seclusion of his own house. Once there he wiped his flustered brow and
cursed a little, and then telephoned her. But Sophy answered that Mrs.
Blake was not well. She had gone to her room.
Reardon had a confused multitude of things to say to her. He wanted to
beg her to understand, to assure her he was thinking of her and not
himself, as indeed he was. But meantime as he rehearsed the arguments he
had at hand, he was going about the room getting things together. His
papers were fairly in order. He could always shake them into perfect
system at an hour's notice. And then muttering to himself that, after
all, he shouldn't use it, he telephoned New York to have a state-room
reservation made for Liverpool. The office was closed, and he knew it
would be, yet it somehow gave him a dull satisfaction to have tried; and
next day he telephoned again.
Within a week Jeff turned his eyes toward a place he had never thought
of, never desired for a moment, and yet now longed for exceedingly. A
master in a night school founded by Miss Amabel had dropped out, and
Jeff went, hot foot, to Amabel and begged to take his place. How could
she refuse him? Yet she did warn him against propaganda.
"Jeff, dear," she said, moving a little from the open fire where he sat
with her, bolt upright, eager, forceful, exactly like a suppliant for a
job he desperately needs, "you won't use it to set the men against
Weedon Moore?"
Jeff looked at her with a perfectly open candour and such a force of
persuasion in his asking eyes that she believed he was bringing his
personal charm to influence her, and shook her head at him
despairingly.
"I won't in that building or the school session," he said. "Outside I'll
knife him if I can."
"Jeff," said Miss Amabel, "if you'd only work together."
"We can't," said Jeff, "any more than oil and water. Or alkali and acid.
We'd make a mighty fizz. I'm in it for all I'm worth, Amabel. To bust
Weedie and save Addington."
"Weedon Moore is saving Addington," said she.
"Do you honestly believe that? Think how Addington began. Do you suppose
a town that old boy up there helped to build--" he glanced at his
friend, the judge--"do you think that little rat can do much for it? I
don't."
"Perhaps Addington doesn't need his kind of help now, or yours.
Addington is perfectly comfortable, except its working class. And it's
the working man Weedon Moore is striving for."
"Addington is comfortable on a red-hot crater," said Jeff. "She's like
all the rest of America. She's sat here sentimentalising and letting the
crater get hotter and hotter under her, and unless we look out, Amabel,
there isn't going to be any America, one of these days. Mrs. Choate says
it's going to be the spoil of damned German efficiency. She thinks the
Huns are waking up and civilisations going under. But I don't. I believe
we're going to be a great unwieldy, industrial monster, no cohesion in
us and no patriotism, no citizenship."
"No patriotism!" Miss Amabel rose involuntarily and stood there
trembling. Her troubled eyes sought the pictured eyes of the old Judge.
"Jeff, you don't know what you're saying."
"I do," said Jeff, "mighty well. Sit down, dear, or I shall have to
salute the flag, too, and I'm too lazy."
She sat down, but she was trembling.
"And I'm going to save Addington, if I can," said Jeff. "I haven't the
tongue of men and angels or I'd go out and try to salvage the whole
business. But I can't. Addington's more my size. If there were invasion,
you know, a crippled man couldn't do more than try to defend his own
dooryard. Dear old girl, we've got to save Addington."
"I'm trying," said she. "Jeff, dear, I'm trying. And I've a lot of
money. I don't know how it rolled up so."
"Don't give it to Weedon Moore, that's all," he ventured, and then, in
the stiffening of her whole body, he saw it was a mistake even to
mention Moore. Her large charity made her fiercely partisan. He ventured
the audacious personal appeal. "Give me some, Amabel, if you've really
got so much. Let me put on some plays, in a simple way, and try to make
your workmen see what we're at, when we talk about home and country.
They despise us, Amabel, except on pay day. Let's hypnotise 'em, please
'em in some other way besides shorter hours and easier strikes. Let's
make 'em fall over themselves to be Americans."
Miss Amabel flushed all over her soft face, up to the line of her grey
hair.
"Jeff," she said.
"What'm?"
"I have always meant when you were at liberty again--" that seemed to
her a tolerable euphemism--"to turn in something toward your debt."
"To the creditors?" Jeff supplied cheerfully. "Amabel, dear, I don't
believe there are any little people suffering from my thievery. It's
only the big people that wanted to be as rich as I did. Anne and Lydia
are suffering in a way. But that's my business. I'm going to confess to
you. Dear sister superior, I'm going to confess."
She did not move, hardly by an eyelash. She was afraid of choking his
confidence, and she wanted it to come abundantly. Jeff sat for a minute
or two frowning and staring into the fire. He had to catch himself back
from what threatened to become silent reverie.
"I've thought a good deal about this," he said, "when I've had time to
think, these last weeks. I'd give a lot to stand clear with the world.
I'd like to do a spectacular refunding of what I stole and lost. But I'd
far rather pitch in and save Addington. Maybe it means I'm warped
somehow about money, standards lowered, you know, perceptions blunted,
that sort of thing. Well, if it's so I shall find it out sometime and be
punished. We can't escape anything, in spite of their doctrine of
vicarious atonement."
She moved slightly at this, and Jeff smiled at her.
"Yes," said he, "we have to be punished. Sometimes I suppose the full
knowledge of what we've done is punishment enough. Now about me. If
anybody came to me to-day and said, 'I'll make you square with the
world,' I should say, 'Don't you do it. Save Addington. I'd rather throw
my good name into the hopper and let it grind out grist for Addington.'"
Miss Amabel put out the motherly hand and he grasped it.
"And I assure you," he said again, "I don't know whether that's
common-sense--tossing the rotten past into the abyss and making a new
deal--or whether it's because I've deteriorated too much to see I've
deteriorated. You tell, Amabel."
She took out her large handkerchief--Amabel had a convenient pocket--and
openly wiped her eyes.
"I'll give you money, Jeff," she said, "and you can put it into plays.
I'd like to pay you something definite for doing it, because I don't see
how you're going to live."
"Lydia'll help me do it," said Jeff, "she and Anne. They're curiously
wise about plays and dances. No, Amabel, I sha'n't eat your money,
except what you pay me for evening school. And I have an idea I'm going
to get on. I always had the devil's own luck about things, you know.
Look at the luck of getting you to fork out for plays you've never heard
the mention of. And I feel terrible loquacious. I think I shall write
things. I think folks'll take 'em. They've got to. I want to hand over a
little more to Esther."
Even to her he had never mentioned the practical side of Esther's life.
Miss Amabel looked at him sympathetically, inquiringly.
"Yes," he said, "she's having a devil of a time. I want to ease it up
somehow--send her abroad or let her get a divorce or something."
"You couldn't--" said Amabel. She stopped.
His brows were black as thunder.
"No," said he, "no. Esther and I are as far apart as--" he paused for a
simile. Then he smiled at her. "No," he said. "It wouldn't do."
As he went out he stopped a moment more and smiled at her with the
deprecating air of asking for indulgence that was his charm when he was
good. His eyes were the soft bright blue of happy seas.
"Amabel," said he, "I don't want to cry for mercy, though I'd rather
have mercy from you than 'most anybody. Blame me if you've got to, but
don't make any mistake about me. I'm not good and I'm not all bad. I'm
nothing but a confusion inside. I've got to pitch in and do the best
thing I know. I'm an undiscovered country."
"You're no mystery to me," she said. "You're a good boy, Jeff."
He went straight home and called Lydia and Anne to council, the colonel
sitting by, looking over his glasses in a benevolent way.
"I've been trying to undermine Weedie," said Jeff, "with Amabel. I can't
quite do it, but I've got her to promise me some of her money. For
plays, Lydia, played by Mill End. What do you say?"
"She hasn't money enough for real plays," said Lydia. "All she's got
wouldn't last a minute."
"Not in a hall?" asked Jeff. "Not with scenery just sketched in, as it
were? But all of it patriotic. Teach them something. Ram it down their
throats. English language."
Lydia made a few remarks, and Jeff sat up and stared at her. The colonel
and Anne, endorsing her, were not surprised. They had heard it all
before. It seems Lydia had a theory that the province of art is simply
not to be dull. If you could charm people, you could make them do
anything. The kite of your aspirations might fly among the stars. But
you couldn't fly it if it didn't look well flying. The reason nobody
really learns anything by plays intended to teach them something, Lydia
said, is because the plays are generally dull. Nobody is going to listen
to "argufying" if he can help it. If you tell people what it is
beneficial for them to believe they are going home and to bed,
unchanged. But they'll yawn in your faces first. Lydia had a theory that
you might teach the most extraordinary lessons if you only made them
bewitching enough. Look at the Blue Bird. How many people who loved to
see Bread cut a slice off his stomach and to follow the charming
pageant of the glorified common things of life, thought anything save
that this was a "show" with no appeal beyond the visual one? Yet there
it was, the big symbolism beating in its heart and keeping it alive. The
Children of Light could see the symbolism quick as a wink. Still the
Children of Darkness who never saw any symbolism at all and who were the
ones to yawn and go home to bed, helped pay for tickets and keep the
thing running. We must bewitch them also. Jeff inquired humbly if she
would advise taking up Shakespeare with the Mill Enders and found she
still wouldn't venture on it at once. She'd do some fairy plays, quite
easy to write on new lines. Everything was easy if you had "go" enough,
Lydia said. Jeff ventured to inquire about scenic effects, and
discovered, to his enlightenment, that Lydia had the greatest faith in
the imagination of any kind of audience. Do a thing well enough, she
said, and the audience would forget whether it was looking at a painted
scene or not. It could provide its own illusion. Think of the players,
she reminded him, who, when they gave the Trojan Women on the road, and
sought for a little Astyanax, were forbidden by an asinine city
government to bring on a real child. Think how the actors crouched
protectingly over an imaginary Astyanax, and how plainly every eye saw
the child who was not there. Perhaps every woman's heart supplied the
vision of her dream-child, of the child she loved. Think of the other
play where the kettle is said to be hissing hot and everybody shuns it
with such care that onlookers wince too. Lydia thought she could write
the fairy plays and the symbolic plays, all American, if Jeff liked, and
he might correct the grammar.
Just then Mary Nellen, passionately but silently grieved to have lost
such an intellectual feast, came in on the tail of these remarks. She
brought Jeff a letter. It was a publisher's letter, and the publisher
would print his book about prisoners. It said nothing whatever of trying
to advertise him as a prisoner. Jeff concluded the man was a decent
fellow. He swaggered a little over the letter and told the family he had
to, it was such luck.
They were immensely proud and excited at once. The colonel called him
"son" with emphasis, and Lydia got up and danced a little by herself.
She invited Anne to join her, but Anne sat, soft-eyed and still, and was
glad that way. Jeff thought it an excellent moment to tell them he was
going to teach in the evening school, upon which Lydia stopped dancing.
"But I want to," he said to her, with a smile for her alone. "Won't you
let me if I want to?"
"I want you to write," said Lydia obstinately.
"I shall. I shall write. And talk. It's a talking age. Everybody's
chattering, except the ones that are shrieking. I'm going to see if I
can't down some of the rest."
XXXVI
A carnival of motor cars kept on whirling to all parts of the town where
Madame Beattie was likely to speak. She spoke in strange places: at
street corners, in a freight station, at the passenger station when the
incoming train had brought a squad of workmen from the bridge repairing
up the track. It was always to workmen, and always they knew, by some
effective communication, where to assemble. The leisure class, too, old
Addingtonians, followed her, as if it were all the best of jokes, and
protested they sometimes understood what she said. But nobody did,
except the foreigners and not one of them would own to knowing. Weedon
Moore made little clipped bits of speeches, sliced off whenever her car
appeared and his audience turned to her in a perfect obedience and
glowing interest. Jeff, speaking for Alston, now got a lukewarm
attention, the courtesy born out of affectionate regard. None of the
roars and wild handclappings were for him. Madame Beattie was eating up
all the enthusiasm in town. Once Jeff, walking along the street, came on
her standing in her car, haranguing a group of workmen, all intent,
eager, warm to her with a perfect sympathy and even a species of
adoration.
