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 thecountry town--or, more accurately, the inconsiderable city--of Addingtonthan this clear twilight of a spring day. Anne and Lydia French withtheir stepfather, known in domestic pleasantry as the colonel, had hitupon a perfect combination of time and weather, and now they stood in adazed silence, dense to the proffers of two hackmen with the urgency oftwenty, and looked about them. That inquiring pause was as if they hadexpected to find, even at the bare, sand-encircled station, the imaginedcharacteristics of the place they had so long visualised. The handsomeelderly man, clean-shaven, close-clipped, and, at intervals when herecalled himself to a stand against discouragement, almost military inhis bearing, was tired, but entrenched in a patient calm. The girls wereprofoundly moved in a way that looked like gratitude: perhaps, too, exalted as if, after reverses, they had reached a passionately desiredgoal. Anne was the elder sister, slender and sweet, grave with theprotective fostering instinct of mothers in a maidenly hiding, ready tocome at need. She wore her plain blue clothes as if unconscious of themand their incomplete response to the note of time. A woman would havedetected that she trimmed her own hat, a flat, wide-brimmed straw with aformless bow and a feather worthy only in long service. A man wouldhave cherished the memory of her thin rose-flushed face with the crisptouches of sedate inquiry about the eyes. "Do you want anything?" Anne'seyes were always asking clearly. "Let me get it for you. " But even a manthus tenderly alive to her charm would have thought her older than shewas, a sweet sisterly creature to be reverentially regarded. 

Lydia was the product of a different mould. She was the woman, though agirl in years and look, not removed by chill timidities from woman'snormal hopes, the clean animal in her curved mouth, the trick of partingher lips for a long breath because, for the gusto of life, the ordinarybreath wouldn't always do, and showing most excellent teeth, the littlesquare chin, dauntless in strength, the eyes dauntless, too, and hairall 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 theirpassionate loyalties, was "father" not a line removed. In the delicacyof his patrician type he might even have been "grandfather", for helooked older than he was, the worsted prey of circumstance. He had mettrouble that would not be evaded, and if he might be said to haveconquered, it was only from regarding it with a perplexed immobility, sopuzzling was it in a world where honour, he thought, was absolutelydefined and a social crime as inexplicable as it was rending. 

And while the three wait to have their outlines thus inadequatelysketched, the hackman waits, too, he of a more persistent hope than hisfellows who have gone heavily rolling away to the stable, it being nowsix o'clock and this the last train. 

Lydia was a young woman of fervid recognitions. She liked to take a dayand stamp it for her own, to say of this, perhaps: "It was the ninth ofApril when we went to Addington, and it was a heavenly day. There was aclear sky and I could see Farvie's beautiful nose and chin against itand Anne's feather all out of curl. Dear Anne! dear Farvie! Everythingsmelled of dirt, good, honest dirt, not city sculch, and I heard arobin. Anne heard him, too. I saw her smile. " But really what Anneplucked out of the moment was a blurred feeling of peace. The day waslike 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 ofDenny, the hackman, and said to him in her liquid voice that laid bondsof kind responsiveness:

"Do you know the old Blake house?"

Denny nodded. He was a soft, loosely made man with a stubby moustachepicked out in red and a cheerfully dishevelled air of having been up allnight. 

"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 thestation master in selecting the trunks, no large task when there was buta drummer's case besides. He went about this meditatively, inwardlysearching out the way of putting the question that should elicit theidentity of his fares. There was a way, he knew. But they had seatedthemselves in the hack, and now explained that if he would take twotrunks along the rest could come with the freight due at least byto-morrow; and he had driven them through the wide street bordered withelms and behind them what Addington knew as "house and grounds" beforehe thought of a way. It was when he had bumped the trunks into theempty hall and Lydia was paying him from a smart purse of silver givenher 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 roundhere?"

Lydia smiled at him pleasantly. 

"Good night, " said she. "Get the freight round in the morning, won'tyou? and be sure you bring somebody to help open the crates. "

Then Denny climbed sorrowfully up on his box, and when he looked roundhe found them staring there as they had stared at the station: only nowhe saw they were in a row and "holding hands". 

"I think, " said Lydia, in rather a hushed voice, as if she told theothers 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 livewith" him when they were little girls and their mother married him. Theynever suggested that mother married him any time within theirremembrance. In their determined state of mind he belonged not only tothe never-ending end when he and they and mother were to meet in agardened heaven with running streams and bowery trees, but as well tothe vague past when they were little girls. Their own father they hadmemory of only as a disturbing large person in rough tweed smelling ofoffice smoke, who was always trying to get somewhere before the domesticexigencies of breakfast and carriage would let him, and who dropped deadone day trying to do it. Anne saw him fall right in the middle of thegravel walk, and ran to tell mother father had stubbed his toe. And whenshe heard mother scream, and noted father's really humorous obstinacyabout getting up, and saw the cook even and the coachman together tryingto persuade him, she got a strong distaste for father; and when abouttwo years afterward she was asked if she would accept this other olderfather, she agreed to him with cordial expectation. He was gentle andhad a smooth, still voice. His clothes smelled of Russia leather andlead pencils and at first of very nice smoke: not as if he had sat in atight room all day and got cured in the smoke of other rank pipes like ahelpless ham, but as if a pleasant acrid perfume were his specialatmosphere. 

"They haven't done much to the garden, have they?" he asked now, pokingwith his stick in the beds under the windows. "I suppose you girls knowwhat these things are, coming up. There's a peony. I do know that. Iremember this one. It's the old dark kind, not pink. I don't much carefor a pink piny. "

The big front yard sloping up to the house was almost full of shrubberyin 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 thisrunaway shrubbery looked, in a way of speaking, inpenetrable. It wouldhave taken so much trouble to get through that you would have feltindiscreet in trying it. The driveway only seemed to have been braveenough to pass it without getting choked up, a road that came in at thebig gateway, its posts marked by haughty granite balls, accomplished aleisurely curve and went out at another similar gateway as proudlydecorated. The house held dignified seclusion there behind theshrubbery, waiting, Lydia thought, to be found. You could not reallysee 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 thecolonel with the charm of old affection playing upon him like airs ofparadise, thought the house beautiful. It was of mellow old brick withwhite trimmings and a white door, and at the left, where the eastern sunwould beat, a white veranda. It came up into a kindly gambrel roof andthere were dormers. Lydia saw already how fascinating those chambersmust be. There was a trellis over the door and jessamine swinging fromit. The birds in the shrubbery were eloquent. A robin mourned on onecomplaining note and Anne, wise also in the troubles of birds, lookedlow for the reason and found, sitting with tail wickedly twitching atthe tip, a brindled cat. Being gentle in her ways and considering thatall things have rights, she approached him with crafty steps and amurmured hypnotic, "kitty! kitty!" got her hands on him, and carried himoff down the drive, to drop him in the street and suggest, with awarning pat and conciliating stroke, the desirability of home. 

The colonel, following Lydia's excited interest, poked with his stickfor a minute or more at a bed under the front window, where somethinglush seemed to be coming up, and Lydia, losing interest when she foundit was only pudding-bags, picked three sprays of flowering almond fordecorating purposes and drew him toward a gate at the east side of thehouse where, down three rotting steps, lay level land. The end of itnext 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 andran down for fifty feet or so between it and the adjoining place. Therea grey board fence took up the boundary and ran on, with a lessdefinite markedness to the eye, until it skirted a rise far down thefield 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 lookedabout her with a little murmured note of happy expectation. She lovedthe place at once, and gave up to the ecstasy of loving it "good andhard, " she would have said. These impulsive passions of her nature hadalways made her greatest joys. They were like robust bewilderingplaymates. She took them to her heart, and into her bed at night to helpher dream. There was nothing ever more warm and grateful than Lydia'sacceptances and her trust in the bright promise of the new. Anne didn'tdo 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 ahundred 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 allhe said was:

"They haven't kept the trees very well pruned. "

"There's Anne, " said Lydia, loosing her hold of his sleeve. She ranlight-footedly back to Anne, and patted her with warm receptiveness. "Anne, look: apple trees, pear trees, peach in that corner. See that bigbush down there. "

"Quince, " said Anne dreamily. She had her hat off now, and her fine softbrown hair, in silky disorder, attracted her absent-minded care. ButLydia had pulled out the pin of her own tight little hat with itsbackward pointing quill and rumpled her hair in the doing and neverknew it; now she transfixed the hat with a joyous stab. 

"Never mind your hair, " said she. "What idiots we were to write to theInn. 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 walllike that? Who built it, Farvie? Who built the brick wall?"

Farvie was standing with his hands behind him, thinking back, the girlsknew well, over the years. A mournful quiet was in his face. They couldfollow 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 runningincursions 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 tohateful 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 asclearly to see them as salutary invasions to keep him from themelancholy accidents of the road, an ambulance dashing up to lift hisbruised hopes tenderly and take them off somewhere for sanitarytreatment, or even some childish sympathy of theirs commissioned to runup and offer him a nosegay to distract him in his walk toward olddisappointments and old cares. He only knew they were welcome visitantsin his mind. Sometimes the mind seemed to him a clean-swept place, theshades down and no fire lighted, and these young creatures, in theirheavenly implication of doing everything for their own pleasure and notfor his, would come in, pull up the shades with a rush, light the fireand sit down with their sewing and their quite as necessary laughter bythe hearth. 

"It's a nice brick wall, " said Anne, in her cool clear voice. "Itdoesn'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 stoodthere at his elbow like rosy champions, bound to stick to him to thelast, and the bird sang and something eased up in his mind. He seemed tobe let off, in this spring twilight, from an exigent task that had shownno signs of easing. Yet he knew he was not really let off. Only thegirls were throwing their glamour of youth and hope and bravado over theapprehensive landscape of his fortune as to-morrow's sun would snatch arosier light from the apple blooms. 

"My great-grandfather built the wall, " said he. He was content to goback to an older reminiscent time when there were, for him, no roads ofgloom. "He was a minister, you know: very old-fashioned even then, verydirect, knew what he wanted, saw no reason why he shouldn't have it. Hewanted 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 arapt way, as if she had said, "There are angels choiring under thetrees. We can hum their songs. "

"It makes an arbour. Farvie'll sit there and read his Greek, " saidLydia. "We can't leave this place to-night. It would be ridiculous, nowwe've found it. It wouldn't be safe either. Places like this bust up andblow away. "

"We can get up the beds to-morrow, " said Anne. "Then we never'll leaveit 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 atthe orchard, as if she sealed it safe from all the spells of night, andentered at the front door, trying, at her suggestion, to squeeze intogether 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 thehall, a large square room with a generous fireplace well blackened andlarge surfaces of old ivory paint. There was a landscape paper here, oftrees in a smoky mist and dull blue skies behind a waft of cloud. Out ofthis lay the dining-room, all in green, and the windows of both roomslooked on a gigantic lilac hedge, and beyond it the glimmer of a whitecolonial house set back in its own grounds. The kitchen was in alean-to, a good little kitchen brown with smoke, and behind that was theshed with dark cobwebbed rafters and corners that cried out for hoes andgarden tools. Lydia went through the rooms in a rush of happiness, Annein a still rapt imagining. Things always seemed to her the symbols ofdearer things. She saw shadowy shapes sitting at the table and breakingbread together, saw moving figures in the service of the house, andgenerations upon generations weaving their webs of hope and pain anddisillusionment and hope again. In the shed they stood looking out atthe back door through the rolling field, where at last a fringe offeathery 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 byjumping-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 modernyet conforming paper of dull blue and grey. 

"The hall is grey, " said Lydia. "Do you notice? How well they've keptthe papers. There isn't a stain. "

"Maiden ladies, " said the colonel, with a sigh. "Nothing but two maidenladies for so long. "

"Don't draw long breaths, Farvie, " said Lydia. "Anne and I are maidenladies. You wouldn't breathe over us. We should feel terribly if youdid. "

"I was thinking how still the house had been, " said he. "It used tobe--ah, well! well!"

"They grew old here, didn't they?" said Anne, her mind taking the maidenladies into its hospitable shelter. 

"They were old when they came. " He was trying to put on a brisker air tomatch these two runners with hope for their torch. "Old as I am now. Iftheir poor little property had lasted we should have had hard work topry them out. We should have had to let 'em potter along here. But theyseem 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 offan emerald plate and hearing the nightingales singing and saying to eachother, 'Oh, my! I _wish_ it was morning so we could get up and put onour pan-velvet dresses and new gold shoes. '"

This effective picture Anne and the colonel received with a perfectgravity, not really seeing it with the mind's eye. Lydia's habit ofspeech demanded these isolating calms. 

"I think, " said Anne, "we'd better be getting to the Inn. We sha'n'tfind any supper. Lydia, which bag did you pack our nighties in?"

Lydia picked out the bag, carolling, as she did so, in high brightnotes, and then remembered that she had to put on her hat. Anne hadalready adjusted hers with a careful nicety. 

"You know where the Inn is, don't you, Farvie?" Lydia was asking, asthey stood on the stone step, after Anne had locked the door, and gazedabout them in another of their according trances. 

He smiled at them, and his eyes lighted for the first time. The smileshowed possibilities the girls had proven through their growing upyears, 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 girlspresently found to be the state street of the town. The houses, eachwith abundant grounds, had all a formal opulence due chiefly to thewhite-pillared fronts. Anne grew dreamy. It seemed to her as if she werewalking by a line of Greek temples in an afternoon hush. The colonel wasnaming the houses as they passed, with good old names. Here were theJarvises, 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-browedstructure built in the eighteenth century and never without guests. 

II

The next morning brought a confusion of arriving freight, and Denny wassupplicated to provide workmen, clever artificers in the opening ofboxes and the setting up of beds. He was fired by a zeal not allcuriosity, a true interest assuaged by certainty more enlivening yet. 

"I know who ye be, " he announced to the colonel. This was on his arrivalwith the first load. "I ain't lived in town very long, or I should knownit afore. It's in the paper. "

Mr. Blake frowned slightly and seemed to freeze all over the surface hepresented to the world. He walked away without a reply, but Lydia, whohad not heard, came up at this point to ask Denny if he knew where shecould find a maid. 

"Sure I do, " said Denny, who was not Irish but consorted with commonspeech. "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'restudyin' together to set up a school in Canada, and they can't beseparated. 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 withshiny black hair and round myopic eyes. This near-sightedness when theyapproached the unclassified, resulted in their simultaneously making upthe most horrible faces, the mere effort of focusing. Mary Nellen--forfamily affection, recognising their complete twin-ship, always blendedthem--were aware of this disfiguring habit, but relegated the curing ofit to the day of their future prosperity. They couldn't afford glassesnow, they said. They'd rather put their money into books. This accordingand instantaneous grimace Lydia found engaging. She could not possiblyhelp hiring them, and they appeared again that night with two batteredtin boxes and took up residence in the shed chamber. 

There had been some consultation about the disposition of chambers. Itresolved itself into the perfectly reasonable conclusion that thecolonel must have the one he had always slept in, the southeasterncorner. 

"But there's one, " said Lydia, "that's sweeter than the whole house puttogether. Have you fallen in love with it, Anne? It's that low, big roomback of the stairs. You go down two steps into it. There's a grape-vineover the window. Whose chamber is that, Farvie?"

He stood perfectly still by the mantel, and the old look ofintrospective pain, almost of a surprised terror, crossed his face. Thenthey 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 Dickensand a dog picture she had known as belonging to Jeff, who was the ownson of the colonel, and took them in there. Once she caught Lydia in thedoorway looking in, a strangled passion in her face, as if she weregoing back to the page of an old grief. 

"Queer, isn't it?" she asked, and Anne, knowing all that lay in theelision, nodded silently. 

Once that afternoon the great brass knocker on the front door fell, andMary 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 hewas mysteriously not the sort to be admitted. Lydia went at once to thedoor whence there came to Anne, listening with a worried intensity, asubdued runnel of talk. The colonel, who had sat down by the librarywindow with a book he was not reading, as if he needed to soothe someinner turmoil of his own by the touch of leathern covers, apparently didnot hear this low-toned interchange. He glanced into the orchard fromtime to time, and once drummed on the window when a dog dashed acrossand ran distractedly back and forth along the brick wall. When Anneheard 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 hereand 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 fatherwas here, and asked if he might see him. I said, No, he couldn't seeanybody. "

"Was he put out?" Anne had just heard Mary Nellen use the phrase. Annethought it covered a good deal. 

