Chapter 26

"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.