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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/29366-8.txt b/29366-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e311fe5 --- /dev/null +++ b/29366-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16371 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prisoner, by Alice Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Prisoner + +Author: Alice Brown + +Release Date: July 10, 2009 [EBook #29366] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONER *** + + + + +Produced by David Clarke, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + 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 + + * * * * * + +Printed in the United States of America. + + + ++--------------------------------------------------------------+ +| | +| The following pages contain advertisements of books by the | +| same author or on kindred subjects. | +| | ++--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + +_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ + + +=Children of Earth= + +$1.25 + +This is the ten thousand dollar American prize play. From thousands of +manuscripts submitted to Mr. Ames of the Little Theatre, Miss Brown's +was chosen as being the most notable, both in theme and +characterisation. + +"A page from the truly native life of the nation, magnificently +written."--_New York Tribune._ + +"Ranks with the best achievements of the American theatre."--_Boston +Transcript._ + + +=My Love and I= + +$1.35 + +"' My Love and I' takes rank with the best work of the best modern +English and American novelists.... The book which originally appeared +under the nom de plume of Martin Redfield is now reissued with its real +author's name on the title page."--_Indianapolis News._ + +"... a compelling story, one that is full of dignity and truth and that +subtly calls forth and displays the nobilities of human nature that +respond to suffering."--_Argonaut._ + +"... the story has a quality of its own that makes it notably worth +while."--_North American Review._ + + * * * * * + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + +Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York + +=Robin Hood's Barn= + +$1.25 + +"... abounds in quiet humour and wholesome idealism, and is dramatic +with the tenseness of human heart throbs. It is very enjoyable to +read--interesting, original, wholesome."--_Boston Times._ + +"The author has displayed much quaint humour, skill in character +drawing, and dramatic force."--_Christian Advocate_. + +=Vanishing Points= + +$1.25 + +"To a comprehensive knowledge of human nature she adds good judgment, +quiet philosophy and style practically perfect. She has, too, a strong +sense of plot. All the narratives, in the present volume, are faultless +in technique, well constructed, spiritually sound."--_Chicago +Herald-Record._ + +"A good book to have within reach when there are a few moments of +leisure, as the stories are short as well as interesting,"--_Pittsburgh +Telegraph._ + +=The Secret of the Clan= + +A Story for Girls + +$1.25 + +"Alice Brown has written a decidedly original story of girl life in 'The +Secret of the Clan' for it is perhaps the first time that any one has +recognised that side of healthy girl character which delights in making +believe on a large scale." + +"The author shows an unfailing understanding of the heart of +girlhood."--_Christian Advocate_. + +"It is fine and sweet, and a good tale as well--Alice Brown may be +trusted for that."--_The Independent._ + + * * * * * + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + + + ++--------------------------------------------------------------+ +| | +| 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' | +| | +| All other inconsistencies are as in the original. | +| The author's spelling has been maintained. | +| | ++--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prisoner, by Alice Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONER *** + +***** This file should be named 29366-8.txt or 29366-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/3/6/29366/ + +Produced by David Clarke, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Prisoner + +Author: Alice Brown + +Release Date: July 10, 2009 [EBook #29366] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONER *** + + + + +Produced by David Clarke, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>THE PRISONER</h1> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;"> +<img src="images/002.png" width="150" height="46" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<h5>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br /> +ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO<br /> +<br /> +MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED<br /> +LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br /> +MELBOURNE<br /> +<br /> +THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.<br /> +TORONTO<br /></h5> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE PRISONER</h2> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h5>BY</h5> + +<h2>ALICE BROWN</h2> + +<h6><span class="smcap">Author of "My Love and I," "Children of<br /> +Earth," "Rose MacLeod," etc.</span></h6> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;"> +<img src="images/003.png" width="100" height="17" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<h3>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +1916</h3> +<h6><i>All rights reserved</i></h6> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<h6>Copyright, 1916<br /></h6> +<h4>By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /></h4> + +<h6>Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1916<br /> +Reprinted June, 1916 July, 1916 Twice August, 1916.<br /></h6> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> + +<h2>THE PRISONER</h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>I</h2> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Lydia was a young woman of fervid recognitions. She liked to take a day +and stamp it for her own, to say of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Do you know the old Blake house?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"The folks moved out last week," said he. "You movin' in?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Lydia supplied, knowing her superior capacity over the other two, +for meeting the average man. "We're moving in. Farvie, got the checks?"</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Denny, "as I know you folks. Do you come from round +here?"</p> + +<p>Lydia smiled at him pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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".</p> + +<p>"I think," said Lydia, in rather a hushed voice, as if she told the +others a pretty secret, "it's a very beautiful place."</p> + +<p>"You girls haven't been here, have you?" asked the colonel.</p> + +<p>"No," said Anne, "you'd just let it when we came to live with you."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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, wait<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>ing, 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Farvie, come!" she cried.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"They haven't kept the trees very well pruned."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> +knew it; now she transfixed the hat with a joyous stab.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It's a nice brick wall," said Anne, in her cool clear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> voice. "It +doesn't seem so much to shut other people out as to shut us in."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>They went up the rotten steps, Lydia with a last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"What's at the end of the field, Farvie?" Lydia asked.</p> + +<p>"The river," said he. "Nothing but the river."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>These were the northeast room, a library in the former time, in a dim, +pink paper with garlands, and the south<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>east sitting-room, in a modern +yet conforming paper of dull blue and grey.</p> + +<p>"The hall is grey," said Lydia. "Do you notice? How well they've kept +the papers. There isn't a stain."</p> + +<p>"Maiden ladies," said the colonel, with a sigh. "Nothing but two maiden +ladies for so long."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I was thinking how still the house had been," said he. "It used to +be—ah, well! well!"</p> + +<p>"They grew old here, didn't they?" said Anne, her mind taking the maiden +ladies into its hospitable shelter.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>wish</i> it was morning so we could get up and put on +our pan-velvet dresses and new gold shoes.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Lydia picked out the bag, carolling, as she did so, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> high bright +notes, and then remembered that she had to put on her hat. Anne had +already adjusted hers with a careful nicety.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said he, "it was here when I was born."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"But I don't know," said he, "what's become of them all."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Sure I do," said Denny, who was not Irish but consorted with common +speech. "My wife's two sisters, Mary Nellen, Prince Edward girls."</p> + +<p>"We don't want two," said Lydia. "My sister and I do a lot of the work."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Mary? did you say?" asked Lydia.</p> + +<p>"Mary Nellen."</p> + +<p>"Mary and Ellen?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Mary Nellen. I'll send 'em up."</p> + +<p>That afternoon they came, pleasant-faced square little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why," said he, "that was Jeff's room when he lived at home."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Anne, in her assuaging voice, "he must have it again."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the colonel. "I think you'd better plan it that way."</p> + +<p>They said no more about the room, but Anne hunted out a set of Dickens +and a dog picture she had known as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Queer, isn't it?" she asked, and Anne, knowing all that lay in the +elision, nodded silently.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Was it?" she asked.</p> + +<p>Lydia nodded. Her face had a flush; the pupils of her eyes were large.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Did he ask who you were?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Was he put out?" Anne had just heard Mary Nellen use the phrase. Anne +thought it covered a good deal.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You couldn't."</p> + +<p>"No," said Lydia, rather drearily, "I couldn't. Do you think Farvie +heard?"</p> + +<p>"I think not. He didn't seem to."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>"That's enough for to-night," said he. "The next I'll see, but not till +morning."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The colonel had, even in his familiar talk with them, a manner of +old-fashioned courtesy.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It was in this very room," he said, "that I saw your dear mother +first."</p> + +<p>Lydia looked up, brightly ready for diversion. Anne sat, her head bent a +little, responsive to the intention of his speech.</p> + +<p>"I was sitting here," said he, "alone. I had, I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"What time of the day was it, Farvie?" Lydia asked, with her eager +sympathy.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?'"</p> + +<p>"She did the best thing anybody could," said Lydia. "She gave us to +you."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"So do I," said Anne, in her low tone. "So do I."</p> + +<p>"And you never'd seen each other before," said Lydia, in an ecstasy of +youthful love for love. "I call that great."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"Wasn't mother darling!" Lydia threw at him, in a passionate sympathy.</p> + +<p>"You're like her, Lydia," said Anne again.</p> + +<p>But Lydia shook her head.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Anne softly, "I wonder."</p> + +<p>"You needn't stop to wonder," said Lydia. "You do it. He's going to +realise he's got sisters anyway—and a father."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Do you think Esther'll meet him?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Impossible to say," the colonel returned, and Lydia's nipped lips and +warlike glance indicated that she found it hideously impossible to say.</p> + +<p>"I intend to find out," said she.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Do you actually believe, Farvie," said Lydia, "that she hasn't been to +see him once in all these hideous years?"</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I don't understand her at all," said Lydia, "unless you're going to let +us say she's selfish and a traitor and——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Lydia, and bit her lip on the implied reason that he'd had +plenty of time.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Maybe they've done it already," Lydia suggested, and the gravity of his +face accorded in the fear that it might be so.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You'll tell her, Farvie," Anne hesitated, "just what we'd decided to do +about his coming—about meeting him?"</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"They will be," Lydia interjected savagely.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I don't think she'll see anything," said Lydia. "She's got a heart like +a stone."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't say that," Anne besought her, "in advance."</p> + +<p>"It isn't in advance," said Lydia. "It's after all these years."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> had an intuition that hatred is of no use. It hindered things, +all sorts of things: kindliness, even justice.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"She's not at home," said he.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Lydia.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Sophy?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "it's me."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> +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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Do excuse me," said she. "I didn't hear you."</p> + +<p>"My name is French," said Lydia, in an incisive haste, "Lydia French. I +came to talk with you about Jeff."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Father came this afternoon," said Lydia. "He wanted to talk things +over. He couldn't get in."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Esther, "I'm sorry for that. So you are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> one of the +step-children. Sit down, won't you. Oh, do take this chair."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Esther. "I know it, of course. To-day's paper had quite a +long synopsis of the case."</p> + +<p>Now Lydia flushed and looked defiant.</p> + +<p>"I am glad to know that," she said. "I must burn the paper. Farvie +sha'n't see it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Did you see them?" asked Lydia, in a flash, ready to blame her whatever +she did.</p> + +<p>But the answer was eloquent with reproach.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Did Jeff write you he didn't want to be pardoned? He did us."</p> + +<p>"No. He hasn't written me for years."</p> + +<p>She looked a baffling number of things now, voluntarily pathetic, a +little scornful, as if she washed her hands gladly of the whole affair.</p> + +<p>"Farvie thinks," said Lydia recklessly, "that you haven't written to +him."</p> + +<p>"How could I?" asked Esther, in a quick rebuttal which actually had a +convincing sound, "when he didn't write to me?"</p> + +<p>"But he was in prison."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Jeffrey," said Esther, "is taking the consequences of his own act."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean to tell me you think he was to blame?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"You don't mean to tell me you think he wasn't?" she countered.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"That's for us to find out," said Lydia. She looked like the apostle of +a holy war.</p> + +<p>"But if you could find out, why haven't you done it before? Why have you +waited all these years?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> +invested other people's money in the wrong things, and then, it said, he +tried to realise."</p> + +<p>"I can't help it," said Lydia doggedly. "He wasn't guilty."</p> + +<p>"Why should he have said he was guilty?" Esther put this to her with her +unchanged air of triumphant cruelty.</p> + +<p>"He might, to save somebody else."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You never will prove any such thing. Never in the world. The money was +in Jeff's hands. He hadn't even a partner."</p> + +<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Aren't you going to ask Jeff here to live with you?"</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Jeffrey and I haven't been in communication for years."</p> + +<p>Then Lydia lost her temper and put herself in the wrong.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Esther made what sounded like an irrelevant answer, but it meant +apparently something even solemn to her.</p> + +<p>"My grandmother," said she, "is an old lady. She's bedridden. She's +upstairs, and I keep the house very quiet on her account."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Please come," said Esther. "I depend upon it. Do you mean you weren't +ever coming any more?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," said she.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> out +bareheaded, and the man proceeded to Esther's door. He was expected. +Esther herself let him in.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Lydia found Anne waiting at the gate.</p> + +<p>"Why, where've you been?" asked Anne, with all the air of a prim mother.</p> + +<p>"Walking," said Lydia meekly.</p> + +<p>"You'd better have come with us," said Anne. "It was very nice. Farvie +told me things."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Lydia, "I wish I had."</p> + +<p>"Without your hat, too," pursued Anne anxiously. "I don't know whether +they do that here."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> Lydia remembered Reardon, and thought she knew.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Alston Choate. To see your father."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You are one of the daughters, aren't you?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she answered. "I'm Anne."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p> + +<p>"When do you expect your brother?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Choate smiled his irregular, queer smile. He was turning away now.</p> + +<p>"Tell him I shall be in soon," he said. "I fancy he'll remember me. +Good-night."</p> + +<p>Lydia was hanging over the balustrade.</p> + +<p>"Who was it?" she asked, as Anne went up.</p> + +<p>Anne told her and because she looked dreamy and not displeased, Lydia +asked:</p> + +<p>"Nice?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Anne. "You've heard Farvie speak of him. Exactly what +Farvie said."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I think I'd better tell you," said she. "I've been to see her."</p> + +<p>There was but one person who could have been meant, and yet that was so +impossible that Anne stared and asked:</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>They had always spoken of Esther as Esther, among themselves, quite +familiarly, but now Lydia felt she would die rather than mention her +name.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p> + +<p>"She is a hateful woman," said Lydia, "perfectly hateful."</p> + +<p>"But what did you go for?" Anne asked, in a gentle perplexity.</p> + +<p>"To find out," said Lydia, in a savage tearfulness, "what she means to +do."</p> + +<p>"And what does she?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> + + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>But in the library where the colonel sat over Mary Nellen's last classic +riddle, she couldn't break it at all.</p> + +<p>"He's come," she said.</p> + +<p>The colonel got up and Virgil slid to the floor.</p> + +<p>"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:</p> + +<p>"My son! my son!"</p> + +<p>If they had kissed, Lydia would not have been surprised.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> But the two +men looked at each other, the colonel took down his hands, and Jeffrey +drew forward a chair for him.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"He's got a lovely voice," said Anne, and Lydia answered chokingly:</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Do you think he sings?" Anne pursued, more, Lydia knew, to loosen the +tension than anything. "Farvie never told us that."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Supper's in the dining-room," said Lydia, in a weak little voice.</p> + +<p>The colonel was about to rise, but Jeffrey said:</p> + +<p>"Not for me."</p> + +<p>"Have you had something?" his father asked, and Jeffrey answered:</p> + +<p>"None for me—thank you."</p> + +<p>The last two words seemed to be an afterthought. Lydia wondered if he +hadn't felt like thanking anybody in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"He doesn't want anything," she said. "We can clear away."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid Farvie'll be tired."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Anne. "I'll go and speak to them."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You mustn't get tired, Farvie."</p> + +<p>The strange voice jumped in on the heels of hers, as if it felt it ought +to be reproved.</p> + +<p>"Of course not. I'd no idea how late it was."</p> + +<p>Anne turned to Jeffrey. Lydia, listening, could tell from the different +direction of the voice.</p> + +<p>"Your room is all ready. It's your old room."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 expecta<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>tions. 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:</p> + +<p>"Oh, let's go to bed."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> 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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Here they are," said he. "Here are the girls."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"It's a newspaper man."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Reporters?" he asked his father.</p> + +<p>The fulness had gone out of Farvie's face.</p> + +<p>"I think you'd better let me see them," he began, but Jeffrey got up and +pushed back his chair.</p> + +<p>"No," said he. "Go on with your breakfast."</p> + +<p>They heard him in the hall, giving a curt greeting. "What do you want?" +it seemed to say. "Get it over."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I hope you are not going to be pursued by that kind of thing."</p> + +<p>"It's all in the day's work," said Jeffrey.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I don't believe you did have anything to eat last night."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Because I'm so hungry?" he asked. His voice sounded kind. "Well, I +didn't."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lydia, now conversation had begun, wanted to be in it.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" asked she, and Anne gave a little protesting note.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Jeffrey, considering. "I didn't feel like it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Seen Jim Reardon?" Jeffrey asked his father.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"No," said the colonel. "Alston Choate called."</p> + +<p>"I wonder what Reardon's doing now?" Jeffrey asked.</p> + +<p>But his father did not know.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What shall we do, my son?" he asked. "Go for a walk—in the orchard?"</p> + +<p>A walk in the street suddenly occurred to him as the wrong thing to +offer a man returned to the battery of curious eyes.</p> + +<p>"If you like," said Jeffrey indifferently. "Do you take one after +breakfast?"</p> + +<p>He spoke as if it were entirely for his father, and Anne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Not necessarily," said the colonel. They were rising. "I was thinking +of you—my son."</p> + +<p>"What makes you call me that?" Jeffrey asked curiously.</p> + +<p>They were in the hall now, looking out beyond the great sun patch on the +floor, to the lilac trees.</p> + +<p>"What did I call you?"</p> + +<p>"Son. You never used to."</p> + +<p>Lydia felt she couldn't be quick enough in teaching him how dull he was.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Don't you like it?" the colonel asked him. He straightened consciously +under the touch of his son's arm.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Girls, come here. I have to have my girls," he said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> to Jeffrey, "when +anything's going to be talked over. They're the head of the house and my +head, too."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I thought you'd like to know as soon as possible what I mean to do," he +said, addressing his father.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you've got your plans," his father said. "I've tried to make +some, but I couldn't—couldn't."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," said Lydia, in a burst, before Anne's warning hand could +stop her, "you want us to leave Farvie?"</p> + +<p>The colonel looked up with a beseeching air.</p> + +<p>"Good God, no!" said Jeffrey irritably. "I only want<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> to know the state +of things here. So I can tell what to do."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"I've tried to write you fully," he said. "I hoped I gave you—a +picture of the way we lived."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Sacrificing?" repeated the colonel helplessly, and Lydia was on the +point of another explosion when Jeffrey himself held up his hand to her.</p> + +<p>"Wait," he said. "Let me think. I don't know how to get on with people. +They only make me mad."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Anne. She often said "of course" to show her sympathy. +"You tell it your own way."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Anne nodded.</p> + +<p>"We live pretty simply," she said, "but we can live. I keep the +accounts. I can tell you how much we spend."</p> + +<p>The colonel had got hold of himself now.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> a little, dancing, but I always insisted on +their keeping that for their own use."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Dancing," said he. "Yes. You wrote me. Do you like to dance?"</p> + +<p>He had turned upon Lydia.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said she. "It's heavenly. Anne doesn't. Except when she's +teaching children."</p> + +<p>"What made you learn dancing?" he asked Anne.