"No, " said Lydia. She lifted her plump hands and threaded the hair backfrom her forehead, a gesture she had when she was tired. It seemed tospur her brain. "No, " she repeated, in a slow thoughtfulness, "he was akind of gentleman. I had an idea he was sorry for me, for us all, Isuppose. I was sorry for him, too. He was trying to earn his living andI wouldn't let him. "

"You couldn't. "

"No, " said Lydia, rather drearily, "I couldn't. Do you think Farvieheard?"

"I think not. He didn't seem to. "

But it was with redoubled solicitude that they threw their jointenergies into making supper inviting, so that the colonel might at leastget a shred of easement out of a pleasant meal. Mary Nellen, whoamicably divided themselves between the task of cooking and serving, forwarded their desires, making faces all the time at unfamiliarsauce-pans, and quite plainly agreed with them that men were to becomforted by such recognised device. Anne and Lydia were deft littlehousewives. They had a sober recognition of the pains that go to awell-ordered life, and were patient in service. Their father had nohabit of complaint if the machinery creaked and even caused the walls toshudder with faulty action. Yet they knew their gentle ways contributedto his peace. 

After supper, having seen that he was seated and ready for the littletalk they usually had in the edge of the evening, Lydia wondered whethershe ought to tell him a reporter had run them down; but while shebalanced the question there came another clanging knock and Mary Nellenbeckoned 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 couldhear the young inexorable voice curtly talking down Mary Nellen and sheclosed the library door behind her. But when the front door had shutafter the invader and Lydia came back, again with reddened cheeks anddistended 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 tillmorning. "

"You know we all thought it best you shouldn't, " Anne said, alwaysfaintly interrogative. "So long as we needn't say who we are. They'dknow who you were. "

"His father, " said Lydia, from an indignation disproportioned to themild sadness she saw in the colonel's face. "That's what they'd say: hisfather. I don't believe Anne and I could bear that, the way they'd sayit. I don't believe Jeff could either. "

The colonel had, even in his familiar talk with them, a manner ofold-fashioned courtesy. 

"I didn't think it mattered much myself who saw them, " he said, "whenyou proposed it. But now it has actually happened I see it's veryunfitting for you to do it, very unfitting. However, I don't believe weshall be troubled again to-night. "

But their peace had been broken. They felt irrationally likeill-defended creatures in a state of siege. The pretty wall-paper didn'thelp them out, nor any consciousness of the blossoming orchard in thechill spring air. The colonel noted the depression in his two defendersand, by a spurious cheerfulness, tried to bring them back to the warmerintimacies of retrospect. 

"It was in this very room, " he said, "that I saw your dear motherfirst. "

Lydia looked up, brightly ready for diversion. Anne sat, her head bent alittle, responsive to the intention of his speech. 

"I was sitting here, " said he, "alone. I had, I am pretty sure, thisvery book in my hand. I wasn't reading it. I couldn't read. The maidcame in and told me a lady wanted to see me. "

"What time of the day was it, Farvie?" Lydia asked, with her eagersympathy. 

"It was the late afternoon, " said he. "In the early spring. Perhaps itwas a day like this. I don't remember. Well, I had her come in. Before Iknew where I was, there she stood, about there, in the middle of thefloor. 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 theirmother. 

"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 Igoing to do with them?'"

"She did the best thing anybody could, " said Lydia. "She gave us toyou. "

"I have an idea I cried, " said the colonel. "Really I know I did. And itbroke her all up. She'd come somehow expecting Jeff's father to accountfor 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 puther 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 ofyouthful love for love. "I call that great. "

"We were married in a week, " said the colonel. "She'd come to ask me tohelp her, do you see? but she found I was the one that needed help. AndI had an idea I might do something for her by taking the responsibilityof her two little girls. But it was no use pretending. I didn't marryher for anything except, once I'd seen her, I couldn't live withouther. "

"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 likehers. 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 havesettled it all a long time before. "She was the most absolutely lovingperson. You girls may be like her in that, too. I'm sure you'reinconceivably good to me. "

"I'd like to love people to death, " said Lydia, with the fierceness ofpassion not yet named and recognised, but putting up its beautiful headnow and then to look her remindingly in the eyes. "I'd like to loveeverybody. You first, Farvie, you and Anne. And Jeff. I'm going to loveJeff 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 gethim 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 torealise he's got sisters anyway--and a father. "

The same thought sprang at once into their three minds. It was notuncommon. They lived so close together, in such a unison of interests, that their minds often beat accordingly. Anne hesitatingly voiced thequestion. 

"Do you think Esther'll meet him?"

"Impossible to say, " the colonel returned, and Lydia's nipped lips andwarlike 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 mannerheading her off from a useless project, "that I'd better make a call onher myself, perhaps at once. "

"She wouldn't see you when you came before, " Lydia reminded him, in ahot rebellion against Jeff's wife who had not stood by him in hisdownfall. In the space of time that he had been outside the line ofcivilised life, an ideal of Jeff had been growing up in her own mind asin Anne's. They saw him as the wronged young chevalier without reproachwhom a woman had forsaken in his need. Only a transcript of theirgirlish dreams could have told them what they thought of Jeff. Hisfather's desolation without him, the crumbling of his father's life fromhale middle age to fragile eld, this whirling of the leaves of time hadseemed to bring them to a blazoned page where Jeff's rehabilitationshould be wrought out in a magnificent sequence. The finish to thatvolume only: Jeff's life would begin again in the second volume, to beannotated with the approbation of his fellows. He would be lifted on thehands of men, their plaudits would upbear his soul, and he would at lasttriumph, sealed by the sanction of his kind. They grew intoxicated overit sometimes, in warm talks when their father was not there. He talkedvery little: a few words now and then to show what he thought of Jeff, aphrase or two where he unconsciously turned for them the page of thepast and explained obscurities in the text they couldn't possiblyelucidate alone--these they treasured and made much of, as theantiquary interprets his stone language. He never knew what importancethey laid on every shred of evidence about Jeff. Perhaps if he had knownhe would have given them clearer expositions. To him Jeff was thedearest of sons that ever man begot, strangely pursued by a maligndestiny accomplished only through the very chivalry and softness of theboy's nature. No hero, though; he would never have allowed his girls tobuild on that. And in all this rehabilitation of Jeff, as the girls sawit, there was one dark figure like the black-clad mourner at the gravewho seems to deny the tenet of immortality: his wife, who had not stoodby him and who was living here in Addington with her grandmother, hadinsisted on living with grandmother, in fact, as a cloak for herhardness. Sometimes they felt if they could sweep the black-clad figureaway from the grave of Jeff's hopes, Jeff, in glorious apotheosis, wouldrise again. 

"What a name for her--Esther!" Lydia ejaculated, with an intensity ofhatred 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 ofhis own. Lydia often saw him holding the balance for her intemperatejudgments, his grain of gold forever equalising her dross. "I thinkshe'd be called a beautiful woman. Jeff thought she was. "

"Do you actually believe, Farvie, " said Lydia, "that she hasn't been tosee him once in all these hideous years?"

"I know it, " said he. "However, we mustn't blame her. She may be a timidwoman. We must stand by her and encourage her and make it easier for herto meet him now. Jeff was very much in love with her. He'll understandher better than we do. "

"I don't understand her at all, " said Lydia, "unless you're going to letus say she's selfish and a traitor and----"

"No, no, " said Anne. "We don't know her. We haven't even seen her. Wemust do what Farvie says, and then what Jeff says. I feel as if Jeff hadthought things out a lot. "

"Yes, " said Lydia, and bit her lip on the implied reason that he'd hadplenty of time. 

"Yes, " said the colonel gravely, in his own way. "I'd better go overthere early to-morrow afternoon. Before the reporters get at her. "

"Maybe they've done it already, " Lydia suggested, and the gravity of hisface accorded in the fear that it might be so. 

Lydia felt no fear: a fiery exultation, rather. She saw no reason whyEsther should be spared her share of invasion, except, indeed, as itmight add to the publicity of the thing. 

"You'll tell her, Farvie, " Anne hesitated, "just what we'd decided to doabout his coming--about meeting him?"

"Yes, " said he. "In fact, I should consult her. She must have thoughtout things for herself, just as he must. I should tell her heparticularly asked us not to meet him. But I don't think that wouldapply to her. I think it would be a beautiful thing for her to do. Ifreporters are there----"

"They will be, " Lydia interjected savagely. 

"Well, if they are, it wouldn't be a bad thing for them to report thathis wife was waiting for him. It would be right and simple andbeautiful. But if she doesn't meet him, certainly we can't. That wouldgive 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 likea 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 atnight--the colonel, though not sitting down to a definite conclave, wentover with Anne and Lydia every step of his proposed call on Esther, asif they were planning a difficult route and a diplomatic mission at theend, and later, in a state of even more exquisite personal fitness thanusual, the call being virtually one of state, he set off to find hisdaughter-in-law. Anne and Lydia walked with him down the drive. They hadthe air of upholding him to the last. 

The way to Esther's house, which was really her grandmother's, he hadtrodden through all his earlier life. His own family and Esther's hadbeen neighbours intimately at one, and, turning the familiar corner, hefelt, with a poignancy cruel in its force, youth recalled and ageconfirmed. Here were associations almost living, they were so vivid, yetwraithlike in sheer removedness. It was all very subtle, in itsequal-sided force, this resurrection of the forms of youth, to be met bythe cold welcome of a change in him. The heart did quicken over itsrecognition of the stability of things, but with no robust urge such asit knew in other years; indeed it fluttered rather pathetically, as ifit begged him to put no unwonted strain upon it now, as in that timeforegone, when every beat cried out, "Heave the weight! charge up thehill! We're equal to it. If we're not, we'll die submerged in our ownred fount. " He was not taking age with any sense of egotisticalrebellion; but it irked him like an unfamiliar weight patiently borneand for no reward. The sense of the morning of life was upon him; yethere he was fettered to his traitorous body which was surely going tobetray him in the end. No miracle could save him from atomic downfall. However exultantly he might live again, here he should live no more, andthough there was in him no fervency either of rebellion or belief, hedid look gravely now at the pack of mortality he carried. It wascarefully poised and handled. His life was precious to him, for hewanted this present coil of circumstance made plain before he should gohence and be seen no more. 

The streets just now were empty. It was an hour of mid-afternoon whenladies had not dawned, in calling raiment, upon a world of otherexpectant ladies, and when the business man is under bonds to keepsequestered with at least the pretext of arduous tasks. The colonel hadample opportunity to linger by yards where shrubbery was coming out inshining buds, and draw into his grave consciousness the sense of spring. Every house had associations for him, as every foot of the road. Now hewas passing the great yellow mansion where James Reardon lived. Reardon, of Irish blood and American public school training, had been Jeffrey'sintimate, the sophisticated elder who had shown him, with a coolpracticality that challenged emulation, the world and how it was to bebought. When there were magnates in Addington, James had been a poorboy. There were still magnates, and now he was one of them, so far asclub life went and monetary transactions. He had never tried to marry anAddington girl, and therefore could not be said to have put his socialmerit absolutely to the touch. But luck had always served him. Perhapsit 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 warningreversal, and got the gay habit of rolling up money like a snowball ona damp day. When the ball got too heavy for him to handle deftly, Jimdropped the game, only starting the ball down hill--if one may findsymbolism for sedate investments--gathering weight as it went and, itwas thought, at obstructive points persuading other little boys to push. The colonel had often wondered if Jeffrey had been one of those littleboys. Now, at forty-five, Reardon lived a quiet, pottering life, abachelor with a housekeeper and servants enough to keep the big yellowhouse in form. He read in a methodical way, really the same books overand over, collected prints with a conviction that a print is a print, exercised his big frame in the club gymnasium, took a walk of sanitarylength morning and afternoon and went abroad once in two years. 

"I've got money enough, " he was accustomed to say, when the adventurouspetitioned him to bolster new projects for swift returns, "all ingilt-edged securities. That's why I don't propose to lay awake an hourin my life, muddling over stocks. Why, it's destruction, man! it'sdeath. It eats up your tissues faster than old age. " The eccentricity ofhis verb indicated only the perfection of his tact. He had a perfectcommand of the English language, but a wilful lapse into colloquialismsendeared him, he knew, to his rougher kind. There was no more popularman. He was blond and open-featured. He spoke in a loud yet alwayssympathetic voice, and in skilfully different fashions he called everyman 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 immediateforebears, rich in all possible mechanical appliances for the ease oflife, speculated whether Reardon had, in the old days, been good forJeff. Could he, with his infernal luck, have been good for any youth ofJeff's impetuous credulity? Mightn't Jeff have got the idea that lifeis an easy job? The colonel felt now that he had always distrustedReardon's bluff bonhomie, his sympathetic voice, his booming implicationthat he was letting you into his absolutely habitable heart. He knew, too, that without word of his own his distrust had filtered out to Anneand Lydia, and that they were prepared, while they stood by Jeff tounformulated issues, to trip up Reardon, somehow bring him low and setJeff up impeccable. Of this he was thinking gravely now, the differentpoints of it starting up in his mind like sparks of light while heregarded Reardon's neat shrubs healthily growing, as if the last drop offertilising had been poured into them at this spring awakening, and allpruned to a wholesome symmetry. Then, hearing the sound of a door andpainfully averse to meeting Reardon, he went on and mounted the steps ofthe great brick house where his daughter-in-law lived. And here theadventure came to an abrupt stop. The maid, perfectly courteous and yetwith an air of readiness even he, the most unsuspecting of men, couldnot fail to recognise, told him, almost before he had finished hisinquiry, that Mrs. Blake was not at home. She would not be at home thatafternoon. 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 smoothsanguine face of the girl, noting mechanically her light eyelashes andthe spaces between her teeth, he knew she lied. Yet he was a courteousgentleman, and did not report that to his inner mind. He bestowed hiscard upon Sapphira, and walked away at his sedate pace, more thananything puzzled. Esther was not proposing to take part in their comingdrama. He couldn't count on her. He was doubly sorry because thisdefection was going to make Anne and Lydia hate her more than ever, andhe 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, theyseemed, while not withdrawing themselves bodily, really to slip away, inorder not even tacitly to question him. They had a marvellousunwillingness to bring a man to the bar. There was no over-tactfuldisplay of absence, but their minds simply would not set upon andinterrogate his, nor skulk round corners to spy upon it. But he had totell them, and he was anxious to get it over. Just as they seemed nowabout 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 saidunmistakably, "I don't believe it. " The colonel was tired enough to wantto say, "I don't either, " but he never felt at liberty to encourageLydia's too exuberant candour. 

"She's not to be at home to-morrow, " he said. "It looks as if she'd gonefor--for the present, " he ended lamely, put down his hat and went intothe 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 anyassurance within him of the force to assuage an indignation heunderstood though he couldn't feel it. That was another of the levellingpowers of age. You couldn't key your emotions up to the point where theymight shatter something or perhaps really do some good. It wasn't onlythat 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 tobid her come and help him fight the battle that was hers even moreindubitably than his; yet he was conscious that behind her defences wasanother world of passion and emotion and terribly strong desires, asvalid as his own. She had her side. He didn't know what it was. Hewanted really to avoid knowing, lest it weaken him through its appealfor a new sympathy; but he knew the side was there. This, he said tohimself, with a half smile, was probably known as tolerance. It seemedto him old age. 

So, from their benign choice, he had really nothing to say to Lydia orAnne. In the late afternoon Anne asked him to go to walk and show herthe town, and he put her off. He was conscious of having drowsed away inhis chair, into one of those intervals he found so inevitable, and thatwere, at the same time, so irritatingly foreign to his previous habitsof life. He did not drop his pursuits definitely to take a nap. The napseemed to take him, even when he was on the margin of some lake or riverwhere he thought himself well occupied in seeing the moving to and froof boats, for business and pleasure, just as his own boat had gallantlycut invisible paths on the air and water in those earlier years. The napwould steal upon him like an amiable yet inexorable joker, and throw acloudy veil over his brain and eyes, and he would sink into a gulf hehad not perceived. It lay at his feet, and something was always ready topush him into it. He thought sometimes, wondering at the inevitablenessof it, that one day the veil would prove a pall. 

But after their twilight supper, he felt more in key with the tangibleworld, 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 withthem, and waited until they had gone a rod or two along the street. Thecolonel turned away from Esther's house, as Lydia knew he would. She hadnot watched him for years without seeing how resolutely he put thememory 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 proudindifference it took a good deal of warm affection to penetrate. Lydiastood there and looked up and down the street. It had been a day almosthot, surprising for the season, and she was dressed in conformity insome kind of thin stuff with little dots of black. Her round young armswere bare to the elbow, and there was a narrow lacy frill about herneck. It was too warm really to need a hat or jacket, and this place wasinformal enough, she thought, to do away with gloves. Having rapidlydecided that it was also a pity to cool resolution by returning to thehouse for any conventional trappings, she stepped to the pavement andwent, with a light rapidity, along the road to Esther's. 