He stepped up in the car beside her. He had an irritated sense that, if
he got near enough, he might find himself inside the mystic ring. She
turned to him with a gracious and dramatic courtesy. She even put a hand
on his arm, and he realised, with more exasperation, that he was
supporting her while she talked. The crowd cheered, and, it appeared,
they were cheering him.
"What are you saying?" he asked her, in an irascible undertone. "Talk
English for ten minutes. Play fair."
But she only smiled on him the more sympathetically, and the crowd
cheered them both anew. Jeff stuck by, that night. He stayed with her
until, earlier than usual because she had tired her voice, she told the
man to drive home.
"I am taking you with me to see Esther," she mentioned unconcernedly, as
they went.
"No, you're not," said Jeff. "I'm not going into that house."
"Very well," said Madame Beattie. "Then tell him to stop here a minute,
while we talk."
Jeff hesitated, having no desire to talk, and she herself gave the
order.
"Poor Esther!" said Jeff, when the chauffeur had absented himself to a
sufficient distance, and, according to Madame Beattie's direction, was
walking up and down. "Isn't it enough for you to pester her without
bringing me into it? Why are you so hard on her?"
"I've been quite patient," said Madame Beattie, "with both of you. I've
sat down and waited for you to make up your minds what is going to be
done about my necklace. You're doing nothing. Esther's doing nothing.
The little imp that took it out of Esther's bag is doing nothing. I've
got to be paid, among you. If I am not paid, the little dirty man is
going to have the whole story to publish: how Esther took the necklace,
years ago, how the little imp took it, and how you said you took it, to
save her."
"I have told Weedon Moore," said Jeff succinctly, "in one form or
another that I'll break his neck if he touches the dirty job."
"You have?" said Madame Beattie. She breathed a dramatic breath,
whether of outraged pride or for calculated effect he could not tell.
"Jeff, I can assure you if the little man refuses to do it--and I doubt
whether he will--I'll have it set up myself in leaflets, and I'll go
through the town distributing them from this car. Jeff, I must have
money. I must have it."
He sat back immovable, arms folded, eyes on the distance, and frowningly
thought. What use to blame her who acted after her kind and was no more
to be stirred by appeals than a wild creature red-clawed upon its prey?
"Madame Beattie," said he, "if I had money you should have it. Right or
wrong you should have it if it would buy you out of here. But I haven't
got it."
"It's there you are a fool," she said, moved actually now by his
numbness to his own endowment. "I could beat my head and scream, when I
think how you're throwing things away, your time, in that beastly night
school, your power, your personal charm. Jeff, you've the devil's own
luck. You were born with it. And you simply won't use it."
He had said that himself in a moment of hope not long before: that he
had the devil's own luck. But he wasn't going to accept it from her.
"You talk of luck," he said, "to a man just out of jail."
"You needn't have been in jail," she was hurling at him in an unpleasant
intensity of tone, as if she would have liked to scream it and the quiet
street denied her. "If you hadn't pleaded guilty, if you hadn't handed
over every scrap of evidence, if you had been willing to take advantage
of what that clerk was ready to swear--why, you might have got off and
kept on in business and be a millionaire to-day."
How she managed to know some of the things she did he never fathomed.
He had never seen anybody of the direct and shameless methods of Madame
Beattie, willing to ask the most intimate questions, make the most
unscrupulous demands. He remembered the young clerk who had wanted to
perjure himself for his sake.
"That would have made a difference, I suppose," he said, "young
Williams' testimony. I wonder how he happened to think of it."
"He thought of it because I went to him," said Madame Beattie. "I said,
'Isn't there anything you could swear to that would help him?' He knew
at once. He turned white as a sheet. 'Yes,' he said, 'and I'll swear to
it.' I told him we'd make it worth his while."
"You did?" said Jeff. "Well, there's another illusion gone. I took a
little comfort in young Williams. I thought he was willing to perjure
himself because he had an affection for me. So you were to make it worth
his while."
She laughed a little, indifferently, with no bitterness, but in
retrospect of a scene where she had been worsted.
"You needn't mourn that lost ideal," she said. "Young Williams showed me
the door. It was in your office, and he actually did show me the door.
He was glad to perjure himself, he said, for you. Not for money. Not for
me."
Jeff laughed out.
"Well," he said, "that's something to the good anyway. We haven't lost
young Williams. He wrote to me, not long ago. When I answer it, I'll
tell him he's something to the good."
But Madame Beattie was not going to waste time on young Williams.
"It ought to be a criminal offence," she said rapidly, "to be such a
fool. You had the world in your hand. You've got it still. You and
Esther could run such a race! think what you've got, both of you, youth,
beauty, charm. You could make your way just by persuasion, persuading
this man to one thing and that man to another. How Esther could help
you! Don't you see she's an asset? What if you don't love her? Love! I
know it from the first letter to the last, and there's nothing in it,
Jeff, nothing. But if you make money you can buy the whole world."
Her eager old face was close to his, the eyes, greedy, ravenous,
glittered into his and struck their base messages deeper and deeper into
his soul. The red of nature had come into her cheeks and fought there
with the overlying hue of art. Jeff, from an instinct of blind courage,
met her gaze and tried to think he was defying it bravely. But he was
overwhelmed with shame for her because she was avowedly what she was.
Often he could laugh at her good-tempered cynicism. Over her now, for he
actually did have a kind of affection for her, he could have cried.
"Don't!" he said involuntarily, and she misunderstood him. His shame for
her disgrace she had taken for yielding and she redoubled the hot
torrent of temperamental persuasion.
"I will," she said fiercely, "until you get on your legs and act like a
man. Go to Esther. Go to her now, this night. Come with me. Make love to
her. She's a pretty woman. Sweep her off her feet. Tell her you're going
to make good and she's going to help you."
Jeff rose and stepped out of the car. The ravenous old hand still
dragged at his arm, but he lifted it quietly and gave it back to her. He
stood there a moment, his hat off, and signalled the chauffeur. Madame
Beattie leaned over to him until her eyes were again glittering into
his.
"Is that it?" she asked. "Are you going to run away?"
"Yes," said Jeff, quietly. "I'm going to run away."
The man came and Jeff stood there, hat still in hand, until the car had
started. He felt like showing her an exaggerated courtesy. Jeff thought
he had never been so sorry for anybody in his life as for Madame
Beattie.
Madame Beattie drew her cloak the closer, sunk her chin in it and
concluded Jeff was done with her. She was briefly sorry though not from
shame. It scarcely disconcerted her to find he liked her even less than
she had thought. Where was his large tolerance, she might have asked,
the moral neutrality of the man of the world?
He had made it incumbent on her merely to take other measures, and next
day, seeing Lydia walk past the house, she went to call on Anne. Her way
was smooth. Anne herself came to the door in the neighbourly Addington
fashion when help was busy, and took her into the library, expressing
regret that her father was not there. The family had gone out on various
errands. This she offered in her gentle way, even with a humorous
ruefulness, Madame Beattie would find her so inadequate. To Anne, Madame
Beattie was exotic as some strange eastern flower, not less impressive
because it was a little wilted and showed the results of brutal usage.
Madame Beattie composedly took off her cloak and put her feet up on the
fender, an attitude which perilously tipped her chair. On this Anne
solicitously volunteered to move the fender and did it, bringing the
high-heeled shoes comfortably near the coals. Then Madame Beattie,
wasting no time in preliminaries, began, with great circumspection and
her lisp, and told Anne the later story of the necklace. To her calm
statement of Esther's thievery Anne paid a polite attention though no
credence. She had not believed it when Lydia told her. Why should she be
the more convinced from these withered lisping lips? But Madame Beattie
went on explicitly, through the picturesque tale of Lydia and the
necklace and the bag. Then Anne looked at her in unaffected horror. She
sat bolt upright, her slender figure tense with expectation, her hands
clasped rigidly. Madame Beattie enjoyed this picture of a sympathetic
attention, a nature played upon by her dramatic mastery. Anne had no
backwardness in believing now, the deed was so exactly Lydia's. She
could see the fierce impulse of its doing, the reckless haste, no pause
for considering whether it were well to do. She could appreciate Lydia's
silence afterward. "Poor darling" she murmured, and though Madame
Beattie interrogated sharply, "What?" she was not to hear. All the
mother in Anne, faithfully and constantly brooding over Lydia, grew into
passion. She could hardly wait to get the little sinner into her arms
and tell her she was eternally befriended by Anne's love. Madame Beattie
was coming to conclusions.
"The amount of the matter is," she said, "I must be paid for the
necklace."
"But," Anne said, with the utmost courtesy, "I understand you have the
necklace."
"That isn't the point," said Madame Beattie. "I have been given a great
deal of annoyance, and I must be compensated for that. What use is a
necklace that I can neither sell nor even pawn? I am in honour bound
"--and then she went on with her story of the Royal Personage, to which
Anne listened humbly enough now, since it seemed to touch Lydia. Madame
Beattie came to her alternative: if nobody paid her money to ensure her
silence, she would go to Weedon Moore and give him the story of
Esther's thievery and of Lydia's. Anne rose from her chair.
"You have come to me," she said, "to ask a thing like that? To ask for
money--"
"You are to influence Jeff," Madame Beattie lisped. "Jeff can do almost
anything he likes if he doesn't waste himself muddling round with
turnips and evening schools. You are to tell him his wife and the imp
are going to be shown up. He wouldn't believe me. He thinks he can
thrash Moore and there'll be an end of it. But it won't be an end of it,
my dear, for there are plenty of channels besides Weedon Moore. You tell
him. If he doesn't care for Esther he may for the little imp. He thinks
she's very nice."
Madame Beattie here, in establishing an understanding, leered a little
in the way of indicating a man's pliability when he thought a woman
"very nice", and this finished the utter revolt of Anne, who stood, her
hand on a chair back, gazing at her.
"I never," said Anne, in a choked way, "I never heard such horrible
things in my life." Then, to her own amazement, for she hardly knew the
sensation and never with such intensity as overwhelmed her now, Anne
felt very angry. "Why," she said, in a tone that sounded like wonder,
"you are a dreadful woman. Do you know what a dreadful woman you are?
Oh, you must go away, Madame Beattie. You must go out of this house at
once. I can't have you here."
Madame Beattie looked up at her in a pleasant indifference, as if it
rather amused her to see the grey dove bristling for its young. Anne
even shook the chair she held, as if she were shaking Madame Beattie.
"I mean it," she said. "I can't have you stay here. My father might
come in and be civil to you, and I won't have anybody civil to you in
this house. Lydia might come in, and Lydia likes you. Why, Madame
Beattie, can you bear to think Lydia likes you, when you're willing to
say the things you do?"
Madame Beattie was still not moved except by mild amusement. Anne left
the chair and took a step nearer.
"Madame Beattie," she said, "you don't believe a word I say. But I mean
it. You've got to go out of this house, or I shall put you out of it
with my hands. With my hands, Madame Beattie--and I'm very strong."
Madame Beattie was no coward, but she was not young and she had a sense
of physical inadequacy. About Anne there was playing the very spirit of
tragic anger, none of it for effect, not in the least gauged by any idea
of its efficiency. Those slender hands, gripping each other until the
knuckles blanched, were ready for their act. The girl's white face was
lighted with eyes of fire. Madame Beattie rose and slowly assumed her
cloak.
"You're a silly child," she said. "When you're as old as I am you'll
have more common-sense. You'd rather risk a scandal than tell Jeff he
has a debt to pay. By to-morrow you'll see it as I do. Come to me in the
morning, and we'll talk it over. I won't act before then."
She walked composedly to the door and Anne scrupulously held it for her.
They went through the hall, Anne following and ready to open the last
door also. But she closed it without saying good-bye, in answer to
Madame Beattie's oblique nod over her shoulder and the farewell wave of
her hand. For an instant Anne felt like slipping the bolt lest her
adversary should return, but she reflected, with a grimness new to her
gentle nature, that if Madame Beattie did return her own two hands were
ready. She stood a moment, listening, and when the carriage wheels
rolled away down the drive, she went to the big closet under the stairs
and caught at her own coat and hat. She was going, as fast as her feet
would carry her, to see Alston Choate.