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeffrey, "but dancing? Why'd you pick out that?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Jeffrey. His eyes had a shade less of gravity, but he kept an +unmoved seriousness of tone.</p> + +<p>"About our living with Farvie," said Anne. "I can see you'd want to +know."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said he, "I do."</p> + +<p>"We love to," said Anne. "We don't know what we should do if Farvie +turned us out."</p> + +<p>"My dear!" from the colonel.</p> + +<p>"Why, he's our father," said Lydia, in a burst. "He's just as much our +father as he is yours."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Good!" said Jeffrey. His voice had warmed perceptibly. "Good for you. +That's what I thought."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeffrey did not thank them for that, or seem to hear it even.</p> + +<p>"I want," said he, "to go West."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Farvie, with a determined cheerfulness, "I guess the +girls'll agree to that. Middle West?"</p> + +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeffrey, in relief. "I've got to go alone."</p> + +<p>"My son—" said the colonel and couldn't go on. Then he did manage. +"Aren't we going to live together?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet," said Jeffrey. "Not yet."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"He's got to go alone," said Anne. "But he'll come back."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Lydia, from the habit they had learned of heartening Farvie, +"he'll come back."</p> + +<p>But she was hotly resolving that he should learn his duty and stay here. +Let her get a word with him alone.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> in enough to keep you as you ought +to be. I want to stay here a little while first."</p> + +<p>The colonel was rejuvenated by delight. Lydia wondered how anybody could +see that look on his face and not try to keep it there.</p> + +<p>"I've got," said Jeffrey, "to write a book."</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Who was he?" Anne asked, with a serious uplift of her brows.</p> + +<p>"A defaulter."</p> + +<p>"In the Federal Prison?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Did the man ask you to write his life?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You feel he was unjustly sentenced," the colonel concluded.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lydia winced at the word. Jeffrey had been commonly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> called a defaulter, +and she was imperfectly reconciled to that: certainly not to a branding +more ruthless still.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"When does he—come out?" Anne hesitated over this. She hardly knew a +term without offence.</p> + +<p>"Next year."</p> + +<p>"But," said she, "you wouldn't want to publish a book about him and have +him live it down?"</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't I?" asked Jeffrey, turning on her. "He's willing."</p> + +<p>"He can't be willing," Lydia broke in. "It's frightful."</p> + +<p>"Well, he is," said Jeffrey. "There's nothing you could do to him he'd +mind, if it gave him good advertising."</p> + +<p>"What does he want to do," asked the colonel, "when he comes out?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>coup</i>; he couldn't help it. Maybe he'd +get nabbed."</p> + +<p>"What a horrid person!" said Lydia. "How can you have anything to do +with him?"</p> + +<p>"Why, he's interesting," said Jeffrey, in a way she found brutal. "He's +a criminal. He's got outside."</p> + +<p>"Outside what?" she persisted.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You could have the blue chamber, couldn't he, Farvie? and do your +writing there."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I don't know whether I can do it," he said. "A man has got to know how +to write."</p> + +<p>"You wrote some remarkable things for the <i>Nestor</i>," 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.</p> + +<p>Jeff was ruthless.</p> + +<p>"That was all rot," he said.</p> + +<p>"What was?" Lydia darted at him. "Didn't you mean what you said?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nestor</i>, +the prison organ. Let him out, pardon him, simply because he can +write.'"</p> + +<p>"As I understand," said his father, "you did get the name of the paper +changed."</p> + +<p>"Well, now," said Jeff, appealingly, in a candid way, "what kind of name +was that for a prison paper? <i>Nestor!</i> '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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> 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.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You called it <i>Prison Talk</i>, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeff. "They called it <i>Prison Talk."</i></p> + +<p>"And all our newspapers copied your articles," said Anne, artfully +guiding him forward, "the ones you called 'The New Republic.'"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nestor</i>, and say to yourself, 'I'm +outside'—why there's the devil in it."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> a State or Federal Board and incidentally at +Lydia, as if he would say:</p> + +<p>"Here's a very young and insignificant criminal. We'll return to her +presently. But she, too, is going to be convinced."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>"I was surprised," said his father, "that so much plain speaking was +allowed."</p> + +<p>"Advertising! Of course they allowed us," said Jeff. "It advertised us +outside. Advertised the place. Officials got popular. Inside conduct +went up a hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And you want to write his life!" said Lydia's look.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Where's Esther?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"She's living here," said the colonel, "with her grandmother."</p> + +<p>"Has that old harpy been over lately?"</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Not to my knowledge."</p> + +<p>Anne and Lydia exchanged looks. Madame Beattie was a familiar name to +them, but they had never heard she was a harpy.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Great-aunt," said Jeffrey. "Step-sister to Esther's grandmother. She +must be sixty-five where grandmother's a good ten years older."</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No news," said the colonel. "It's years since she's been here. Not +since—then."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the colonel.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I have," she said. "I've seen her."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"How does she look?" he asked.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"She looked," said she coldly, "perfectly well."</p> + +<p>"Where d'you see her?" Jeff asked.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Lydia!" the colonel called remindingly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Did she—" at last suddenly and painfully thrown out of his nonchalant +run of talk, he stopped.</p> + +<p>"She's a horrid woman," said Lydia, crimson with her own daring, and got +up and ran out of the room.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Women never did like her, you know."</p> + +<p>So Anne got up and went out, thinking it was the moment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"But he's only just—free," she said.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Prisons?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But she's his wife," said Anne gently. "I suppose he loves her. Let's +hope he does."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 pas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>sionate 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.</p> + +<p>"Got a spade?" she heard him call.</p> + +<p>"Yes." It was Anne's voice. "Here it is."</p> + +<p>"Why, it's new," Lydia heard him say.</p> + +<p>He was under her window now, and she could not see him without putting +her head over the sill.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Anne. "I went down town and bought it."</p> + +<p>Anne's voice sounded particularly satisfied. Lydia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>Jeff himself might have understood that in Anne, for he said:</p> + +<p>"I bet you brought it home in your hand."</p> + +<p>"No takers," said Anne. "I bet I did."</p> + +<p>"That heavy spade?"</p> + +<p>"It wasn't heavy."</p> + +<p>"You thought I'd be spading to keep from growing dotty. Good girl. Give +it here."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Up," said Jeff. "I don't care where. You always spade up, don't you?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She went down to the noon dinner quite chastened, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Where is he?" suddenly she said to Anne, in the midst of their weaving +the household rhythm.</p> + +<p>"Jeff?" asked Anne, not stopping. "He's spading in the garden."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"No," said Anne. "He'll be tired enough to sleep to-night."</p> + +<p>"Didn't he sleep last night?" Lydia asked, that old ache beginning again +in her.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't think so," said Anne. "But he's well tired<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> now".</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Don't cry for her. She isn't worth it. She's a hateful woman."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VII</h2> + + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> be stationary. Grandmother +feared her besides hating her, though loving the order she brought to +pass.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>Esther, with her telegram, stood beside the bed.</p> + +<p>"Grandmother," said she, in the perfect tone she used toward her, clear +and not too loud, "Aunt Patricia Beattie is coming."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Is that youth?" the eyes inquired. "Useless, not especially +admirable—but curious."</p> + +<p>Esther, waiting there for recognition, felt the discom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>fort grandmother +always seemed to stir into her mood. Her rose-touched skin was a little +more suffused, though not beyond a furtherance of beauty.</p> + +<p>"Aunt Patricia is coming," she repeated. "When I heard from her last she +was in Poland."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>A satirical light shivered across grandmother's eyes.</p> + +<p>"Where is your husband?" she inquired. "Here?"</p> + +<p>"Here?" repeated Esther. "In this house?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"He isn't coming here. It would be very painful for him."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Older," said grandmother. "More difficult. Keep her out of here."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Could you come in? I'm bothered. Yes," in answer to his question, "in +trouble, I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>Alston Choate came at once; her voice must have told<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What's gone wrong?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Aunt Patricia is coming."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You say you're afraid of her?" he said, at the end. "Let her come. She +may not want to stay."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Now Choate thought he saw how it was.</p> + +<p>"You mean she's been banging about Europe," he said, "living in +<i>pensions</i>, trailing round with second-rate pro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>fessionals. I get that +idea, at least. Am I right?"</p> + +<p>"She's frightfully bohemian, of course," said Esther. "Yes, that's what +I did mean."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"She smokes," said Esther, in a burst of confidence. "She did years ago +when nice women weren't doing it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"No matter," said he, "so long as you don't."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him with large, imploring eyes.</p> + +<p>"Must I?" he heard her whispering, it seemed really to herself.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>"You see," she said, "he and I are strangers—almost. He's been away so +long."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"No," said Esther. "He didn't wish it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Choate was glad and sorry.</p> + +<p>"Weren't you?" he responded. "Poor child!"</p> + +<p>"No. We'd begun to be strangers, in a way. And it's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> gone on and on, and +of course we're really strangers now."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Choate answered in a choked voice that made him shake his head +impatiently:</p> + +<p>"It isn't better for any man to be free."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Don't you know you mustn't say that kind of thing to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Where's your husband?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I knew he was out," said Madame Beattie. "I keep track of your +American papers. Isn't he here?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"With his father."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Does his father live alone?"</p> + +<p>"No. He has step-daughters."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why isn't he with you?" she asked again.</p> + +<p>The tea had come and Madame Beattie lifted her cup in a manner elegantly +calculated to display, though ingenuously, a hand loaded with rings.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense," said Aunt Patricia, herself taking the teapot and +strengthening her cup. "What do you mean by happy?"</p> + +<p>"He is completely estranged," said Esther. "He is a different man from +what he used to be."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>That sounded complete, and she hoped for some slight change of position +on the part of the inquisitor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Of course you went to see him while he was in prison?" auntie pursued +inexorably.</p> + +<p>"No," said Esther, in a voice thrillingly sweet. "He didn't wish it."</p> + +<p>Auntie helped herself to tea. Esther made a mental note that an extra +quantity must be brewed next time.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Esther thought, in her physical aversion to auntie, that he must indeed +have been happy in the only escape left open to him.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> + +<p>"All the time?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Not all the time!"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, auntie, she lies in bed all the time."</p> + +<p>"What for? Is she crippled, or paralysed or what?"</p> + +<p>"She says she is old."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I'll go to my room now," said Madame Beattie. "What a nice house! This +is Susan's house, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VIII</h2> + + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Oh! he's a good old boy."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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:</p> + +<p>"The devil!"</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie threw back her head on its stout muscular neck and +laughed, a husky laugh much like an old man's wheeze.</p> + +<p>"No! no!" said she, approaching him and extending an ungloved hand, "not +so bad as that. How are you? Tell its auntie."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"How in the deuce," said he, "did you get here so quick?"</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie rejected the rocker and took a straight chair that kept +her affluence of curves in better poise.</p> + +<p>"Quick after what?" she inquired, with a perfect good-nature.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie regarded him with an unimpaired good-humour.</p> + +<p>"Bless you, Jeff," said she, "I know that. What are you going to do, now +you're out?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said he. "If I did know I shouldn't tell you."</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie seemed not to suspect the possibility of rebuff.</p> + +<p>"Esther hasn't changed a particle," said she.</p> + +<p>Jeff scowled, not at her, but absently at the side of the house, and +made no answer.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Jeffrey had ceased scowling. He had smoothed his brows out with his +hand, indeed, as if their tenseness hurt him.</p> + +<p>"Look here," said he, "you ask a lot of questions."</p> + +<p>She laughed again, a different sort of old laugh, a fat and throaty one.</p> + +<p>"Did I ever tell you," said she, "what the Russian grand duke said when +I asked him why he didn't marry?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Jeff, quite peaceably now. She was safer in the company of +remembered royalties.</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie sought among the jingling decorations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> of her person for +a cigarette, found it and offered him another.</p> + +<p>"Quite good," she told him. "An Italian count keeps me supplied. I don't +know where the creature gets them."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> woman. +Madame Beattie saw her and straightened some of the laughing wrinkles +round her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Well, well!" said she. "Who's this?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie," said he, "this is Miss Lydia French."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Now," said she, "who are you?"</p> + +<p>Jeffrey, seeing Lydia so put about, answered for her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> again, but this +time in terms of a warmth which astonished him as it did Lydia.</p> + +<p>"She is my sister Lydia."</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie looked at him in a frank perplexity.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Anne is in the house," said he.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Lydia, in a wilful stubbornness; "I don't know her."</p> + +<p>"You've seen her, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I've seen her."</p> + +<p>"You don't like her then?" said Madame astutely. "What's the matter with +her?"</p> + +<p>Something gave way in Lydia. The pressure of feeling was too great and +candour seethed over the top.</p> + +<p>"She's a horrid woman."</p> + +<p>Or was it because some inner watchman on the tower told her Jeff himself +had better hear again what one per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>son 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:</p> + +<p>"What a little devil!"</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie now turned to him.</p> + +<p>"Same old story, isn't it?" she stated. "Every woman of woman born is +bound to hate her."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeff.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Come," she was saying to Jeffrey, "walk along with me."</p> + +<p>He obediently picked up his hat.</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't go home with you," said he, "if that's what you mean."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Stuff!" said the lady. "You needn't tell me you don't want to see +Esther."</p> + +<p>Jeff didn't tell her that. He didn't tell her anything. He stolidly +guided her along.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> + +<p>"There isn't a man born that wouldn't want to see Esther if he'd seen +her once," said Madame Beattie.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie found Esther at the door, waiting. She was an excited +Esther, bright-eyed, short of breath.</p> + +<p>"Where have you been?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Where have you been?" repeated Esther, a pulse of something like anger +beating through the words.</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie answered idly: "Up to see Jeff."</p> + +<p>"I knew it!" Esther breathed.</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Madame Beattie carelessly. "Jeff and I were quite +friends in old times. I was glad I went. It cheered him up."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Did he—" Esther paused.</p> + +<p>"Ask for you?" supplied Madame Beattie pleasantly. "Not a word."</p> + +<p>Here Esther's curiosity did whip her on. She had to ask:</p> + +<p>"How does he look?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, youngish," said Madame. "Rather flabby. Obstinate. Ugly, too."</p> + +<p>"Ugly? Plain, do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You'll have to give him up," she said.</p> + +<p>"Give him up!" flamed Esther. "Do you think I want—"</p> + +<p>There she paused and Madame Beattie supplied temperately:</p> + +<p>"No matter what you want. You couldn't have him."</p> + +<p>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 femi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>nine 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IX</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> delightfully unlike anybody else. The colonel, with a quick, moved +look, just said her name:</p> + +<p>"Amabel!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Dear me!" she said, "how pleasant it is to see this house open again."</p> + +<p>"But it's been open," Lydia impulsively reminded her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes," said Miss Amabel. "But not this way." She turned to Jeff and +regarded him anxiously. "Don't you smoke?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He laughed again. He was exceedingly pleased, Anne saw, merely at seeing +her. Miss Amabel was exactly as he remembered her.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said he. "Want us to?"</p> + +<p>She put up her long eyebrows and smiled as if in some amusement at +herself.</p> + +<p>"I've learned lately," she said, "that gentlemen are so devoted to it +they feel lost without it."</p> + +<p>"Light up, Choate," said Jeffrey. "My sisters won't mind. Will you?" He +interrogated Anne. "They get along with me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"This is very pleasant," said the colonel suddenly. "It's good to see +you, Amabel. Now I feel myself at home."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff, my dear," she said, "I can't wait to hear about your ideal +republic."</p> + +<p>And then, all his satisfaction gone and his scowl come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> back, Jeff shook +his head as if a persistent fly had lighted on him, and again he +disclaimed achievement.</p> + +<p>"Amabel," said he, "I'm awfully sick of that, you know."</p> + +<p>"But, dear boy, you revolutionised—" she was about to add, "the +prison," but stumbled lamely—"the place."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"It isn't revolutionised," said Jeff. He turned upon Choate brusquely. +"It's exactly the same."</p> + +<p>"They say it's revolutionised," Miss Amabel offered anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Who says so?" he countered, now turning on her.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Of course we're going to see each other," she said. "And there's such a +lot you can do."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>She was going on with a perfect clarity of purpose.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you know, Jeff can do more for us than anybody else."</p> + +<p>"What do you want done for you?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>His habit of direct attack gave Lydia a shiver. She was sure people +couldn't like it, and she was exceedingly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> anxious for him to be liked. +Miss Amabel turned to Farvie.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"Now I'm out," said Jeff brutally, "you find me equal to it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Weedon Moore?" Jeffrey repeated, in a surprised and most uncordial +tone. He looked at Choate.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Argosy</i>."</p> + +<p>"Owns it, too, I think," said Farvie. "They told me so at the +news-stand."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Choate pointedly, "it's said Miss Amabel owns it."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel was plainly grieved.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff laughed. It was a kindly laugh. Anne was again sure he loved Miss +Amabel.</p> + +<p>"I can't see Moore changing much after twenty-five," he said to Choate, +who confirmed him briefly:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Same old Weedie."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I don't know any one," said she, "who feels the prevailing unrest more +keenly than Weedon Moore."</p> + +<p>At that instant, Mary Nellen, her eyes brightening as these social +activities increased, appeared in the doorway, announcing doubtfully:</p> + +<p>"Mr. Moore."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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 +<i>Argosy</i>."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Miss French," said he, with no hesitation before her name, "how is +Jeff?"</p> + +<p>The mere inquiry set Anne vainly to hoping that he need not come in. But +he gave no quarter.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Won't you come in?" said Anne.</p> + +<p>Even then he did not abandon his hat. He kept his hold on it, bearing it +before him in a way that made Anne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Jeff, my dear fellow! I'm tremendously glad to see you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Still it's changed," said Moore, regarding him almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> archly. +"Addington isn't the place it was even a year ago."</p> + +<p>"I hope we've learned something," said Miss Amabel earnestly and yet +prettily too.</p> + +<p>"My theory of Addington," said Choate easily, "is that we all wish we +were back in the Addington of a hundred years ago."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"No, my dear," said Miss Amabel.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> 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?"</p> + +<p>Weedon gave a quick embarrassed laugh.</p> + +<p>"You're so droll," said he.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Moore laughed with an overdone enjoyment.</p> + +<p>"Excellent," he said, squeezing the words out of his knees. "You're such +a humourist."</p> + +<p>If he wanted to be offensive, that was the keenest cut he could have +delivered.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"And here's Miss Amabel," Choate went on, in the voice it seemed he kept +for her, "going to the outer extreme and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel looked deeply troubled and also at a loss.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Look at your own self-sacrifice," said Choate.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," he said, "I want you to do something for the <i>Argosy</i>."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p> + +<p>Jeff at once knew what.</p> + +<p>"Queer," he said, "how you all think I've got copy out of jail."