She knew the way. When she reached the house she regarded it for amoment from the opposite side of the street, and Jim Reardon, coming outof his own gate for his evening's stroll to the Colonial Club, saw herand 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 ofthe Addington girl about her unconsidered ease. Jim looked at herdeferentially, as he passed, a hand ready for his hat. But though Lydiasaw him she dismissed him as quickly, perhaps as no matter forwonderment, and again because her mind was full of Esther. Now in thehaste that dares not linger, she crossed the street and ascended thesteps of the brick house. As she did so she was conscious of thestillness within. It might have been a house embodied out of her owndreams. But she did not ring, nor did she touch the circlet the brasslion of a knocker held obligingly in his mouth. She lifted the heavylatch, stepped in and shut the door behind her. 

This was not the front entrance. The house stood on a corner, and thisdoor led into a little square hall with a colonial staircase of charmingright-angled turns going compactly up. Lydia looked into the room at herright and the one at her left. They were large and nobly proportioned, furnished in a faded harmony of antique forms. The arrangement of thehouse, she fancied, might be much like the colonel's. But though shethought like lightning in the excitement of her invasion, there was notmuch clearness about it; her heart was beating too urgently, and theblood 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: apeach-coloured silk bag hung on the back of a chair and the lacy cornerof a handkerchief stood up in its ruffly throat. The bag, thehandkerchief, brought her courage back. They looked like a substantialEsther of useless graces she had to fight. And so passionately alive wasshe to everything concerning Jeffrey that it seemed base of a woman oncebelonging to him to parade lacy trifles in ruffly bags when he wascondemned to coarse, hard usages. But having Esther to fight, shestepped into that room, and immediately a warm, yet, she had time tothink, 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 tothe English tongue, she found a proper pronoun would not serve her forsufficient 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 chairand eating candied fruit from a silver dish. This, Lydia knew, wasEsther Blake. She had expected to feel for her the distaste ofrighteousness in the face of the wrong-doer: for Esther, she knew, wasproven, by long-continued hardness of heart and behaviour, indubitablywrong. Here was Esther, Jeff's wife, not showing more than two-thirds ofher thirty-three years, her brow unlined, her expression of a generalsweetness indicating not only that she wished to please but that shehad, in the main, been pleased. The beauty of her face was in its longeyelashes, absurdly long, as if nature had said, "Here's a by-product wedon't know what to do with. Put it into lashes. " Her hands were whiteand exquisitely cared for, and she wore no wedding ring. Lydia notedthat, with an involuntary glance, but strangely it did not move her toany access of indignation. Anger she did feel, but it was, childishly, anger over the candied fruit. "How can you lie there and eat, " shewanted to cry, "when Jeff is where he is?"

A little flicker ran over Esther's face: it might at first have been theripple 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, inone deft motion, set the fruit on a little table and ran a hand lightlyover 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. Icame to talk with you about Jeff. "

The shadow that went over Esther's face was momentary, no more than abird's wing over a flowery plot; but it was a shadow only. There was noeagerness or uplift or even trouble at the name of Jeff. 

"Father came this afternoon, " said Lydia. "He wanted to talk thingsover. He couldn't get in. "

"Oh, " said Esther, "I'm sorry for that. So you are one of thestep-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 hertrembling knees. It was no trivial task, she saw, to face Jeff's wifeand drag her back to wifehood. But she ignored the proffer of the softerchair. It was easier to take a straight one and sit upright, her brownlittle hands clenched tremblingly. Esther, too, took a chair the twin ofhers, as if to accept no advantage; she sat with dignity and waitedgravely. She seemed to be watchful, intent, yet bounded by reserves. Itwas the attitude of waiting for attack. 

"This very next week, you know, Jeff will be discharged. " Lydia spokewith 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 FederalPrison. You know, don't you? You heard he had been pardoned?"

Esther looked at her a full minute, her face slowly suffusing. Lydia sawthe colour even flooding into her neck. Her eyes did not fill, but theydeepened in some unusual way. They seemed to be saying, defiantlyperhaps, that they could cry if they would, but they had other modes ofempery. 

"You know, don't you?" Lydia repeated, but more gently. She began towonder now whether trouble had weakened the wife's brain, her power atleast of receptivity. 

"Yes, " said Esther. "I know it, of course. To-day's paper had quite along synopsis of the case. "

Now Lydia flushed and looked defiant. 

"I am glad to know that, " she said. "I must burn the paper. Farviesha'n't see it. "

"There were two reporters here yesterday, " said Esther. She spokeangrily now. Her voice hinted that this was an indignity which need nothave been put upon her. 

"Did you see them?" asked Lydia, in a flash, ready to blame her whatevershe did. 

But the answer was eloquent with reproach. 

"Certainly I didn't see them. I have never seen any of them. When thathorrible newspaper started trying to get him pardoned, reporters camehere 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, alittle scornful, as if she washed her hands gladly of the whole affair. 

"Farvie thinks, " said Lydia recklessly, "that you haven't written tohim. "

"How could I?" asked Esther, in a quick rebuttal which actually had aconvincing 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 somefigurines right on the mantel where they seemed to be right enoughbefore. "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 isruined, too. I don't know whether it's any worse for a woman than for aman. "

"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 alow tone charged with her own complexity of sentiment. She washorror-stricken chiefly. Esther saw that, and looked at her in a largeamaze. 

"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 wasimpatiently conscious of this heat and her excited breath. But she hadentered the fray, and there was no returning. 

"Then who was guilty?" Esther asked it almost triumphantly, as if thepoint of proving herself right were more to her than the innocence ofJeff. 

"That's for us to find out, " said Lydia. She looked like the apostle ofa holy war. 

"But if you could find out, why haven't you done it before? Why have youwaited 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, tohelp out. You know Farvie put almost every cent he had into paying thecreditors, and then it was only a drop in the bucket. And besides Jeffpleaded guilty, and he kept writing Farvie to let it all stand as itwas, and somehow, we were so sorry for Jeff we couldn't help feelinghe'd got to have his way. Even if he wanted to sacrifice himself heought to be allowed to, because he couldn't have his way about anythingelse. At least, that was what Anne and I felt. We've talked it over alot. 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 sumof money. I read it all over in the paper the other day. He hadstockholders' money, and he plunged, it said, just before the panic. Heinvested other people's money in the wrong things, and then, it said, hetried 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 herunchanged air of triumphant cruelty. 

"He might, to save somebody else. "

Esther was staring now and Lydia stared back, caught by the almostterrified surprise in Esther's face. Did she know about Jim Reardon? ButEsther broke the silence, not in confession, if she did know: withviolence rather. 

"You never will prove any such thing. Never in the world. The money wasin Jeff's hands. He hadn't even a partner. "

"He had friends, " said Lydia. But now she felt she had implied more thanwas 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 raiseher brows a little, it seemed so crude and horrible; she could havelaughed outright at herself for having the nerve to put it. She couldn'timagine what the colonel would have thought of her. Anne, she knew, would have crumpled up into silken disaster like a flower under toosharp 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 ofnowhere and pursuing me into my most intimate retreats?" She answered ina careful hedging way that was not less pretty than her unconsideredspeech:

"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 tobe pardoned, you could have made your plans. Don't you mean to ask himhere?"

Esther made what sounded like an irrelevant answer, but it meantapparently something even solemn to her. 

"My grandmother, " said she, "is an old lady. She's bedridden. She'supstairs, and I keep the house very quiet on her account. "

Lydia had a hot desire to speak out what she really felt: to say, "Yourgrandmother's being bedridden has no more to do with it than the cat. "Lydia was prone to seek the cat for exquisite comparison. Persons, withher, could no more sing--or dance--than the cat. She found the cat, inthe way of metaphor, a mysteriously useful animal. But the veryembroidery of Esther's mode of speech forbade her invoking thateccentric aid. Lydia was not eager to quarrel. She would have beenhorrified if circumstance had ever provoked her into a rash word to herfather, and with Anne she was a dove of peace. But Esther by a word, itseemed, by a look, had the power of waking her to unholy revolt. Shethought it was because Esther was so manifestly not playing fair. Whycouldn't she say she wouldn't have Jeff in the house, instead of sittinghere and talking like a nurse in a sanitarium, about bedriddengrandmothers?

"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 talkof anything else. "

"Isn't that interesting!" said Esther, though not as if she put aquestion. "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 whomLydia wasn't a sister, and Lydia's face burned in answer. A wave ofchildish misery came over her. She wished she had not come. She wishedshe knew how to get away. And while she took in Esther's harmony ofdress, her own little odds and ends of finery grew painfully cheap toher. But the telephone bell rang in the next room, and Esther rose andexcused herself. While she was gone, Lydia sat there with her littlehands gripped tightly. Now she wished she knew how to get out of thehouse another way, before Esther should come back. If it were not forthe credit of the family, she would find the other way. MeantimeEsther's voice, very liquid now that she was not talking to a sisterwoman, 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'tever coming any more?"

When she appeared again, Lydia was quivering with a childish anger. Shehad risen, and stood with her hands clasped before her. So she was inthe habit of standing before her dancing class until the music shouldbegin and lead her through the measures. She was delightful so and, fromlong training, entirely self-possessed. 

"Good-bye, " said she. 

"Don't go, " said Esther, in a conventional prettiness, but no suchbeguilement as she had wafted through the telephone. "It's been sopleasant meeting you. "

Again Lydia had her ungodly impulse to contradict, to say: "No, ithasn't either. You know it hasn't. " But she turned away and, head alittle bent, walked out of the house, saying again, "Good-bye. "

When she got out into the dusk, she went slowly, to cool down and thinkit over. It wouldn't do for the colonel and Anne to see her on the swellof such excitement, especially as she had only defeat to bring them. Shehad meant to go home in a triumphant carelessness and say: "Oh, yes, Isaw 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 decentthing by Jeff. " No such act of virtuous triumph: she had simply been asilly girl, and Anne would find it out. Near the corner she met the manshe had seen on her way in coming, and he looked at her again with thatsolicitous air of being ready to take off his hat. She went on with aconsciousness of perhaps having achieved an indiscretion in coming outbareheaded, 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 tospend it at the club, feet up, trotting over the path of custom, knowingto a dot what men he would find there and what each would say. Old DanWheeler would talk about the advisability of eating sufficientvegetables to keep your stomach well distended. Young Wheeler wouldrefer owlishly to the Maries and Jennies of an opera troupe recently inAddington, and Ollie Hastings, the oldest bore, would tell long stories, and wheeze. But Reardon was no sooner in his seat, with his glass besidehim, than he realised he was disturbed, in some unexpected way. It mighthave been the pretty girl he met going into Esther's; it might have beenthe thought of Esther herself, the unheard call from her. So he left hisglass untasted and telephoned her: "You all right?" To which Estherreplied in a doubtful purr. "Want me to come up?" he asked, as hethought, against his will. And he swallowed a third of his firewater ata gulp and went to find her. He knew what he should find, --an Esther whobade him remember, by all the pliancy of her attractive body and everytone of her voice, how irreconcilably hard it was that she should have ahusband 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. Farvietold me things. "

"Yes, " said Lydia, "I wish I had. "

"Without your hat, too, " pursued Anne anxiously. "I don't know whetherthey 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, wonderedif he needed a little strychnia. She would remember, she thought, togive it to him in the morning. After they had said good-night, and thecolonel, indeed, was in his bed, she heard the knocker clang and slippeddown the stairs to answer. Halfway she stopped, for Mary Nellen, candlein hand, had arrived from the back regions, and was, with admirablecaution, 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, apologisedfor calling so late. He was extremely busy. He had to be at the officeover time, but he didn't want to-day's sun to go down and he not havewelcomed Mr. Blake. Anne had a chance, in the space of his deliveringthis preamble, to think what a beautiful person he was. He had a youngface lighted by a twisted whimsical smile, and a capacious forehead, built out a little into knobs of a noble sort, as if there were amplechambers behind for the storing away of precedent. Altogether he wouldhave satisfied every æsthetic requirement: but he had a broken nose. Theportrait painter lusted for him, and then retired sorrowfully. But thenose made him very human. Anne didn't know its eccentricity was theresult of breakage, but she saw it was quite unlike other noses andfound it superior to them. 

Alston Choate spent every waking minute of his life in the practice oflaw and the reading of novels; he was either digging into precedent, expounding it, raging over its futilities, or guiltily losing himself inthe life of books. What he really loved was music and the arts, and hedearly liked to read about the people who had leisure to follow suchlures, time to be emotional even, and indulge in pretty talk. Yet lawwas 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 oflitigants would seek other doors. The wave of middle age would toss himto an island of leisure, and there he would sit down and hear music andread 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 archaicinstruments, calling out of them, with slim fingers, diaphanousmelodies. Yet the beauty that surrounded her like a light mantle she hadsnatched up from nature to wear about her always, did not displace theother vision of beauty in his heart. It did not even jostle it. EstherBlake was, he knew, the sum of the ineffable feminine. 

While he made that little explanation of his haste in coming and hisfear 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. Herfather, 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 tobed. Then it seemed to her that Choate did a thing unsurpassed insplendour. 

"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 thereholding it in a serious manner, as if it lighted some ceremonial. Thenit was that Choate made the speech that clinched his hold upon herheart. 

"When do you expect your brother?"

Anne's face flooded. He was not acting as if Jeff, coming from anunspeakable place, mustn't be mentioned. He was asking exactly as ifJeff had been abroad and the ship was almost in. It was like a pilotboat going out to see that he got in safely. And feeling thecircumstance greatly, she found herself answering with a slowseriousness which did, indeed, carry much dignity. 

"We are not sure. We think he may come directly through; but, on theother 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, Lydiaasked:

"Nice?"

"Oh, yes, " said Anne. "You've heard Farvie speak of him. Exactly whatFarvie said. "

Lydia had gone some paces in undressing. She stood there in a whitewrapper, with her hair in its long braid, and stared at Anne for aconsidering 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 soimpossible that Anne stared and asked:

"Who?"

They had always spoken of Esther as Esther, among themselves, quitefamiliarly, but now Lydia felt she would die rather than mention hername. 

"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 todo. "

"And what does she?"

"Nothing. "

V

The house, almost of its own will, slid into order. Mary Nellen was awonderful person. She arranged and dusted and put questions to Anne asto Cicero and Virgil, and then, when Anne convoyed her further, to thecolonel, and he found a worn lexicon in the attic and began to dig outtranslations and chant melodious periods. The daughters could havehugged Mary Nellen, bright-eyed and intent on advancement up the hill oflearning, for they gave him something to do to mitigate suspense untilhis son should come. And one day at twilight, when they did not know itwas going to be that day at all, but when things were in a completestate of readiness and everybody disposed to start at a sound, the frontdoor opened and Jeffrey, as if he must not actually enter until he wasbidden, stood there and knocked on the casing. Mary Nellen, having morethan mortal wit, seemed to guess who he was, and that the colonel mustnot be startled. She appeared before Lydia in the dining-room and gaveher a signalling grimace. Lydia followed her, and met the man, now astep inside the hall. Lydia, too, knew who it was. She felt the bloodrun painfully into her face, and hoped he didn't see how confused shewas with her task of receiving him exactly right after all this time ofpreparation. There was no question of kissing or in any way sealing hersisterly devotion. She gave him a cold little hand, and he took it withthe same bewildered acquiescence. She looked at him, it seemed to her, along time, perhaps a full minute, and found him wholly alien to herdreams of the wronged creature who was to be her brother. He was of agood height, broad in the shoulders and standing well. His face heldnothing of the look she had always wrought into it from the picture ofhis college year. It was rather square. The outline at least couldn't bechanged. The chin, she thought, was lovable. The eyes were large andblue; stern, it seemed, but really from the habit of the forehead thathad been scarred with deepest lines. The high cheekbones gave him an oddlook as if she saw him in bronze. They stared at each other and Jeffreythought he ought to assure her he wasn't a tramp, when Lydia found hervoice. 

