Chapter 28

"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."