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I can't help it," said Jeff. "I don't want such a row made over it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> Anne wondered again +whether the intimacy of the letters accounted for this sweet +informality. "You're banished. What's worse than that?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I believe in law," said Jeff rapidly. "Sometimes I think that's all I +believe in now."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Suddenly his eyes left Miss Amabel's quickened face and he glanced about +him, aware of the startled tensity of gaze<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> among the others. Moore, +with a little book on his knee, was writing rapidly.</p> + +<p>"Notes?" Jeff asked him shortly. "No, you don't."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You can't do that, Moore," he said indifferently, and Choate murmured a +monosyllabic assent.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Don't you do something, you two girls?" she asked, with her inviting +smile. "I'm sure Jeff wrote me so."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>And Lydia was so purely childlike and dear, after this talk of +punishments and duties, that involuntarily they all laughed and she +looked abashed.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you know folk-dances," said Miss Amabel.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Lydia, getting back her spirit. "There isn't one we +don't know."</p> + +<p>And they laughed again and Miss Amabel tied on her bonnet and went away +attended by Choate, with Weedon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Moore a pace behind, holding his hat, +until he got out of the house, as it might be at a grotesque funeral.</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel had called back to Lydia:</p> + +<p>"You must come and train my classes in their national dancing."</p> + +<p>Lydia, behind the colonel and Jeff as they stood at the front door, +seized Anne's hand and did a few ecstatic little steps.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Father," said he, in a voice of mysterious reproach, "I don't know what +I was meant to be."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>X</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I'll take those," he said.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Give them here."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't leave your writing," said Lydia primly if shyly, and +delivered up her charge.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Don't worry about my writing," said he.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she answered, turning on him the clarity of her glance. "I +shouldn't. Authors never want it talked about."</p> + +<p>"That's not it," said he. She found him tremendously in earnest. "I'm +not an author."</p> + +<p>"But you will be when this is written."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You want other people to understand," said Lydia, bright-eyed, now she +was following him. "For—a warning."</p> + +<p>His frown was heavy. Now he was trying to follow her.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> game. And it's a queer game. It cuts +him off. He's outside."</p> + +<p>And here Lydia had a simple and very childlike thought, so inevitable to +her that she spoke without consideration.</p> + +<p>"You were outside, too."</p> + +<p>Jeff gave a little shake of the head, as if that didn't matter now he +was here and explaining to her.</p> + +<p>"And the devil of it is, after they're once outside they don't know they +are."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean, when they've done something and been found guilty and—"</p> + +<p>"I mean all along the line. When they've begun to think they'll make +good, when they've begun to play the game."</p> + +<p>"For money?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"That's precisely it," said he heavily. "I've got to think about it all +the time. I've got to make good."</p> + +<p>"In the same way?" said Lydia, looking up at him childishly. "With +money?"</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You won't do just what you did before?" asserted Lydia, out of her +faith in him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I shall."</p> + +<p>She opened terrified eyes upon him.</p> + +<p>"Be a promoter?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know what I shall be. But I know the money game, and I shall +have to play it and make good."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"And pay back—" There she hesitated, and he finished for her.</p> + +<p>"The money I lost in a hole? Well, we'll see." This last sounded +indulgent, as if he might add, "little sister ".</p> + +<p>Lydia plucked up spirit.</p> + +<p>"There's something else I hoped you'd do first."</p> + +<p>"What is it?"</p> + +<p>"I want you to prove you're innocent."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Innocent!" he repeated. "What do you mean by innocent?"</p> + +<p>Lydia took heart again, since he really did invite her on.</p> + +<p>"Why, of course," she said, "we all know—Farvie and Anne and I—we know +you never did it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Did what?"</p> + +<p>"Lost all that money. Took it away from people."</p> + +<p>The softness of her voice was moving to him. He saw she meant him very +well indeed.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said he, "I lost the money. Don't make any mistake about that."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" he asked her. "Who's been talking to you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff turned away from her and went back into his room. He shut the door, +and yet so quietly that she could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XI</h2> + + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Now he put out his hand, but it had been so long in coming that Jeff +gave no sign of seeing it.</p> + +<p>"I'll walk along with you," he said.</p> + +<p>"No, no." Reardon was calling upon reserves of decency and good feeling. +"You'll do nothing of the sort. Come in."</p> + +<p>"No," said Jeff. "I was walking. I'll go along with you."</p> + +<p>Now Reardon came down the steps and put an insistent hand on his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said he, "come on in. You surprised me. That's the truth. I +wasn't prepared. I hadn't looked for you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Can't we," said he, "sit down here?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"This was the old Pelham house?"</p> + +<p>Reardon assented, in evident relief, at so remote a topic.</p> + +<p>"I bought it six years ago. Had it put in perfect repair. The plumbing +cost me—well! you know what old houses are."</p> + +<p>Jeff turned upon him.</p> + +<p>"Jim," said he quietly, "what's the matter?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing's the matter," said Reardon, blustering. "My dear boy! I'm no +end glad to see you."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Suddenly the telephone rang, and the English man-servant came out and +said, with a perfect decorum:</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Blake at the telephone, sir."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Excuse me," he said, got up and went inside, and Blake heard his voice +in brief replies.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What Mrs. Blake?" Jeff asked.</p> + +<p>Reardon sat down and fussed with the answer.</p> + +<p>"What Mrs. Blake?" he repeated, and flicked a spot of dust from his +trousered ankle lifted to inspection.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeff, with an outward quiet. "Was that my wife?"</p> + +<p>Again the colour rose in Reardon's face. It was the signal of an emotion +that gave him courage.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," he said, "it was."</p> + +<p>"What did she want?"</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said Reardon, "it's no possible business of yours what Esther +wants."</p> + +<p>"You call her Esther?"</p> + +<p>"I did then."</p> + +<p>An outraged instinct of possession was rising in Rear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>don. 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Very unwise?" Jeff repeated, in an unmixed amazement, "to come back to +Addington? My father's here."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How am I making it?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why, you're making her damned uncomfortable."</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Esther," he said, fixing upon that as the least offensive to himself.</p> + +<p>"How am I making my wife uncomfortable?" Jeff inquired.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff threw back his head and laughed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff had risen, and Reardon, too, got on his feet. Jeff seemed to be +considering, and very gravely, and Reardon, frowning, watched him.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Why, it isn't what you'd wilfully do." Now that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Reardon lost patience. You could afford to, evidently, with so numb an +antagonist.</p> + +<p>"Why, you know," he said. "You remember how things used to be."</p> + +<p>Jeff looked full at him now, and there was a curious brightness in his +eyes.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Reardon, feeling more and more benevolent, dilated visibly.</p> + +<p>"Most natural thing in the world. You can see how it would be. I suppose +her mind keeps harking back, going<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> over things, you know; and here you +are on the same street, as you might say."</p> + +<p>"No," said Jeff, stupidly, as if that were the case in point, "it isn't +the same street."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> Esther any more. +There never had been the Esther that made the music of his strong belief +in her.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">—"After long grief and pain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To find the arms of my true love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Round me once again."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>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 unan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>nounced, 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.</p> + +<p>"Esther," he said. "Esther, dear!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>That was her cue.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I was," she said. Now that she could trans<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>late 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I never was happy, at the last. I was afraid."</p> + +<p>He dropped her hands.</p> + +<p>"What of?" he said to himself stupidly. "In God's name, what of?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Don't," he said. "Don't go."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Hullo, Jeff!"</p> + +<p>But she came down the stairs and Esther, seeing his marauding entry +turned into something like a visit under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> social sanction, beat upon his +wrist with her other hand and cried two hot tears of angry impotence.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Tell him to let me go."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He dropped her wrist.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come into the library," said Madame Beattie. "I can't stand. My +knees are creaking. Come, Esther, ask your husband in."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"He had just come," she said. "He came in. I didn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> ask him to. He had +not—" a little note like fright or triumph beat into her voice—"he had +not—kissed me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The whole implication was astounding to Jeff; but the only thing he +could fix definitely was the concrete possibility that she had counsel.</p> + +<p>"Who is your counsel, Esther?" he asked her.</p> + +<p>But Esther had gone farther than discretion bade.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I was afraid of you," she insisted. "I am now."</p> + +<p>"Well!" said Jeff. He found himself smiling at Madame Beattie, and she +was answering his smile. Perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Have you seen her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Was she—cruel?"</p> + +<p>"Don't! don't!" Jeff said, in a broken voice.</p> + +<p>"Do you love her?" she went on, in an inexorable fierceness.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XII</h2> + + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Anne! Anne!" her sister was whispering close to her cheek.</p> + +<p>"Why, Lyd," said Anne, "what is it?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Anne, when people kiss you, is it different if they are men?"</p> + +<p>Now Anne did rise and turned the clothes back, but Lydia still knelt and +shivered.</p> + +<p>"You've been having bad dreams," said Anne. "Come in here, lovey, and +Anne'll sing 'Lord Rendal.'"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"That's a nightmare," said Anne. "Now you've got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> all cool and waked up, +you run back to bed, unless you'll get in here."</p> + +<p>Lydia put a fevered little hand upon her.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Who was it, Lydia?" she asked sternly. "Who is it you are thinking +about?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody," said Lydia, in a sudden curt withdrawal. She rose to her feet. +"Yes, it was a nightmare."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p> + +<p>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?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XIII</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Father," said he, "I've got to get out."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You said so. But not yet, I hope."</p> + +<p>"At once," said Jeffrey. "I am going at once. To-day perhaps. To-morrow +anyway. I've simply got to get away."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p> + +<p>The colonel, rather impatiently, because his voice would tremble, asked +as Lydia had done:</p> + +<p>"Have you seen Esther?"</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I see, Jeff, I see. But I wish you could find it possible to put it +off—till the end of the week, say."</p> + +<p>"Very well," said Jeff, in a curt concession, "the end of this week."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"What is it, Farvie?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Anne," said he, "I'm an old man."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, Farvie!" She was smoothing his shoulder with her slender hand. +"No!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Damn it, Anne!" he said, with suddenly frowning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> brow, and now she +started. She had never heard an outbreak from courtly Farvie. "I wish +I'd been more of a man."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "I wish I'd been more of a man. I should be more of a +man now."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Kill out this superstition of a country. Kill it out, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Who you are? Jeff knew what it meant. Did he want Moore to tell them +that he was a capitalist found out and punished?</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"This man," said he, "tells you you've no country.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"I could take you back to town."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The car passed swiftly on and down the road to town.</p> + +<p>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 dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>ened field, for even +the moon, as if she joined the general verdict, slipped under a cloud.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>He opened the front door softly and out of the library Anne came at once +as if she had been awaiting him.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, in a quick trouble breaking bounds, though gently, now +there was another to share it, "I'm afraid Farvie's sick."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XIV</h2> + + +<p>"What is it?" said he. "What's the matter?"</p> + +<p>But Anne, after a second glance at his tired face, was all concern for +him.</p> + +<p>"Have you had something to eat?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He put that aside, and said remindingly:</p> + +<p>"What is it about father?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I'll go up," said he. "Did you call a doctor?"</p> + +<p>"No. He wouldn't let me."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> + +<p>"He's asleep," she said, in a whisper. "I'm sitting here to listen."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"That you, Jeff?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said he, "I've been lying here making up my mind I'd tell you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said he, "I'm in a bad place. I've met the last enemy."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but the last enemy isn't Death," said the colonel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid," he said quite simply.</p> + +<p>"What are you afraid of?" Jeff felt he had to meet him with an equal +candour.</p> + +<p>"Everything."</p> + +<p>They looked at each other a moment and then Jeff essayed a mild, "Oh, +come!" because there was nothing more to the point.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Is my going a knockdown blow?"</p> + +<p>There was something pathetic in hearing that, but pleasurable, too, in a +warm, strange way.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, of course it is."</p> + +<p>"Well, then," said Jeff, "don't worry. I won't go."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeffrey thoughtfully. "Yes. They're dear girls."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Have you had anything to eat?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," the colonel said. "Egg-nog. Anne makes it. Very good."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>A slow smile lighted the colonel's face, rather grimly.</p> + +<p>He admired the ease with which Jeff grasped the situation.</p> + +<p>"Don't you start them out cooking," he advised.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You're right," said the colonel, with vigour. "We'll put on our shoes."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"He's going to get up."</p> + +<p>Anne made a movement toward the door.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>They were both regarding him with a pale, anxious questioning. But +Anne's look cleared.</p> + +<p>"Come, Lydia," said she, and as Lydia, cramped with sleep, trudged after +her, she added wisely, "It'll be better for them both."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> in this first interval of his homecoming all small +indulgences were sweet. He paused in filling, finger on the weed.</p> + +<p>"Where's yours?" he asked.</p> + +<p>The colonel shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Don't smoke?" Jeff inquired.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I suppose it's in my bureau drawer," said the colonel, with +impatience. "Left hand. I kept it; I don't know why."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeffrey. "Of course you kept your pipe."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What's your idea," he said,' at length, "of Weedon Moore?"</p> + +<p>The colonel took his pipe out and replaced it.</p> + +<p>"Rather a dirty fellow, wasn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. That is, in college."</p> + +<p>"What d' he do?"</p> + +<p>The colonel had never been told at the time. He knew Moore was an +outcast from the gang.</p> + +<p>"Everything," said Jeffrey briefly. "And told of it," he added.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose there's anything in this town for me to do?"</p> + +<p>The colonel produced at once the possibility he had been privately +cherishing.</p> + +<p>"Alston Choate—"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The colonel hesitated.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It would be simple enough," he said, "if I had any capital."</p> + +<p>"You haven't," said Jeff, rather curtly, "for me to fool away. What +you've got you must save for the girls."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I want to stand by you, father. But you won't get much satisfaction out +of me."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"You're older," said the colonel. "And—you'll let<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>Out of his imprisonment! The red mounted to Jeffrey's forehead. He took +out his pipe, emptied it carefully and laid it down.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The colonel gave his little acquiescing nod.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't have it again," he said. "No, I wouldn't go back."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," he said. He leaned over the table and touched Jeffrey's hand.</p> + +<p>Jeff looked up.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"The reason you're not prepared to go on is because you don't care. You +don't care a hang about yourself."</p> + +<p>Jeffrey debated a moment. It was true. His troublesome self did not seem +to him of any least account.</p> + +<p>"Well," said he, "let's go to bed."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XV</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>After breakfast Jeffrey turned to Lydia and said quite simply: "Come +into the orchard and walk a little."</p> + +<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What have I done," she asked, and his mind supplied the accusatory +inference, "that you don't love me any more?"</p> + +<p>He hastened to answer.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Lydia gravely. "You're not that."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to ask you a question," said Jeffrey shortly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> in his +distaste for asking it at all. "Do you want me to take father away with +me, you and Anne?"</p> + +<p>"Are you going away?" she asked, in an irrepressible tremor.</p> + +<p>"Answer me," said Jeffrey.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Does he want us to go?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Do you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! no!" she cried.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"You think it's going to be too hard for us," she said, with a +directness he thought splendid.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't marry," said Lydia. "You know that."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> 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?</p> + +<p>"You see," he said irrelevantly, "I want you to have your life."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He was most amusedly anxious to know whether Lydia also was going to +heaven.</p> + +<p>"Do you care what happens to you here?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she answered instantly. "I care about staying with my folks."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Are you going to heaven, too, Lydia?" he ventured. "With Anne?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said he, "I see what to do."</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I'll go to work on this place. I'll plough it up. I'll raise things, +and father and I'll dig."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Come in," said Lydia. "She wants us."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Dancing classes!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I'm going along with you."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Amabel, dear, what are you running with Weedon Moore for?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not," said Jeff.</p> + +<p>"Alston Choate is, too."</p> + +<p>"Choate and I know him, better than you or any other woman can in a +thousand years."</p> + +<p>"You think he's the same man he was in college."</p> + +<p>"Fellows like Moore don't change. There's something inherently rotten in +'em you can't sweeten out."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Nomination. For what?"</p> + +<p>"Mayor."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Go into the east room, dear," said she. "Why, Jeff, what is it?"</p> + +<p>He was standing still, looking now up the stairs.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said he, "I believe I'm going to cry. It hasn't changed—any more +than you have. You darling!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"More or less," said she.</p> + +<p>"Run for office?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Ever get any?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"There! what d'I tell you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What's he done?"</p> + +<p>"He has organised—"</p> + +<p>"Strikes?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He's been all over the state, working."</p> + +<p>"And talking?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, Jeff! Don't be unjust. He has to talk."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Have you, now?" he insisted.</p> + +<p>"Well, no, Jeffrey. I haven't heard him. There's rather a strong +prejudice here against labour meetings.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> So Weedon very wisely talks to +the men when he can get them alone."</p> + +<p>"Why wisely? Why do you say that?"</p> + +<p>"Because we want to spread knowledge without rousing prejudice. Then +there isn't so much to fight."</p> + +<p>"What kind of knowledge is Weedon Moore spreading? Tell me that."</p> + +<p>Her plain face glowed with the beauty of her aspiration.</p> + +<p>"He is spreading the good tidings," she said softly, "good tidings of +great joy."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him in a touched solemnity.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"What are you writing there?" Jeffrey asked, with a certainty that it +had something to do with Moore.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"For Moore? You're writing it for Moore?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." She slipped the pad into her bag.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I hope not, dear," she said gravely, but with no understanding, he saw, +that her pure intentions could lead her wrong.</p> + +<p>"I've heard Weedon Moore talking to the men."</p> + +<p>She gave him a look of acute interest.</p> + +<p>"Really, Jeff? Now, where?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But he's preaching discontent."</p> + +<p>"Ah, Jeffrey," said she, "there's a noble discontent. Where should we be +without it?"</p> + +<p>He got up, and shook his head at her, smilingly, tenderly. She had made +him feel old, and alien to this strange new day.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But why not?" she asked him quickly. "Am I to think myself better than +they are?"