"I'll tell Farvie, " said she. She turned away from him, and immediatelywhirled 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 classicriddle, 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 withage and apprehension. The girls hadn't known how old a man he was untilthey heard him calling for his son. Jeffrey heard it and came in with afew long steps, and his father met him at the door. To the two girlsJeff seemed astonished at the emotion he was awakening. How could he be, they wondered, when this instant of his release had been so terrible andso beautiful for a long time? The tears came rushing to their eyes, asthey saw Farvie. He had laid aside all his gentle restraint, and put hisshaking hands on Jeffrey's shoulders. And then he called him by the namehe 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 twomen looked at each other, the colonel took down his hands, and Jeffreydrew forward a chair for him. 

"Sit down a minute, " he said, quite gently, and then the girls knew thathe really had been moved, though he hadn't shown it, and, ready to seizeupon anything to love in him, they decided they loved his voice. Whenthey had got away out of the room and stood close together in thedining-room, as if he were a calamity to be fled from, that was the onlything 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 thetension than anything. "Farvie never told us that. "

But Lydia couldn't answer any more, and then they both became aware thatMary Nellen had hurried out some supper from the pantry and put quite anarray of candles on the table. She had then disappeared. Mary Nellen hadgreat delicacy of feeling. Anne began to light the candles, and Lydiawent back to the library. The colonel and Jeffrey were sitting therelike two men with nothing in particular to say, but, because theyhappened 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 hehadn't felt like thanking anybody in years. There seemed to be nothingfor her to do in this rigid sort of reunion, and she went back to Annein 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 downin the candlelight, making no pretence of reading or talk. All the timethey could hear the two voices from the library, going on at regularintervals. At ten o'clock they were still going on, at eleven. Lydiafelt a deadly sleepiness, but she roused then and said, in the midst ofa 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 couldhear her voice from the other room, such a kind voice but steadied witha little clear authority. 

"You mustn't get tired, Farvie. "

The strange voice jumped in on the heels of hers, as if it felt it oughtto be reproved. 

"Of course not. I'd no idea how late it was. "

Anne turned to Jeffrey. Lydia, listening, could tell from the differentdirection 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 saidquickly: "Thank you, " as if it wanted to get everything, evencivilities, quickly over. 

Lydia sat still in the dining-room. The candles had guttered and gonedown, but she didn't feel it possible to move out of her lethargy. Shewas not only sleepy but very tired. Yet the whole matter, she knew, wasthat this undramatic homecoming had deadened all her expectations. Shehad reckoned upon a brother ready to be called brother; she had meant todevote 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 wantanything they could do. She heard him say "Good-night. " There was onlyone good-night, which must have been to the colonel, though Anne wasstanding by, and then she heard Anne, in a little kind voice, asking herfather if he wouldn't have something hot before he went to bed. No, hesaid. He should sleep. His voice sounded exhilarated, with a thrill init of some even gay relief, not at all like the voice that had saidgood-night. And Anne lighted his candle for him and watched him up thestairs, and Lydia felt curiously outside it all, as if they were playingthe play without her. Anne came in then and looked solicitously at theguttered candles of which one was left with a winding-sheet, like atipsy host that had drunk the rest under the table, and appeared to becomforting the others for having made such a spectacle of themselves tono purpose. Lydia was so sleepy now that there seemed to be severalAnnes and she heard herself saying fractiously:

"Oh, let's go to bed. "

Through the short night she dreamed confusedly, always a dream aboutoffering Farvie a supper tray, and his saying: "No, I never mean to eatagain. " And then the tray itself seemed to be the trouble, and it had tobe filled all over. But nobody wanted the food. 

In the early morning she awoke with the sun full upon her, for she hadbeen too tired the night before to close a blind. She got out of bed andran to the window. The night had been so confusing that she felt in verymuch 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 tohave 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 fromher old conception of him that she had to mould him all over now to fithim into the orchard scene. He was running in a foolish, half-heartedway; but suddenly he seemed to call upon his will and set his elbows andran hard. Lydia felt herself panting in sympathy. She had a distaste forhim, too, even with this ache of pity sharper than any she had feltwhile she dreamed about him before he came. What did he want to do itfor? she thought, as she watched him run. Why need he stir up in her adeeper sorrow than any she had felt? She stepped back from her standbehind 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. Shehad lost a cherished dream, that was all. After this she wouldn't wakein 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 MaryNellen, with some prescience of it, had breakfast ready. Jeff, now inhis coat, stood by the dining-room door with his father, talking in acommonplace way about the house as it used to be, and the colonel wasprofessing himself glad no newer fashions had made him change it inessentials. 

"Here they are, " said he. "Here are the girls. "

Anne, while Lydia entered from the hall, was coming the other way, fromthe kitchen where she had been to match conclusions with Mary Nellenabout bacon and toast. Anne was flushed from the kitchen heat, and shehad the spirit to smile and call, "Good morning. " But Lydia felt haltingand speechless. She had thought proudly of the tact she should show whenthis moment came, but she met it like a child. They sat down, and Annepoured coffee and asked how Farvie had slept. But before anybody hadbegun 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 tobe done now:

"It's a newspaper man. "

Lydia, in her distress, gave Jeffrey a quick look, to see if he hadheard. 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 andpushed 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, withoutlowering his voice, in what seemed to Lydia and Anne, watching theeffect on their father, a reckless, if not a brutal, disregard ofdecencies:

"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 endsit. "

It didn't end it for them. They kept on proffering persuasive littlenotes of interrogative sound, and possibly they advanced their claim tobe heard because they had their day's work to do. 

"Sorry, " said Jeff, yet not too curtly. "Yes, I did write for the prisonpaper. Yes, it was in my hands. No, I hadn't the slightest intention ofover-turning any system. Reason for doing it? Why, because that's theway the thing looked to me. Not on your life. I sha'n't write a word forany paper. Sorry. Good-bye. "

The front door closed. It had been standing wide, for it was a warmmorning, but Lydia could imagine he shut it now in a way to make morecertain his tormentors had gone. While he was out there her old sweetsympathy came flooding back, but when he strode into the room and tookup his napkin again, she stole one glance at him and met his scowl anddidn't like him any more. The scowl wasn't for her. It was anintrospective scowl, born out of things he intimately knew and couldn'tcommunicate if he tried. 

The colonel had looked quite radiantly happy that morning. Now hiscolour had died down, leaving in his cheeks the clear pallor of age, andhis hands were trembling. It seemed that somebody had to speak, and hedid 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. Annethought he seemed like a painstaking child not altogether sure of hismanners. 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 ofimpulse 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 daredbait the scowling martyr. He looked at Anne. His scowl continued. Theybegan 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, Ididn'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 withinrestraining walls, probably in silence, and to take up the kindceremonial of common life was too much for him. Anne poured him anothercup of coffee. 

"Seen Jim Reardon?" Jeffrey asked his father. 

Anne and Lydia could scarcely forbear another glance at him. Here wasReardon, the evil influence behind him, too soon upon the scene. Theywould not have had his name mentioned until it should be brought out inJeffrey'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 outof the window and forgot them all. Lydia felt one of her disproportionedindignations. She was afraid the colonel was not going to have thebeautiful time with him their hopes had builded. The colonel lookedolder 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 tooffer a man returned to the battery of curious eyes. 

"If you like, " said Jeffrey indifferently. "Do you take one afterbreakfast?"

He spoke as if it were entirely for his father, and Anne and Lydiawondered, Anne in her kind way and the other hotly, how he could forgetthat all their passionate interests were for him alone. 

"Not necessarily, " said the colonel. They were rising. "I was thinkingof 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 thefloor, 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 yearsand years. Your name wasn't enough. Farvie felt so--affectionate. "

The last word sounded silly to her, and her cheeks were so hot theyseemed to scald her eyes and melt out tears in them. Jeffrey gave her alittle quizzical look, and slipped his arm through his father's. Anne, at the look, was suddenly relieved. He must have some soft emotions, shethought, behind the scowl. 

"Don't you like it?" the colonel asked him. He straightened consciouslyunder the touch of his son's arm. 

"Oh, yes, " said Jeffrey. "I like it. Only you never had. Except inletters. 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 weredisappearing into the dining-room where Mary Nellen was now supreme. Thecolonel called them, imperatively. There was such a note of necessity inhis voice that they felt sure he didn't know how to deal, quite byhimself, with this unknown quantity of a son. 

"Girls, come here. I have to have my girls, " he said to Jeffrey, "whenanything's going to be talked over. They're the head of the house and myhead, too. "

The girls came proudly, if unwillingly. They knew the scowling young mandidn't need them, might not want them indeed. But they were a part ofFarvie, and he'd got to accept them until they found out, at least, howsafe Farvie was going to be in his hands. Jeffrey wasn't thinking ofthem at all. He was accepting them, but they hadn't any share in hisperspective. Lydia felt they were the merest little dots there. Shegiggled, one brief note to herself, and then sobered. She was as likelyto laugh as to fume, and it began to seem very funny to her that in thisdrama of The Prisoner's Return she and Anne were barely to have speakingparts. The colonel sat in his armchair at the orchard window, andJeffrey stood by the mantel and fingered a vase. Lydia, for the firsttime seeing his hands with a recognising eye, was shocked by them. Theywere not gentleman's hands, she thought. They were worn, and hadcalloused stains and ill-kept nails. 

"I thought you'd like to know as soon as possible what I mean to do, " hesaid, addressing his father. 

"I'm glad you've got your plans, " his father said. "I've tried to makesome, but I couldn't--couldn't. "

"I want first to find out just how things are here, " said Jeffrey. "Iwant to know how much you've got to live on, and whether these girlshave anything, and whether they want to stay on with you or whetherthey're doing it because--" Jeffrey now had a choking sense of emotionstoo big for him--"because there's no other way out. "

"Do you mean, " said Lydia, in a burst, before Anne's warning hand couldstop 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 stateof things here. So I can tell what to do. "

The colonel had got hold of himself, and straightened in his chair. Thegirls 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--apicture of the way we lived. "

"You did. You have, " said Jeffrey, still with that air of gettingnowhere and being greatly irritated by it. "But how could I know howmuch these girls are sacrificing?"

"Sacrificing?" repeated the colonel helplessly, and Lydia was on thepoint 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 amoment 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 whoseemotions weren't likely to get the upper hand----"don't you see I've gotto 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 theaccounts. 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. Idon't actually know how, except that Anne is such a good manager. Sheand Lydia have earned quite a little, dancing, but I always insisted ontheir keeping that for their own use. "

Here Jeffrey looked at Anne and found her pinker than she had been. Annewas thinking she rather wished she had not been so free with her offerof 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'steaching children. "

"What made you learn dancing?" he asked Anne. 

"We wanted to do something, " she said guiltily. She was afraid hertongue was going to betray her and tell the story of the lean year aftertheir mother died when they found out that mother had lived a life ofmagnificent deception as to the ease of housekeeping on twelve hundred ayear. 

"Yes, " said Jeffrey, "but dancing? Why'd you pick out that?"

"We couldn't do anything else, " said Lydia impatiently. "Anne and Idon't know anything in particular. " She thought he might have beenclever enough to see that, while too tactful to betray it. "But we looknice--together--and anybody can dance. "

"Oh!" said Jeffrey. His eyes had a shade less of gravity, but he kept anunmoved seriousness of tone. 

"About our living with Farvie, " said Anne. "I can see you'd want toknow. "

"Yes, " said he, "I do. "

"We love to, " said Anne. "We don't know what we should do if Farvieturned us out. "

"My dear!" from the colonel. 

"Why, he's our father, " said Lydia, in a burst. "He's just as much ourfather 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 ofhoping Jeff would like it very much, "we shall be glad to let the houseagain and go anywhere you say. We've often talked of it, the girls andI. "

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 thegirls'll agree to that. Middle West?"

"No, " said Jeffrey, "the West--if there is any West left. Somewherewhere there's space. " His voice fell, on that last word. It held wondereven. Was there such a thing, this man of four walls seemed to ask, asspace?

"You'd want to go alone, " said Anne softly. She felt as if she werebreaking 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 nearsaying: "You know I haven't so very many years, " but he held on tohimself. 

"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 amgoing to work, and I'm going to turn in enough to keep you as you oughtto be. I want to stay here a little while first. "

The colonel was rejuvenated by delight. Lydia wondered how anybody couldsee 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. Thenewspapers have had it all, how you've changed the prison paper, and howyou built up a scheme of prison government, and I said to myself, 'Whenhe comes out, he'll write a book, and good will come of it, and then weshall see that, under Providence, my son went to prison that he might dothat. '"

He was uplifted with the wonder of it. The girls felt themselves carriedalong at an equal pace. This was it, they thought. It was a part of theprovidences that make life splendid. Jeffrey had been martyred that hemight do a special work. 

"Oh, no, " said he, plainly bored by the inference. "That's not it. I'mgoing 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 inthem. Lydia was ready to sound the top note of revolt. Her thoughts wererunning a definite remonstrance: "Write the life of another man when youshould be getting your evidence together and proving your own innocenceand the injustice of the law?" Anne was quite ready to believe theremust be a cogent reason for writing the life of his fellow criminal, butshe wished it were not so. She, too, from long habit of thought, wantedJeffrey to attend to his own life now he had a chance. The colonel, sheknew, through waiting and hoping, had fallen into an attitude of mind aswistful and expectant as hers and Lydia's. The fighting qualities, itseemed, had been ground out of him. The fostering ones had growndisproportionately, and sometimes, she was sure, they made him ache, ina 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 Imight 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. Beenbetter perhaps if he'd got more. What I had in mind was to tell how aman 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 brandingmore ruthless still. 

"I've watched him a good deal, " said Jeffrey. "We've had some talktogether. 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 aterm without offence. 

"Next year. "

"But, " said she, "you wouldn't want to publish a book about him and havehim 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'dmind, 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, stealit. Not that he wants to bunco. He's had his dose. He's learned it isn'tsafe. But he'd make some dashing _coup_; he couldn't help it. Maybe he'dget nabbed. "

"What a horrid person!" said Lydia. "How can you have anything to dowith him?"

"Why, he's interesting, " said Jeffrey, in a way she found brutal. "He'sa criminal. He's got outside. "

"Outside what?" she persisted. 

"Law. And he wouldn't particularly want to get back, except that itpays. But I'm not concerned with what he does when he gets back. I wantto show how it seemed to him outside and how he got there. He's morepicturesque than I am, or I'd take myself. "

Blessed Anne, who had no grasp, she thought, of abstract values, butknew 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 yourwriting there. "

Lydia flashed her a reproachful glance. She would have scattered hispapers and spilled the ink, rather than have him do a deed like that. Ifhe did it, it was not with her good-will. Jeff had drawn his frown thetighter. 

"I don't know whether I can do it, " he said. "A man has got to know howto 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 hadconcocted for the treatment of a returning prisoner, never to refer tostone walls and iron bars. But surely, he felt, Jeff neededencouragement. 