XXXVII
Alston Choate was working, and he was alone. Anne, bright-eyed and
anxious, came in upon him and brought him to his feet. Anne had learned
this year that you should not knock at the door of business offices, but
she still half believed you ought, and it gave her entrance something of
deprecation and a pretty grace.
"I am so troubled," she said, without preliminary. "Madame Beattie has
just been to see me."
Alston, smiling away her agitation, if he might, by a kind assumption
that there was no conceivable matter that could not be at once put
right, gave her a chair and himself went back to his judicial seat.
Anne, not loosening her jacket, looked at him, her face pure and
appealing above the fur about her throat, as if to beg him to be as kind
as he possibly could, since it all involved Lydia.
"I've no doubt it's Madame Beattie," said Alston carelessly, even it
might have been a little amused at the possibilities. "If there's a
ferment anywhere north of Central America she's pretty certain to have
set it brewing."
Anne told him her tale succinctly, and his unconcern crumbled. He
frowned over the foolishness of it, and considered, while she talked,
whether he had better be quite open with her, or whether it was
sufficient to take the responsibility of the thing and settle it like a
swaggering god warranted to rule. That was better, he concluded.
"I'll go to see Madame Beattie," he said. "Then I'll report to you. But
you'd better not speak to Lydia about it. Or Jeff. Promise me."
"Oh, I'll promise," said Anne, a lovely rose flush on her face. "Only,
if Lydia is in danger you must tell me in time to do something. I don't
know what, but you know for Lydia I'd do anything."
"I will, too," said Alston. "Only it won't be for Lydia wholly. It'll be
for you."
Then for an instant, though so alive to her, he seemed to withdraw into
remote cogitation, and she wondered whether he was really thinking of
the case at all. Because she was in a lawyer's office she called it a
case, timorously; that made it much more serious. But Alston, in that
instant, was thinking how strange it was that the shabby old office,
witness of his unwilling drudgery and his life-saving excursions into
the gardens of fiction, should be looking now on her, seated there in
her earnestness and purity, and that he should at last be recognising
her. She was a part of him, Alston thought, beloved, not because she was
so different but so like. There was no assault of the alien nature upon
his own, irresistible because so piquing. There were no unexplored
tracts he couldn't at least fancy, green swards and clear waters where a
man might be refreshed. Everything he found there would be, he knew, of
the nature of the approaches to that gentle paradise. What a thing,
remote, extraordinary to think of in his office while she brought him
the details of a tawdry scandal. Yet the office bore, to his eyes,
invisible traces of past occupancy: men and women out of books were
there, absolutely vivid to his eyes, more alive than half the
Addingtonians. The walls were hung with garlands of fancy, the windows
his dreaming eyes had looked from were windows into space beyond
Addington. No, these were no common walls, yet unfitting to gaze on
while you told a client you loved her. After all, on rapid second
thought, it might not seem so inapt seen through his mother's eyes, as
she was betraying herself now in more than middle age. "Ask her wherever
you find yourselves," he fancied his mother saying. "That is part of the
adventure."
Alston looked at Anne and smiled upon her and involuntarily she smiled
back, though she saw no cause for cheerfulness in the dismal errand she
had come on. She started a little, too, for Alston, in the most matter
of fact way, began with her first name.
"Anne," said he, "I have for a long time been--" he paused for a word.
The ones he found were all too dignified, too likely to be wanted in a
higher cause--"bewitched," he continued, "over Esther Blake."
The colour ran deeper into Anne's face.
"You don't want," she said, "to do anything that might hurt her? I
shouldn't want to, either. But it isn't Esther we're talking about. It's
Madame Beattie."
"I know," said Alston, "but I want you to know I have been very
much--I've made a good deal of a fool of myself over Mrs. Blake."
Still he obstinately would not say he had been in love. Anne, looking at
him with the colour rising higher and higher, hardly seemed to
understand. But suddenly she did.
"You don't mean--" she stammered. "Mr. Choate, she's married, you know,
even if she and Jeff aren't together any more. Esther is married."
"I know it," said Alston drily. "I've wished they weren't married. I've
wished I could ask her to marry me. But I don't any longer. You won't
understand at all why I say it now. Sometime I'll tell you when you've
noticed how I have to stand up against my cut and dried ways. Anne, I'm
talking to you."
She had got on her feet and was fumbling with the upper button of her
coat which had not been unloosed. But that she didn't remember now. She
was in a mechanical haste of making ready to go. Alston rose, too, and
was glad to find he was the taller. It gave him a mute advantage and he
needed all he could get.
"I'm telling you something quite important," he said, in a tone that set
her momentarily and fallaciously at ease. "It's going to be very
important to both of us. Dear Anne! darling Anne!" He broke down and
laughed, her eyes were so big with the surprise of it, almost, it might
be, with fright. "That's because I'm in love with you," said Alston.
"I've forgotten every other thing that ever happened to me, all except
this miserable thing I've just told you. I had to tell you, so you'd
know the worst of me. Darling Anne!" He liked the sound of it.
"I must go," said Anne.
"You'd better," said Alston. "It'll be much nicer to ask you the rest of
it in a proper place. Anne, I've had so much to do with proper places
I'm sick of 'em. That's why I've begun to say it here. Nothing could be
more improper in all Addington. Think about it. Be ready to tell me when
I come, though that won't be for a long time. I'm going to write you
things, for fear, if I said them, you'd say no. And don't really think.
Just remember you're darling Anne."
She gave him a grave look--Alston wondered afterward if it could
possibly be a reproving one--and, with a fine dignity, walked to the
door. Since he had begun to belie his nature, mischief possessed him. He
wanted to go as far as he audaciously could and taste the sweet and
bitter of her possible kindness, her almost certain blame.
"Good-bye," he said, "darling Anne."
This was as the handle of the door was in his grasp ready to be turned
for her. Anne, still inexplicably grave, was looking at him.
"Good-bye," she said, "Mr. Choate."
He watched her to the head of the stairs, and then shut the door on her
with a click. Alston was conscious of having, for the joy of the moment,
really made a fool of himself. But he didn't let it depress him. He
needed his present cleverness too much to spend a grain of it on
self-reproach. He went to his safe and took out a paper that had been
lying there ready to be used, slipped it into his pocket and went,
before his spirit had time to cool, to see Madame Beattie.
Sophy admitted him and left him in the library, while she went to summon
her. And Madame Beattie came, finding him at the window, his back turned
on the warm breathing presences of Esther's home. If he had penetrated,
for good cause, to Circe's bower, he didn't mean to drink in its subtle
intimacies. At the sound of a step he turned, and Madame Beattie met him
peaceably, with outstretched hand. Alston dropped the hand as soon as
possible. Lydia might swear she was clean and that her peculiarily
second-hand look was the effect of overworn black, but Alston she had
always impressed as much-damaged goods that had lost every conceivable
inviting freshness. She indicated a chair conveniently opposite her own
and he sat down and at once began.
"Madame Beattie, I have come to talk over this unfortunate matter of the
necklace."
"Oh," said Madame Beattie, with a perfect affability and no apparent
emotion, "Anne French has been chattering to you."
"Naturally," said Choate. "I am their counsel, hers and her sister's."
"These aren't matters of law," said Madame Beattie. "They are very
interesting personal questions, and I advise you to let them alone. You
won't find any precedent for them in your books."
"I have been unpardonably slow in coming to you," said Alston. "And my
coming now hasn't so very much to do with Lydia and Anne. I might have
come just the same if you hadn't begun to annoy them."
"Well," said Madame Beattie impatiently. She wanted her nap, for she was
due that evening at street corners in Mill End. "Get to the point, if
you please."
"The point is," said Alston, "that some months ago when you began to
make things unpleasant for a number of persons--"
"Nonsense!" said Madame Beattie briskly. "I haven't made things
unpleasant. I've only waked this town out of its hundred years' sleep.
You'd better be thankful to me, all of you. Trade is better, politics
are most exciting, everything's different since I came."
"I sent at once to Paris," said Alston, with an impartial air of
conveying information they were equally interested in, "for the history
of the Beattie necklace. And I've got it. I've had it a week or more,
waiting to be used." He looked her full in the face to see how she took
it. He would have said she turned a shade more unhealthy, in a yellow
way, but not a nerve in her seemed to blench.
"Well," said she, "have you come to tell me the history of the Beattie
necklace?"
"Briefly," said Alston, "it was given the famous singer, as she states,
by a certain Royal Personage. We are not concerned with his identity,
his nationality even. But it was a historic necklace, and he'd no
business to give it to her at all. There were some rather shady
transactions before he could get his hands on it. And the Royal Family
never ceased trying to get it back. The Royal Personage was a young man
when he gave it to her, but by the time the family'd begun to exert
pressure he wasn't so impetuous, and he, too, wanted it back. His
marriage gave the right romantic reason, which he used. He actually
asked the famous singer to return it to him, and at the same time she
was approached by some sort of agent from the family who offered her a
fat compensation."
"It was a matter of sentiment," said Madame Beattie loftily. "You've no
right to say it was a question of money. It is extremely bad taste."
"She had ceased singing," said Alston. "Money meant more to her than the
jewels it would have been inexpedient to display. For by that time, she
didn't want to offend any royal families whatever. So she was bought
off, and she gave up the necklace."
"It is not true," said she. "If it was money I wanted, I could have sold
it."
"Oh, no, I beg your pardon. There would have been difficulties in the
way of selling historic stones; besides there were so many royal
personages concerned in keeping them intact. It might have been very
different when the certain Royal Personage was young enough and
impetuous enough to swear he stood behind you. He'd got to the point
where he might even have sworn he never gave them to you."
She uttered a little hoarse exclamation, a curse, Alston could believe,
in whatever tongue.
"Besides," he continued, "as I just said, Madame Beattie wasn't willing,
on the whole, to offend her royal patrons, though she wasn't singing any
longer. She had a good many favours to ask of the world, and she didn't
want Europe made too hot to hold her."
He paused to rest a moment from his thankless task, and they looked at
each other calmly, yet quite recognising they were at grips.
"You forget," said she, "that I have the necklace at this moment in my
possession. You have seen it and handled it."
"No," said Alston, "I have never seen the necklace. Nobody has seen it
on this side the water. When you came here years ago and got Jeff into
difficulties you brought another necklace, a spurious one, paste, stage
jewels, I daresay, and none of us were clever enough to know the
difference. You said it was the Beattie necklace, and Esther was
hypnotised and--"
"And stole it," Madame Beattie put in, with a real enjoyment now.
"And Jeff was paralysed by loving Esther so much that he didn't look
into it. And as soon as he was out of prison you came here and
hypnotised us all over again. But it's not the necklace."
Madame Beattie put back her head and burst into hoarse and perfectly
spontaneous laughter.
"And it was for you to find it out," she said. "I didn't think you were
so clever, Alston Choate. I didn't know you were clever at all. You
refresh me. God bless us! to think not one of them had the sense, from
first to last, to guess the thing was paste."
Alston enjoyed his brief triumph, a little surprised at it himself. He
had no idea she would back down instantly, nor indeed, though it were
hammered into her, that she would own the game was up. The same recoil
struck her and she ludicrously cocked an eye.
"I shall give you a lot of trouble yet though. The necklace may be a
dead issue, but I'm a living dog, Alston Choate. Don't they say a living
dog is better than a dead lion? Well, I'm living and I'm here."
He saw her here indefinitely, rolling about in hacks, in phaetons, in
victorias, in motors, perpetually stirring two houses at least to
nervous misery. There would be no running away from her. They would have
her absurdly tied about their necks forever.
"Madame Beattie!" said he. This was Alston's great day, he reflected,
with a grimace all to himself. He had never put so much impetuosity, so
much daring to the square inch, into any day before. He lounged back a
little in his chair, put his hands in his pockets and tried to feel
swaggering and at ease. Madame Beattie, he knew, wouldn't object to
swagger. And if it would help him dramatically, so much the better.