</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"And love of man," said Miss Amabel quietly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"I don't find fewer virtues among my plainer friends."</p> + +<p>"No, no, dear! But you do find less—less background."</p> + +<p>"That's our fault, Jeff. We've made their background. It's a factory +wall. It's the darkness of a mine."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Her face flamed at him, the bonfire's light when prejudice is burned.</p> + +<p>"I know," she said, "but you're too slow. You want them educated first. +Then you'll give them something—if they deserve it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I would, Jeffrey."</p> + +<p>"You would?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Go slow?" said Amabel, smiling at him. "How can I? Night and day I see +those people. I hear them crying out to me."</p> + +<p>"Well, it's uncomfortable. But it's no reason for your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> delivering them +over to demagogues like Weedon Moore."</p> + +<p>"He's not a demagogue."</p> + +<p>There was a sad bravado in her smile, and he answered with an obstinacy +he was willing she should feel.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She followed him to the door; her comfortable hand was on his arm.</p> + +<p>"Weedon will begin his campaign this fall," she said. Evidently she felt +bound to define her standpoint clearly.</p> + +<p>"Where's his money?" They were at the door and Jeffrey turned upon her. +"Amabel, you're not going to stake that whelp?"</p> + +<p>She flushed, from guilt, he knew.</p> + +<p>"I am not doing anything unwise," she said, with the Addington dignity.</p> + +<p>Thereupon Jeffrey went away sadly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XVI</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> +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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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".</p> + +<p>"It isn't the dancing," said Lydia at once, as Miss Amabel knew she +would.</p> + +<p>"No. But you've seemed tired a good deal of the time lately. Does +anything worry you?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Lydia soberly. She looked absent-minded, as if she sought +about for what did worry her.</p> + +<p>"You don't think your father's working too hard, planting?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It's only," she said, "we're not getting anywhere. That worries me."</p> + +<p>"With your work?" Miss Amabel was waving a palm-leaf fan, from no +necessity but the tranquillity induced by its rhythmic sway.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh, no. About Jeffrey. Didn't you know we meant to clear him, Anne and +I?"</p> + +<p>"Clear him, dear? What of?"</p> + +<p>"Why, what he was accused of," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"But he had his trial, you know. He was found guilty. He pleaded guilty, +dear. That was why he was sentenced."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but we all know why he pleaded guilty," said Lydia. "It was to save +somebody else."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lydia was staring at her with wide eyes.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean Esther?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, of course I mean Esther."</p> + +<p>"But I don't. I mean that dreadful man."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"My dear," said she, "I don't know what you mean."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"James Reardon?"</p> + +<p>Lydia hated him too much to accept even a knowledge of his name.</p> + +<p>"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 noth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>ing 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."</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel looked at her thoughtfully and patiently.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Oh, how can you say a thing like that?" cried Lydia, in high passion. +"And you've known him all your life."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You mustn't forget there was the necklace, and Madame Beattie expecting +to be paid."</p> + +<p>Lydia was breathless in her extremity of surprise.</p> + +<p>"What necklace?" asked she.</p> + +<p>"Don't you know?"</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel's voice rose upon the horror of her own betrayal.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel wore the dignified Addington aloofness.</p> + +<p>"I am very sorry," said she. "I have been indiscreet."</p> + +<p>"But you'll tell me, now you've begun," panted Lydia. "You'll have to +tell me or I shall go crazy."</p> + +<p>"We must both control ourselves," said Miss Amabel, with a further +retreat to the decorum of another genera<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>tion. "You are not going crazy, +Lydia. We are both tired and we feel the heat. And I shall not tell +you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"What was it about your necklace?"</p> + +<p>She had created an effect. Madame Beattie herself gasped.</p> + +<p>"For God's sake, child," said she, "what do you know about my necklace?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know anything," said Lydia. "And I want to know everything that +will help Jeff."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No. Oh, no!"</p> + +<p>"His father?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Farvie? Not a word."</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie considered.</p> + +<p>"What business is it of yours?" she asked.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 gov<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>ernment and his exchequer to give me such a necklace. +But he did."</p> + +<p>"Why did he?" Lydia asked.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"He had to," said she, with an admiringly dramatic simplicity. "I wanted +it."</p> + +<p>"But—" began Lydia, and Madame Beattie put up a small hand with a +gesture of rebuttal.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Esther, as Lydia had seen her sitting in a long chair and eating candied +fruit, had been a figure of such civilised<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> worth, however odious, that +Lydia said involuntarily, in a loud voice:</p> + +<p>"She couldn't. I don't believe it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but she did," said Madame Beattie, looking at her with the coolness +of one who holds the cards. "She owned she did."</p> + +<p>"To you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But he made her give it back," said Lydia, out of agonised certainty +that she must above all believe in him.</p> + +<p>"He couldn't. She said she'd lost it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Into the water?"</p> + +<p>"She said so."</p> + +<p>"You don't believe it." Lydia read that clearly in the contemptuous old +face.</p> + +<p>"Well, now, I ask you," said Madame Beattie, "was there ever such a +silly tale? A young woman of New<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"But what did she do with it?" she insisted.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Madame Beattie idly. "Put it in a safety deposit in +New York perhaps. Don't ask me."</p> + +<p>"But don't you care?" cried Lydia, all of a heat of wonder—terror also +at melodramatic thieving here in simple Addington.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"He must have been heartbroken."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"But he couldn't pay you. He'd just got into difficulties. You said so."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>coup</i> +with all his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Then you did it," she said. "You! you forced him, you pushed him—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Who was Lepidus?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>A troop of conclusions were rushing at Lydia, all demanding to be fitted +in.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The vision of Jeffrey fleeing before the lash of this implacable +taskmaster was appalling to Lydia.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But he can't pay you," said she. "He's no money. Not even to settle +with his creditors."</p> + +<p>"That's it," said Madame Beattie. "He's got to make it. And I'm his +first creditor. I must be paid first."</p> + +<p>"You haven't told him so?" said Lydia, in a manner of fending her off.</p> + +<p>"It isn't time. He hasn't recovered his nerve. But he will, digging in +that absurd garden."</p> + +<p>"And when you think he has, you'll tell him?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you said you promised him not to tell all this about Esther. And +you've told me."</p> + +<p>"That's why. Get him to work. Spur him up. Talk about his creditors. Now +run away. I want to read."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XVII</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I thought I'd go to bed early," she said, laying down the brush and +gathering round her hair to braid it. "Why, Lyd!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I've found it out," she announced. "All of it. She made him do it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Anne began braiding her hair again. During Lydia's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"What a dreadful old woman!" said Anne.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie?" Lydia asked quickly. "Oh, no, she's not, Anne. I like +her."</p> + +<p>"Like her? A woman like that? She doesn't even look clean."</p> + +<p>Lydia answered quite eagerly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Anne," said Lydia, "it's true. Don't you see it's true?"</p> + +<p>"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?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes, I do," said Lydia stoutly. "It's just like her."</p> + +<p>"She might do other things, different kinds of things that are just as +bad. But stealing, Lyd! Why, think! Esther's a lady."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>Lydia felt firmer ground. She read the newspapers and Anne did not.</p> + +<p>"Now, Anne," said she, "you're 'way off. Diamonds cost thousands and +thousands of dollars, and so do pearls."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Anne, "royal jewels or something of that sort. But a +diamond necklace brought here to Addington in Madame Beattie's bag—"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why, you simpleton!" said she.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> was either satirical, as to ask, "Did she tell you so?" or +compassionate, implying cerebral decay. But she did venture the +compassion.</p> + +<p>"Lydia, don't you think you'd better go to bed?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Lydia promptly, and went out and shut the door.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Get your hat. We're going to see Mr. Alston Choate."</p> + +<p>"What for?" asked Anne.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to tell him what Madame Beattie told me." Lydia's colour was +high. She looked prodigiously excited,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You're a Silly Billy," said she. "You're not going to see Mr. Choate."</p> + +<p>"Won't you go with me?" Lydia inquired.</p> + +<p>"No, of course I sha'n't. And you won't go, either."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I shall," said Lydia. "I'm gone."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I've come to engage you for our case."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Will you sit down?" he said.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Now," said he.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Alston Choate did not allow a glint to lighten the grave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> kindliness of +his glance. Perhaps he felt no amusement; she was his client and very +sweet.</p> + +<p>"Never," said he, in the manner of an uncle to a child. "Tell me +anything you like. I shall respect your confidence."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Why," she cried out, in actual pain, "you don't believe me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Do you realise," he began gravely, "what you accuse Mrs. Blake of?"</p> + +<p>Lydia had not been used to think of her by that name and she asked, with +lifted glance:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Esther?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Mrs. Jeffrey Blake."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie knows it. Esther owned it, I told you."</p> + +<p>"Owned it to Madame Beattie?"</p> + +<p>"To Jeff, anyway. Madame Beattie says so."</p> + +<p>"Do you think for a moment she was telling you the truth?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Miss Lydia," said Choate gravely, "I'm bound to warn you in advance +that you mustn't draw that kind of inference."</p> + +<p>Lydia lost her temper. It seemed to her she had been talking plain fact.</p> + +<p>"I shall draw all the inferences I please," said she, "es<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>pecially if +they're true. And you needn't try to mix me up by your law terms, for I +don't understand them."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"About Esther?" she inquired viciously.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said he steadily, "about Mrs. Jeffrey Blake. She is a +gentlewoman."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But I'm not doing it for myself," said Lydia instantly. "It's for +Jeffrey."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>She asked it anxiously, and Alston answered her with the more gentleness +because her solicitude made her so kind and fair.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"But," said she, "mightn't Esther have been tried for stealing the +necklace?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said he, "if she had been suspected, if there'd been +evidence—"</p> + +<p>"Then I call it a wicked shame she wasn't," said Lydia.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> "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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Miss Lydia, will you let me tell you something?"</p> + +<p>She nodded, her eyes fixed on his.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I don't expect to get anything," said Lydia, on fire. "I'm not doing it +for myself."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"He doesn't love her," said Lydia eagerly. "Not one bit."</p> + +<p>Choate himself believed that, but he stared briefly at having it thrown +at him with so deft a touch. Then he went on.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Blake is going to be found not guilty."</p> + +<p>"Why is she?" asked Lydia calmly. It seemed to her the cross-questioning +was rightly on her side.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> +get nothing out of it. For the necklace being lost, she won't get that."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Who don't?" he asked, frowning.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie and I."</p> + +<p>"Where do you think it is then?"</p> + +<p>"We think Esther's got it somewhere."</p> + +<p>"But you say she lost it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"My God!" said he, under his breath.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why, Anne," said Lydia, "I never saw you mad before."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I came to get you," she said, to Lydia. "You must come home with me."</p> + +<p>"I can't," said Lydia. "I am having a business talk with Mr. Choate. +I've asked him to undertake our case."</p> + +<p>"Our case," Anne repeated, in a perfect despair. "Why, we haven't any +case."</p> + +<p>She turned to Choate and he gave her a confirming glance.</p> + +<p>"I've been telling your sister that, virtually," said he. "I tell her +she doesn't need my services. You may persuade her."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>Alston Choate was looking thoughtful. It was not a story to be spread +broadcast over Addington. He temporised.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Alston Choate was looking at her, frowning.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Anne fervently, "God forbid that. Farvie can't say enough +against it."</p> + +<p>Lydia's perfectly concrete faith was not impaired in the least.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said she, "you'll have to help us somehow."</p> + +<p>So Alston Choate thought. He was regarding Lydia, and he spoke with a +deference she was glad to welcome, a prospective client's due.</p> + +<p>"I think," said he, "you had better leave the case with me."</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XVIII</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I believe that little wild-fire's been here to see you already. Has +she? and talking about necklaces?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Madame Beattie composedly. "She was there when the +note came, and curious as a cat."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Do you mind telling me," said Alston, "what this story is—about a +necklace?"</p> + +<p>"I've no doubt she's told you just as well as I could,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> said Madame +Beattie. "She sat and drank it all in. I bet ten pounds she remembered +word for word."</p> + +<p>"As I understand, you say—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not fully," said Madame Beattie, fanning.</p> + +<p>"Then you were paid something?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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 +ruminat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>ingly, 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.</p> + +<p>"I know every word of Maupassant. Neat, very neat."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I remember," said Madame Beattie composedly. "But if it had been a +necklace such as mine an imitation would have cost a pretty penny."</p> + +<p>"So it wasn't the necklace itself," he hazarded. "You wouldn't have +brought a priceless thing over here. It was the imitation."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You are a rude young man to put words into my mouth, a rude young man."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And counsel confided in by that imp," she supplied shrewdly.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"A certain Royal Personage," said Madame Beattie calmly.</p> + +<p>"Or," said Alston, beginning after a safe hiatus,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> "whether you had had +an imitation made, and whether the necklace said to be lost was the +imitation."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Alston with a calculated dignity, "I know her very well."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I mean really know her, not enough to take her in to dinner or +snatch your hat off to her."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I really know her."</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> + +<p>Alston was looking at her in a fixed distaste.</p> + +<p>"Esther is your niece," he began.</p> + +<p>"Grandniece," interrupted Madame Beattie.</p> + +<p>"She's of your blood. And at present you are her guest—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>But Alston went in a silence he recognised as sulky, and put her into +the carriage with a perfect solicitude.</p> + +<p>"I must ask you," he said stiffly before he closed the carriage door, +"not to mention this to Mrs. Blake."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> closed the door he set a chair for +her. But Anne refused it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Anne looked at him, pleading in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Terribly," she said, "terribly troubled. Lydia has always been +impulsive, but not unmanageable. And I don't in the least know what to +do."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XIX</h2> + + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> ever, and wearing no mark of the inner cruelties he had suffered +and had imagined she must share with him.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie," Anne said, "isn't a fit companion for a young girl. +She can't be."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Madame Beattie," said Lydia. "I love to."</p> + +<p>"Then we'll have a phaeton, and you shall drive."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Do you want to jog?"</p> + +<p>Lydia always wanted to, and she found it the more engaging because +Madame Beattie told her it drove Esther to madness and despair.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What has that young man done for you, my dear, young Choate?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>She put her lips together and thought what she would do if she were +Jeff.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But isn't he agitating anything?"</p> + +<p>"Agitating?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. That's what he must do, you know. That's all he can do."</p> + +<p>Lydia turned reproachful eyes upon her.</p> + +<p>"You think so, too," she said.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"He doesn't love Esther," said Lydia, and then savagely bit her lip.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Weedon Moore?" asked Lydia. "Anne won't let me know him."</p> + +<p>"Well, you do know him, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Choate, my dear," said Madame Beattie. "He's afraid Moore will get hold +of you. He's blocking your game, that's all."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> +other countries, and she was offering him an interview.</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie showed she had the formula, and could manage quite well +alone.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," stammered Moore. "I beg your pardon."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>"Am I permitted to say—" Weedon began, and then wondered how he could +proceed.</p> + +<p>"You can say anything I do," said Madame Beattie promptly. "No more. Of +course not anything else. What is it you want to say?"</p> + +<p>Weedon dropped the pencil, and under the table began to squeeze +inspiration from his knees.</p> + +<p>"Am I permitted," he continued, aghast at the liberty he was taking, "to +know the name of the giver?"</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p> + +<p>"When?" ventured Weedon.</p> + +<p>"Oh, a long time after, a very long time. The Royal Personage was going +to be married and her Royal Highness—"</p> + +<p>"Her Royal Highness?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Moore was forgetting to be shy. He licked his lips, the story promised +so enticingly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Weedon felt as if somehow he had been done.</p> + +<p>"But you haven't told me anything," he implored. "Everybody knows as +much as that."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But I must have the whole in hand," pleaded Weedon.</p> + +<p>"Well, you can't. Because I sha'n't give it to you. Not till I'm ready. +You can publish a paragraph from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"I'm not a journalist," Weedon ventured. "I practise law."</p> + +<p>"Well, you run the paper, don't you? I'm going now. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No," said grandmother, from under the bedclothes. "Go away and call +Rhoda Knox."</p> + +<p>Esther went, angry but not disconcerted. The result<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Would you mind, Mrs. Blake," she said, "asking Sophy to mail this?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Rhoda went quite meekly, and Esther having seen, exulted and thought she +also should dare revolt. But she never did.</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Moore, I am distressed about the interview in your paper."</p> + +<p>Moore, standing, could not squeeze inspiration out of his knees, and +missed it sorely.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Blake," said he, "I wouldn't have distressed you for the world."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Not a word," said Weedon earnestly. "If you could prevail upon her—" +There he stopped, remembering Esther was on the other side.</p> + +<p>"I shall have to be very frank with you," said Esther. "But you will +remember, won't you, that it is in confidence?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Esther was familiar with that form of withdrawal. She herself was always +escaping by it.</p> + +<p>"But you own the paper," she combated him. "Everybody says so."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> 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 <i>eau sucrée</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XX</h2> + + +<p>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 <i>Argosy</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"What is it?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't," said Lydia. "You can't get any more. They couldn't print +them fast enough."</p> + +<p>Jeff passed it to her with a curt gesture of relinquishing any last +interest in it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That's Moore," he said. "It's like him."</p> + +<p>Lydia was at once relieved. She had been afraid he wasn't going to +discuss it at all.</p> + +<p>"You don't blame her, do you?" she prompted.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie?" He was thinking hard and scowling. "No."</p> + +<p>"Anne blames her. She says no lady would have done it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p> + +<p>"O Jeff, I wish you'd give this up."</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"This," she said. "You mustn't stay here and hoe corn. You must get into +business and show people—"</p> + +<p>Her voice choked. It refused absurdly to go on.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I can't help it," she said. "I want you to be doing something real."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> 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'."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff, you know you've got a lot of money to earn—to pay back—"</p> + +<p>And there she stopped. He was regarding her gravely, but the moment he +spoke she knew it was not in any offence.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lydia turned away from him, and he could fancy the bright tears dropping +as she walked. "Oh, dear!" he heard her say. "Oh, dear!"</p> + +<p>"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!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> +that shows you. When it comes to dancing you can understand. I'm a +cripple, Lydia. Don't you see?"</p> + +<p>She had turned obediently, and now she smeared the tears away with one +small hand.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Lydia, looking at him boldly, "and if you were guilty who +made you so? Who pushed you on?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"So," he thought, "more ginger for the labouring man."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I was going to see you," she said. "Get in here."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Tell him to drive along outside the town," she bade. "Were you going to +see me?