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 itall wrong. 'There's a man, ' they said, 'in the Federal Prison, JeffreyBlake, the defaulter. Very talented. Has revolutionised the _Nestor_, the prison organ. Let him out, pardon him, simply because he canwrite. '"

"As I understand, " said his father, "you did get the name of the paperchanged. "

"Well, now, " said Jeff, appealingly, in a candid way, "what kind of namewas that for a prison paper? _Nestor!_ 'Who was Nestor?' says the manthat'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 andhe'll give you a maxim. 'Gee!' says he, 'I don't want advice. I knowhow I got here, and if I ever get out, I'll see to it I don't get inagain. '"

Lydia found this talk exceedingly diverting. She disapproved of it. Shehad wanted Jeff to appear a dashing, large-eyed, entirely innocent youngman, his mouth, full of axioms, prepared to be the stay of Farvie'sgentle years. But this rude torrent of perverse philosophy bore heralong and she liked it, particularly because she felt she shouldpresently contradict and show how much better she knew herself. Anne, too, evidently had an unlawful interest in it, and wanted him to keep ontalking. She took that transparent way of furthering the flow by askinga 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, artfullyguiding him forward, "the ones you called 'The New Republic. '"

"What d'they want to copy them for?" asked Jeff. "It was a fool thing todo. I'd simply written the letters to the men, to ask 'em if they didn'tthink the very devil of prison life was that we were outside. Notbecause 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 lawsand the whole framework that's been built up from the cave man. Oryou're desperate, don't you see? You're all alone. And a man will do agreat deal not to be alone. If there's nothing for you to do but learn atrade, and be preached at by _Nestor_, and say to yourself, 'I'moutside'--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 atAnne much as if she were a State or Federal Board and incidentally atLydia, as if he would say:

"Here's a very young and insignificant criminal. We'll return to herpresently. But she, too, is going to be convinced. "

"And I don't say a man hasn't got to be infernally miserable when he'sworking 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 whenhis term is over. I don't believe it's going to do much for him merelyto keep the laws he's been chucked under, against his will, though he'sgot to keep 'em, or they'll know the reason why. "

Lydia wondered who They were. She thought They might be brutal wardensand assembled before her, in a terrifying battalion, the strait-jacketsand 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 adamned word'"--really abashed he looked at Anne--"I beg your pardon. 'Wehaven't got a word to say in this government we're under; but say wehave. Say the only thing we can do is to give no trouble, fineourselves, punish ourselves if we do. The worst thing that can happen tous, ' I said, 'is to hate law. Well, the best law we've got is prisonlaw. It's the only law that's going to touch us now. Let's love it as ifit 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 wasallowed. "

"Advertising! Of course they allowed us, " said Jeff. "It advertised usoutside. Advertised the place. Officials got popular. Inside conductwent up a hundred per cent, just as it would in school. Men are onlyboys. As soon as the fellows got it into their heads we were trying towork out a republic in a jail, they were possessed by it. I wish youcould see the letters that were sent in to the paper. You couldn'tpublish 'em, some of 'em. Too illiterate. But they showed you what wasinside the fellows. Sometimes they were as smug as a prayer-meeting. "

"Did this man write?" Lydia asked scornfully, with a distaste she didn'tpropose 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'dbeen trying to build up a monarchy instead of a republic he'd havehatched up a scheme for looting the crown jewels. Or if we'd beenfounding a true and only church, he'd have suggested a trick for meltingthe 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 hisreason as well as bought his freedom. Now he was spreading it out andletting them consider it, not for praise, but because he trusted them. He felt a few rivets giving in the case he had hardened about himselffor so long a time. He thought he had got very hard indeed, and was evenwilling to invite a knock or two, to test his induration. But there wassomething curiously softening in this little group sitting in the shadeof the pleasant room while the sunshine outside played upon growingleaves. He was conscious, wonderingly, that they all loved him verymuch. His father's letters had told him that. It seemed simple andnatural, too, that these young women, who were not his sisters and whogave him, in his rough habit of life, a curious pain with their delicacyand softness--it seemed natural enough that they should, in a way notunderstood, belong to him. He had got gradually accustomed to it, fromtheir growing up in his father's house from little girls to girlsdancing themselves into public favour, and then, again, he had beenliving "outside" where ordinary conventions did not obtain. He had gotused to many things in his solitary thoughts that were never tested byother minds in familiar intercourse. The two girls belonged there amongaccepted things. He looked up suddenly at his father, and asked thequestion 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 tothem, 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. Shemust be sixty-five where grandmother's a good ten years older. "

"She sang, " said the colonel, forgetting, as he often did, they seemedso young, that everybody in America must at least have heard traditionof 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 shelost her voice, and she married Beattie, and he died. Then she came backhere and hunted up Esther. "

His face settled into lines of sombre thought, puzzled thought, itseemed to Anne. But to Lydia it looked as if this kidnapping of MadameBeattie from the past and thrusting her into the present discussion wasonly a pretext for talking about Esther. Of course, she knew, he waswildly anxious to enter upon the subject, and there might be pain enoughin it to keep him from approaching it suddenly. Esther might be aburning coal. Madame Beattie was the safe holder he caught up to keephis fingers from it. But he sounded now as if he were either muchabsorbed in Madame Beattie or very wily in his hiding behind her. 

"I've often wondered if she came back. I've thought she might easilyhave settled on Esther and sucked her dry. No news of her?"

"No news, " said the colonel. "It's years since she's been here. Notsince--then. "

"No, " said Jeff. There was a new line of bitter amusement near hismouth. "I know the date of her going, to a dot. The day I was arrestedshe put for New York. Next week she sailed for Italy. " But if Lydia wasgoing to feel more of her hot reversals in the face of his calling plainnames, she found him cutting them short with another question: "SeenEsther?"

"No, " said the colonel. 

A red spot had sprung into his cheek. He looked harassed. Lydia spranginto the arena, to save him, and because she was the one who had thelatest news. 

"I have, " she said. "I've seen her. "

She knew what grave surprise was in the colonel's face. But no suchthing appeared in Jeff's. He only turned to her as if she were the nextto be interrogated. 

"How does she look?" he asked. 

The complete vision of her stretched at ease eating fruit out of asilver dish, as if she had arranged herself to rouse the most violentemotions in a little seething sister, stirred Lydia to the centre. Butnot for a million dollars, she reflected, in a comparison clung tofaithfully, would she tell how beautiful Esther appeared to even thehostile 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 youmight select some rare martyrdom for her--quartering or gridironingaccording to the oldest recipes--and you couldn't make her tell lessthan the truth, because only the truth would contribute to the downfallof Esther. "I went in without ringing, because Farvie'd been before andthey wouldn't let him in. "

"Lydia!" the colonel called remindingly. 

"I found her reading--and eating. " Lydia hadn't known she could be sohateful. Still she was telling the exact truth. "We talked a few minutesand I came away. "

"Did she--" at last suddenly and painfully thrown out of his nonchalantrun of talk, he stopped. 

"She's a horrid woman, " said Lydia, crimson with her own daring, and gotup and ran out of the room. 

Anne looked appealingly at Jeff, in a way of begging him to remember howyoung Lydia was, and perhaps how spoiled. But he wasn't disturbed. Heonly 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 hisfather 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 andcried again, there was such wilful havoc in the pink smoothness of herface. 

"Isn't he hateful?" she asked Anne, with an incredulous spite in hervoice. "How could anybody that belonged to Farvie be so rough? I can'tendure him, can you?"

Anne looked distressed. When there were disagreements and cross-purposesthey made her almost ill. She would go about with a physical nausea uponher, 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. Itseemed the top of earthly fortune to be free, and abysmal misery to havemissed it. 

"I can't help it, " said Lydia. "What does he want to act so for? Whydoes 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 gethim back. And about her as if she wasn't any different from what heexpected and you couldn't ask her to be anything else. "

"But she's his wife, " said Anne gently. "I suppose he loves her. Let'shope he does. "

"You can, if you want to, " said Lydia, with a wet handkerchief makinganother renovating attack on her face. "I sha'n't. She's a horridwoman. "

They parted then, for their household deeds, but all through the morningLydia had a fire of curiosity burning in her to know what Jeff wasdoing. He ought, she knew, to be sitting by Farvie, keeping him company, in a passionate way, to make up for the years. The years seemedsometimes like a colossal mistake in nature that everybody had got tomake up for--make up to everybody else. Certainly she and Anne andFarvie had got to make up to the innocent Jeff. And equally they had allgot to make up to Farvie. But going once noiselessly through the hall, she glanced in and saw the colonel sitting alone by the window, MaryNellen's Virgil in his hand. He was well back from the glass, and Lydiaguessed that it was because he wanted to command the orchard and nothimself be seen. She ran up to her own room and also looked. There hewas, Jeff, striding round in the shadow of the brick wall, walking likea man with so many laps to do before night. Sometimes he squared hisshoulders and walked hard, but as if he knew he was going to getthere--the mysterious place for which he was bound. Sometimes hisshoulders sagged, and he had to drive himself. Lydia felt, in herthroat, the aching misery of youth and wondered if she had got to cryagain, and if this hateful, wholly unsatisfactory creature was going tokeep her crying. As she watched, he stopped, and then crossed theorchard green directly toward her. She stood still, looking down on himfascinated, her breath trembling, as if he might glance up and ask herwhat business she had staring down there, spying on him while he didthose mysterious laps he was condemned to, to make up perhaps for thesteps 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 puttingher head over the sill. 

"Yes, " said Anne. "I went down town and bought it. "

Anne's voice sounded particularly satisfied. Lydia knew that tone. Itsaid Anne had been able to accomplish some fit and clever deed, toplease. It was as if a fountain, bubbling over, had said, "Have I givenyou a drink, you dog, you horse, you woman with the bundle and thechild? 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. Giveit here. "

"But, Jeff!" Anne's voice flew after him as he went. Lydia felt herselfgrow hot, knowing Anne had taken the big first step that had looked soimpossible when they saw him. She had called him Jeff. "Jeff, where areyou 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, goingforth to spade "up". Evidently Anne intended to have no spading atrandom in a fair green orchard. She was one of the conservers of theearth, a thrifty housewife who would have all things well done. Theylooked happily intent, the three, going out to their breaking ground. Lydia felt the tempest in her going down, and she wished she were withthem. But her temper shut her out. She felt like a little cloud drivenby some capricious wind to darken the face of earth, and not by her ownwillingness. 

She went down to the noon dinner quite chastened, with the expressionAnne knew, of having had a temper and got over it. The three looked asif they had had a beautiful time, Lydia thought humbly. The colour wasin their faces. Farvie talked of seed catalogues, and it became evidentthat 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 apleasant game. 

Lydia kept a good deal to herself that day. She accepted a task fromAnne of looking over table linen and lining drawers with white paper. Mary Nellen was excused from work, and sat at upper windows making a humof study like good little translating bees. Anne went back and forthfrom china closet to piles of dishes left ready washed by Mary Nellen, and the colonel, in the library, drowsed off the morning's work. Lydiahad a sense of peaceful tasks and tranquil pauses. Her own pulses hadquieted with the declining sun, and it seemed as if they might all besettling into a slow-moving ease of life at last. 

"Where is he?" suddenly she said to Anne, in the midst of their weavingthe 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 ontheir hands, not a liberated prisoner, but a prisoner still bound bytheir fond expectations of him. He must be beguiled, distracted from thememory 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 againin 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 thelittle room when she went softly up the back stairs to speak to MaryNellen. There was a light on his table. The door was open. He sat, hisback to her, his arms on the table, his head on his arms. She heard thelong labouring breaths of a creature who could have sobbed if he had notkept a heavy hand on himself. They were, Lydia thought, like the breathsof a dear dog she had known who used to put his nose to the crack of theshut door and sigh into it, "Please let me in. " It seemed to her acutelysensitive mind, prepared like a chemical film to take every impressionJeff could cast, as if he were lying prone at the door of the cruelbeauty and breathing, "Please let me in. " She wanted to put her hands onthe bowed head and comfort him. Now she knew how Anne felt, Anne, thelittle mother heart, who dragged up compassion from the earth andbrought it down from the sky for unfriended creatures. And yet all thesolace 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. Themessage was explicit, and, in the point of affection, diffuse. Old-fashioned, too: she longed to hold her niece in her arms. A moreterrified young woman could not easily have been come on that day thanEsther Blake, as she opened the envelope, afraid of detectives, ofreporters, of anything connected with a husband lately returned fromjail. But this was worse than she could have guessed. In face of anordinary incursion she might shut herself up in her room and send Sophyto 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 sheran upstairs with the telegram and tapped at grandmother's door. RhodaKnox came in answer. She was a large woman of a fine presence, redcheekbones with high lights, and smooth black hair brushed glossy andcarefully coiled. She was grandmother's attendant, helplessly hated bygrandmother but professionally unmoved by it, a general who carried onintricate calculations to avoid what she called "steps. " In the matterof steps, she laid bonds on high and low. A deed that would have takenher five minutes to do she passed on to the next available creature, even if it required twenty minutes' planning to hocus him into acceptingit. She had the intent look of the schemer: yet she was one who meantwell and simply preferred by nature to be stationary. Grandmotherfeared her besides hating her, though loving the order she brought topass. 

Esther slipped by her, and went to the bed where grandmother was lyingpropped on pillows, an exceedingly small old woman who was even tolife-long friends an enigma presumably without an answer. She had theremote air of hating her state of age, which did not seem a naturalnecessity but a unique calamity, a trap sprung on her and, after thenature of traps, most unexpectedly. When she was young she had believedthe old walked into the trap deliberately because it was provided on apath they were tired of. But she wasn't tired, and yet the trap hadclutched her. She had a small face beautifully wrought upon by lines, asif she had given a cunning artificer the preparation of a mask she waspaying dearly for and yet didn't prize at all. An old-fashioned nightcapwith a frill covered her head, and she had tied herself so tightly intoit that he must be a bold adventurer who would get at the thoughtsinside. Her little hands were shaded by fine frills. She looked, on thewhole, like a disenchanted lingerer in the living world, a uselesscreature for whom fostering had done so much that you might ask: "Whatis this illustration of a clean old woman? What is it for? What does itteach?"

Esther, with her telegram, stood beside the bed. 

"Grandmother, " said she, in the perfect tone she used toward her, clearand 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 especiallyadmirable--but curious. "

Esther, waiting there for recognition, felt the discomfort grandmotheralways seemed to stir into her mood. Her rose-touched skin was a littlemore suffused, though not beyond a furtherance of beauty. 

"Aunt Patricia is coming, " she repeated. "When I heard from her last shewas 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 offar-off, palm-girt islands and savages beating strange instruments andchanting to them uncouth syllables. "Rhoda Knox, don't let her get uphere. "

"How can I keep her out?" asked Esther. "You'll have to see her. I can'tlive 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 andhabits of thought were as a tale long told. Once it had been a mildlyfascinating game to see through what Esther said to what she reallymeant. 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 alovely ideal of herself. The imaginary Esther was all sympathy; she waseven self-sacrificing. No shining quality lay in the shop window of theworld's praise but the real Esther snatched it and adorned herself withit. The Esther that was talked in the language of the Esther that oughtto be. If she didn't want to see you, she told you it would beinconvenient for you to come. If she wanted to tell you somebody hadpraised the rose of her cheek, she told you she was so touched byeverybody's goodness in loving to give pleasure; then she proved herpoint by naive repetition of the pretty speech. Sometimes she even, inthe 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. "Shewasn'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 ifshe got drum and fife and went out to beat it up. One empty victory shehad achieved: grandmother had at least spoken to her. Sometimes sheturned 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 aletter. 

"Mrs. Blake, could you take this down?" she asked, in a faultlessmanner, and yet implacably. "And let it go out when somebody is going?"

Esther accepted the letter helplessly. She knew how Rhoda sat planningto get her errands done. Yet there was never any reason why you shouldnot do them. She ran downstairs carrying the letter, hating it becauseit had got itself carried against her will, and went at once to thetelephone. And there her voice had more than its natural appeal, becauseshe was so baffled and angry and pitied herself so much. 

"Could you come in? I'm bothered. Yes, " in answer to his question, "introuble, 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 agitationadmirably 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, andeven the terrifying goal where he might be crowned victor even before hechose. 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 herdistance from him. It was a wonderfully vivifying call: nothing to fearfrom her, but exhilarating feats to be undertaken for her sake. 

"I'm frightened at last, " she told him. That she was a brave woman thewoman she had created for her double had persuaded her. "I had to speakto somebody. "

Choate looked really splendid in the panoply of his simplicity andrestraints and courtesy. A man can be imposing in spite of a brokennose. 

"What's gone wrong?" he asked. 

"Aunt Patricia is coming. "

Choate had quite forgotten Aunt Patricia. She had been too far in thedepths of Poland for Esther to summon up her shade. Possibly it was adangerous shade to summon, lest the substance follow. But now shesketched Aunt Patricia with hesitating candour, but so that he lost noneof her undesirability, and he listened with a painstaking courtesy. 

"You say you're afraid of her?" he said, at the end. "Let her come. Shemay not want to stay. "

"She is so--different, " faltered Esther. She looked at him with humideyes. It was apparent that Aunt Patricia was different in a way not tobe 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 thatidea, at least. Am I right?"

"She's frightfully bohemian, of course, " said Esther. "Yes, that's whatI did mean. "

"But she's not young, you know, " said Choate, in an indulgent kindlinessEsther 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 agowhen 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 whatshe tells. She's different from anybody I ever met--and I don't see howI can make her happy. "

By this time Choate saw there was nothing he could do about AuntPatricia, and dismissed her from his orderly mind. She was notabsolutely pertinent to Esther's happiness. But he looked grave. Therewas somebody, he knew, who was pertinent. 