"Madame Beattie," he repeated, "I've a proposition to make to you. I
thought of it within the last minute."
Her eyes gleamed out at him expectantly, avariciously, with some
suspicion, too. She hoped it concerned money, but it seemed unlikely, so
chill a habit of life had men of Addington.
"It is absolutely my own idea," said Alston. "Nobody has suggested it,
nobody has anything whatever to do with it. If I give myself time to
think it over I sha'n't make it at all. What would you take to leave
Addington, lock, stock and barrel, cut stick to Europe and sign a paper
never to come back? There'd be other things in the paper. I should make
it as tight as I knew how."
Madame Beattie set her lips and looked him over, from his well-bred face
and his exceedingly correct clothes to his feet. She would never have
suspected an Addington man of such impetus, no one except perhaps Jeff
in the old days. What was the utmost an Addington man would do? She had
been used to consider them a meagre set.
"Well?" said Alston.
Madame Beattie blinked a little, and her mind came back.
"Ten thousand," she tossed him at a venture, in a violence of haste.
Alston shook his head.
"Too much," said he.
Madame Beattie, who had not known a tear for twenty years at least,
could have cried then, the money had seemed so unreasonably, so
incredibly near.
"You've got oceans of money," said she, in a passion of eagerness, "all
you Addington bigwigs. You put it away and let it keep ticking on while
you eat noon dinners and walk down town. What is two thousand pounds to
you? In another year you wouldn't know it."
"I sha'n't haggle," said Alston. "I'll tell you precisely what I'll put
into your hand--with conditions--if you agree to make this your farewell
appearance. I'll give you five thousand dollars. And as a thrifty
Addingtonian--you know what we are--I advise you to take it. I might
repent."
She leaned toward him and put a shaking hand on his knee.
"I'll take it," she said. "I'll sign whatever you say. Give me the money
now. You wouldn't ask me to wait, Alston Choate. You wouldn't play a
trick on me."
Alston drew himself up from his lounging ease, and as he lifted the
trembling old hand from his knee, gave it a friendly pressure before he
let it fall.
"I can't give it to you now," he said. "Not this minute. Would you mind
coming to my office to-morrow, say at ten? We shall be less open to
interruption."
"Of course I'll come," she said, almost passionately.
He had never seen her so shaken or indeed actually moved from her
cynical calm. She was making her way out of the room without waiting for
his good-bye. At the door she turned upon him, her blurred old face a
sad sight below the disordered wig. Esther, coming downstairs, met her
in the hall and stopped an instant to stare at her, she looked so
terrible. Then Esther came on to Alston Choate.
"What is it?" she began.
"I was going to ask for you," said Alston. "I want to tell you what I
have just been telling Madame Beattie. Then I must see Jeff and his
sisters." This sounded like an afterthought and yet he was conscious
that Anne was in his mind like a radiance, a glow, a warm sweet wind.
"Everybody connected with Madame Beattie ought to understand clearly
what she can do and what she can't. She seems to have such an
extraordinary facility for getting people into mischief."
He placed a chair for her and when she sank into it, her eyes
inquiringly on his face, he began, still standing, to tell her briefly
the history of the necklace. Esther's face, as he went on, froze into
dismay. He was telling her that the thing which alone had brought out
passionate emotion in her had never existed at all. Not until then had
he realised how she loved the necklace, the glitter of it, the reputed
value, the extraordinary story connected with it. Esther's life had been
built on it. And when Alston had finished and found she could not speak,
he was sorry for her and told her so.
"I'm sorry," he said simply.
Esther looked at him a moment dumbly. Then her face convulsed. She was
crying.
"Don't," said Choate helplessly. "Don't do that. The thing isn't worth
it. It isn't worth anything to speak of. And it's made you a lot of
trouble, all of you, and now she's going back to Europe and she'll take
it with her."
"Going back?" Esther echoed, through her tears. "Who says she's going
back?"
"She says so," Alston rejoined weakly. He thought his hush money might
fairly be considered his own secret. It was like a candle burned in
gratitude for having found out he had dared to say, "darling Anne".
"If she would go back!" said Esther. "But she won't. She'll stay here
and talk to mill hands and drag dirty people up those stairs. And I
shall live here forever with her and grandmother, and nobody will help
me. Nobody will ever help me, Alston Choate. Do you realise that?
Nobody."
Her melting eyes were on his and she herself was out of her chair and
tremulously near. But Esther made no mistake of a too prodigal largess a
man like Reardon was bewitched by, even if he ran from it. She stood
there in sorrowful dignity and let her eyes plead for her. And Alston,
though he had accomplished something for her as well as for Anne, felt
only a sense of shame and the misery of falling short. He had thought he
loved her (he had got so far now as to say to himself he thought so) and
he loved her no more. He wished only to escape, and his wish took every
shred of the hero out of him.
"We'll all help you," he said with the cheerfulness exasperatingly ready
to be pumped up when things are bad and there is no adequate remedy.
"I'd like to. And so will Jeff."
With that he put out his hand to her, and when she unseeingly accorded
him hers gave it what he thought an awkward, cowardly pressure and left
her. There are no graceful ways for leaving Circe's isle, Alston
thought, as he hurried away, unless you have at least worn the hog's
skin briefly and given her a showing of legitimate triumph. And that
night, because he had a distaste for talking about it further, he wrote
the story to Jeff, still omitting mention of his candle-burning
honorarium. To Anne, he sent a little note, the first of a long series,
wondering at himself as he wrote it, but sticking madly to his audacity,
for that queerly seemed the way to win her.
"Darling Anne," the note said. "It's all right. I'll tell you
sometime. Meanwhile you're not to worry.
"Your lover,
"ALSTON CHOATE."
XXXVIII
While the motor cars were whirling about Addington and observers were in
an ecstasy over Madame Beattie's electioneering, Reardon was the more
explicitly settling his affairs and changing his sailing from week to
week as it intermittently seemed possible to stay. He was in an
irritation of unrest when Esther did not summon him, and a panic of fear
at the prospect of her doing it. He was beginning dimly to understand
that Esther, even if the bills were to be paid, proposed to do nothing
herself about getting decently free. Reardon thought he could interpret
that, in a way that enhanced her divinity. She was too womanly, he
determined. How could a creature like her give even the necessary
evidence? If any one at that time believed sincerely in Esther's clarity
of soul, it was Reardon who had not thought much about souls until he
met her. Esther had been a wonderful influence in his life, transmuting
everyday motives until he actually stopped now to think a little over
the high emotions he was not by nature accustomed even to imagine. There
was something pathetic in his desire to better himself even in spiritual
ways. No man in Addington had attained a higher proficiency in the
practical arts of correct and comfortable living, and it was owing to
the power of Esther's fastidious reserves that he had begun to think all
women were not alike, after all. There must be something in class,
something real and uncomprehended, or such a creature as she could not
be born with a difference. When she came nearer him, when she of her own
act surrendered and he had drawn the exquisite sum of her into his
arms, he still believed in her moral perfection to an extent that made
her act most terribly moving to him. The act grew colossal, for it meant
so matchless a creature must love him unquestioningly or she could not
step outside her fine decorum. Every thought of her drew him toward her.
Every manly and also every ambitious impulse of his entire life--the
ambition that bade him tread as near as possible to Addington's upper
class--forbade his seeking her until he had a right to. And if she would
not free herself, the right would never be his.
One day, standing by his window at dusk moodily looking out while the
invisible filaments that drew him to her tightened unbearably, he saw
Jeff go past. At once Reardon knew Jeff was going to her, and he found
it monstrous that the husband whose existence meant everything to him
should be seeking her unhindered. He got his hat and coat and hurried
out into the street in time to see Jeff turn in at her gate. He strode
along that way, and then halted and walked back again. It seemed to him
he must know at least when Jeff came out.
Jeff had been summoned, and Esther met him with no pretence at an
artifice of coolness. She did not ask him to sit down. They stood there
together in the library looking at each other like two people who have
urgent things to say and limited time to say them in.
"Jeff," she began, "you're all I've got in the world. Aunt Patrica's
going away."
Jeff clutched upon his reason and hoped it would serve him while
something more merciful kept him kind.
"Good!" said he. "That's a relief for you."
"In a way," said Esther. "But it leaves me alone, with grandmother. It's
like being with a dead woman. I'm afraid of her. Jeff, if you'd only
thought of it yourself! but I have to say it. Won't you come here to
live?"
"If he had only thought of it himself!" his heart ironically repeated.
Had he not in the first years of absence from her dreamed what it would
be to come back to a hearth she was keeping warm?
"Esther," he said, "only a little while ago you said you were afraid of
me."
Esther had no answer to make. Yet she could take refuge in a perfect
humility, and this she did.
"I ask you, Jeff," she said. "I ask you to come back."
The world itself seemed to close about him, straiter than the walls of
the room. Had he, in taking vows on him when he truly loved her, built a
prison he must dwell in to the end of his life or hers? Did moral law
demand it of him? did the decencies of Addington?
"I ask you to forgive me," said Esther. "Are you going to punish me for
what I did?"
"No," said Jeff, in a dull disclaimer. "I don't want to punish you."
But he did not want to come back. This her heart told her, while it
cautioned her not to own she knew.
"I shouldn't be a burden on you," she said. "I should be of use, social
use, Jeff. You need all the pull you can get, and I could help you
there, tremendously."
The same bribe Madame Beattie had held out to him, he remembered, with a
sorry smile. Esther, Madame Beattie had cheerfully determined, was to
help him placate the little gods. Now Esther herself was offering her
own abetment in almost the same terms. He saw no way even vaguely to
resolve upon what he felt able to do, except by indirection. They must
consider it together.
"Esther," he said, "sit down. Let me, too, so we can get hold of
ourselves, find out what we really think."
They sat, and she clasped her hands in a way prayerfully suggestive and
looked at him as if she hung on the known value of his words. Jeff
groped about in his mind for their common language. What had it
been?--laughter, kisses, the feverish commendation of the pageant of
life. He sat there frowning, and when his brow cleared it was because he
decided the only way possible was to open the door of his own mind and
let her in. If she found herself lonesome, afraid even in its
furnishings as they inevitably were now, that would tell them something.
She need never come again.
"Esther," he said, "the only thing I've found out about myself is that I
haven't found out anything. I don't know whether I'm a decent fellow,
just because I want to be decent, or whether I'm stunted, calloused, all
the things they say happen to criminals."
"Don't," said Esther sharply. "Don't talk of criminals."
"I've got to. You let me wander on a minute. Maybe it'll get us
somewhere." He debated whether he should tell her he wanted to save
Addington. No, she wouldn't understand. Could he tell her that at that
minute he loved Addington better than anything but Lydia? and Lydia he
must still keep hidden in the back of his mind under the green leaves of
secrecy. "Esther," said he, "Esther, poor child, I don't want you to be
a prisoner to me. And I don't want to be a prisoner to you. It would be
a shocking wrong to you to be condemned to live with me all your life
just because an old woman has scared you. What a penalty to pay for
being afraid of Madame Beattie--to live with a husband you had stopped
thinking about at all."
Esther gave a patient sigh.
"I don't understand," she said, "what you are talking about. And this
isn't the way, dear, for us to understand each other. If we love each
other, oughtn't we to forgive?"
"We do," said Jeff. "I haven't a hostile thought toward you. I should be
mighty sorry if you had for me. But, Esther, whatever we feel for each
other, will the thing stand the test of the plain truth? If it's going
to have any working basis, it's got to. Now, do you love me? No, you
don't. We both know we've changed beyond--" he paused for a merciful
simile--"beyond recognition. Now because we promised to live together
until death parted us, are we going to? Was that a righteous promise in
view of what might happen? The thing, you see, has happened. If we had
children it might be righteous to hang together, for their sakes. Is it
righteous now? I don't believe it."
Esther lifted her clasped hands and struck them down upon her knee. The
rose of her cheek had paled, and all expression save a protesting
incredulity had frozen out of her face.
"I have never," she said, "been so insulted in my life."