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Jeffrey, after executing her order. "I've told you I can't go +to see you."</p> + +<p>"Because Esther made that row? absurd! It's Susan's house."</p> + +<p>"I'm not likely to go into it," said Jeff drily, "unless I am +summoned."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p> + +<p>"She's a fool."</p> + +<p>"But I don't mind telling you where I was going," said Jeff. "I was +going to lick Weedon Moore—or the equivalent."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I blame you all right," said Jeff, "but you're not a responsible +person. A chap that owns a paper is."</p> + +<p>"I wish you'd met him," she said, in great enjoyment. "Where'd he go, +Jeffrey? Can't we find him now?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 ".</p> + +<p>"Oh, he had an interpreter."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What the devil made you do it anyway?" he asked her; but Madame Beattie +chuckled and would not answer.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXI</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I haven't much idea the <i>Argosy</i> is read in foreign capitals," Jeff +felt bound to assure her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but we can cable it. The French journals—they used to be very good +to me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Patricia Beattie," she continued, "again a <i>casus belli</i>. 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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I shall stand by," said Madame Beattie. "If you go too far I shall +interfere. So you can go as far as you like."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She was ingenuously disappointed. She even reproached him:</p> + +<p>"You said you were going to do it."</p> + +<p>"That was in my haste," said Jeffrey. "I can't lick him with a woman +standing by. I should feel like a fool."</p> + +<p>Denny was drawing up at the circus-ground.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Madame Beattie, "you've disappointed me tremendously. +That's all I can say."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>Weedon, it was easy to note, was battering down tradition.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"The man's a fool," said she.</p> + +<p>"No," said Jeffrey, "he's not a fool. He knows mighty well what he's +saying and how it'll take."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> 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!"</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh, the man's a fool," said Madame Beattie again. "I'm going in there."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You may go, my friend," said she, quite affectionately. "I do not need +you." Then she said something, possibly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Come up here beside me."</p> + +<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What is she saying?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What is she saying?" he repeated, and for answer the interpreter +snatched one of Jeff's hands and seemed about to kiss it.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"We can't go in this," Jeffrey said to her. "This is Moore's car."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"See here, Madame Beattie," said he, "we can't do this. We must get out +at the gate, at least."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What are they yelling?" Jeffrey asked.</p> + +<p>"It's for you," Madame Beattie said composedly. "They're cheering you."</p> + +<p>"Me? How do you know? That's not my name."</p> + +<p>"No. It's The Prisoner. They're calling you The Prisoner."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What are you doing?" she inquired. "We're going home."</p> + +<p>"This is Moore's car," Jeffrey reminded her.</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't. It's the proletariat's car." She rolled the <i>r</i> +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."</p> + +<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I shall take cold. I got very warm speaking. My voice—"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"But what is there in being a prisoner to start up such a row?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She had turned toward the door and now she came back and struck his arm +violently with her hand.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Esther! Esther!"</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXII</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Ladies shouldn't come out here," he said. "They must send Mary Nellen +to fetch me in."</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel sat down on the bench and did a little extra breathing, +while she looked at him affectionately.</p> + +<p>"You are a good boy, Jeff," said she, at length, "whatever you've been +doing."</p> + +<p>"I've been hoeing," said Jeff. "Here, let me."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Father used to perspire on his chin."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you mustn't play tricks," said Miss Amabel. "You must be good and +not play tricks on other people."</p> + +<p>Jeff drew up his knees and clasped his hands about them. His eyes were +on the corn shimmering in the heat.</p> + +<p>"What's in your bonnet, dear?" said he. "I hear a buzz."</p> + +<p>"What happened the other night?" she asked. "It came to my ears, I won't +say how."</p> + +<p>"Weedie told you. Weedie always told."</p> + +<p>"I don't say it was Mr. Weedon Moore."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p> + +<p>She was speaking with dignity, and Jeffrey laughed and unclasped his +hands to pat her on the arm.</p> + +<p>"I wonder why it makes you so mad to have me call him Weedie."</p> + +<p>She answered rather hotly, for her.</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't do it, any of you, if you weren't disparaging him."</p> + +<p>"Oh, we might. Out of affection. Weedie! good old Weedie! can't you hear +us saying that?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Again Jeffrey gave her a light touch of affectionate intimacy.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" said he. "What do you want me to do?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You don't want me to spoil Weedie's game."</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"Under cover of the dark."</p> + +<p>"He doesn't run any risk of annoying people by assembling in the +streets."</p> + +<p>"Weedie doesn't want any decent man to know his game, whatever his game +is."</p> + +<p>"I won't answer that, Jeffrey. But I feel bound to say you are +ungenerous. You've an old grudge against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> Weedon Moore. You all have, +all you boys who were brought up with him. So you break up the meeting."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"You hated him when you were boys," said Amabel. "Those things last. +Nothing is so hard to kill as prejudice."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yet you went there and you took that impossible Martha Beattie with +you—"</p> + +<p>"Patricia, not Martha."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel turned upon him a look where just reproof struggled with +wounded pride.</p> + +<p>"Jeffrey, I didn't think you'd be insincere with me."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"And yet you did take Madame Beattie to Moore's rally."</p> + +<p>"Rally? So that's what he calls it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"We don't know."</p> + +<p>"Ask Moore."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Moore doesn't know."</p> + +<p>"He can ask his interpreter, can't he?"</p> + +<p>"Andrea? He won't tell."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"South of Europe?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"He has the fruit store on Mill Street."</p> + +<p>"Ah! Amabel, do you know what this interview has done for me? It's given +me a perfectly overwhelming desire to speak the tongues."</p> + +<p>"Foreign languages, Jeff?"</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> talking about when they can kick up row enough under +my very nose to make you come and rag me like this?"</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said Miss Amabel, "unless you are prepared to go into social +work seriously and see things as Mr. Moore sees them—"</p> + +<p>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—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"They say Madame Beattie speaks a dozen or so and I don't know how many +dialects."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can't compete with Madame Beattie. She's got the devil on her +side."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You haven't noticed the corn," said he. "Don't you know you must praise +the work of a man's hands?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I feel fit enough."</p> + +<p>"You don't look over twenty."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you're only doing this for a time?"</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p> + +<p>"If you wanted capital, Jeff—"</p> + +<p>He took up a fold of her little shoulder ruffle and put it to his lips, +and Lydia saw and wondered.</p> + +<p>"No, dear," said he. "I sha'n't need your money. Only don't you let +Weedie have it, to muddle away in politics."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I can't bear to have you doing irresponsible things with Madame +Beattie. She's not fit—"</p> + +<p>"Not fit for me to play with? Madame Beattie won't hurt me."</p> + +<p>"She may hurt Lydia."</p> + +<p>"Lydia!"</p> + +<p>The word leaped out of some deep responsiveness she did not understand.</p> + +<p>"Don't you know how much they are together? They go driving."</p> + +<p>"Well, what's that? Madame Beattie's a good old sport. She won't harm +Lydia."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said he, "you're great chums with Madame Beattie, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Sit down," he said. "There's nothing to be ashamed of in liking Madame +Beattie. You do like her, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Lydia. "I like her very much."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said he, "what do you two talk about?"</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie and I?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. In those long drives, for instance, what do you say?"</p> + +<p>Lydia looked at him, her eyes narrowed slightly, and Jeffrey knew she +did not want to tell. When Esther didn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Politics," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>Jeffrey broke out into a laugh.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come off!" said he. "Politics. Not much you don't."</p> + +<p>Lydia laughed, too, in a sudden relief and pleasure. She didn't like her +lie, it seemed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Anne wouldn't tell a lie," said Jeffrey.</p> + +<p>She flared up at him.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't either. I never do. You took me by surprise."</p> + +<p>"Does Madame Beattie talk to you about her life abroad?"</p> + +<p>He ventured this. But she was gazing at him in the clearest candour.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no." "About what, Lydia? Tell me. It bothers me."</p> + +<p>"Did Miss Amabel bother you?" The charming face was fiery.</p> + +<p>"I don't need Amabel to tell me you're taking long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>She was gazing at him now in quite a dignified surprise.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>But Jeffrey understood her. He, too, believed Madame Beattie had a +decency of her own.</p> + +<p>"Never mind," said he. "Only I want to keep you as you are. So would +father. And Anne."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"There's one thing you could tell me. That wouldn't do any harm."</p> + +<p>"What?" asked Lydia.</p> + +<p>"Your old crony must have mentioned the night we ran away with Weedon +Moore's automobile."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Lydia. Her eyes were eloquent now. "She told me."</p> + +<p>"Did she tell you what she said to Weedon's crowd, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> turn them round +like a flock of sheep and bring them over to us?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, she told me."</p> + +<p>"What was it?"</p> + +<p>But Lydia again looked obstinate, though she ventured a little plea of +her own.</p> + +<p>"Jeff, you must go into politics."</p> + +<p>"Not on your life."</p> + +<p>"The way is all prepared."</p> + +<p>"Who prepared it? Madame Beattie?"</p> + +<p>"You are going," said Lydia, this irrepressibly and against her +judgment, "to be the most popular man in Addington."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Andrea?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Do you know him?"</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie does." She coloured slightly, as if all Madame Beattie's +little secrets were to be guarded.</p> + +<p>"We'll have him up here if he'll come, and we'll learn to pass the bread +in Italian. Shall we?"</p> + +<p>"I'd love to," said Lydia. "We're learning now, Anne and I."</p> + +<p>"Of Andrea?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>He threw himself down on the sofa and clasped his hands<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> than jealousy came up +in him, and he hated something in her as he hated the men desiring her.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXIII</h2> + + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Who do you think I am? What did Madame Beattie tell you?"</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> would only repeat a word over and over, always with an access +of affection, and when Jeffrey asked:</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Jeffrey stood upon no ceremony with him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>"There's a breeze over here," said Alston, and they took chairs by the +window.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"We used to sail the old scow down there," he said. "Remember?"</p> + +<p>Choate nodded.</p> + +<p>"She's down there now in one of the yards, filled with red geraniums."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"See here," said he, "what's Madame Beattie up to?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"She's been making things rather lively," he owned. "Who told you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"She's told 'em something that makes things infernally uncomfortable for +other people," said Choate bluntly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> "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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"How do you know?" he asked.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Did Esther tell you?" Jeff inquired.</p> + +<p>"Yes. She told me."</p> + +<p>"When?"</p> + +<p>"Several times. She has been very uncomfortable. She has needed +counsel."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with this town, anyway?"</p> + +<p>"Addington?" said Choate. "You find it changed?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"There's no such picture now," Alston assured him. "The Addington we +knew was Victorian."</p> + +<p>"Yes. It hadn't changed in fifty years. What's it changing for now?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Compassion?"</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> + +<p>Jeff was rather bewildered.</p> + +<p>"Are we so compassionate as all that?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Not really. It's my impression most of us aren't compassionate at all."</p> + +<p>"Amabel is."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But what's Weedon Moore got to do with it? Is Weedie compassionate?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. In numbers. It can vote itself right into destruction—which is +what it's doing."</p> + +<p>"And Weedie wants to be mayor."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Choate," said Jeffrey cheerfully, "you're an alarmist."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, I'm not. A man like Weedie can get any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>where, 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."</p> + +<p>"But where's he get his infernal influence? Weedie Moore!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well, for God's sake, why don't they?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Is that what the women here are doing?"</p> + +<p>"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'."</p> + +<p>"You're not precisely a sentimentalist, are you?" said Jeff. He was +seeing Choate in the new Addington as Choate presented it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff's face was a map of dark emotion. His mind went<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"You know, Choate," said he, "I believe the first thing for a man to +learn is that he can't dodge penalties."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>Jeff was looking at him quizzically.</p> + +<p>"Where do you live," said he, "in the new Addington or the old one?"</p> + +<p>Choate answered rather wearily, as if he had asked himself that question +and found the answer disheartening.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You going to let Moore administer it?"</p> + +<p>"If he's elected."</p> + +<p>"He can't be elected. We won't have it. What you going to do?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, in politics," said Alston. "They're too vile for a decent man +to touch."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose Weedie's going on with his circus-ground rallies?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>"They say not."</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I've kept a pretty close inquiry afoot. I'm told the men won't go."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie won't let them."</p> + +<p>"The devil she won't! What's the old witch's spell?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said Alston, earnestly, "you mustn't do that."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why mustn't I?" asked Jeff.</p> + +<p>It was very quietly said.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," Choate answered. "I spoke on impulse."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes. But I think you'd better go on."</p> + +<p>Alston kept silence. He was looking out of the window now, pale and +immovably obstinate.</p> + +<p>"Do you, by any chance," said Jeff, "think Esther is afraid of me?"</p> + +<p>Choate faced round upon him, immediately grateful to him.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Because she <i>is</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"It was at no one time," said Choate unwillingly. Yet it seemed to him +Jeff did deserve candour at all their hands.</p> + +<p>"You mean it's been a good many times?"</p> + +<p>"I mean I've been, in a way, her adviser since—"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not to Reardon," Jeff's inner voice was commenting satirically. "What +would you think if you knew she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"About Weedie," he said. "We shall have to do some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>thing 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said he, "do you know what they're calling me, these foreigners +Madame Beattie's training with?"</p> + +<p>She nodded.</p> + +<p>"The Prisoner," said Jeff. "That's what I am—The Prisoner."</p> + +<p>She hastened to reassure him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p> + +<p>"They don't do it to be hateful. It's in love. That's what they mean it +in—love."</p> + +<p>Jeff made a little gesture of the hand, as if he tossed off something so +lightly won.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But what are we prisoner to?" Lydia asked sharply, as if these things +were terrifying. "Is Farvie a prisoner?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And Anne? and I?"</p> + +<p>Jeff sat looking at her in an abstracted thoughtfulness.</p> + +<p>"Anne?" he repeated. "You? I don't know. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"And," he was saying, "once we know we're prisoners, We can be free."</p> + +<p>"How?" said Lydia hopefully. "Can we do the things we like?"</p> + +<p>"No, by God! there's only one way of getting free, and that's by putting +yourself under the law."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Jeff was roaming on, beguiled by his new thoughts and the sound of his +own voice.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He got up and Lydia called to him:</p> + +<p>"What is the lion's cub?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He went in and up the stairs and Lydia fancied she heard the tearing of +papers in his room.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXIV</h2> + + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"We can't get too homesick for old Addington while we have you to look +at," said he.</p> + +<p>She stopped working for one pod's space and looked at him.</p> + +<p>"Are you homesick for old Addington?" she asked. "Alston Choate says +that. He says it's a homesick world."</p> + +<p>"He's dead right," said Jeff.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What do you want of old Addington?" said she. "What do we need we +haven't got?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She looked at him, distressed.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said she, "do you think our young people are not—what they +were?"</p> + +<p>He loved her beautiful indirection.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"You always did joke me," said she. "Get a rise out of me? Is that what +you call it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And yet," said she, "when Weedon Moore talks to those same men you go +and break up the meeting."</p> + +<p>"But bless you, dear old girl," said Jeff, "Weedon was teaching 'em the +rules for wearing the red flag. And I'm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>She meditated.</p> + +<p>"If only you and Weedon would talk it over," she ventured, "and combine +your forces. You're both so clever, Jeff."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie," said she, "I wish you and I could go abroad together."</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie grinned at her, with a perfect appreciation.</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't like it," said she.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>The foreign contingent was always known to her and Madame Beattie as +They.</p> + +<p>"The fool!" said Madame Beattie cheerfully. "What for?"</p> + +<p>"To teach them to be good."</p> + +<p>"What does he want to muddle with that for?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Madame Beattie, you know yourself you're talking to them and +telling them things."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"No," said Lydia, lying. The day he took her hands and told her what she +still believed at moments—he had caught fire then.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Do you want him to play the old game?" asked Lydia.</p> + +<p>"I want him to make some money."</p> + +<p>"To pay his creditors."</p> + +<p>"Pay your grandmother! pay for my necklace. Lydia, I've scared her out +of her boots."</p> + +<p>"Esther?" Lydia whispered.</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie whispered, too, now, and a cross-light played over her +eyes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes. I've searched her room. And she knows it. She thinks I'm searching +for the necklace."</p> + +<p>"And aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"What then?" asked Lydia, breathless.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What should prevent her? the police?"</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>"She'd rather give you the diamonds," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You can't know that," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>She was trembling all over.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But I don't like it," said Lydia. "I don't think it's fair. She hates +Jeff—"</p> + +<p>"Nonsense. She doesn't hate any man. Jeff's poor, that's all."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Look here," said he, "I'm going down there to make an ass of myself. +Don't you come. I won't have it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>But he was not permitted to begin at once. There was a stir without and +the sound of feet. The door opened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"I'll interpret."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What are they laughing at?"</p> + +<p>"I have to put it picturesquely," said Madame Beattie, in a stately +calm. "That's the only way they'll understand. Go on."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>But Madame Beattie was tired, though this was the flowering of her later +life.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You don't think the men like him the less for it?" said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What did you tell last night?" said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"Oh, stories, stories, stories. To-night I may spice it up a little with +modern middle-Europe scandal. Dear souls! they love it."</p> + +<p>"What does Jeff think they're listening to?" asked Lydia.</p> + +<p>"The trusts, last time," said Madame Beattie. "My Holy Father! that's +what he thinks. The trusts!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXV</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Esther was a pathetic pale creature, as she met him in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Alston, what am I going to do?"</p> + +<p>"Things going badly?" he asked her, in a voice moved enough to hearten +her. "What is it that's different?"</p> + +<p>"Everything. Aunt Patricia has those horrible men come here and talk +with her—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What does your grandmother say?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>"She must stand for it, in a way, or Madame Beattie couldn't do it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I don't believe grandmother understands fully. She's so old."</p> + +<p>"She isn't tremendously old."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry," said Alston, in a low tone. "I'm devilish sorry."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"You know," said Esther, almost in a whisper. She had herself in hand +now.</p> + +<p>"Yes. But tell me again. Tell me explicitly."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid," said Esther, "of him."</p> + +<p>"Of your husband? If that's it, say it."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Esther," said he, "you'd better tell me everything."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>It was a confession, a surrender, and he felt the tre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>mendous 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Alston," said she, in what seemed to him a beautiful simplicity, "why +can't you do anything for me?"