"I haven't succeeded in seeing Jeff yet, " he began, with a slighthesitation. It seemed to him it might be easier for her to hear thatname than the formal words, "your husband". She winced. Choate saw itand 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 wordsurprised him mightily. He had never called her "dear". She hadn't evenbeen "Esther" to him. But the warmth of his compassion and an irritationthat 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 lodgewith her and so betray him. Esther heard the word quite clearly and knewwhat volumes of commentary it carried; but Choate, relieved, thought ithad 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 solong. "

"You haven't seen him, " said Choate, like an accusation. He had oftenhad 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 Jeffhad 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 shouldhave left on his face the warm touch of hers and the cleansing of hertears. Choate had a tremendous idea of the obligations of what he calledlove. He hid what he thought of it in the fastnesses of a shy heart, buthe took delight and found strength, too, in the certainty that there isunconquerable love, and that it laughs at even the locksmiths thatfasten prison doors. He knew what a pang it would have been to him if hehad seen Esther Blake going year after year to carry her hoardedsweetness 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 fatherunderstands him. I don't. Why, before he went away we weren't so veryhappy. 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, andof course we're really strangers now. "

The Esther she meant to be gave her a sharp little prick here--thatEsther seemed to carry a needle for the purpose of these occasionalpricks, though she used it less and less as time went on--and said toher, "Strangers before he went away? Oh, no! I'd like to think that. Itmakes the web we're spinning stronger. But I can't. No. That isn'ttrue. "

"So you see, " said the real Esther to Choate, "I can't do anything. Isit here alone with my hands tied, and grandma upstairs--of course Ican't leave grandma--and I can't do anything. Do you think--" she lookedvery challenging and pure--"do you think it would be wicked of me todream of a divorce?"

Choate got up and walked to the fireplace. He put both hands on themantel and gripped it, and Esther, with that sense of implacable masterywomen 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 itwould be better for him if he could be free and build his life up againfrom the beginning. "

Choate answered in a choked voice that made him shake his headimpatiently:

"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 asdeep as the source of tears, though she exulted to see he had no tearsto show her. Men should, she felt, be strong. 

"Don't you know you mustn't say that kind of thing to me?" he askedher. "Don't you see it's a temptation? I can't listen to it. I can'tconsider it for a minute. "

"Is it a temptation?" she asked, in a whisper, born, it seemed, ofunacknowledged intimacies between them. The whisper said, "If it is atemptation, it is not a temptation to you alone. "

Choate was not looking at her, but he saw her, with the eyes of themind: the brown limpid look, the uplift of her quivering face, the curveof her throat and the long ripple to her feet. He walked out of theroom; it was the only thing for a decent man to do, in the face ofincarnate appeal, challenge, a vitality so intense, and yet sounconscious of itself, he knew, that it was, in its purity, almostirresistible. In the street he was deaf to the call of a friend andpassed 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 alittle, in a formless way. She could not manage a tune, but she had arhythmic style of humming that was not unpleasant to hear and gave heroccasional outlet. It was the animal in the desert droning and purringto itself in excess of ease. She felt equal to meeting Aunt Patriciaeven. 

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 provedthere was too much to come by cab, and Denny brought it afterward, shabby trunks of a sophisticated look, spattered with labels. MadameBeattie alighted from the cab, a large woman in worn black velvet, witha stale perfume about her. Esther was at the door to meet her, and evenin this outer air she could hardly help putting up her nose a little atthe exotic smell. Madame Beattie was swarthy and strong-featured with asoft wrinkled skin unnatural from over-cherishing. She had bright, humorously satirical eyes; and her mouth was large. Therefore you weresurprised at her slight lisp, a curious childishness which Esther hadalways considered pure affectation. She had forgotten it in these lateryears, but now the sound of it awakened all the distaste and curiosityshe 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 whenyou remembered it had once been "golden ". It was raucous yet husky, agin voice, Jeffrey had called it, adding that she had a gin cough. Allthis Esther remembered as she went forward prettily and submitted toAunt Patricia's perfumed kiss. The ostrich feathers in the worn velvettravelling hat cascaded over them both, and bangles clinked in a thindiscord with curious trinkets hanging from her chatelaine. Evidently thedesire to hold her niece in her arms had been for telegraphic purposesonly. 

When they had gone in and Aunt Patricia was removing her gloves andaccepting tea--she said she would not take her hat off until she wentupstairs--she asked, with a cheerful boldness:

"Where's your husband?"

Esther shrank perceptibly. No one but Lydia had felt at liberty to pelther with the incarcerated husband, and she was not only sensitive infact but from an intuition of the prettiest thing to do. 

"Oh, I knew he was out, " said Madame Beattie. "I keep track of yourAmerican papers. Isn't he here?"

"He's in town, " said Esther, in a low voice. Her cheeks burned withhatred of the insolence of kin which could force you into the open andstrip 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 oversixty? Ridiculous business! Well, what's Jeff there for? Why isn't hewith you?"

Madame Beattie had a direct habit of address, and, although she spokemany other languages fluently, in the best of English. There were timeswhen she used English with an extreme of her lisping accent, but thatwas when it seemed good business so to do. This she modified if shefound herself cruising where New England standards called for plain NewEngland speech. 

"Why isn't he with you?" she asked again. 

The tea had come and Madame Beattie lifted her cup in a manner elegantlycalculated to display, though ingenuously, a hand loaded with rings. 

"Dear auntie, " said Esther, widening eyes that had been potent withAlston 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 andstrengthening her cup. "What do you mean by happy?"

"He is completely estranged, " said Esther. "He is a different man fromwhat he used to be. "

"Of course he's different. You're different. So am I. He can't take upthings 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 toher 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 positionon the part of the inquisitor. 

"Of course you went to see him while he was in prison?" auntie pursuedinexorably. 

"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 extraquantity must be brewed next time. 

"You see, " said Madame Beattie, putting her cup down and settling backinto her chair with an undue prominence of frontal velvet, "you have totake these things like a woman of the world. What's all this talk aboutfeelings, and Jeff's being unhappy and happy? He's married you, and it'sa good thing for you both you've got each other to turn to. This kind ofsentimental talk does very well before marriage. It has its place. You'dnever marry without it. But after the first you might as well takethings 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 whenwe found everybody was doing us and we should be a great deal strongertogether than apart, we came together again. And he died very happily. "

Esther thought, in her physical aversion to auntie, that he must indeedhave 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 drycoughs of doubt, of derision, of good-natured tolerance; but perhaps sheherself couldn't have said now whether they had their origin in anydisability. 

"Grandma is in her room, " said Esther faintly. She felt a savagedistaste for facing the prospect of them together, auntie who would besure to see grandmother, and grandmother who would not be seen. "Shelies 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'thave to give up your faculties at all unless you stop using them?"

"She says she is old, " repeated Esther obstinately. It seemed to her asensible thing for grandmother to say. Being old kept her happily inretirement. She wished auntie had a similar recognition of decencies. 

"I'll go to my room now, " said Madame Beattie. "What a nice house! Thisis Susan's house, isn't it?"

"Yes. " Esther had now retired to the last defences. She saw auntiesettling upon them in a jovial ease. It might have been different, shethought, if Alston Choate had got her a divorce years ago and thenmarried her. "Come, " she said, with an undiminished sweetness, "I'lltake you to your room. "

VIII

Addington, so Jeffrey Blake remembered when he came home to it, was asurvival. Naïve constancies to custom, habits sprung out of oldconditions and logical no more, and even the cruder loyalties to thepast, lived in it unchanged. This was as his mind conceived it. Hisroots 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 spenthere, but as his prosperity burned the more brilliantly, he and Estherhad taken up city life in winter, and for the summer had bought a largeand perfectly equipped house in a colony at the shore. That, in thecrash of his fortunes, had gone with other wreckage, and now he neverthought of it with even a momentary regret. It belonged to that feveredtime when he was always going fast and faster, as if life were aperpetual speeding in a lightning car. But of Addington he did think, inthe years that were so much drear space for reflection, and though hefelt no desire to go back, the memory of it was cool and still. The townhad distinct social strata, the happier, he felt, in that. There werethe descendants of old shipbuilders and merchants who drew theirsufficient dividends and lived on the traditions of times long past. Allthese families knew and accepted one another. Their peculiarities wereno more to be questioned than the eccentric shapes of clouds. TheDaytons, who were phenomenally ugly in a bony way, were the Daytons. Their long noses with the bulb at the base were Dayton noses. TheMadisons, in the line of male descent from distinguished blood, drankto an appalling extent; but they were Madisons, and you didn't interdictyour daughters' marrying them. The Mastertons ate no meat, and didn'tbelieve in banks. They kept their money in queer corners, and there wasso much of it that they couldn't always remember where, and thelaundress had orders to turn all stockings before wetting, and didindeed often find bills in the toe. But the laundress, being also ofAddington, though of another stratum, recognised this as a Mastertonhabit, and faithfully sought their hoarded treasure for them, anddelivered it over with the accuracy of an accountant. She wouldn't haveseen how the Mastertons could help having money in their clothes unlessthey should cease being Mastertons. Nor was it amazing to their peers, meeting them in casual talk, to realise that they were walkingdepositories of coin and bills. A bandit on a lonely road would, if hewere born in Addington, have forborne to rob them. These and otherpersonal eccentricities Jeffrey Blake remembered and knew he should findthem ticking on like faithful clocks. It was all restful to recall, buthorrible to meet. He knew perfectly what the attitude of Addington wouldbe to him. Because he was Addington born, it would stand by him, andwith a double loyalty for his father's sake. That loyalty, beautiful orstupid as you might find it, he could not bear. He hoped, however, toescape it by making his father the briefest visit possible and thengetting off to the West. Anne had reminded him that Alston Choate hadcalled, 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 wasglad he had not seen him. The first really embarrassing caller came theforenoon after Madame Beattie had arrived at Esther's, Madame Beattieherself in the village hack with Denny, uncontrollably curious, on thebox. Madame Beattie paid twenty-five cents extracted from the tinklingchatelaine, and dismissed Denny, but he looked over his shoulderregretfully until he had rounded the curve of the drive. Meantime she, in her plumes and black velvet, was climbing the steps, and Jeffrey, whowas 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 brisklyround the corner. Before he reached the door she was on him. 

"Here, Jeff, here!" said she peremptorily and yet kindly, as you mightdetain a dog, and Jeff, pausing, gazed at her in frank disconcertmentand remarked as frankly:

"The devil!"

Madame Beattie threw back her head on its stout muscular neck andlaughed, a husky laugh much like an old man's wheeze. 

"No! no!" said she, approaching him and extending an ungloved hand, "notso bad as that. How are you? Tell its auntie. "

Jeffrey laughed. He took the hand for a brief grasp, and returned to thegroup 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 kepther 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, inresearch, he had dug up a strange object he had no use for and mightfind it difficult to place. Not to name: he could name her veryaccurately. 

"So quick after I got here, " he replied, with candour. "I tell youplainly, Madame Beattie, there isn't a cent to be got out of me. I'mdone, 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, nowyou're out?"

The question came as hard as a stroke after the cushioned assurancepreceding it. Jeff met it as he might have met such a query from a manto 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, andmade no answer. 

"Aren't you coming down there?" asked Madame Beattie peremptorily, withthe air of drumming him up to some task that would have to be reckonedwith in the end. "Come, Jeff, why don't you answer? Aren't you comingdown?"

Jeffrey had ceased scowling. He had smoothed his brows out with hishand, 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 whenI asked him why he didn't marry?"

"No, " said Jeff, quite peaceably now. She was safer in the company ofremembered royalties. 

Madame Beattie sought among the jingling decorations of her person fora cigarette, found it and offered him another. 

"Quite good, " she told him. "An Italian count keeps me supplied. I don'tknow where the creature gets them. "

Then, after they had lighted up, she returned to her grand duke, andJeff found the story sufficiently funny and laughed at it, and shepulled another out of her well-stored memory, and he laughed at that. Madame Beattie told her stories excellently. She knew how little weightthey carry smothered in feminine graces and coy obliquities from thepoint. Graces had long ceased to interest her as among the assets of alife where man and woman have to work to feed themselves. Now she satdown 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'sneatly shod and very small feet went up on a chair, and she tipped theone she was sitting in at a dangerous angle while she exhaledluxuriously, and so Lydia, coming round the corner in a simple curiosityto know who was there, found them, laughing uproariously and dim withsmoke. Lydia had her opinions about smoking. She had seen women indulgein it at some of the functions where she and Anne danced, but she hadnever 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 herwhole life. She stopped short, and the two could not at once get hold ofthemselves in their peal of accordant mirth. But Lydia had time to seeone thing for a certainty. Jeff's face had cleared of its brooding andits intermittent scowl. He was enjoying himself. This, she thought, in asudden rage of scorn, was the kind of thing he enjoyed: not Farvie, notAnne's gentle ministrations, but the hooting of a horrible old woman. Madame Beattie saw her and straightened some of the laughing wrinklesround her eyes. 

"Well, well!" said she. "Who's this?"

Then Jeffrey, becoming suddenly grave, as if, Lydia thought, he ought tobe ashamed of laughing in such company, sprang to his feet, and threwaway his cigarette. 

"Madame Beattie, " said he, "this is Miss Lydia French. "

Madame Beattie did not rise, as who, indeed, so plumed andblack-velveted should for a slip of a creature trembling with futilerage over a brother proved wanting in ideals? She extended one hand, while the other removed the cigarette from her lips and held it at abecoming distance. 

"And who's Miss Lydia French?" said she. Then, as Lydia, pink withembarrassment and disapproval, made no sign, she added peremptorily, "Come here, my dear. "

Lydia came. It was true that Madame Beattie had attained to privilegethrough courts and high estate. When she herself had ruled by theprerogative of a perfect throat and a mind attuned to it, she hadimbibed a sense of power which was still dividend-paying even now, though the throat was dead to melody. When she really asked you to doanything, you did it, that was all. She seldom asked now, because herattitude was all careless tolerance, keen to the main chance but lax inexacting smaller tribute, as one having had such greater toll. ButLydia's wilful hesitation awakened her to some slight curiosity, and shebade her the more commandingly. Lydia was standing before her, red, unwillingly civil, and Madame Beattie reached forward and took one ofher little plump work-roughened hands, held it for a moment, as if inguarantee of kindliness, and then dropped it. 

"Now, " said she, "who are you?"

Jeffrey, seeing Lydia so put about, answered for her again, but thistime 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 backnow and looked straight at her, as if to imply if there were anyqualifying of the marriage she had a word to say. "Wasn't there anotherchild?" 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 howuncomfortable she was; but Lydia took no notice. Now she straightenedslightly, and put her pretty head up. She looked again as she did whenthe music was about to begin, and her little feet, though they kepttheir 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 withher?"

Something gave way in Lydia. The pressure of feeling was too great andcandour seethed over the top. 

"She's a horrid woman. "

Or was it because some inner watchman on the tower told her Jeff himselfhad better hear again what one person thought of Esther? Madame Beattiethrew back her plumed head and laughed, the same laugh she had used toannotate the stories. Lydia immediately hated herself for havingchallenged it. Jeffrey, she knew, was faintly smiling, though she couldnot 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 isbound to hate her. "

"Yes, " said Jeff. 

Lydia walked away, expecting, as she went, to be called back andresolving that no inherent power in the voice of aged hatefulness shouldforce her. But Madame Beattie, having placed her, had forgotten allabout 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. Shehad long ago ceased to exercise happy control over useful muscles. Theyeven creaked in her ears and did strange things when she made requestsof them. 

"You understand, " said Jeffrey, when they were pursuing a slow way alongthe street, he with a chafed sense of ridiculous captivity. "I sha'n'tgo 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 seeEsther. "

Jeff didn't tell her that. He didn't tell her anything. He stolidlyguided her along. 

"There isn't a man born that wouldn't want to see Esther if he'd seenher once, " said Madame Beattie. 

But this he neither combated nor confirmed, and at the corner nearestEsther's house he stopped, lifted the hand from his arm and placed it ina stiff rigour at her waist. He then took off his hat, prepared to standwhile 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 hateher, 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 turnedin at the gate, and then he wheeled abruptly and went back. An instinctof flight was on him. Here in the open street he longed for walls, onlyperhaps because he knew how well everybody wished him and their kindnesshe could not meet. 

Madame Beattie found Esther at the door, waiting. She was an excitedEsther, bright-eyed, short of breath. 

"Where have you been?" she demanded. 

Madame Beattie took off her hat and stabbed the pin through it. Hertoupée, deranged by the act, perceptibly slid, but though she knew it bythe 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 theneighbouring stand. 