"That's it," said Jeff. "I tried to tell the truth and you can't stand
it. You tell it to me now, and I'll see if I can stand your side of it."
She was out of her chair and on her feet.
"You must go," she said. "You must go at once."
"I'm sorry," said Jeff. He was looking at her with what Miss Annabel
called his beautiful smile. "You can't possibly believe I want things to
be right for you. But it's true. I mean to make them righter than they
are, too. But I don't believe we can shackle ourselves together. I don't
believe that's right."
He went away, leaving her trembling. There was nothing for it but to go.
On the sidewalk not far from her door he met Reardon with a casual nod,
and Reardon blazed out at him, "Damn you!" At least that was what Jeff
for the instant thought he said and turned to look at him. But Reardon
was striding on and the back of his excellent great-coat looked so
handsomely conventional that Jeff concluded he had been mistaken. He
went on trying to sift his distastes and revulsions from what he wanted
to do for Esther. Something must be done. Esther must no more be bound
than he.
Reardon did not knock at her door. He opened it and went in and Esther
even passionately received him. They greeted each other like
acknowledged lovers, and he stood holding her to him while she sobbed
bitterly against his arm.
"What business had he?" he kept repeating. "What business had he?"
"I can't talk about it," said Esther. "But I can never go through it
again. You must take me away."
"I'm going myself," said Reardon. "I'm booked for Liverpool."
Esther was spent with the weariness of the years that had brought her no
compensating joys for her meagre life with grandmother upstairs and her
most uneasy one since Madame Beattie came. How could she, even if
Reardon furnished money for it, be sure to free herself from Jeff in
time to taste some of the pleasures she craved while she was at her
prime of beauty? After all, there were other lands to wander in; it
wasn't necessary to sit down here and do what Addingtonians had done
since they settled the wretched place on the date they seemed to find so
sacred. So she told him, in a poor sad little whisper:
"I shall die if you leave me."
"I won't go," said Reardon, at once. "I'll stand by."
"You will go," said Esther fiercely, half in anger because he had to be
cajoled and prompted, "and take me with you."
Reardon, standing there feeling her beating heart against his hand,
thought that was how he had known it would be. He had always had a fear,
the three-o'clock-waking-in-the-morning fear, that sometime his
conventions would fall from him like a garment he had forgotten, and he
should do some act that showed him to Addington as he was born. He had
too, sometimes, a nightmare, pitifully casual, yet causing him an
anguish of shame: murdering his grammar or smoking an old black pipe
such as his father smoked and being caught with it, going to the club in
overalls. But now he realised what the malicious envy of fortune had in
store for him. He was to run off with his neighbour's wife. For an
instant he weakly meant to recall her to herself, to remind her that she
didn't want to do it. But it seemed shockingly indecorous to assume a
higher standard than her own, and all he could do was to assure her, as
he had been assuring her while he was swept along that dark underground
river of disconcerted thought: "I'll take care of you."
"What do you mean?" she returned, like a wild thing leaping at him. "Do
you mean really take care of me? over there?"
"Yes," said Reardon, without a last clutch at his lost vision, "over
there. We'll leave here Friday, for New York."
"I shall send my trunks in advance," said Esther. "By express. I shall
say I am going for dressmaking and the theatre."
Reardon settled down to bare details. It would be unwise to be seen
leaving on the same train, and he would precede her to New York. It
would be better also to stay at different hotels. Once landed they
would become--he said this in the threadbare pathetic old phrase--man
and wife "in the sight of God". He was trying honestly to spare her
exquisite sensibilities, and Esther understood that she was to be saved
at all points while she reaped the full harvest of her desires. Reardon
kissed her solemnly and went away, at the door meeting Madame Beattie,
who gave him what he thought an alarming look, at the least a satirical
one. Had she listened? had she seen their parting? But if she had, she
made no comment. Madame Beattie had her own affairs to manage.
"I have told Sophy to do some pressing for me," she said to Esther.
"After that, she will pack."
"Sophy isn't very fond of packing," said Esther weakly. She was quite
sure Sophy would refuse and was immediately sorry she had given Madame
Beattie even so slight a warning. What did Sophy's tempers matter now?
She would be left behind with grandmother and Rhoda Knox. What
difference would it make whether in the sulks or out of them?
"Oh, yes," said Madame Beattie quietly. "She'll do it."
Esther plucked up spirit. For weeks she had hardly addressed Madame
Beattie at all. She dared not openly show scorn of her, but she could at
least live apart from her. Yet it seemed to her now that she might, as a
sort of deputy hostess under grandmother, be told whether Madame Beattie
actually did mean to go away.
"Are you--" she hesitated.
"Yes," said Madame Beattie, "I am sailing. I leave for New York Friday
morning."
Esther had a rudimentary sense of humour, and it did occur to her that
it would be rather a dire joke if she and Madame Beattie, inexorably
linked by destiny, were to go on the same boat. But Madame Beattie drily
if innocently reassured her. And yet was it innocently? Esther could not
be sure. She was sailing, she explained, for Naples. She should never
think of venturing the northern crossing at this season.
And that afternoon while Madame Beattie took her drive, Esther had her
own trunks brought to her room and she and Sophy packed. Sophy was
enchanted. Mrs. Blake was going to New York, so Mrs. Blake told her, and
as soon as she got settled Sophy would be sent for. She was not to say
anything, however, for Mrs. Blake's going depended on its being carried
out quietly, for fear Madame Beattie should object. Sophy understood.
She had been quiet about many things connected with the tranquillity
dependent on Madame Beattie, and she even undertook to have the express
come at a certain hour and move the trunks down carefully. Sophy held
many reins of influence.
When Madame Beattie came back from driving, Andrea was with her. She had
called at the shop and taken him away from his fruity barricades, and
they had jogged about the streets, Madame Beattie talking and Andrea
listening with a profound concentration, his smile in abeyance, his
black eyes fiery. When they stopped at the house Esther, watching from
the window, contemptuously noted how familiar they were. Madame Beattie,
she thought, was as intimate with a foreign fruit-seller as with one of
her own class. Madame Beattie seemed impressing upon him some command or
at least instructions. Andrea listened, obsequiously attentive, and when
it was over he took his hat off, in a grand manner, and bending, kissed
her hand. He ran up the steps and rang for her, and after she had gone
in, Esther saw him, dramatic despondency in every drooping muscle, walk
sorrowfully away.
Madame Beattie, as if she meant to accomplish all her farewells betimes,
had the hardihood, this being the hour when Rhoda Knox took an airing,
to walk upstairs to her step-sister's room and seat herself by the
bedside before grandmother had time to turn to the wall. There she sat,
pulling off her gloves and talking casually as if they had been in the
habit of daily converse, while grandmother lay and pierced her with
unyielding eyes. There was not emotion in the glance, no aversion or
remonstrance. It was the glance she had for Esther, for Rhoda Knox.
"Here I am," it said, "flat, but not at your mercy. You can't make me do
anything I don't want to do. I am in the last citadel of apparent
helplessness. You can't any of you drag me out of my bed. You can't even
make me speak." And she would not speak. Esther, creeping out on the
landing to listen, was confident grandmother never said a word. What
spirit it was, what indomitable pluck, thought Esther, to lie there at
the mercy of Madame Beattie, and deny herself even the satisfaction of a
reply. All that Madame Beattie said Esther could not hear, but evidently
she was assuring her sister that she was an arch fool to lie there and
leave Esther in supreme possession of the house.
"Get up," Madame Beattie said, at one point. "There's nothing the matter
with you. One day of liberty'd be better than lying here and dying by
inches and having that Knox woman stare at you. With your constitution,
Susan, you've got ten good years before you. Get up and rule your house.
I shall be gone and you won't have me to worry you, and in a few days
she'll be gone, too."
So she knew it, Esther realised, with a quickened heart. She slipped
back into her room and stood there silent until Madame Beattie, calling
Sophy to do some extra service for her, went away to her own room. And
still grandmother did not speak.
XXXIX
On the morning Madame Beattie went, a strange intermittent procession
trickled by the house, workmen, on their way to different activities,
diverted from their usual road, and halting an instant to salute the
windows with a mournful gaze. Some of them took their hats off, and the
few who happened to catch a glimpse of Madame Beattie gave eager
salutation. At one time a group of them had collected, and these Esther
looked down on with a calm face but rage in her heart, wondering why she
must be disgraced to the last. But when Madame Beattie really went there
was no one in the street, and Esther, a cloak about her, stood by the
carriage in a scrupulous courtesy, stamping a little, ostensibly to keep
her feet warm but more than half because she was in a fever of
impatience lest the unwelcome guest should be detained. Madame Beattie
was irritatingly slow. She arranged herself in the hack as if for a
drive long enough to demand every precaution. Esther knew perfectly well
she was being exasperating to the last, and in that she was right. But
she could hardly know Madame Beattie had not a malevolent impulse toward
her: only a careless understanding of her, an amused acceptance. When
she had tucked herself about with the robe, undoing Denny's kind offices
and doing them over with a tedious moderation, she put out her arms to
draw Esther into a belated embrace. But Esther could not bear
everything. She dodged it, and Madame Beattie, not at all rebuffed, gave
her hoarse little crow of laughter.
"Well," said she, "I leave you. But not for long, I daresay."
"You'll be coming back by spring," said Esther, willing to turn off the
encounter neatly.
"I might," said Madame Beattie, "if Susan dies and leaves me everything.
But I sha'n't depend on seeing you. We shall meet, of course, but it'll
be over there." Again she laughed a little at a disconcerted stare from
Esther. "Tell him to go along," she said. "You'd better make up your
mind to Italy. Everything seems right, there, even to New
Englanders--pretty nearly everything. _Au revoir_."
She drove away chuckling to herself, and Esther stood a moment staring
blankly. It had actually happened, the incredible of which she had
dreamed. Madame Beattie was going, and now she herself was following too
soon to get the benefit of it.
Lydia was out that morning and Denny, who saw her first, drew up of his
own accord. It was not to be imagined by Denny that Madame Beattie and
Lydia should have spent long hours jogging together and not be grateful
for a last word. Madame Beattie, deep in probing of her little hand-bag,
looked up at the stopping of the hack, and smiled most cordially.
"Come along, imp," said she. "Get in here and go to the station with
me."
Lydia stepped in at once, very glad indeed of a word with her unpopular
friend.
"Are you truly going, Madame Beattie?" she asked, adding tumultuously,
since there was so little time to be friendly, "I'm sorry. I like you,
you know, Madame Beattie."
"Well, my dear," said Madame Beattie good-naturedly, "I fancy you're the
only soul in town that does, except perhaps those nice workmen I've
played the devil with. I only hope they'll succeed in playing the devil
themselves a little, even if I'm not here to coach them. I've explained
it all very carefully, just as I got the dirty little man to explain it
to me, and I think they'll be able to manage. When it all comes out you
can tell Jeff I did it. I began it when I thought it might be of some
advantage to me, but I've told Andrea to go on with it. It'll be more
amusing, on the whole."
"Go on with what?" inquired Lydia.
"Never mind. But you must write me and tell me how the election went. I
won't bother you with my address, but Alston Choate'll give it to you.
He intends to keep his eye on me, the stupid person. I wouldn't come
over here again if I were paid for it."
At the station Lydia, a little sick and sorry, because she hated changes
and also Madame Beattie kept some glamour for her, stepped out and gave
her old friend a firm hand to help her and then an arm to lean on.
Madame Beattie bade Denny a carelessly affectionate farewell and left
him her staunch ally. She knew how to bind her humbler adherents to her,
and indeed with honesty, because she usually liked them better than the
people who criticised her and combated and admired her from her own
plane. After the trunks were checked and she still had a margin of time,
she walked up and down the platform leaning on Lydia's arm, and talked
about the greyness of New England and the lovely immortalities of Italy.
When they saw the smoke far down the track, she stopped, still leaning
on Lydia.