</p> + +<p>This was so divinely childlike and direct that he had to tell her.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Esther, yet raging against him inwardly. "You can't help +me."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Esther.</p> + +<p>"He gives you no money whatever?"</p> + +<p>"None."</p> + +<p>"Then he's a bigger rascal than I've been able to think him."</p> + +<p>"I believe——" said Esther, and stopped.</p> + +<p>"What do you believe?"</p> + +<p>"I think the money must come from his father. He sends it to me."</p> + +<p>"Then there is money?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Esther irritably, "there's some money, or how could I +live?"</p> + +<p>"But you told me there was none."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"His father sends me some," said Esther, in a voice almost inaudible. It +sounded sulky.</p> + +<p>"Regularly?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I suppose so."</p> + +<p>"Don't you know?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He sends it regularly."</p> + +<p>"How often?"</p> + +<p>"Four times a year."</p> + +<p>"Haven't you every reason to believe that money is from Jeff?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Esther. "I haven't any reason to think so at all. His father +signs the cheques."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it probable that his father would do that when Jeff was in +prison, and that he should continue doing it now?"</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Esther, "isn't it worth it?"</p> + +<p>Alston got up and rather blindly went out of the room.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>I "Sit down," she said.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Mary gone to bed?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Choate. "She was tired. She's been rehearsing a dance +with those French girls and their class."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>She gave the corner of the book a pat with one beautiful hand.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Mysteries of Paris."</p> + +<p>"That's our vice, isn't it," said Alston, "yours and mine, novel +reading?"</p> + +<p>"You're marked with it," said she.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>Alston stared at her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Would you like to go abroad?" he asked her then, "with Mary? Would you +like me to take you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Mother," said Alston, "what's come over you? Is it this book?"</p> + +<p>She laughed, in an easy good-humour.</p> + +<p>"Books don't come over me," said she. "I believe it's that old Madame +Beattie."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"Not every night."</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"No, no, mother, they don't do that."</p> + +<p>"I tell you what it makes me feel, Alston: it makes me feel <i>fat</i>."</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie weighs twenty pounds more than you do, and she's not so +tall by three inches."</p> + +<p>"And then I realise that when women say they want to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"But, mother, there's no game, except a dirty one of graft and politics. +There's nothing in it."</p> + +<p>"No," said Mrs. Choate. "There isn't in most games. But people play +them."</p> + +<p>"You don't think Amabel is in it for the game?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But, mother," said Alston, "you belong to the antis."</p> + +<p>"Do I?" asked his mother. "Yes, I believe I do."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say you're not sincere?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Do you think they're in it for the game?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Alston rose and stood looking down at her. She glanced up brightly, met +his eyes and laughed.</p> + +<p>"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. +Ac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>tually, 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."</p> + +<p>"Get into politics?" he asked, remembering Jeff.</p> + +<p>"Maybe."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXVI</h2> + + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"The trouble is," he said, at breakfast, when Mary Nellen was bringing +in the waffles, "we're all such liars."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"It is beautiful," said Lydia. "It doesn't need to be thick."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I am simply," said Jeff, "so tickled I can hardly contain myself. I +have discovered something."</p> + +<p>"What?" said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Anne was looking at him in a serious anxiety.</p> + +<p>"With conditions as they are—" said she, and Jeff interrupted her +without scruple.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Jeff," said he, "what do you want to do?"</p> + +<p>"I want," said Jeff, "to keep this town out of the clutch of Weedie +Moore."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"He won't take it," said Anne impulsively, and bit her lip.</p> + +<p>"How do you know?" asked Jeff.</p> + +<p>"He hates politics."</p> + +<p>"He hates Addington more as it is."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Well?" said he.</p> + +<p>Lydia was all alive. Her small face seemed drawn to a point of +eagerness. She spoke.</p> + +<p>"Alston Choate isn't the man for mayor."</p> + +<p>"Who is?"</p> + +<p>"You."</p> + +<p>Jeff slowly smiled at her.</p> + +<p>"I?" he said. "How many votes do you think I'd get?"</p> + +<p>"All the foreign vote. And the best streets wouldn't vote at all."</p> + +<p>"Why?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p> + +<p>She bit her lip. She had not meant to say it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lydia looked the unmovable obstinacy she felt stiffening every fibre of +her.</p> + +<p>"You're all wrong," she said. "You could have anything you wanted."</p> + +<p>"Who says so?"</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie."</p> + +<p>"I wish," said Jeff, "that old harpy would go to Elba or Siberia or the +devil. I'm not going to run for office."</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do?" asked Lydia, in a small voice. She was +resting a hand on the table, and the hand trembled.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What kind of plays?"</p> + +<p>"Shakespeare, maybe."</p> + +<p>"They can't do that. They don't know enough."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But they won't act Shakespeare," said Lydia. "They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> only care about +their own countries. That's why they love Madame Beattie."</p> + +<p>"What are their countries, Lydia?"</p> + +<p>"Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia—oh, a lot more."</p> + +<p>"Aren't they voting here in this country?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, ever so many of them."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said Lydia, venturing, "aren't you going into business?"</p> + +<p>"I am in business," said Jeff. "It's my business to bail out the +scuppers here in Addington and bust Weedie Moore."</p> + +<p>"If you went into business," said Lydia, "and made money you could—"</p> + +<p>"I could pay off my creditors? No, I couldn't, Lydia. I could as easily +lift this house."</p> + +<p>"But you could pay something—"</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"No, no."</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lydia was terrified and he reassured her.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>But Lydia still looked at him, hungry for his happiness, and he +despairingly tried to show her his true mind.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>That hurt her and it did no good. She didn't believe him.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What's Weedon Moore?" one man said. "A dirty little shyster. Let him +talk. He can't do any harm."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Do you know what he's telling them?" Jeff inquired.</p> + +<p>They supposed they did. He was probably asking them to vote for him.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> going to fight out the old brute battle for bare +supremacy.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>One man, a big coal dealer down by the wharves, did more or less agree +with him.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>It was the first pat retort of any sort Jeff had got.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you're goin' to do about it," he said.</p> + +<p>"We're going to put in a decent man for mayor," said Jeff. "And we're +going to keep Weedon Moore out."</p> + +<p>"Moore ain't no good," said the coal man. "But I dunno's he'd do any +harm."</p> + +<p>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 cus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>todians 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.</p> + +<p>"Sorry," said he. "Not a word about your own experiences."</p> + +<p>"It isn't my prison experience," said Jeff. "It's my life here. It's +everybody's life on the planet."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How do you think it's written?" Jeff ventured to ask.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You'd say it won't sell."</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow, I know. I'm feeling the pulse of the public all the +time. It's my business."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p> + +<p>Jeff put out his hands for the sheets and the censor gave them up +willingly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Is it?" Jeff inquired.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"Decidedly."</p> + +<p>"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? <i>Then</i> we'd publish it as an eccentric book by an eccentric +fellow, a victim of prison regulations."</p> + +<p>Jeff laid his papers down on the table beside him and set a glass on +them to keep them from blowing away.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff carried the manuscript into the house, and asked the wise young +judge to come out and see his late corn,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXVII</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>But when the curtain went up, he opened his eyes to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Anne looks very sweet, doesn't she? but not at all like a dancer."</p> + +<p>"Sweet," said the mother.</p> + +<p>"Anne doesn't belong there, does she?" said Alston.</p> + +<p>"No," said the mother. "Lydia does."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> knew what picture +of him was under Andrea's skull. A sudden impulse seized him to make the +man his confidant.</p> + +<p>"Andrea," said he, "I want you fellows to act plays with me."</p> + +<p>Andrea looked enchanted.</p> + +<p>"What play?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Shakespeare," said Jeff. "In English. That's your language, Andrea, if +you're going to live here."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Won't she allow it?" he hazarded. "Madame Beattie?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You may take me home," she said.</p> + +<p>"I can't," said Jeff ruthlessly, when he had got her out of earshot. +"I'm going to carry things for Anne."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie," said Jeff, "you've got to give away<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"What do you want to do?" But she was pleased. There was somebody under +her foot.</p> + +<p>"I want to rehearse some plays in English. And I gather from the leader +of the clan—"</p> + +<p>"Andrea?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Andrea. They won't do it unless you tell them to."</p> + +<p>"Of course they won't," said Madame Beattie.</p> + +<p>"Then why won't they? What's your infernal spell?"</p> + +<p>"It's the spell of the East. And you can't tempt them with anything that +comes out of the West."</p> + +<p>"Their food comes out of the West," said Jeff, smarting.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that! Well, that's about all you can give them. That's what they +come for."</p> + +<p>"All of them? Good God!"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"What?" Jeff asked her sternly. He shook her arm involuntarily.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Drunk?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Then why won't you," said Jeff, in wrath, "let me knock something else +into their heads. You can't do it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> by facts. There aren't many facts +just now that aren't shameful. Why can't you let me do it by poetry?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"They like me," said Jeff, "for some mysterious reason."</p> + +<p>"They like you because I've told them to."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe it." But in his heart he did.</p> + +<p>"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 +<i>pension</i>."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Have you any objection," said Jeff, "to my trying to produce the +Merchant of Venice with English-speaking children of foreigners?"</p> + +<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXVIII</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I've actually done it," said she. "I've got on her nerves. She's going +away."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"So you think she'll come back?" she asked drearily.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you mustn't let her, must you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I sha'n't let her. Of course I sha'n't."</p> + +<p>"What shall you do?"</p> + +<p>"She's not going till night. She takes Sophy, of course."</p> + +<p>"But what can you do?"</p> + +<p>"I shall consult that dirty little man. He's a lawyer and he's not in +love with her."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Moore? You haven't much time, Madame Beattie. She'll be going."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"There it is," she whispered to herself, with the scant breath her +choking heart would lend her. "Oh, there it is!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> directly upstairs to +Jeffrey's room where he might be writing at that hour.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> a negation almost imperceptible. "No," said Jeffrey to +himself. "She didn't have it. Who did have it?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Where did you get it?" he asked, looking up at Lydia.</p> + +<p>Something inside her throat had swollen. She swallowed over it with +difficulty before she spoke. But she did speak.</p> + +<p>"I took it."</p> + +<p>"Took it?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You mean you found it."</p> + +<p>"No. I didn't find it. I took it."</p> + +<p>"You must have found it first."</p> + +<p>"I looked for it," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"In Esther's bag."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You'll have to tell me about it, Lydia. Where was the bag?"</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"That Madame Beattie was?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>By this time her hands were shaking and her lips chattered piteously. +Jeffrey was wholly perplexed, but bitterly sorry for her.</p> + +<p>"What made you bring it here, dear?" said he.</p> + +<p>Lydia caught at the endearing word, and something like a spasm moved her +face.</p> + +<p>"I had to," said she. "It has made all the trouble."</p> + +<p>"But I don't want it," said Jeffrey. "Whatever trouble it made is over +and done with. However this came into Esther's hands—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know how that was," said Lydia. "She stole it. Madame Beattie +says so."</p> + +<p>"And whatever she is going to do with it now—that isn't a matter for me +to meddle with."</p> + +<p>"Don't you care?" said Lydia, in a passionate outcry. "Now you've got it +in your hand, don't you care?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Jeff, "what could I do with it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How do you know she's hounded me?"</p> + +<p>"She says so. She wants you to get into politics and into business and +pay her back."</p> + +<p>"But that's what you've wanted me to do yourself."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said he, "you must leave this thing here with me."</p> + +<p>His hand indicated by a motion the hateful bauble that lay there +glittering at them.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said she. "I've left it with you."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Do you understand?" said he. "You mustn't speak of it."</p> + +<p>"I shall have to tell," said Lydia, "if anybody asks me. If I didn't it +would be—queer."</p> + +<p>"It's a great deal more than queer," said Jeff.</p> + +<p>He smiled now, and she drew a happy breath. And he was amused, in a grim +way. He had been, for a long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said he, "you know what it would be called—this taking +something out of another woman's bag?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Leave it with me," he said. "And promise me one thing. Don't speak to +anybody about it."</p> + +<p>"Unless they ask me," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Here is the necklace," said he, in a perfectly commonplace tone. "I +suppose that's what you are talking about."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"The necklace was stolen. It was taken out of this house. Who took it?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>His tone was rather a chaffing one, a recall to the inter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>course of +everyday life. "Be advised," it said. "Don't carry a dull joke too far."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Is this it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She nodded.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I'm sure," said Esther.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Ask her," said Madame Beattie, in her tiniest lisp, "if the necklace is +hers."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Ask her," said Madame Beattie, with relish, "where she got it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>But Alston asked no further questions. Madame Beattie went amicably on.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Don't go," she said. The words were all in one breath. "Don't go far. I +am afraid."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p> + +<p>He hesitated, and Jeffrey said equably but still with a grim amusement:</p> + +<p>"I think you'd better go."</p> + +<p>So he went out of the room and Esther was left between her two +inquisitors.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXIX</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute," he said. "There are one or two things we've got to get +at. Where did you find the necklace?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"This is the necklace," he went on. "It was lost, you know. Where did +you find it, Esther?"</p> + +<p>But suddenly Esther remembered she had a counter charge to make.</p> + +<p>"You have broken into this house," she said, "and taken it. If it is +Aunt Patricia's, you have taken it from her."</p> + +<p>"No," said Aunt Patricia easily, "it isn't altogether mine. Jeff made me +a payment on it a good many years ago."</p> + +<p>Esther turned upon her.</p> + +<p>"He paid you for it? When?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Queer things were going on in Jeff's mind. The necklace, no matter what +its market price, seemed to him of no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Esther!" he said. She lifted her head slightly, but gave no other sign +of hearing. "We'll give this back to Madame Beattie."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Sell the damned thing then, if you don't want it and do want money," +said Jeff. "You've got it back."</p> + +<p>"I can't sell it." She had half closed her eyes, and her lips gave an +unctious little relish to the words.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why can't you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Jeff was looking at her sharply.</p> + +<p>"I never said I took it from a hand-bag," he rejoined.</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie broke down and laughed. She gave the bracelet a final +snap.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't mention you," said Madame Beattie. "I know who took the +necklace."</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>His movement must have shaken the touch on his arm, for Esther's hand +fell.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Then," said Esther, slipping away from him a pace, "you didn't do it +after all."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeff. "I will think. Is it understood?" He walked over to +her and stood there looking down at her.</p> + +<p>She glanced pleasantly up at him.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I swear," said Jeff, "you are—" Neither words nor breath failed him, +but he was afraid of his own passion.</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie laughed.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said she, "I've no visible means of support. If I had I should +be as mild—you can't think!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Who did it?" she cried. "That woman?"</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie was exploring a little box for a tablet, which she took +composedly.</p> + +<p>"What woman?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"That woman upstairs."</p> + +<p>"Rhoda Knox? God bless me, no! Rhoda Knox wouldn't steal a button. She's +New England to the bone."</p> + +<p>"Sophy?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"In the dining-room?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I might as well take it with me," said Madame Beattie. "You don't act +as if you were his wife."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"He did take it out of my bag. You have planned it between you to get it +back into your hands."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> +feminine. But he did not look at her, and she had to throw what argument +she might into her voice.</p> + +<p>"You were so good to stay," she said, with a little tired sigh. "They've +gone. Come back into the other room."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Esther!" said he. There was no pretence now of being on terms too +distant to let him use her name.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"For God's sake, tell me about this thing."</p> + +<p>"You know all I do," she said brokenly.</p> + +<p>"I don't know anything," said Choate. "You tell me your husband——"</p> + +<p>"Don't call him that," she entreated.</p> + +<p>"Your husband entered this house and took the necklace. I want to know +where he took it from."</p> + +<p>"She told you," said Esther scornfully.</p> + +<p>He gained a little courage now and ventured to look at her. If she could +repel Madame Beattie's insinuation, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"I am told the necklace was in your bag. How did it get there?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Esther, in a perfect clarity.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It is a plot between them," she said boldly.</p> + +<p>"Between whom?"</p> + +<p>"Aunt Patricia and him."</p> + +<p>"What is the plot?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>This was all very stupid, Esther felt, when he might be assuring her of +his unchanged and practical devotion.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know," she said irritably. "How should I know?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"What for?"</p> + +<p>"To have him steal it, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"To have him steal her own necklace? Couldn't she have given it to him?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But how was he to know she had put it in the bag?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Why was it better to have him find it in your bag than anywhere else in +the house?" he was hammering on.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Esther again, and now she gave a little sigh.</p> + +<p>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 bond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>age. To Esther +he looked young, like the Jeff she used to know.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"We could sell it," said Choate drily, "or its owner could, to help us +live and support being blind."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Alston was watching him sharply now. He was wondering whether Jeff was +going to accuse her of appropriating it in the beginning.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Good!" said Jeff. "Now I propose we all escape from the necklace. We're +prisoners, and let's be free."</p> + +<p>"How are you a prisoner?" Alston asked him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p> + +<p>Jeff smiled at him.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>This he asked of Esther and she returned bitterly:</p> + +<p>"Aunt Patricia's got it. She walked out of the room with it, shaking it +in the sun."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Esther cried out here, a little sharp cry of rage against him.</p> + +<p>"I see," said she, "it's only an attack on me. That's where all your +talk is leading."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It's true, Esther. I'm a prisoner, too. I'm trying to see how I can get +out."</p> + +<p>Choate spoke here, adopting the terms of Jeff's own fancy.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> small brain, through +all their talk, ever since Madame Beattie had denied Jeff's having taken +the necklace, and now it offered its result.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXX</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Miss Lydia came to me, some weeks ago, about these jewels."</p> + +<p>Here Jeff stopped him, breaking in upon him indeed when he had got thus +far.</p> + +<p>"Alston, let's go down under the old willow and smoke a pipe."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"That necklace, Choate," said he, "is a regular little devil of a +necklace. Do you realise how much mischief it's already done?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>But Jeff went on with his ruminating.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"But sometimes," said Alston, "it is beauty."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Alston stiffly, "that's the point. That's what it +leads to."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Alston took out his match-box, and felt his fingers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff was watching the boys across the flats, critically and with a real +interest.</p> + +<p>"She did," he said.</p> + +<p>Alston bolstered himself with a fictitious anger.</p> + +<p>"And you can tell me of it," he blustered.</p> + +<p>"You asked me."</p> + +<p>"You believe she did?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yet you tell me because I ask you."</p> + +<p>Alston seemed to be bitterly defending Esther.