"Where have you been?" repeated Esther, a pulse of something like angerbeating 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 quitefriends 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 wasrather a silly boy, I remember. Had enthusiasms. Much in love. He isn'tnow. He's no use for women. "

Esther looked at her in an arrested thoughtfulness. Madame Beattie couldhave laughed. She had delivered the challenge Jeff had not sent, andEsther was accepting it, wherever it might lead, to whatever duellingground. Esther couldn't help that. A challenge was a challenge. She hadto answer. It was a necessity of type. Madame Beattie saw the leastlittle flickering thought run into her eyes, and knew she wasinvoluntarily charting the means of summons, setting up the loom, as itwere, to weave the magic web. She got up, took her hat, gave her toupéea 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 onlywhen she had shut the door upon herself did she relax and smile over thesimplicity of even a feminine creature so versed in obliquity asEsther. For Esther might want to escape the man who had brought disgraceupon her, but her flying feet would do her no good, so long as themainspring of her life set her heart beating irrationally for conquest. Esther had to conquer even when the event would bring disaster: like achieftain who would enlarge his boundaries at the risk of taking insavages 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 Nellenexcitedly arrayed them. Alston Choate had come to call, and followinghim appeared an elderly lady whom Jeffrey greeted with more outwardwarmth than he had even shown his father. Alston Choate had walked inwith a simple directness as though he were there daily, and Anneimpulsively went forward to him. She felt she knew him very well. Theywere quite friends. Alston, smiling at her and taking her hand on theway to the colonel and Jeff, seemed to recognise that, and greeted herless formally than the others. The colonel was moved at seeing him. TheChoates were among the best of local lineage, men and womendistinguished by clear rigidities of conduct. Their friendship was apromissory note, bound to be honoured to the full. Lydia was for somereason abashed, and Jeff, both she and Anne thought, not adequatelywelcoming. But how could he be, Anne considered. He was in a position ofunique loneliness. He lacked fellowship. Nobody but Alston, in theirstratum at least, had come in person. No wonder he looked warily, lesthe assume too much. 

Before they settled down, the elderly lady, with a thud of feet softlyshod, walked through the hall and stood at the library door regardingthem benignantly. And then Jeff, with an outspoken sound of pleasure andsurprise, got up and drew her in, and Choate smiled upon her as if shewere delightfully unlike anybody else. The colonel, with a quick, movedlook, just said her name:

"Amabel!"

She gave warm, quick grasps from a firm hand, gave them all round, notseeming to know she hadn't met Anne and Lydia, and at once took off herbonnet. It had strings and altogether belonged to an epoch at leasttwenty years away. The bonnet she "laid aside" on a table with a certainabsent care, as ladies were accustomed to treat bonnets before they gotinto the way of jabbing them with pins. Then she sat down, earnestlysolicitous and attentive as at a consultation. Anne thought she was themost beautiful person she had ever seen. It was a pity Miss AmabelBracebridge could not have known that impetuous verdict. It would havebrought her a surprised, spontaneous laugh: nothing could have convincedher it was not delicious foolery. She was tall and broad and heavy. Whenshe stood in the doorway, she seemed to fill it. Now that she sat in thechair, she filled that, a soft, stout woman with great shoulders and abenign face, a troubled face, as if she were used to soothing ills, yetfound for them no adequate recompense. Her dark grey dress was buttonedin front, after the fashion of a time long past. It was so archaic incut, with a little ruffle at neck and sleeves, that it did more thanadequate service toward maturing her. Indeed, there was no youth aboutMiss Amabel, except the youth of her eyes and smile. There werechildlike wistfulness and hope, but experience chiefly, of life, of theunaccounted for, the unaccountable. She had, above all, an expression ofwell-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 andregarded him anxiously. "Don't you smoke?" she asked. 

He laughed again. He was exceedingly pleased, Anne saw, merely at seeingher. 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 atherself. 

"I've learned lately, " she said, "that gentlemen are so devoted to itthey feel lost without it. "

"Light up, Choate, " said Jeffrey. "My sisters won't mind. Will you?" Heinterrogated 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'sconvenience. But though Choate accepted a cigar, he did not light it. 

"Not now, " he said, when Jeffrey offered him a light; he laid the cigardown, tapping it once or twice with his fine hand, and Anne thought herefrained in courtesy toward her and Lydia. 

"This is very pleasant, " said the colonel suddenly. "It's good to seeyou, Amabel. Now I feel myself at home. "

But what, after the first settling was over, had they to say? The samethought was in all their minds. What was Jeffrey going to do? He knewthat, and moved unhappily. Whatever he was going to do, he wouldn't talkabout it. But Miss Amabel was approaching him with the clearestsimplicity. 

"Jeff, my dear, " she said, "I can't wait to hear about your idealrepublic. "

And then, all his satisfaction gone and his scowl come back, Jeff shookhis head as if a persistent fly had lighted on him, and again hedisclaimed achievement. 

"Amabel, " said he, "I'm awfully sick of that, you know. "

"But, dear boy, you revolutionised--" she was about to add, "theprison, " but stumbled lamely--"the place. "

"The papers told us that, " said Choate. It was apparent he was helpingsomebody out, but whether Jeff or Miss Amabel even he couldn't havesaid. 

"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 youall sorts of questions and you wouldn't say a word. "

"But you wrote me, " said Jeff affectionately, "every week. I got so usedto your letters I sha'n't be able to do without them; I shall have tosee you every day. "

"Of course we're going to see each other, " she said. "And there's such alot you can do. "

She looked so earnestly entreating that Choate, who sat not far fromher, gave a murmured: "Ah, Miss Amabel!" In his mind thehalf-despairing, wholly loving thought had been: "Good old girl! You'respending 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 peoplecouldn'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 muchon it, " she added, now to Jeff, "when I wrote you, because I thoughtyou'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. " Nothingtroubled her governed calm. It might almost be that, having looked fromhigh places into deep ones, no abyss could dizzy her. "Weedon Moorefeels as I do. "

"Weedon Moore?" Jeffrey repeated, in a surprised and most uncordialtone. He looked at Choate. 

"Yes, " said Choate, as if he confirmed not only the question but Jeff'sinner feeling, "he's here. He's practising law, and besides that heedits the _Argosy_. "

"Owns it, too, I think, " said Farvie. "They told me so at thenews-stand. "

"Well, " said Choate pointedly, "it's said Miss Amabel owns it. "

"Then, " said Jeff, including her abruptly, "you've the whip-hand. Youcan get Moore out of it. What's he in it for anyway? Did you have totake him over with the business?"

Miss Amabel was plainly grieved. 

"Now why should you want to turn him out of it?" she asked, really ofChoate 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 MissAmabel. 

"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 nowto Farvie. "He never has been, here in Addington. He comes of plainpeople. "

"That's not it, Miss Amabel, " said Choate gently. "He might have beenspawned out of the back meadows or he might have been--a Bracebridge. "He bowed to her with a charming conciliation and Miss Amabel sat alittle straighter. "If we don't accept him, it's because he's WeedonMoore. "

"We were in school with him, you know: in college, too, " said Jeff, withthat gentleness men always accorded her, men of perception who saw inher the motherhood destined to diffuse itself, often to no end: she wasso noble and at the same time so helpless in the crystal prison of herhopes. "We knew Weedie like a book. "

Miss Amabel took on an added dignity, proportioned to the discomfort ofher task. Here she was defending Weedon Moore whom her outersensibilities 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 morekeenly than Weedon Moore. "

At that instant, Mary Nellen, her eyes brightening as these socialactivities increased, appeared in the doorway, announcing doubtfully:

"Mr. Moore. "

Jeffrey, as if actually startled, looked round at Choate who wasunaffectedly annoyed. Anne, rising to receive the problematic Moore, thought they had an air of wondering how they could repel unwarrantedinvasion. Miss Amabel, in a sort of protesting, delicate distress, wasloyally striving to make the invader's path plain. 

"I told him I was coming, " she said. "It seems he had thought ofdropping in. " Then Anne went out on the heels of Mary Nellen, hearingMiss Amabel conclude, as she left, with an apologetic note unfamiliar toher soft voice, "He wants you to write something, Jeff, for the_Argosy_. "

Anne, even before seeing him, became conscious that Mary Nellen regardedthe newcomer as undesirable; and when she came on him standing, hat inhand, she agreed that Weedon Moore was, in his outward integument, exceedingly unpleasant: a short, swarthy, tubby man, always, she was tonote, dressed in smooth black, and invariably wearing or carrying, withthe 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 barbarictaste in flowing ties. Seeing Anne, he spoke at once, and if she had notbeen prepared for him she must have guessed him to be a man come on amessage of importance. There was conscious emphasis in his voice, andthere needed to be if it was to accomplish anything: a high voice, strident, and, like the rest of him, somehow suggesting insect life. Heheld out his hand and Anne most unwillingly took it. 

"Miss French, " said he, with no hesitation before her name, "how isJeff?"

The mere inquiry set Anne vainly to hoping that he need not come in. Buthe 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 itbefore him in a way that made Anne think absurdly of shields andbucklers. When, in the library, she turned to present him, as if he werean unpleasant find she had got to vouch for somehow, the men werealready on their feet and Jeff was setting forward a chair. She couldnot help thinking it was a clever stage business to release him from thenecessity of shaking hands. But Moore did not abet him in thatinformality. 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, anoratorical 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 himsteal a shamefaced look at Miss Amabel and immediately, as if somethingradical had to be done when it came to the friend of a beloved old girllike her, strike his hand into Moore's, with an emphasis the morepronounced for his haste to get it over. Moore seemed enraptured at thehandshake and breathless over the occasion. Having begun shaking handshe kept on with enthusiasm: the colonel, Miss Amabel and Lydia had torespond 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 toexpect. Then they all sat down and there was, Lydia decided, as sheglanced 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 ofgenerous willingness to share all he had. He asked the colonel how heliked Addington, and was not abashed at being reminded that the colonelhad 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 yetprettily too. 

"My theory of Addington, " said Choate easily, "is that we all wish wewere back in the Addington of a hundred years ago. "

"You'd want to be in the dominant class, " said Moore. There wassomething like the trammels of an unwilling respect over his manner toChoate; yet still he managed to be rallying. "When the old merchantswere 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 likea marionette moulded to express something and saying it with painfulclumsiness, almost grotesquerie, "the ships are bringing human productsnow. They're bringing us citizens, bone and sinew of the republic, andwe 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 tobelong to the governing class--of course. "

"Now!" said Miss Amabel. She spoke gently, and she was, they saw, painedat the turn the talk had taken. "Alston, why should you say that?"

"Because I mean it, " said Alston. His quietude seemed to carry a privatemessage to Moore, but he turned to her, as he spoke and smiled as if toask her not to interpret him harshly. "Of course I should have wanted tobe 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'tembarrass you by naming them. You want to sit submerged, you others, andbe choked by slime, if you must be, and have the holy city built up onyour 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 tobelong to the dominant class. So does the man that never dominated inhis 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 sucha humourist. "

If he wanted to be offensive, that was the keenest cut he could havedelivered. 

"I have often thought, " said the colonel, beginning in a hesitating, deferent way that made his utterance rather notable, "that we saddlewhat we call the lower orders with motives different from our own. "

"Precisely, " Choate clipped in. "We used to think, when they committed aperfectly logical crime, like stealing a sheep or a loaf of bread, thatit was absolutely different from anything we could have done. Whereas intheir places we should have tried precisely the same thing. Just ascleanliness is a matter of bathtubs and temperature. We shouldn't batheif we had to break the ice over a quart of water and then go out and runa trolley car all day. "

Lydia's face, its large eyes fixed upon him, said so plainly "I don'tbelieve it" that he laughed, with a sudden enjoyment of her, and, afteran instant of wider-eyed surprise, she laughed too. 

"And here's Miss Amabel, " Choate went on, in the voice it seemed he keptfor her, "going to the outer extreme and believing, because thelabouring man has been bled, that he's incapable of bleeding you. Don'tyou 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 fortythousand prophets out of Israel; but put him where I am and he'll clingwith 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 thedeepest knowledge comes of pain. And the poor have suffered pain so manycenturies. They've learned things we don't know. Look how they help oneanother. 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 herface. "I don't know what it is to be hungry. If I starved myself Ishouldn't know, because in somebody's pantry would be the bread-box Icould put my hand into. They know, Alston. It gives them insight. Whenthey remember the road they've travelled, they're not going to make themistakes we've made. "

"Oh, yes, they are, " said Choate. "Pardon me. There are going to berobbers and pirates and Napoleons and get-rich-quicks born for quite awhile yet. And they're not going to be born in my class alone--norWeedon'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 ofmen. And Weedon accepted no rebuff. He turned to Jeff, distinctlyleaving 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 prisonwhere gentlemen, when they have done wrong or been, like Jeff, falselyaccused, may go with dignity. 

"My dear, " said Miss Amabel, in a manner at once all compassion andinexorable demand, "you've got so much to tell us. You men inthat--place, " she stumbled over the word and then acceptedit--"discussed the ideal republic. You made it, by discussing it. "

"Yes, " said Choate, in voice of curious circumspection as if he hardlyknew what form even of eulogy might hurt, "it was an astonishing pieceof 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 beatingsluggishly it might be, from prison air, could not be seen. But MissAmabel, exquisitely compassionate, was yet inexorable, because he hadsomething to give and must not withhold. 

"The wonderful part of it is, " she said, "that when you have built upyour ideal government, prison ceases to be prison. There won't bepunishment any more. "

"Oh, don't you make that mistake, " said Jeff, instantly, moved now toovitally to keep out of it. "There are going to be punishments all alongthe line. The big punishment of all, when you've broken a law, is thatyou're outside. If it's a small break, you're not much over the sill. Ifit's a big break, you're absolutely out. Outside, Amabel, outside!" Henever used the civil prefix before her name, and Anne wondered againwhether the intimacy of the letters accounted for this sweetinformality. "You're banished. What's worse than that?"

"Oh, but, " said she, her plain, beautiful face beaming divinity on himas one of the children of men, "I don't want them to be banished. Ifanybody 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 ofone trade-stained hand in the other palm. "You're emasculating the wholenation. Let us be educated, but let us take our good hard whacks. "

"Hear! hear!" said Choate, speaking mildly but yet as a lawyer, whospent 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 Ibelieve in now. "

Anne and Lydia looked at him in a breathless waiting upon his words. Hehad begun to justify himself to their crescent belief in him, theproduct of the years. His father also waited, but tremulously. Here wasthe boy he had wanted back, but he had not so very much strength toaccord even a fulfilled delight. Jeff, forgetful of everybody but theold sybil he was looking at, sure of her comprehension if not heragreement, went on. 

"I'd rather have bad laws than no laws. I believe in Sparta. I believein the Catholic Church, if only because it has fasts and penances. We'vegot to toe the mark. If we don't, something's got to give it to us goodand hard, the harder the better, too. Are we children to be let off fromthe consequences of what we've done? No, by God! We're men and we've gotto learn. "

Suddenly his eyes left Miss Amabel's quickened face and he glanced abouthim, 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 himbullied, 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 amonosyllabic assent. 

Moore never questioned the bullying he so prodigally got. He never hadat college even; he was as ready to fawn the next day. It seemed as ifthe inner man were small, too small for sound resentment. Jeff sat downagain. He looked depressed, his countenance without inward light. ButLydia and Anne had rediscovered him. Again he was their hero, reclothedindeed in finer mail. Miss Amabel rose at once. She shook hands with thecolonel, and asked Anne and Lydia to come to see her. 

"Don't you do something, you two girls?" she asked, with her invitingsmile. "I'm sure Jeff wrote me so. "

"We dance, " said Lydia, in a bubbling bright voice, as if she had runforward to be sure to get the chance of answering. "Let us come anddance for you. We can dance all sorts of things. "

And Lydia was so purely childlike and dear, after this talk ofpunishments and duties, that involuntarily they all laughed and shelooked abashed. 

"Perhaps you know folk-dances, " said Miss Amabel. 

"Oh, yes, " said Lydia, getting back her spirit. "There isn't one wedon't know. "

And they laughed again and Miss Amabel tied on her bonnet and went awayattended 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, " saidhe, before they turned to separate, "I always thought you were meant fora writer. "

Jeff looked at him in a dull denial, as if he wondered how any man, lifebeing 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 whatI was meant to be. "

X

It was Lydia who found out what Jeff meant himself to be, for the nextday, 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 inthe orchard, and if Miss Lydia wanted to carry up the towels! there wasthe dusting, too. Lydia, at the open door, stopped, for Jeff was sittingat his writing table, paper before him. He flicked a look at her, absently, as at an intruder as insignificant as undesired, and becausethe sacredness of his task was plain to her she took it humbly. ButJeff, 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 aworried sense that he and the colonel were living on their kind offices, and he felt like assuring Lydia she shouldn't carry towels about foreither of them long. Then, as she did not yield them but looked, housekeeper-wise, at the rack still loaded with its tumbled reserves, headded:

"Give them here. "

"You mustn't leave your writing, " said Lydia primly if shyly, anddelivered up her charge. 