"You've been a droll imp," she said. "If I had money I'd take you with
me and amuse myself seeing you in Italy. Your imp's eyes would be
rounder than they are now, and you'd fall in love with some handsome
scamp and find him out and grow up and leave him and we'd take an
apartment and sit there and laugh at everything. You can tell Jeff--"
the train was really nearing now and she bent and spoke at Lydia's
ear--"tell him he's going to be a free man, and if he doesn't make use
of his freedom he's a fool. She's going to run away. With Reardon."
"Who's going to run away?" Lydia shrilled up into her face. "Not
Esther?"
"Esther, to be sure. I gather they're off to-night. That's why I'm going
this morning. I don't want to be concerned in the silly business, though
when they're over there I shall make a point of looking them up. He'd
pay me anything to get rid of me."
The train was in, and her foot was on the step. But Lydia was holding
her back, her little face one sharp interrogation.
"Not to Europe?" she said. "You don't mean they're going to Europe?"
"Of course I do," said Madame Beattie, extricating herself. "Where else
is there to go? No, I sha'n't say another word. I waited till you
wouldn't have a chance to question me. Tell Jeff, but not till to-morrow
morning. Then they'll be gone and it won't be his responsibility.
Good-bye, imp."
She did not threaten Lydia with envelopment in her richness of velvet
and fur. Instead, to Lydia's confusion and wonder, ever-growing when she
thought about it afterward, she caught up her hand and gave it a light
kiss. Then she stepped up into the car and was borne away.
"I don't believe it," said Lydia aloud, and she walked off, glancing
down once at the hand that had been kissed and feeling gravely moved by
what seemed to her an honour from one of Madame Beattie's standing.
Lydia was never to forget that Madame Beattie had been a great lady, in
a different sense from inherited power and place. She was of those who
are endowed and to whom the world must give something because they have
given it so much. Should she obey her, and tell Jeff after the danger of
his stopping Esther was quite past? Lydia thought she would. And she
owned to herself the full truth about it. She did not for an instant
think she ought to keep her knowledge in obedience to Madame Beattie,
but she meant at least to give Jeff his chance. And as she thought, she
was walking home fast, and when she got there she hurried into the
library without taking off her hat, and asked the colonel:
"Where's Jeff?"
The colonel was sitting by the fire, a book in his hand in the most
correct position for reading. He had been deep in one of his friendly
little naps and had picked the book up when he heard her step and held
it with a convincing rigour.
"He's gone off for a tramp," said he, looking at her sleepily. "He'd
been writing and didn't feel very fit. I advised him to go and make a
day of it."
Anne came in then, and Lydia stared at her, wondering if Anne could
help. And yet, whatever Anne said, she was determined not to tell Jeff
until the morning. So she slowly took off her things and made brisk
tasks to do about the house. Only when the two o'clock train was nearly
due she seized her hat and pinned it on, slipped into her coat and
walked breathlessly to the station. She was there just before the train
came in and there also, a fine figure in his excellently fitting
clothes, was Reardon. He was walking the platform, nervously Lydia
thought, but he seemed not to be waiting for any one. Seeing her he
looked, though she might have fancied it, momentarily disconcerted, but
took off his hat to her and turned immediately to resume his march.
Suppose Esther came, Lydia wondered. What should she do? Should she stop
her, block her way, bid her remember Jeff? Or should she watch her to
the last flutter of her hatefully pretty clothes as she entered the car
with Reardon and, in the noise of the departing train, give one loud
hurrah because Jeff was going to be free? But the train came, and
Reardon, without a glance behind, though in a curious haste as if he
wanted at least to escape Lydia's eyes, entered and was taken away.
Again Lydia went home, and now she sat by the fire and could not talk,
her elbows on her knee, her chin supported in her hands.
"What is it?" Anne asked her. "You look mumpy."
Yes, Lydia, said, she was mumpy. She thought she had a cold. But though
Anne wanted to minister to her she was not allowed, and Lydia sat there
and watched the clock. At the early dark she grew restless.
"Farvie," said she, "shouldn't you think Jeff would come?"
"Why, no," said he, looking at her over his glasses, doing the
benevolent act, Lydia called it. "There's a moon, and he'll probably get
something to eat somewhere or even come back by train. It isn't his
night at the school."
At six o'clock Lydia began to realise that if Esther were going that day
she would take the next train. It would not be at all likely that she
took the "midnight" and got into New York jaded in the early morning.
She put on her hat and coat, and was going softly out when Anne called
to her:
"Lyd, if you've got a cold you stay in the house."
Lydia shut the door behind her and sped down the path. She thought she
should die--Lydia had frequent crises of dying when the consummations of
life eluded her--if she did not know whether Esther was going. Yet she
would not tell Jeff until it was too late, even if he were there on the
spot and if he blamed her forever for not telling him. This time she
stayed in a sheltering corner of the station, and not many minutes
before the train a dark figure passed her, Esther, veiled, carrying her
hand-bag, and walking fast. Lydia could have touched her arm, but
Esther, in her desire of secrecy, was trying to see no one. She, too,
stopped, in a deeper shadow at the end of the building. Either she had
her ticket or she was depending on the last minute for getting it.
Lydia, with a leap of conjecture concluded, and rightly, that she had
sent Sophy for it in advance. The local train came in, bringing the
workmen from the bridge, still being repaired up the track, and Lydia
shrank back a little as they passed her. And among them, finishing a
talk he had taken up on the train, was, incredibly, Jeff. Lydia did not
parley with her dubieties. She slipped after them in the shadow, came up
to him and touched him on the arm.
"Jeff!" she said.
He turned, dropped away from the men and stood there an instant looking
at her. Lydia's heart was racing. She had never felt such excitement in
her life. It seemed to her she should never get her breath again.
"What's the matter?" said Jeff. "Father all right?"
"She's going to run away with Reardon," said Lydia, her teeth clicking
on the words and biting some of them in two. "He went this afternoon.
They're going to meet."
"How do you know?"
Neither of them, in the course of their quick sentences, mentioned
Esther's name.
"Madame Beattie told me. Look over by that truck. Don't let her see
you."
Jeff turned slightly and saw the figure by the truck.
"She's going to take this train," said Lydia. "She's going to Reardon. O
Jeff, it's wicked."
Lydia had never thought much about things that were wicked. Either they
were brave things to do and you did them if you wanted to, or they were
underhand, hideous things and then you didn't want to do them. But
suddenly Esther seemed to her something floating, tossed and driven to
be caught up and saved from being swamped by what seas she knew not.
Jeff walked over to the dark figure by the truck. Whether he had
expected it to be Esther he could not have said, but even as it shrank
from him he knew.
"Come," said he. "Come home with me."
Esther stood perfectly silent like a shrinking wild thing endowed with a
protective catalepsy.
"Esther," said he, "I know where you're going. You mustn't go. You
sha'n't. Come home with me."
And as she did not move or answer he put his arm through hers and guided
her away. Just beyond the corner of the station in a back eddy of
solitude, she flung him off and darted three or four steps obliquely
before he caught her up and held her. Lydia, standing in the shadow, her
heart beating hard, heard his unmoved voice.
"Esther, you're not afraid of me? Come home with me. I won't touch you
if you'll promise to come. I can't let you go. I can't. It would be the
worst thing that ever happened to you."
"How do you know," she called, in a high hysterical voice, "where I'm
going?"
"You were going with somebody you mustn't go with," said Jeff. "We won't
talk about him. If he were here I shouldn't touch him. He's only a
fool. And it's your fault if you're going. But you mustn't go."
"I am going," said Esther, "to New York, and I have a perfect right to.
I shall spend a few days and get rested. Anybody that tells you anything
else tells lies."
"The train is coming," said Jeff. "Stand here, if you won't walk away
with me, and we'll let it go."
She tried again to wrench herself free, but she could not. Lydia,
standing in the shadow, felt a passionate sympathy. He was kind, Lydia
saw, he was compelling, but if he could have told the distracted
creature he had something to offer her beyond the bare protection of an
honourable intent, then she might have seen another gate open besides
the one that led nowhere. Almost, at that moment, Lydia would have had
him sorry enough to put his arms about her and offer the semblance of
love that is divinest sympathy. The train stopped for its appointed
minutes and went on.
"Come," said Jeff, "now we'll go home."
She turned and walked with him to the corner. There she swerved.
"No," said Jeff, "you're coming with me. That's the place for you.
They'll be good to you, all of them. They're awfully decent. I'll be
decent, too. You sha'n't feel you've been jailed. Only you can't walk
off and be a prisoner to--him. Things sha'n't be hard for you. They
shall be easier."
Lydia, behind, could believe he was going on in this broken flow of
words to soothe her, reassure her. "Oh," Lydia wanted to call to him,
"make love to her if you can. I don't care. Anything you want to do I'll
stand by, if it kills me. Haven't I said I'd die for you?"
But at that moment of high excitement Lydia didn't believe anything
would kill her, even seeing Jeff walk away from her with this little
wisp of wrong desires to hold and cherish.
Jeff took Esther up the winding path, opened the door and led her into
the library where his father sat yawning. Lydia slipped round the back
way to the kitchen and took off her hat and coat.
"Cold!" she said to Mary Nellen, to explain her coming, and warmed her
hands a moment before she went into the front hall and put her things
away.
"Father," said Jeff, with a loud cheerfulness that sounded fatuous in
his own ears, "here's Esther. She's come to stay."
The colonel got on his feet and advanced with his genial courtesy and
outstretched hand. But Esther stood like a stone and did not touch the
hand. Anne came in, at that moment, Lydia following. Anne had caught
Jeff's introduction and looked frankly disconcerted. But Lydia marched
straight up to Esther.
"I've always been hateful to you," she said, "whenever I've seen you.
I'm not so hateful now. And Anne's a dear. Farvie's lovely. We'll all do
everything we can to make it nice for you."
Jeff had been fumbling at the back of Esther's veil and Anne now, seeing
some strange significance in the moment, put her quick fingers to work.
The veil came off, and Esther stood there, white, stark, more tragic
than she had ever looked in all the troubles of her life. The colonel
gave a little exclamation of sorrow over her and drew up the best chair
to the fire, and Anne pushed back the lamp on the table so that its
light should not fall directly on her face. Then there were commonplace
questions and answers. Where had Jeff been? How many miles did he think
he had walked? And in the midst of the talk, while Lydia was upstairs
patting pillows and lighting the fire in the spare-chamber, Esther
suddenly began to cry in a low, dispirited way, no passion in it but
only discouragement and physical overthrow. These were real enough tears
and they hurt Jeff to the last point of nervous irritation.
"Don't," he said, and then stopped while Anne knelt beside her and, in a
rhythmic way, began to rub one of her hands, and the colonel stared into
the fire.
"Perhaps if you went upstairs!" Anne said to her gently. "I could really
rub you if you were in bed and Lydia'll bring up something nice and
hot."
"No, no," moaned Esther. "You're keeping me a prisoner. You must let me
go." Then, as Jeff, walking back and forth, came within range of her
glance, she flashed at him, "You've no right to keep me prisoner."
"No," said Jeff miserably, "maybe not. But I've got to make sure you're
safe. Stay to-night, Esther, and to-morrow, when you're rested, we'll
talk it over."
"To-morrow," she muttered, "it will be too late."
"That's it," said Jeff, understanding that it would be too late for her
to meet Reardon. "That's what I mean it shall be."
Anne got on her feet and held out a hand to her.
"Come," she said. "Let's go upstairs."
Esther shrank all over her body and gave a glance at Jeff. It was a
cruel glance, full of a definite repudiation.
"No, no," she said again, in a voice where fear was intentionally
dominant.
It stung him to a miserable sorrow for her and a hurt pride of his own.
"For God's sake, no!" he said. "You're going to be by yourself, poor
child! Run away with Anne."
So Esther rose unwillingly, and Anne took her up to the spacious chamber
where firelight was dancing on the wall and Lydia had completed all
sorts of hospitable offices. Lydia was there still, shrinking shyly into
the background, as having no means of communication with an Esther to
whom she had been hostile. But Esther turned them both out firmly, if
with courtesy.
"Please go," she said to Anne. "Please let me be."