</p> + +<p>"Not precisely," said Jeff. "Because you're bewitched by her. You must +get over that."</p> + +<p>The distance wavered before Choate's eyes, He hated Jeffrey childishly +because he could be so calm.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You needn't worry," he said. "She is as completely separated from me as +if—as if you had never been away from her."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Sorry," said Jeff. "You deserve to be told the whole business. But you +can't be."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Couldn't we go out somewhere and talk?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said he. "We could walk down to the river."</p> + +<p>They started at once, and Anne, seeing them go, sighed deeply. Lydia was +shut away from her lately. Anne missed her.</p> + +<p>Lydia and Jeff went down the narrow path at the back<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Does she know it?" asked Lydia.</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>"Esther. Does she know I stole it out of the bag?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Lydia, "I must go away."</p> + +<p>"Go away?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She was an absolutely composed Lydia. She had forestalled him in her +colossal common-sense.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> shield Esther, to +shield you, and when she finds she can't get it she'll sail peacefully +off."</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie wouldn't do anything hateful to me," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Nobody will arrest anybody," said Jeff. "You are absolutely out of it. +And you must keep your mouth tight and stay out."</p> + +<p>"But you said Esther knew I did it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lydia turned upon him.</p> + +<p>"You told them that? Oh, I can't have it. I won't. I shall go to them at +once."</p> + +<p>She had even turned to fly to them.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>Lydia selected from this the fact that hit her hardest.</p> + +<p>"Is Alston Choate in love with Esther?"</p> + +<p>"He thinks he is."</p> + +<p>"Then I must tell Anne."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But Anne worships him."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean she's in love with Choate?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Lydia, "I don't mean that. I mean she thinks he's the most +beautiful person she ever saw."</p> + +<p>"Then let her keep on thinking so," said Jeff. "And sometime he'll think +that of her."</p> + +<p>Lydia was indignant.</p> + +<p>"If you think Anne——" she began, and he stopped her.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why can't you?" asked Lydia.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span></p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"You do care. You care about Lydia. That's what you're +facing—love—love of Lydia."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia!" he said, and again he spoke her name.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Lydia. "What is it?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," he said, "what if you and I should tell each other the truth?"</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You and me?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Lydia, "I'm outside anyway. With you. And I'm glad of it. +You won't feel so lonesome now."</p> + +<p>Jeff's eyes began to brim.</p> + +<p>"You little hateful thing," he said. "You've made me cry."</p> + +<p>"Got a hanky?" Lydia inquired solicitously.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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——"</p> + +<p>She stopped and he heard her breath and then the click of her teeth as +if she broke the words in two.</p> + +<p>"Don't be afraid, Lydia," he said. "I won't."</p> + +<p>"I'm not afraid," she flashed.</p> + +<p>"And don't talk of killing."</p> + +<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> "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."</p> + +<p>"How do you know I put my head on the table?" said Jeff. It was +wholesome to him to sound rough to her.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I won't do it again," said Jeff. "Lydia, I can't say one of the things +I want to. Not one of them."</p> + +<p>"I don't expect you to," said Lydia. "I understand you and me too. All I +wanted was for you to understand me."</p> + +<p>"I do," said Jeff. "And I'll stand up to it. Shake hands, Lydia."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXI</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Mother," he said, "you never were disgusted through and through. With +yourself."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Mother," said he, "does civilisation rot us after all? Have we got to +be savages to find out what's in us?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He thought of the night when she had lain in bed and told how she was +travelling miles from Addington in her novel.</p> + +<p>"You never owned these things before, mother," he said. "What makes you +now?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with us? Is it Addington?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You old Tartar," said Alston, "have we really got to fight?"</p> + +<p>"We've got to be punished anyhow," said his mother.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> "And I suppose the +only punishment we should feel is the punishment of money and blood."</p> + +<p>"Let's run away, mother," said Alston. "Let's pick up Mary and run away +to Europe."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"England can manage Germany," said Alston, "through the pocket. +Industrial wars are the only ones we shall ever see."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Alston was impressed, in spite of himself. His mother was not given to +prophecy or passionate asseveration.</p> + +<p>"But anyhow," said she, "you can't run away, for they're going to ask +you to stand for mayor."</p> + +<p>"The dickens they are! Who said so?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"She needn't worry," said Alston, getting up. "I shouldn't take it."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> haven't lived in a library all your life. It +may not do him any good, but it'll save your soul alive."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 ave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>nues 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I felt," said he, "as if something had happened to you."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Do you think I ought to live like this—afraid?"</p> + +<p>"Afraid?" asked Reardon. "Of him?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He came this afternoon. There is nobody to stand between us. I am +afraid."</p> + +<p>Reardon made the only answer possible, and felt the thrill of his own +adequacy.</p> + +<p>"I'll stand between you."</p> + +<p>"But you can't," she said. "You've no right."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Look here. It ain't because I don't want you. But there's Jeff."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Do I?" said Esther.</p> + +<p>She rose, and, looking wan, gave him her hand. And Reardon got out of +the room, feeling rather more of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Esther, stop a minute. I want you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Esther," said Madame Beattie, "you may have the necklace."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> get him started. Not that I think you could. He's +done with you, I fancy."</p> + +<p>Esther, still speechless, wondered if she could. It was a challenge of +precisely the force Madame Beattie meant it to be.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXII</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"I thought," said she, "after what I said, I ought to come, to reassure +you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 detach<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>ment from feminine allurements when they are +summoned to affairs.</p> + +<p>"Esther," said Jeff, before Lydia could speak, "just why are you here?"</p> + +<p>"I told you," said Esther, with a pretty air of pained surprise. "To +tell Lydia she mustn't be unhappy."</p> + +<p>Then Lydia found her tongue.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Lydia!" said Jeff warningly.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Esther looked back at her in that pained forbearance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> which clothed her +like a transfiguring atmosphere. Then she drew a sharp breath.</p> + +<p>"Jeff!" she said, turning to him.</p> + +<p>The red had mounted to his forehead. He admired Lydia, and with some +wild impulse of his own, loved her bravado.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come, Lydia," he said. "We can't talk like that. If Esther means to +be civil—"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Esther too rose, murder in her heart but still a solicitous sadness in +her eyes, and turned, following Lydia's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said Esther, at his elbow, "Jeff, I must go. This is too painful +for everybody. I can't bear it."</p> + +<p>"That's right," said Jeff in the kindness of sudden relief. "Run along."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Come, come, Esther," said she, "don't run away. I came to see you as +much as anybody."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I suppose you're talking about that stupid necklace."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Now I've come to be disagreeable. Esther has been agreeable, I've no +doubt. Jeff, I hope you're being nice to her."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Esther glanced up at her quickly and Madame Beattie shook her head.</p> + +<p>"You've been a silly child, too," she said. "You took the necklace to +give it back to me. Through Jeff, I understand."</p> + +<p>"No, I didn't," said Lydia, in a passion to tell the truth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> 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—'"</p> + +<p>"Who told you that?" flashed Esther. She had forgotten her patient calm.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I have told you," said Jeff, "to sell it. If it's worth what you say—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff moved uneasily in his chair. He thought there were things he might +say to Madame Beattie if the others were not present.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Well," said he. "Well!"</p> + +<p>Lydia was maliciously glad that even he could find nothing more to say.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie gave a little ironic crow of laughter.</p> + +<p>"Sit down, Esther," she said, "and let Mr. Blake shake hands with me. +No, I can't stay to dinner. Esther may,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> if she likes, but I've business +on my hands. It's with that dirty little man Jeff's got such a prejudice +against."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I must," said Esther, with a little deprecatory look and another +significant one at Madame Beattie's back. "Good-bye."</p> + +<p>She threw Lydia, in her scornful silence there in the background, a +smile and nod.</p> + +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>"I have to go," she said. "I really have to, this time."</p> + +<p>Meantime Jeff, handing Madame Beattie into the carriage, had had his +word with her.</p> + +<p>"You'll do nothing until I see you."</p> + +<p>"If you see me moderately soon," said Madame Beattie pleasantly. +"Esther, are you coming?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Esther, with a scrupulous politeness. "No, thank you. I shall +walk."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"My son," began the colonel.</p> + +<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Don't bother him, Farvie," said she. "He's out of prison! he's out of +prison!"</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXIII</h2> + + +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>But Jeff was meeting the half question comprehensively.</p> + +<p>"I don't quite know what she came for."</p> + +<p>"Couldn't you have persuaded her," said the colonel, hesitating, "to +stay?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Jeff. "Esther doesn't want to stay. We mustn't think of +that."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Come in, Farvie," she said. "You haven't corrected Mary Nellen's +translation."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Sit down, sit down," he said. "You haven't looked me up before, not +since—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel moved her chair back. She was about to rise.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"O Jeffrey!" said Miss Amabel. "Why put it so un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>pleasantly? Mr. Moore +would never print anything which could annoy you or any one. We mustn't +assume he would."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"That's all," said Jeff. He, too, was standing and he now turned to go.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Pardon me," said Jeff. "I have to go. But mayn't I take you home?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Surely not," said Jeff. "Addington forever!"</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> Choate Building to Alston's +office, and, from some sudden hesitancy, tapped on the door.</p> + +<p>"Come in," called Alston, and he went.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Choate," said he, "have you been asked to run for mayor?"</p> + +<p>Choate frowned. He wasn't thinking of public office.</p> + +<p>"I've been—approached," he said, as if the word made it the more +remote.</p> + +<p>"What did you say?"</p> + +<p>"Said I wouldn't. Jeff, I believe you started the confounded thing."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And let Addington go to pot? Why, we'd all rather<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"She's gone to pot anyway," said Choate. "So's the country. There aren't +any Americans now. They're blasted aliens."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You will be downed."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>(This was before Robert Frost had come into his fame, but New England +had printed a verse or two and then forgotten them.)</p> + +<p>"I didn't know you were such a fellow," said Choate, really interested, +in an impersonal way. "You go to my head."</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Then, for God's sake," said Jeff, "take your alien and make an American +of him."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"They talk about the melting-pot," said Jeff rather helplessly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Jeff seemed to be meeting him as if their minds were at grapples.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p> + +<p>"They've even brought their insect pests," put in Alston.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Oh, come," said Alston, "give 'em a fair show. They've come for +liberty. You've got to take their word for it."</p> + +<p>"Some of 'em have come to avoid being skinned alive, by Islam, some to +get money enough to go back with and be <i>rentiers</i>. The Germans have +come to show us the beatitude of their specially anointed way of life."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Alston curtly, "we've got 'em. And they've got us. You +can't leaven the whole lump."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXIV</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"What is strange?" asked Jeff, with a kindly note she found reassuring.</p> + +<p>"You and me," said Esther, "standing here, when—I don't believe you +were going to speak."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"When I don't want to!" Esther repeated. There was musing in the soft +voice, a kind of wonder.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> feel that. If I see it's going to happen I can save you +that, at least."</p> + +<p>Esther stood looking up at him, her lips parted, as if she drank what he +had to say through them, and drank it thirstily.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Esther," he said, "don't say such a thing. Don't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Jeff!" said Esther.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Now I see," said Esther, "how really alone I am. I thought I was when +you were away, but it was nothing to this."</p> + +<p>She walked on, listlessly, aimlessly even though she kept the path and +she was going on her way as she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care about Addington," said Esther. "It can say what it +pleases—if you're kind to me."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Now Esther looked at him. She smiled.</p> + +<p>"Scold away," she said. "I've wanted you to scold me. I haven't been so +happy for months."</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 irri<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>tably 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>They were past her, but not before Esther had asked, in answer:</p> + +<p>"Where shall we go? I mean—" she caught herself up from her wilful +stumbling—"where could I go—alone?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He turned upon the words and strode off and Esther, without looking +after him, went in and at once upstairs.</p> + +<p>"Good girl!" Madame Beattie called to her, from her room. "Well begun is +half done."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I've been to Amabel's," he said. "You were going there, too, weren't +you?"</p> + +<p>Lydia's face relaxed and cleared a little. She looked relieved, perhaps +from the mere kindness of his voice.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I didn't go," she said. "I didn't feel like it."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said he. "Lydia."</p> + +<p>"I know it," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>She sought out her handkerchief and seemed to attack her face with it, +she was so angry at the tears.</p> + +<p>"You're not hurt," said Jeff. "Truly you're not hurt, Lydia. There's +been nothing to hurt you."</p> + +<p>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 be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>side 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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXV</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> take him +patiently because you tell them to. But they don't half want him."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Jeff was more interested in his eating than in answering Mrs. Choate +with more than an encouraging:</p> + +<p>"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?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Speaking?" asked Jeff. "She'd have spoken, if she got half a chance."</p> + +<p>Alston laughed quietly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It's disgraceful," said Esther, almost crying into the telephone. "What +is she saying to them?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Find out," Esther besought him. "Ask her. Ask whom you shall vote for. +It'll get her started."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> the best, she thought, the man had to offer—and then said to her +jocosely:</p> + +<p>"Well, Madame Beattie, who shall I vote for?"</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie looked at him an instant with a quizzical comprehension +it was too dark for him to see.</p> + +<p>"I can tell whom you'd better not vote for," she said. "Don't vote for +Esther. Tell him to go on."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Look here," said Reardon, shaken, "what we going to do?"</p> + +<p>"You must tell me," she whispered. "How could I tell you?"</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I won't in that building or the school session," he said. "Outside I'll +knife him if I can."</p> + +<p>"Jeff," said Miss Amabel, "if you'd only work together."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Weedon Moore is saving Addington," said she.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I do," said Jeff, "mighty well. Sit down, dear, or I shall have to +salute the flag, too, and I'm too lazy."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p> + +<p>She sat down, but she was trembling.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel flushed all over her soft face, up to the line of her grey +hair.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," she said.</p> + +<p>"What'm?"</p> + +<p>"I have always meant when you were at liberty again—" that seemed to +her a tolerable euphemism—"to turn in something toward your debt."</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> confess to +you. Dear sister superior, I'm going to confess."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She moved slightly at this, and Jeff smiled at her.</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>Miss Amabel put out the motherly hand and he grasped it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She took out her large handkerchief—Amabel had a convenient pocket—and +openly wiped her eyes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Even to her he had never mentioned the practical side of Esther's life. +Miss Amabel looked at him sympathetically, inquiringly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You couldn't—" said Amabel. She stopped.</p> + +<p>His brows were black as thunder.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> and do the best +thing I know. I'm an undiscovered country."</p> + +<p>"You're no mystery to me," she said. "You're a good boy, Jeff."</p> + +<p>He went straight home and called Lydia and Anne to council, the colonel +sitting by, looking over his glasses in a benevolent way.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"She hasn't money enough for real plays," said Lydia. "All she's got +wouldn't last a minute."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>Just then Mary Nellen, passionately but silently grieved to have lost +such an intellectual feast, came in on the tail<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"But I want to," he said to her, with a smile for her alone. "Won't you +let me if I want to?"</p> + +<p>"I want you to write," said Lydia obstinately.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXVI</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What are you saying?" he asked her, in an irascible undertone. "Talk +English for ten minutes. Play fair."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I am taking you with me to see Esther," she mentioned unconcernedly, as +they went.</p> + +<p>"No, you're not," said Jeff. "I'm not going into that house."</p> + +<p>"Very well," said Madame Beattie. "Then tell him to stop here a minute, +while we talk."</p> + +<p>Jeff hesitated, having no desire to talk, and she herself gave the +order.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You have?" said Madame Beattie. She breathed a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You talk of luck," he said, "to a man just out of jail."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>How she managed to know some of the things she did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"That would have made a difference, I suppose," he said, "young +Williams' testimony. I wonder how he happened to think of it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She laughed a little, indifferently, with no bitterness, but in +retrospect of a scene where she had been worsted.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Jeff laughed out.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>But Madame Beattie was not going to waste time on young Williams.</p> + +<p>"It ought to be a criminal offence," she said rapidly, "to be such a +fool. You had the world in your hand.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Is that it?" she asked. "Are you going to run away?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeff, quietly. "I'm going to run away."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 thiev<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>ery 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.</p> + +<p>"The amount of the matter is," she said, "I must be paid for the +necklace."</p> + +<p>"But," Anne said, with the utmost courtesy, "I understand you have the +necklace."</p> + +<p>"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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> she would go to Weedon Moore and give him the story of +Esther's thievery and of Lydia's. Anne rose from her chair.</p> + +<p>"You have come to me," she said, "to ask a thing like that? To ask for +money—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I mean it," she said. "I can't have you stay here.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> 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?"</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie was still not moved except by mild amusement. Anne left +the chair and took a step nearer.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXVII</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I am so troubled," she said, without preliminary. "Madame Beattie has +just been to see me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span></p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I will, too," said Alston. "Only it won't be for Lydia wholly. It'll be +for you."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The colour ran deeper into Anne's face.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She had got on her feet and was fumbling with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I must go," said Anne.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," he said, "darling Anne."</p> + +<p>This was as the handle of the door was in his grasp<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> ready to be turned +for her. Anne, still inexplicably grave, was looking at him.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," she said, "Mr. Choate."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie, I have come to talk over this unfortunate matter of the +necklace."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Madame Beattie, with a perfect affability and no apparent +emotion, "Anne French has been chattering to you."</p> + +<p>"Naturally," said Choate. "I am their counsel, hers and her sister's."</p> + +<p>"These aren't matters of law," said Madame Beattie.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> "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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"The point is," said Alston, "that some months ago when you began to +make things unpleasant for a number of persons—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Well," said she, "have you come to tell me the history of the Beattie +necklace?"</p> + +<p>"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 Fam<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>ily +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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"It is not true," said she. "If it was money I wanted, I could have sold +it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She uttered a little hoarse exclamation, a curse, Alston could believe, +in whatever tongue.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He paused to rest a moment from his thankless task,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> and they looked at +each other calmly, yet quite recognising they were at grips.</p> + +<p>"You forget," said she, "that I have the necklace at this moment in my +possession. You have seen it and handled it."</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"And stole it," Madame Beattie put in, with a real enjoyment now.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Madame Beattie put back her head and burst into hoarse and perfectly +spontaneous laughter.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Well?" said Alston.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span></p> + +<p>Madame Beattie blinked a little, and her mind came back.</p> + +<p>"Ten thousand," she tossed him at a venture, in a violence of haste.</p> + +<p>Alston shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Too much," said he.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She leaned toward him and put a shaking hand on his knee.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'll come," she said, almost passionately.</p> + +<p>He had never seen her so shaken or indeed actually<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she began.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry," he said simply.</p> + +<p>Esther looked at him a moment dumbly. Then her face convulsed. She was +crying.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> now she's going back to Europe and she'll take +it with her."</p> + +<p>"Going back?" Esther echoed, through her tears. "Who says she's going +back?"</p> + +<p>"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".</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Darling Anne," the note said. "It's all right. I'll tell you +sometime. Meanwhile you're not to worry.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p style="margin-left: 55%;">"Your lover,<br /></p> + +<p style="margin-left: 65%;">"<span class="smcap">Alston Choate</span>."<br /></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>XXXVIII</h2> + +<p>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 sur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span>rendered 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff," she began, "you're all I've got in the world. Aunt Patrica's +going away."</p> + +<p>Jeff clutched upon his reason and hoped it would serve him while +something more merciful kept him kind.</p> + +<p>"Good!" said he. "That's a relief for you."</p> + +<p>"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 your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span>self! but I have to say it. Won't you come here to +live?"</p> + +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>"Esther," he said, "only a little while ago you said you were afraid of +me."</p> + +<p>Esther had no answer to make. Yet she could take refuge in a perfect +humility, and this she did.</p> + +<p>"I ask you, Jeff," she said. "I ask you to come back."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>"I ask you to forgive me," said Esther. "Are you going to punish me for +what I did?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Jeff, in a dull disclaimer. "I don't want to punish you."</p> + +<p>But he did not want to come back. This her heart told her, while it +cautioned her not to own she knew.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Esther," he said, "sit down. Let me, too, so we can get hold of +ourselves, find out what we really think."</p> + +<p>They sat, and she clasped her hands in a way prayer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>fully 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Don't," said Esther sharply. "Don't talk of criminals."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Esther gave a patient sigh.</p> + +<p>"I don't understand," she said, "what you are talking about. And this +isn't the way, dear, for us to understand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> each other. If we love each +other, oughtn't we to forgive?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I have never," she said, "been so insulted in my life."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She was out of her chair and on her feet.</p> + +<p>"You must go," she said. "You must go at once."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What business had he?" he kept repeating. "What business had he?"</p> + +<p>"I can't talk about it," said Esther. "But I can never go through it +again. You must take me away."</p> + +<p>"I'm going myself," said Reardon. "I'm booked for Liverpool."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I shall die if you leave me."</p> + +<p>"I won't go," said Reardon, at once. "I'll stand by."</p> + +<p>"You will go," said Esther fiercely, half in anger be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span>cause he had to be +cajoled and prompted, "and take me with you."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" she returned, like a wild thing leaping at him. "Do +you mean really take care of me? over there?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Reardon, without a last clutch at his lost vision, "over +there. We'll leave here Friday, for New York."</p> + +<p>"I shall send my trunks in advance," said Esther. "By express. I shall +say I am going for dressmaking and the theatre."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"I have told Sophy to do some pressing for me," she said to Esther. +"After that, she will pack."</p> + +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Madame Beattie quietly. "She'll do it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Are you—" she hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Madame Beattie, "I am sailing. I leave for New York Friday +morning."</p> + +<p>Esther had a rudimentary sense of humour, and it did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> and after she had gone +in, Esther saw him, dramatic despondency in every drooping muscle, walk +sorrowfully away.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXIX</h2> + + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Well," said she, "I leave you. But not for long, I daresay."</p> + +<p>"You'll be coming back by spring," said Esther, willing to turn off the +encounter neatly.</p> + +<p>"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. <i>Au revoir</i>."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Come along, imp," said she. "Get in here and go to the station with +me."</p> + +<p>Lydia stepped in at once, very glad indeed of a word with her unpopular +friend.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well, my dear," said Madame Beattie good-naturedly, "I fancy you're the +only soul in town that does, except<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"Go on with what?" inquired Lydia.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>"Who's going to run away?" Lydia shrilled up into her face. "Not +Esther?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The train was in, and her foot was on the step. But Lydia was holding +her back, her little face one sharp interrogation.</p> + +<p>"Not to Europe?" she said. "You don't mean they're going to Europe?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<p>"Where's Jeff?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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, momen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span>tarily 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" Anne asked her. "You look mumpy."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Farvie," said she, "shouldn't you think Jeff would come?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Lyd, if you've got a cold you stay in the house."</p> + +<p>Lydia shut the door behind her and sped down the path.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Jeff!" she said.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" said Jeff. "Father all right?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How do you know?"</p> + +<p>Neither of them, in the course of their quick sentences, mentioned +Esther's name.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie told me. Look over by that truck. Don't let her see +you."</p> + +<p>Jeff turned slightly and saw the figure by the truck.</p> + +<p>"She's going to take this train," said Lydia. "She's going to Reardon. O +Jeff, it's wicked."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Come," said he. "Come home with me."</p> + +<p>Esther stood perfectly silent like a shrinking wild thing endowed with a +protective catalepsy.</p> + +<p>"Esther," said he, "I know where you're going. You mustn't go. You +sha'n't. Come home with me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How do you know," she called, in a high hysterical voice, "where I'm +going?"</p> + +<p>"You were going with somebody you mustn't go with," said Jeff. "We won't +talk about him. If he were here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> I shouldn't touch him. He's only a +fool. And it's your fault if you're going. But you mustn't go."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"The train is coming," said Jeff. "Stand here, if you won't walk away +with me, and we'll let it go."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Come," said Jeff, "now we'll go home."</p> + +<p>She turned and walked with him to the corner. There she swerved.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>But at that moment of high excitement Lydia didn't believe anything +would kill her, even seeing Jeff walk away<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> from her with this little +wisp of wrong desires to hold and cherish.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Father," said Jeff, with a loud cheerfulness that sounded fatuous in +his own ears, "here's Esther. She's come to stay."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"To-morrow," she muttered, "it will be too late."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Anne got on her feet and held out a hand to her.</p> + +<p>"Come," she said. "Let's go upstairs."</p> + +<p>Esther shrank all over her body and gave a glance at Jeff. It was a +cruel glance, full of a definite repudiation.</p> + +<p>"No, no," she said again, in a voice where fear was intentionally +dominant.</p> + +<p>It stung him to a miserable sorrow for her and a hurt pride of his own.</p> + +<p>"For God's sake, no!" he said. "You're going to be by yourself, poor +child! Run away with Anne."</p> + +<p>So Esther rose unwillingly, and Anne took her up to the spacious chamber +where firelight was dancing on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Please go," she said to Anne. "Please let me be."</p> + +<p>This seemed to Anne quite natural. She knew she herself, if she were +troubled, could get over it best alone.</p> + +<p>"Mayn't I come back?" she asked. "When you're in bed?"</p> + +<p>"No," Esther said. "I am so tired I shall sleep. You're very kind. Good +night."</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Father," said he at last, breaking the silence where the clock ticked +and the fire stirred.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Whatever she does," said Jeff, "I'm to blame for it."</p> + +<p>"Don't blame yourself any more," the colonel said. "We won't blame +anybody."</p> + +<p>He did not even venture to ask what Esther would be likely to do.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said aloud, "I've got to do it."</p> + +<p>All that evening they sat silent, the four of them, as if waiting for an +arrival, an event. At eleven Anne came in.</p> + +<p>"I've been up and listened," she said. "She's perfectly quiet. She must +be asleep."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span></p> + +<p>Jeff rose.</p> + +<p>"Come, father," he said. "You'll be drowsy as an owl to-morrow. We'd +better get up early, all of us."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XL</h2> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Go up," he said to Lydia. "Knock. Then try the door."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Lydia, "will he be good to her?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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 ac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span>tually 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Where is she?" asked Jeff, when he had closed the door.</p> + +<p>"Esther?" said Madam Bell. "Gone. She's taken every stitch she had that +was worth anything. Martha told me she was going for good."</p> + +<p>"Who's Martha? Oh, yes, yes—Madame Beattie."</p> + +<p>The light faded for an instant from the parchment face.</p> + +<p>"Don't tell me," she sharply bade him, "Esther's coming back?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Jeff. "If she does, she shall come to me."</p> + +<p>He went away without another word, and Madam Bell called after him:</p> + +<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> me."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Father, Esther's gone abroad," the colonel answered soothingly:</p> + +<p>"Yes, my son, I know. It is in every way best."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> soothingly suggested that he +should not come. Better not, Andrea said. Too much work for nothing. +They knew already what to do. They understood.</p> + +<p>"Understand what?" Jeff asked him.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what it is," said Moore, almost weeping. "But it's some +damned trick, and I'll be even with them."</p> + +<p>"If they elect you—" Jeff began coldly.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"All you knew?" Jeff could not resist saying. "All you know about +trickery, Weedie?"</p> + +<p>"As a lawyer," said Weedie, "I told her about writing in names. I told +her about stickers—"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What did she want to know for?" Jeff asked. He, too, was roused to +sudden startled interest.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> reading to the colonel. Alston took her hands and +drew her out to him.</p> + +<p>"It's not very cold," he said. "One minute, Anne. Won't you love me if I +am not a mayor?"</p> + +<p>Anne didn't answer. She stood there, her hands in his, and Alston +thought she was the stillest thing he had ever seen.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you speak," said Alston, in a rage of delight in her, "you +little dumb person, you?"</p> + +<p>Anne did better. She got her hands out of his and lifted them to draw +his face again to hers.</p> + +<p>"How silly we are," said Anne. "And the door is swinging open, and it'll +let all the cold in on Farvie's feet."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" said Jeff.</p> + +<p>He went to her and she faced him, the colour running over her face.</p> + +<p>"That man—" she said, and stopped.</p> + +<p>"Moore?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He has insulted me."</p> + +<p>"Moore?" he repeated.</p> + +<p>"He has asked me—Jeff, I am a woman of sixty and over—he has asked me +to marry him."</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute," said Jeff. "I've forgotten something."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>"Did you do what you had forgotten?" Amabel asked.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Miss Amabel, in a stately manner. "I had just heard it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know Mrs. Choate had any such interest in local affairs," said +Amabel.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> 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!"</p> + +<p>"Save us from Alston?" asked Jeff, as they went away, and Miss Amabel +forgot Moore and laughed.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I've lost Farvie," she said, "and Anne. Can't I come with you?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"But why the deuce," said Jeff, "Andrea and his gang look so mournful I +can't see."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Lydia, "don't you know? They voted for you, and their votes +were thrown out."</p> + +<p>"For me?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Lydia," said Jeff, "you're making this up."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, I'm not," said Lydia. "Mr. Choate told<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"How do you know so much about her?" he began.</p> + +<p>"Madame Beattie? We used to talk together," said Lydia demurely.</p> + +<p>"You knew her confounded plans?"</p> + +<p>"Some of them."</p> + +<p>"And never told?"</p> + +<p>"They were secrets," said Lydia. "Come, let's walk along."</p> + +<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked Lydia.</p> + +<p>"What did she tell those fellows about me?"</p> + +<p>"Andrea?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Lydia, "it can't do any harm to tell you that."</p> + +<p>"Any harm? I ought to have known it from the first. Out with it."</p> + +<p>"Well, she told them you had been in prison, and you were sent there by +Weedon Moore and his party—"</p> + +<p>"His party? What was that?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"My word!" said Jeff. "And they believed her."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Moses," said Jeff, "leading them out of bondage."</p> + +<p>"Yes. Come, we can't stand here. If Miss Amabel sees us she'll think +we're crazy."</p> + +<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I have heard from her."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How can she?" said Lydia stupidly. "She couldn't marry him."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jeff, "sometime—"</p> + +<p>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 un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span>imaginably free, came winging to him like a bird with messages.</p> + +<p>"We aren't," he said, "going to be prisoners, either of us."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"We aren't going to be downed by loving each other so we can't stand up +to it and say we'll wait."</p> + +<p>"I can stand up to it," said Lydia. "I can stand up to anything—for +you."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>They were at their own gate. They halted there.</p> + +<p>"You'd better go down and find Anne and Farvie," said Lydia.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span> tint and line +of it, turned to him in an unhesitating response. It was the garden of +love, and, too, a pure unhindered happiness.</p> + +<p>"I'm going in," said Lydia, "to get something ready for them to +eat—Farvie and Anne. For us, too."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<h4>THE END</h4> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<h6>Printed in the United States of America.</h6> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<div class="anote"> + +<h4>The following pages contain advertisements of books<br />by the same author +or on kindred subjects.</h4> + +</div> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h4><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></h4> + + +<p><b>Children of Earth</b></p> + +<p class="price">$1.25</p> + +<p>This is the ten thousand dollar American prize play. From thousands of +manuscripts submitted to Mr. Ames of the Little Theatre, Miss Brown's +was chosen as being the most notable, both in theme and +characterisation.</p> + +<p>"A page from the truly native life of the nation, magnificently +written."—<i>New York Tribune.</i></p> + +<p>"Ranks with the best achievements of the American theatre."—<i>Boston +Transcript.</i></p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p><b>My Love and I</b></p> + +<p class="price">$1.35</p> + +<p>"' My Love and I' takes rank with the best work of the best modern +English and American novelists.... The book which originally appeared +under the nom de plume of Martin Redfield is now reissued with its real +author's name on the title page."—<i>Indianapolis News.</i></p> + +<p>"... a compelling story, one that is full of dignity and truth and that +subtly calls forth and displays the nobilities of human nature that +respond to suffering."—<i>Argonaut.</i></p> + +<p>"... the story has a quality of its own that makes it notably worth +while."—<i>North American Review.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p><b>Robin Hood's Barn</b></p> + +<p class="price">$1.25</p> + +<p>"... abounds in quiet humour and wholesome idealism, and is dramatic +with the tenseness of human heart throbs. It is very enjoyable to +read—interesting, original, wholesome."—<i>Boston Times.</i></p> + +<p>"The author has displayed much quaint humour, skill in character +drawing, and dramatic force."—<i>Christian Advocate</i>.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p><b>Vanishing Points</b></p> + +<p class="price">$1.25</p> + +<p>"To a comprehensive knowledge of human nature she adds good judgment, +quiet philosophy and style practically perfect. She has, too, a strong +sense of plot. All the narratives, in the present volume, are faultless +in technique, well constructed, spiritually sound."—<i>Chicago +Herald-Record.</i></p> + +<p>"A good book to have within reach when there are a few moments of +leisure, as the stories are short as well as interesting,"—<i>Pittsburgh +Telegraph.</i></p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p><b>The Secret of the Clan</b></p> + +<p style="margin-left: 15%;">A Story for Girls</p> + +<p class="price">$1.25</p> + +<p>"Alice Brown has written a decidedly original story of girl life in 'The +Secret of the Clan' for it is perhaps the first time that any one has +recognised that side of healthy girl character which delights in making +believe on a large scale."</p> + +<p>"The author shows an unfailing understanding of the heart of +girlhood."—<i>Christian Advocate</i>.</p> + +<p>"It is fine and sweet, and a good tale as well—Alice Brown may be +trusted for that."—<i>The Independent.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<h3>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</h3> +<h5>Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York</h5> + +<div class="tnote"> + +<h3>Transcriber's Note.</h3> + +<p>The following changes have been made in the text.<br /><br /> +Page 256. 'cermony' changed to 'ceremony'<br /> +Page 259. 'paraphase' changed to 'paraphrase'<br /> +Page 275. 'hestitate' changed to 'hesitate'<br /> +Page 362. 'fleering' changed to 'fleeting'<br /><br /> + +All other inconsistencies are as in the original.<br /> The author's spelling has been maintained.</p> + + +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prisoner, by Alice Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONER *** + +***** This file should be named 29366-h.htm or 29366-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/3/6/29366/ + +Produced by David Clarke, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Prisoner + +Author: Alice Brown + +Release Date: July 10, 2009 [EBook #29366] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONER *** + + + + +Produced by David Clarke, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + 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 aesthetic 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 mediaeval 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. Naive 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 +toupee, 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 toupee +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 toupee, 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 toupee and with iced _eau sucree_ 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 toupee 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 seances 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 naively 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 + + * * * * * + +Printed in the United States of America. + + + ++--------------------------------------------------------------+ +| | +| The following pages contain advertisements of books by the | +| same author or on kindred subjects. | +| | ++--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + +_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ + + +=Children of Earth= + +$1.25 + +This is the ten thousand dollar American prize play. From thousands of +manuscripts submitted to Mr. Ames of the Little Theatre, Miss Brown's +was chosen as being the most notable, both in theme and +characterisation. + +"A page from the truly native life of the nation, magnificently +written."--_New York Tribune._ + +"Ranks with the best achievements of the American theatre."--_Boston +Transcript._ + + +=My Love and I= + +$1.35 + +"' My Love and I' takes rank with the best work of the best modern +English and American novelists.... The book which originally appeared +under the nom de plume of Martin Redfield is now reissued with its real +author's name on the title page."--_Indianapolis News._ + +"... a compelling story, one that is full of dignity and truth and that +subtly calls forth and displays the nobilities of human nature that +respond to suffering."--_Argonaut._ + +"... the story has a quality of its own that makes it notably worth +while."--_North American Review._ + + * * * * * + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + +Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York + +=Robin Hood's Barn= + +$1.25 + +"... abounds in quiet humour and wholesome idealism, and is dramatic +with the tenseness of human heart throbs. It is very enjoyable to +read--interesting, original, wholesome."--_Boston Times._ + +"The author has displayed much quaint humour, skill in character +drawing, and dramatic force."--_Christian Advocate_. + +=Vanishing Points= + +$1.25 + +"To a comprehensive knowledge of human nature she adds good judgment, +quiet philosophy and style practically perfect. She has, too, a strong +sense of plot. All the narratives, in the present volume, are faultless +in technique, well constructed, spiritually sound."--_Chicago +Herald-Record._ + +"A good book to have within reach when there are a few moments of +leisure, as the stories are short as well as interesting,"--_Pittsburgh +Telegraph._ + +=The Secret of the Clan= + +A Story for Girls + +$1.25 + +"Alice Brown has written a decidedly original story of girl life in 'The +Secret of the Clan' for it is perhaps the first time that any one has +recognised that side of healthy girl character which delights in making +believe on a large scale." + +"The author shows an unfailing understanding of the heart of +girlhood."--_Christian Advocate_. + +"It is fine and sweet, and a good tale as well--Alice Brown may be +trusted for that."--_The Independent._ + + * * * * * + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + + + ++--------------------------------------------------------------+ +| | +| 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' | +| | +| All other inconsistencies are as in the original. | +| The author's spelling has been maintained. | +| | ++--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prisoner, by Alice Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONER *** + +***** This file should be named 29366.txt or 29366.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/3/6/29366/ + +Produced by David Clarke, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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