This seemed to Anne quite natural. She knew she herself, if she were
troubled, could get over it best alone.
"Mayn't I come back?" she asked. "When you're in bed?"
"No," Esther said. "I am so tired I shall sleep. You're very kind. Good
night."
She saw them to the door with determination even, and they went
downstairs and sat in the dining-room in an excited silence, because it
seemed to them Jeff might want to see his father and talk over things.
But Jeff and his father were sitting on opposite sides of the table, the
colonel pretending to read and Jeff with his elbows on the table, his
head resting on his hands. How was he to finish what he had begun? For
she hated him, he believed, with a childish hatred of the discomfort he
had brought her. If there were some hot betrayal of the blood that had
driven her to Reardon he almost thought, despite Addington and its
honesties and honours, he would not lift his hand to keep her. Addington
was very strong in him that night, the old decent loyalties to the
edifice men and women have built up to protect themselves from the beast
in them. Yet how would it have stood the assault of honest passion,
sheer human longing knocking at its walls? If she could but love a man
at last! but this was no more love than the puerile effort of a meagre
discontent to make itself more safe, more closely cherished, more
luxuriously served.
"Father," said he at last, breaking the silence where the clock ticked
and the fire stirred.
"Yes," said the colonel. He did not put down his book or move his finger
on it. He meant, to the last line of precaution, to invite Jeff's
confidence.
"Whatever she does," said Jeff, "I'm to blame for it."
"Don't blame yourself any more," the colonel said. "We won't blame
anybody."
He did not even venture to ask what Esther would be likely to do.
"I don't understand--" said Jeff, and then paused and the sentence was
never finished. But what he did not understand was the old problem: how
accountability could be exacted from the irresponsible, how an ascetic
loyalty to law could be demanded of a woman who was nothing but a sweet
bouquet of primitive impulses, flowered out of youth and natural
appetites. He saw what she was giving up with Reardon: luxury, a kindly
and absolutely honest devotion. If she went to him it would be to what
she called happiness. If he kept her out of the radius of disapproval,
she might never feel a shadow of regret. But Reardon would feel the
shadow. Jeff knew him well enough to believe that. It would be the old
question of revolt against the edifice men have built. You thought you
could storm it, and it would capitulate; but when the winter rigours
came, when passion died and self got shrunken to a meagre thing, you
would seek the shelter of even that cold courtyard.
"Yes," he said aloud, "I've got to do it."
All that evening they sat silent, the four of them, as if waiting for an
arrival, an event. At eleven Anne came in.
"I've been up and listened," she said. "She's perfectly quiet. She must
be asleep."
Jeff rose.
"Come, father," he said. "You'll be drowsy as an owl to-morrow. We'd
better get up early, all of us."
"Yes," said Anne. She knew what he meant. They had, somehow, a
distasteful, puzzling piece of work cut out for them. They must be up to
cope with this strange Esther.
Lydia fell asleep almost, as the cosy saying goes, as soon as her head
touched the pillow. She was dead tired. But in what seemed to her the
middle of the night, she heard a little noise, and flew out of bed,
still dazed and blinking. She thought it was the click of a door. But
Esther's door was shut, the front door, too, for she crept into the hall
and peered over the railing. She went to the hall window and looked out
on the dark shrubbery above the snow, and the night was still and the
scene so kind it calmed her. But she could not see, beyond the
shrubbery, the black figure running softly down the walk. Lydia went
back to bed, and when the "midnight" hooted she drew the clothes closer
about her ears and thought how glad she was to be so comfortable. It was
not until the next morning that she knew the "midnight" had carried
Esther with it.
XL
It was strangely neutral, the hue of the moment when they discovered she
had gone. They had not called her in the morning, but Anne had listened
many times at the door, and Lydia had prepared a choice tray for her,
and Mary Nellen tried to keep the coals at the right ardour for
toasting. Jeff had stayed in the house, walking uneasily about, and at a
little after ten he came out of his chair as if he suddenly recognised
the folly of staying in it so apathetically.
"Go up," he said to Lydia. "Knock. Then try the door."
Lydia got no answer to her knock, and the door yielded to her. There was
the bed untouched, on the hearth the cold ashes of last night's fire.
She stood stupidly looking until Jeff, listening at the foot of the
stairs, called to her and then himself ran up. He read the chill order
of the room and his eyes came back to Lydia's face.
"Oh," said Lydia, "will he be good to her?"
"Yes," said Jeff, "he'll be good enough. That isn't it. What a fool I
am! I ought to have watched her. But Esther wasn't daring. She never did
anything by herself. I couldn't get to New York now--" He paused to
calculate.
He ran downstairs, and without speaking to his father, on an irrational
impulse, over to Madam Bell's. There he came unprepared upon the
strangest sight he had ever seen in Addington. Sophy, her cynical, pert
face actually tied up into alarm, red, creased and angry, was standing
in the library, and Madam Bell, in a wadded wrapper and her nightcap,
was counting out money into her trembling hand. To Sophy, it was as
terrifying as receiving money from the dead. She had always looked upon
Madam Bell as virtually dead, and here she was ordering her to quit the
house and giving her a month's wages, with all the practicality of a
shrewd accountant. Madam Bell was an amazing person to look at in her
wadded gown and felt slippers, with the light of life once more
flickering over her parchment face.
"Rhoda Knox is gone," she announced to Jeff, the moment he walked in. "I
sent her yesterday. This girl is going as soon as she can pack."
Jeff gave Sophy a directing nod and she slipped out of the room. She was
as afraid of him as of the masterful dead woman in the quilted wrapper.
Anything might happen since the resurrection of Madam Bell.
"Where is she?" asked Jeff, when he had closed the door.
"Esther?" said Madam Bell. "Gone. She's taken every stitch she had that
was worth anything. Martha told me she was going for good."
"Who's Martha? Oh, yes, yes--Madame Beattie."
The light faded for an instant from the parchment face.
"Don't tell me," she sharply bade him, "Esther's coming back?"
"No," said Jeff. "If she does, she shall come to me."
He went away without another word, and Madam Bell called after him:
"Tell Amabel to look round and get me some help. I won't have one of
these creatures that have been ruling here--except the cook. Tell Amabel
to come and see me."
Jeff did remember to do that, but not until he had telephoned New York,
and got his meagre fact. One of the boats sailing that morning had,
among its passengers, J. L. Reardon and Mrs. Reardon. He did not inquire
further. All that day he stayed at home, foolishly, he knew, lest some
message come for him, not speaking of his anxiety even to Lydia, and
very much let alone. That Lydia must have given his father some
palliating explanation he guessed, for when Jeff said to him:
"Father, Esther's gone abroad," the colonel answered soothingly:
"Yes, my son, I know. It is in every way best."
* * * * *
The next week came the election, and Jeff had not got into the last grip
of contest. He had meant to do some persuasive speaking for Alston. He
thought he could rake in all Madame Beattie's contingent, now that she
was away, still leaving them so friendly. But he was dull and
absent-minded. Esther's going had been a defeat another braver, cleverer
man, he believed, need not have suffered. At Lydia he had hardly looked
since the day of Esther's going. To them all he was a closed book,
tight-lipped, a mask of brooding care. Lydia thought she understood. He
was raging over what he might have done. Nothing was going to make Lydia
rage, she determined. She had settled down into the even swing of her
one task: to help him out, to watch him, above all, whatever the
emergency, to be ready.
Once, when Jeff was trying to drag his flagging energies into election
work again, he met Andrea, and stopped to say he would be down at Mill
End that night. But Andrea seemed, while keeping his old fealty,
betokened by shining eyes and the most open smiles, to care very little
about him in a political capacity. He even soothingly suggested that he
should not come. Better not, Andrea said. Too much work for nothing.
They knew already what to do. They understood.
"Understand what?" Jeff asked him.
They had been told before the signora went, said Andrea. She had
explained it all. They would vote, every man of them. They knew how.
"It's easy enough to learn how," said Jeff impatiently. "The thing is to
vote for the right man. That's what I'm coming down for."
Andrea backed away, deferentially implying that Jeff would be most
welcome always, but that it was a pity he should be put to so much
pains. And he did go, and found only a few scattering listeners. The
others, he learned afterward, were peaceably at a singing club of their
own. They had not, Jeff thought, with mortification, considered him of
enough importance to listen to.
Weedon Moore, in these last days, seemed to be scoring; at least
circumstance gave him his own head and he was much in evidence. He spoke
a great deal, flamboyantly, on the wrongs suffered by labour, and his
own consecration to the holy joy of righting them. He spoke in English
wholly, because Andrea, with picturesque misery, had regretted his own
inability to interpret. Andrea's throat hurt him now, he said. He had
been forbidden to interpret any more. Weedie mourned the defection of
Andrea. It had, he felt, made a difference, not only in the size but the
responsiveness of his audiences. Sometimes he even felt they came to be
amused, or to lull his possible suspicion of having lost their old
allegiance. But they came.
That year every man capable of moving on two legs or of being supported
into a carriage, turned out to vote. Something had been done by
infection. Jeff had done it through his fervour, and Madame Beattie a
thousand times more by pure dramatic eccentricity. People were at least
amusedly anxious to see how it was going, and old Addingtonians felt it
a cheerful duty to stand by Alston Choate. The Mill Enders voted late,
all of them, so late that Weedon Moore, who kept track of their
activities, wondered if they meant to vote at all. But they did vote,
they also to the last man, and a rumour crept about that some
irregularity was connected with the ballot. But whatever they did, it
was by concerted action, after a definite design. Weedon Moore, an
agitated figure, meeting Jeff, was so worried and excited by it that he
had to cackle his anxiety.
"What are they doing?" he said, stopping before Jeff on the pavement.
"They've got up some damned thing or other. It's illegal, Blake. I give
you my word it's illegal."
"What is it?" Jeff inquired, looking down on Weedie with something of
the feeling once popularly supposed to be the desert of toads before
that warty personality had been advertised as beneficent to gardens.
"I don't know what it is," said Moore, almost weeping. "But it's some
damned trick, and I'll be even with them."
"If they elect you--" Jeff began coldly.
"They won't elect me," said Moore, from his general overthrow. "Six
months ago every man Jack of 'em was promised to me. Somebody's tampered
with 'em. I don't know whether it's you or Madame Beattie. She led me
on, a couple of weeks ago, into telling her what I knew about trickery
at the polls--"
"All you knew?" Jeff could not resist saying. "All you know about
trickery, Weedie?"
"As a lawyer," said Weedie, "I told her about writing in names. I told
her about stickers--"
"What did she want to know for?" Jeff asked. He, too, was roused to
sudden startled interest.
"You know as much as I do. She was interested in my election, said she
was speaking for me, wanted to know how we managed to crowd in an extra
name not on the ballot. Had heard of that. It worried her, she said.
Blake, that old woman is as clever as the devil."
Jeff made his way past the fuming candidate and walked on, speculating.
Madame Beattie had assuredly done something. She had left the
inheritance of her unleashed energy, in some form, behind her.
He did not go home that late afternoon and in the early evening strolled
about the streets, once meeting Choate and passing on Weedie's agonised
forecast. Alston was mildly interested. He thought she couldn't have
done anything effective. Her line seemed to be the wildly dramatic.
Stage tricks wouldn't tip the scales, when it came to balloting.
Whatever she had done, Alston, in his heart, hoped it would defeat him,
and leave him to the rich enjoyment of his play-day office and his
books. His mother could realise then that he had done his best, and
leave him to a serene progress toward middle age. But when he got as far
as that he remembered that his defeat would magnify Weedon Moore and
miserably concluded he ought rather to suffer the martyrdom of office.
Would Anne like him if he were defeated? He, too, was wandering about
the town, and the bravado of his suit to her came back to him. It was
easy to seek her out, it seemed so natural to be with her, so strange to
live without her. Laughing a little, though nervously, at himself, he
walked up the winding pathway to her house and asked for her. No, he
would not come in, if she would be so good as to come to him. Anne came,
the warmth of the firelight on her cheeks and hands. She had been
sitting by the hearth reading to the colonel. Alston took her hands and
drew her out to him.
"It's not very cold," he said. "One minute, Anne. Won't you love me if I
am not a mayor?"
Anne didn't answer. She stood there, her hands in his, and Alston
thought she was the stillest thing he had ever seen.
"You might be a snow maiden," he said. "Or an ice maiden. Or marble.
Anne, I've got to melt you if you're snow and ice. Are you?" Then all he
could think of was the old foolishness, "Darling Anne."
When he kissed her, immediately upon this, it was in quite a commonplace
way, as if they were parting for an hour or so and had the habit of easy
kissing.
"Why don't you speak," said Alston, in a rage of delight in her, "you
little dumb person, you?"
Anne did better. She got her hands out of his and lifted them to draw
his face again to hers.
"How silly we are," said Anne. "And the door is swinging open, and it'll
let all the cold in on Farvie's feet."
Alston said a few more things of his own, wild things he was surprised
at and forgot immediately and that she was always to remember, and they
really parted now with the ceremonial of easy kissing. But both of them
had forgotten about mayors.
Jeff, with the returns to take her, that night before going home ran in
to Amabel. He believed he ought to be the first to tell her. She would
be disappointed, for after all Weedon Moore was her candidate. As he got
to the top of the steps Moore came scuttling out at the front door and
Jeff stood aside to let him pass. He walked in, calling to her as he
went. She did not answer, but he found her in the library, standing, a
figure of quivering dignity, of majesty hurt and humbled. When she saw
him Amabel's composure broke, and she gave a sob or two, and then twice
said his name.
"What is it?" said Jeff.
He went to her and she faced him, the colour running over her face.
"That man--" she said, and stopped.
"Moore?"
"Yes. He has insulted me."
"Moore?" he repeated.
"He has asked me--Jeff, I am a woman of sixty and over--he has asked me
to marry him."
"Wait a minute," said Jeff. "I've forgotten something."
He wheeled away from her and ran out and down the path after Weedie
Moore. Weedie's legs, being short, had not covered ground very fast.
Jeff had no trouble in overtaking him.
In less than ten minutes, he walked into Miss Amabel's library again, a
little breathless, with eyes shining somewhat and his nostrils big, it
might be thought, from haste. She had composed herself, and he knew her
confidence was neither to be repeated nor enlarged upon. There she sat
awaiting him, dignity embodied, a little more tense than usual and her
head held high. All her ancestors might have been assembled about her,
invisible but exacting, and she accounting to them for the indignity
that had befallen her, and assuring them it was to her, as it would have
been to them, incredible. She was even a little stiff with Jeff at
first, because she had told him what she would naturally have hidden,
like a disgraceful secret. Jeff understood her perfectly. She had met
Weedon Moore on philanthropic grounds, an equal so long as they were
both avowed philanthropists. But when the little man aspired unduly and
ventured to pull at the hem of her maiden gown, Christian tolerance went
by the board and she was Addington and he was Weedon Moore. She would
never be able to summon Christian virtues to the point of a community of
interests with him again. Jeff understood Moore, too, Moore who was
probably on his way home at the moment getting himself together after a
disconcerting bodily shock such as he had not encountered since their
old school days when he had done "everything--and told of it ". He had
counted on her sympathy over his defeat, and chosen that moment to make
his incredible plea.
"Did you do what you had forgotten?" Amabel asked.
"Yes," said Jeff glibly. "I did it quite easily. I've come to tell you
the news. Perhaps you know it already. Alston Choate's elected."
"Yes," said Miss Amabel, in a stately manner. "I had just heard it."
"I'm going round there," said Jeff, "to congratulate his mother. It's
her campaign, you know. He never'd have run if it hadn't been for her."
"I didn't know Mrs. Choate had any such interest in local affairs," said
Amabel.
She was aware Jeff was smoothing her down, ruffled feather after
feather, and she was pathetically grateful. If she hadn't kept a strong
grip on herself, her lip would have been quivering still.
"In a way she's not. She doesn't care about Addington as we do, but she
hates to see old traditions go to the dogs. I've an idea she'll stand
behind Alston and really run the show. Put on your bonnet and come with
me. It's a shame to stay in the house a night like this."
She still knew his purpose and acquiesced in it. He hated to leave her
to solitary thoughts of the indignity Moore had offered her, and also
she hated to be left. She put on her thick cloak and her bonnet--there
were no assumptions with Miss Amabel that she wasn't over sixty--and
they went forth. But Mrs. Choate was not at home, nor was Mary. The maid
thought they had gone down town for the return. Jeff told her Mr. Choate
was to be mayor--no one in Addington seemed to pay much attention to the
rest of the ticket that year--and she returned quite prosaically, "God
save us!"
"Save us from Alston?" asked Jeff, as they went away, and Miss Amabel
forgot Moore and laughed.
They went on down town with the purpose of seeing life, as Jeff said,
and got into a surge of shiny-eyed Mill Enders who looked to Jeff as if
they were commiserating him although it was his candidate that won.
Andrea, indeed, in the moment of their meeting and parting almost wept
over him. And face to face they met Lydia.
"I've lost Farvie," she said, "and Anne. Can't I come with you?"
So they went on together, Lydia much excited and Miss Amabel puzzled, in
her wistful way, at finding social Addington and working Addington
shoulder to shoulder in their extraordinary interest in the election
though never in the common roads of life.
"But why the deuce," said Jeff, "Andrea and his gang look so mournful I
can't see."
"Why," said Lydia, "don't you know? They voted for you, and their votes
were thrown out."
"For me?"
"Yes, Madame Beattie told them to. She'd planned it before she went
away, but somehow it fell through. They were to put stickers on the
ballot, but at the last the stickers scared them, and they just wrote in
your name."
"Lydia," said Jeff, "you're making this up."
"Oh, no, I'm not," said Lydia. "Mr. Choate told me. I knew it was going
to happen, but he's just told me how it was. They wrote 'Prisoner Blake'
in all kinds of scrawls and skriggles. They didn't know they'd got to
write your real name. I call it a joke on Madame Beattie."
To Lydia it looked like a joke on herself also, though a sorry one. She
thought it very benevolent of Madame Beattie to have prepared such a
dramatic surprise, and that it was definite ill-fortune for Jeff to have
missed the full effect of it. But the earth to Lydia was a flare of
dazzling roads all leading from Jeff; he might take any one of them.
To Amabel the confusion of voting was a matter of no interest, and Jeff
said nothing. Lydia was not sure whether he had even really heard. Then
Amabel said if there were going to be speeches she hardly thought she
cared for them, and they walked home with her and left her at the door,
though not before she had put a kind hand on Jeff's shoulder and told
him in that way how grateful she was to him. After she had gone in Jeff,
so curious he had to say it before they started to walk away, turned
upon Lydia.
"How do you know so much about her?" he began.
"Madame Beattie? We used to talk together," said Lydia demurely.
"You knew her confounded plans?"
"Some of them."
"And never told?"
"They were secrets," said Lydia. "Come, let's walk along."
"No, no. I want you where I can look at you, so you won't do any
romancing about that old enchantress. If you know so much, tell me one
thing more. She's gone. She can't hurt you."
"What is it?" asked Lydia.
"What did she tell those fellows about me?"
"Andrea?"
"Andrea and his gang. To make them treat me like a Hindoo god. No, I'll
tell you how they treated me. As savages treat the first white man
they've ever seen till they find he's a rotten trader."
"Oh," said Lydia, "it can't do any harm to tell you that."
"Any harm? I ought to have known it from the first. Out with it."
"Well, she told them you had been in prison, and you were sent there by
Weedon Moore and his party--"
"His party? What was that?"
"Oh, I don't know. Anybody can have a party. Something like Tammany,
maybe. You'd been sent to prison because it was you that had got them
their decent wages, and had the nice little houses built down at Mill
End. And there was a conspiracy against you, and she heard of it and
came over to tell them how it was. But you were in prison because you
stood up for labour."
"My word!" said Jeff. "And they believed her."
"Anybody'd believe anything from Madame Beattie," Lydia said positively.
"She told them lots of stories about you, lovely stories. Sometimes
she'd tell them to me afterward. She made you into a hero."
"Moses," said Jeff, "leading them out of bondage."
"Yes. Come, we can't stand here. If Miss Amabel sees us she'll think
we're crazy."
They walked down the path and out between the stone pillars where he had
met Esther. Jeff remembered it, and out of his wish to let Lydia into
his mind said, as they passed into the street:
"I have heard from her."
Lydia's sudden happiness in the night and in his company--in knowing,
too, she was well aware, that there was no Esther near--saw the cup
dashed from her lips. Jeff didn't wait for her to answer.
"From the boat," he said. "It was very short. She was with him. We
weren't to send her any more money. She said she had taken his name."
"How can she?" said Lydia stupidly. "She couldn't marry him."
"Maybe she thinks she can," said Jeff. He was willing to keep alive her
unthinking innocence. It was not the outcome of ignorance that cramps
and stultifies. He meant Lydia should be a child for a long time. "Now,
see. Her going makes it possible for me to be free--legally, I mean.
When I can marry, Lydia--" He stopped there. They were walking on the
narrow pavement, but not even their hands touched. "Do you love me,"
Jeff asked, "as much as you thought? That way, I mean?"
"Yes," said Lydia. "But I know what you'd like. Not to talk about it,
not to think about it much, but take care of Farvie--and you write--and
both of us work on plays--and sometime--"
"Yes," said Jeff, "sometime--"
One tremendous desire, of all the desires tumultuous in him, was
strongest. If Lydia was to be his--though already she seemed supremely
his in all the shy fealties of the moment--not a petal of the flower of
love should be lost to her. She should find them all dewy and unwithered
in her bridal crown. There should not be a kiss, a hot protestation, the
tawdry path of love half tasted yet long deferred. Lydia should, for the
present, stay a child. His one dear thought, the thought that made him
feel unimaginably free, came winging to him like a bird with messages.
"We aren't," he said, "going to be prisoners, either of us."
"No," said Lydia soberly. She knew by her talk with him and reading what
he had imperfectly written, that he meant to be eternally free through
fulfilling the incomprehensible paradox of binding himself to the law.
"We aren't going to be downed by loving each other so we can't stand up
to it and say we'll wait."
"I can stand up to it," said Lydia. "I can stand up to anything--for
you."
"I don't know," he said, "just how we're coming out. I mean, I don't
know whether I'm coming out something you'll like or not like. How can a
man be sure what's in him? Shall I wake up some time and know, because
I've been a thief, I ought never to think of anything now but
money--paying back, cent for cent, or cents for dollars, what I lost? I
don't know. Or shall I think I'm right in not doing anything spectacular
and plodding along here and working for the town? I don't know that. One
thing I know--you. If I said I loved you it wouldn't be a millionth part
of what I do. I'm founded on you. I'm rooted in you. There! that's
enough. Stop me. That's the thing I wasn't going to do."
They were at their own gate. They halted there.
"You'd better go down and find Anne and Farvie," said Lydia.
She stood in the light from the lamp and he looked full at her. This was
a Lydia he meant never to call out from her maiden veiling after
to-night until the day when he could summon her for open vows and
unstinted cherishing. He wanted to learn her face by heart. How was her
brave soul answering him? The child face, sweet in every tint and line
of it, turned to him in an unhesitating response. It was the garden of
love, and, too, a pure unhindered happiness.
"I'm going in," said Lydia, "to get something ready for them to
eat--Farvie and Anne. For us, too."
She took a little run away from him, and he watched her light figure
until the shrubbery hid her. At the door, it must have been, she gave a
clear call. Jeff answered the call, and then went on to find his father
and Anne. He knew he should not see just the Lydia that had run away
from him until the day she came back again, into his arms.
THE END
* * * * *
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| Transcriber's note |
| |
| The following changes have been made in the text. |
| |
| 'cermony' changed to 'ceremony' |
| 'paraphase' changed to 'paraphrase' |
| 'hestitate' changed to 'hesitate' |
| 'fleering' changed to 'fleeting' |
| |
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