Jeff stepped out after her into the hall. He had left dull issues at histable, and Lydia seemed very sweet, her faith in him chiefly, though hedidn'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. "Ishouldn't. Authors never want it talked about. "

"That's not it, " said he. She found him tremendously in earnest. "I'mnot 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 soforeign to your ideas about books and life. It only happened that I meta man--in there--" he hesitated over it, not as regarding delicacies butonly as they might affect her--"a man like a million others, some of 'emin prison, more that ought to be. Well, he talked to me. I saw whatbrought him where he was. It was picturesque. "

"You want other people to understand, " said Lydia, bright-eyed, now shewas 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 Idid see it so plain I wanted everybody to see it, too. Maybe that waswhy 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 forhim. She wished for Anne who always knew, and with a word could help youout when your elucidation failed. 

"You see, " Jeff was going on, "there's this kind of a brute born intothe world now, the kind that knows how to make money, and as soon ashe's discovered his knack, he's got the mania to make more. It's anobligation, an obsession. Maybe it's only the game. He's in it, just asmuch as if he'd got a thousand men behind him, all looting territory. Itmight be for a woman. But it's the game. And it's a queer game. It cutshim off. He's outside. "

And here Lydia had a simple and very childlike thought, so inevitable toher that she spoke without consideration. 

"You were outside, too. "

Jeff gave a little shake of the head, as if that didn't matter now hewas here and explaining to her. 

"And the devil of it is, after they're once outside they don't know theyare. "

"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 makegood, when they've begun to play the game. "

"For money?"

"Yes, for money, for pretty gold and dirty bills and silver. That's whatit amounts to, when you get down to it, behind all the bank balances andequities. There's a film that grows over your eyes, you look at nothingelse. You don't think about--" his voice dropped and he glanced out atthe walled orchard as if it were even a sacred place--"you don't thinkabout grass, and dirt, and things. You're thinking about the game. "

"Well, " said Lydia joyously, seeing a green pathway out, "now you'vefound 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 allthe time. I've got to make good. "

"In the same way?" said Lydia, looking up at him childishly. "Withmoney?"

"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 forpride, though she could not know whether it was a fine pride or aheaven-defying one. 

"You won't do just what you did before?" asserted Lydia, out of herfaith 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 shallhave 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. Shefaltered it out. It seemed too splendid really to assault fortune likethat. 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 soundedindulgent, 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 nearhim, and after all she was not sure what kind of brother he was, savethat he had to be supremely loved. He looked pale to her now, of ayellowed, 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 knowyou 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 verywell 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 getsomething on the market. " She seemed to be assuring him, in an agonisedway, of his own good faith. "And people bought shares. And you tooktheir money. And--" her voice broke here in a sob of irrepressiblesympathy--"and you lost it. "

"Yes, " said he patiently. "I found myself in a tight place and theunexpected happened--the inconceivable. The market went to pieces. Andof course it was at the minute I was asked to account for the funds Ihad. I couldn't. So I was a swindler. I was tried. I was sentenced, andI went to prison. That's all. "

"Oh, " said Lydia passionately, "but do you suppose we don't know you'renot the only person concerned? Don't you suppose we know there'ssomebody else to blame?"

Jeff turned on her a sudden look so like passion of a sort that shetrembled back from him. Why should he be angry with her? Did he stand byReardon 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, "Farvieand Anne and I. Of course we've talked. Especially Anne and I. We knewyou 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. Butshe 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 ofhis 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 itfrom his college days. But he recalled himself from the obvious. Helooked into his inner chamber of mind where he had forbidden himself toglance since he had come home, lest he see there a confusion of idea anddesire that should make him the weaker in carrying out theinevitabilities of his return. There was one thing in decency to beexpected of him at this point: to give his father a period ofsatisfaction before he left him to do what he had not yet clearlydetermined on. It was sufficiently convincing to tell Lydia he intendedto make good, but he had not much idea what he meant by it. He wasconscious chiefly that he felt marred somehow, jaded, harassed by life, smeared by his experience of living in a gentlemanly jail. The fact thathe had left it did not restore to him his old feeling of owning theearth. He had, from the moment of his conviction and sentence, beenoutside, 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 hadnot 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 asurety, certainly a clank or two. As he remembered it, there was aclanking in his mind, quite sufficient to fulfil the prison ideal. Andthen he thought, with a sudden desire for man's company, the expectationthat 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 tomind that. 

He went out without seeing anybody, the colonel, he knew, being at hisgentle task of cramming for Mary Nellen's evening lesson. Jeff had notbeen 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 thesun burned him, or there were an air too chill--all, he reflected, in agrim discovery, the consequence of being outside and not wanting housesto see you or persons to bow and offer friendly hands. Reardon wouldblow such vapours away with a breath of his bluff voice. But as hereached the vestibule of the yellow house, Reardon himself was comingout and Jeff, with a sick surprise, understood that Reardon was notprepared to see him. 

XI

Reardon stood there in his middle-aged ease, the picture of a man whohas nothing to do more hazardous than to take care of himself. His handswere exceedingly well-kept. His cravat, of a dull blue, was suited tohis fresh-coloured face, and, though this is too far a quest for thecasual eye, his socks also were blue, an admirable match. Jeff was notaccustomed, certainly in these later years, to noting clothes; but hedid feel actually unkempt before this mirror of the time. Yet why? Forin 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 mannerfor the something his origin had lacked. It was not indeed theperfection of his dress that disconcerted; it was the kind of manReardon had grown to be: for of him the clothes did, in their degree, testify. Jeffrey was conscious that every muscle in Reardon's body hadits just measure of attention. Reardon had organised the care of thatbeing who was himself. He had provided richly for his future, wiped outhis past where it threatened to gall him, and was giving dueconsideration to his present. He meant supremely to be safe, and to thatend he had entrenched himself on every side. Jeff felt a verydisorganised, haphazard sort of being indeed before so complete acreature. And Reardon, so far from breaking into the old intimacy thatJeff had seen still living behind them in a sunny calm, only waiting forthe gate to be opened on it again, stood there distinctly embarrassedand nothing more. 

"Jeff!" said he. "How are you?" That was not enough. He found itlacking, and added, with a deepened shade of warmth, "How are you, oldman?"

Now he put out his hand, but it had been so long in coming that Jeffgave 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 hisshoulder. 

"Jeff, " said he, "come on in. You surprised me. That's the truth. Iwasn't prepared. I hadn't looked for you. "

Jeff went up the steps; it seemed, indeed, emotional to do less. But atthe 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 foundnothing 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 plumbingcost 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 noend glad to see you. "

"Oh, no, " said Jeff. "No, you're not. You've kicked me out. What's thereason? 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 andsaid, with a perfect decorum:

"Mrs. Blake at the telephone, sir. "

Jeff was looking at Reardon when he got the message and saw his smallblue eyes suffused and the colour hot in his cheeks. The blond well-keptman seemed to be swelling with embarrassment. 

"Excuse me, " he said, got up and went inside, and Blake heard his voicein brief replies. 

When he came back, he looked harassed, fatigued even. His colour hadgone 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 whereReardon's face, when he again occupied his chair, would be ready to beinterrogated. 

"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 histrousered 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 emotionthat gave him courage. 

"Why, yes, " he said, "it was. "

"What did she want?"

"Jeff, " said Reardon, "it's no possible business of yours what Estherwants. "

"You call her Esther?"

"I did then. "

An outraged instinct of possession was rising in Reardon. Esthersuddenly meant more to him than she had in all this time when she hadbeen meaning a great deal. Alston Choate had power to rouse thisprimitive rage in him, but he could always conquer it by reasoning thatAlston wouldn't take her if he could get her. There were too manyinherited reserves in Alston. Actually, Reardon thought, Alston wouldn'treally want a woman he had to take unguardedly. But here was the manwho, by every rigour of conventional life, had a right to her. It couldhardly be borne. Reardon wasn't used to finding himself dominated byprimal 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 reallygot the better of him. 

"Look here, Blake, " he said--and both of them realised that it was thefirst time he had used that surname; Jeff had always been a boy tohim--"it's very unwise of you to come back here at all. "

"Very unwise?" Jeff repeated, in an unmixed amazement, "to come back toAddington? My father's here. "

"Your father needn't have been here, " pursued Reardon doggedly. Enteredupon what seemed a remonstrance somebody ought to make, he wascommitted, he thought, to going on. "It was an exceedingly ill-judgedmove for you all, very ill-judged indeed. "

Jeff sat looking at him from a sternness that made a definite settingfor the picture of his wonder. Yet he seemed bent only uponunderstanding. 

"I don't say you came back to make trouble, " Reardon went on, pursuednow by the irritated certainty that he had adopted a course and had gotto 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 "yourwife". 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 meetingyou. "

Jeff threw back his head and laughed. 

"No, " he said, "she can't, that's a fact. She can't go into the streetwithout 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 sheruns. No, I shouldn't have thought of it. "

Reardon drew a long breath. He had, it seemed to him, after all donewisely. The note of human brotherhood came back into his voice, even animplication 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 beconsidering, and very gravely, and Reardon, frowning, watched him. 

"No, " said Jeff. "No. Certainly you can't annoy a woman. " He turned uponReardon, but with no suggestion of resentment. "What makes you think Ishould annoy her?"

"Why, it isn't what you'd wilfully do. " Now that the danger of violencewas over, Reardon felt that he could meet his man with a perfectreasonableness, and tell him what nobody else was likely to. "It's yourbeing here. She can't help going back. She remembers how things used tobe. And then she gets apprehensive. "

"How they used to be, " Jeff repeated thoughtfully. He sounded stupidstanding 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 anantagonist. 

"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 hiseyes. 

"I don't, " he said. "I should have said I did, but now I hear you talk Igive you my word I don't. You'll have to tell me. "

"She never blamed you, " said Reardon expansively. He was beginning topity Jeff, the incredible density of him, and he spoke incautiously. "She understood the reasons for it. You were having your businessworries and you were harassed and nervous. Of course she understood. Butthat didn't prevent her from being afraid of you. "

"Afraid of me!" Jeff took a step forward and put one hand on a pillar ofthe 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 supposeher mind keeps harking back, going over things, you know; and here youare on the same street, as you might say. "

"No, " said Jeff, stupidly, as if that were the case in point, "it isn'tthe same street. "

He withdrew his hand from the pillar now with a decisiveness thatindicated he had got to depend on his muscles at once, and started downthe steps. Reardon made an indeterminate movement after him and calledout something; but Jeff did not halt. He went along the driveway, pastthe proudly correct shrubs and brilliant turf and into the street. Hehad but the one purpose of getting to Esther as soon as possible. As hestrode along, he compassed in memory all the seasons of passion fromfull bloom to withering since he saw her last. When he went away fromher to fulfil his sentence, he had felt that identity with her a manmust recognise for a wife passionately beloved. He had left her in astate of nervous collapse, an ignoble, querulous breakdown, due, he hadto explain to himself, to her nature, delicately strung. There wasnothing heroic about the way she had taken his downfall. But theexquisite music of her, he further tutored himself, was not set tomartial strains. She was the loveliness of the twilight, of the eveningstar. And then, when his days had fallen into a pallid sequence, she hadkept silence. It was as if there had been no wife, no Esther. At firsthe made wild appeals to her, to his father for the assurance that shewas living even. Then one day in the autumn when he was watching a paleray of sunshine that looked as if it had been strained through sorrowbefore it got to him, the verdict, so far as his understanding went, wasinwardly pronounced. His mind had been working on the cruel problem andgave him, unsought, the answer. That was what she meant to do: toseparate 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 beliefin her. 

At first he could have dashed himself against the walls in the impotenceof having such bereavement to bear with none of the natural outlets toassauge it. Then beneficent healing passions came to his aid, thoughnot, he knew, the spiritual ones. He descended upon scorn, and finally acold acceptance of what she was. And then she seemed to have died, andin the inexorable sameness of the days and nights he dismissed hermemory, and he meditated upon life and what might be made of it by menwho had still the power to make. But now hurrying to her along the quietstreet, one clarifying word explained her, and, unreasoningly, broughtback his love. She had been afraid--afraid of him who would, in the oldphrase, have, in any sense, laid down his life for her: not lesswillingly, the honourable name he bore among honourable men. A sense ofrenewal and bourgeoning was upon him, that feeling of waking from adream and finding the beloved is, after all, alive. The old simple wordscame back to him that used to come in prison when they dropped moltenanguish 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'sacceptance, he might find she still lived in her beauty, and anypossible life would be too short to teach her not to be afraid. Hereached the house quickly and, with the haste of his courage, went upthe steps and tried the latch. In Addington nearly every house was opento the neighbourly hand. But of late Esther had taken to keeping herbolt slipped. It had dated from the day Lydia made hostile entrance. Finding he could not walk in unannounced, he stood for a moment, hisintention blank. It did not seem to him he could be named conventionallyto Esther, who was afraid of him. And then, by a hazard, Esther, who hadnot 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 aGod-given chance. It was like predestined welcome, a confirming of hishardihood. In spite of the sudden blight and shadow on her face, instinctive recoil that meant, he knew, the closing of the door, hegrasped her hands, both her soft white hands, and seemed, to hisanguished mind, to be dragging himself in by them, and even in the faceof 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, hesaw. It was as if she had perhaps expected him, had anticipated thisvery moment, and yet was not ready, because, such was her hard case, noingenuity could possibly prepare her for it. This he saw, and it ran onin a confirming horrible sequence from Reardon's speech. 

"Esther!" he repeated. He was still holding her hands and feeling theyhad no possibility of escape from each other, she in the weakness of herfear 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 hisdespairing love. (Or was it love? It seemed to him like love, for he hadnot 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 inany degree, she felt the humility of his mind toward her, and began totaste her own ascendancy. He was suing to her in some form, and theinstinct which, having something to give may yet withhold it, fed hersense of power. 

"Why, we were happy, " said Jeffrey, in an agony of wonder. "That's beenmy 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 couldreply, 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. Theywere still by the door, but he was between her and the stairs. He caughtthe glance of calculation, and instinct told him if he lost her now heshould 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 faceinstead of that first candid horror. She had heard something, a stepupstairs, and to that she cried: "Aunt Patricia!" three times, in apiercing entreaty. 

It was not Madame Beattie who came to the stair-head and looked down; itwas Rhoda Knox. After the glance she went away, though in no haste, andsummoned Madame Beattie, who appeared in a silk negligee of black andwhite swirls like witch's fires and, after one indifferent look, calledjovially:

"Hullo, Jeff!"

But she came down the stairs and Esther, seeing his marauding entryturned into something like a visit under social sanction, beat upon hiswrist with her other hand and cried two hot tears of angry impotence. 

"For heaven's sake, Esther, " Madame Beattie remarked, at the foot of thestairs, "what are you acting like this for? You look like a child in atantrum. "

Esther ceased to be in a tantrum. She had a sense of the beautiful, andnot even before these two invaders would she make herself unfitting. Sheaddressed Madame Beattie in a tone indicating her determination not tospeak to Jeff again. 

"Tell him to let me go. "

Jeff answered. Passion now had turned him cold, but he was relentless, aman 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 halfan hour. You may keep your aunt here if you like, but if you run awayfrom me I shall follow you. But you won't run away. You'll stay righthere. "

He dropped her wrist. 

"Oh, come into the library, " said Madame Beattie. "I can't stand. Myknees are creaking. Come, Esther, ask your husband in. "

Madame Beattie, billowing along in the witch-patterned silk and clickingon prodigiously high heels and Esther with her head haughtily up, ledthe way, and Jeff, following them, sat down as soon as they had givenhim leave by doing it, and looked about the room with a faint foolishcuriosity to note whether it, too, had changed. Madame Beattie thrustout a pretty foot, and Esther, perched on the piano stool, lookedrigidly down at her trembling hands. She was very pale. Suddenly sherecovered herself, and turned to Madame Beattie. 

"He had just come, " she said. "He came in. I didn't ask him to. He hadnot--" a little note like fright or triumph beat into her voice--"he hadnot--kissed me. "

She turned to him as if for a confirmation he could not in honestyrefuse her, and Madame Beattie burst into a laugh, one of perfectacceptance of things as they are, human frailties among the first. 

"Esther, " she said, "you're a little fool. If you want a divorce what doyou give yourself away for? Your counsel wouldn't let you. "

The whole implication was astounding to Jeff; but the only thing hecould 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 tohis 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 Ihave 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 andthat although she considered it of some value, she had not technicallytaken it in. 

"What had you to condone in me, Esther?" he asked her gently. Suddenlyshe seemed to him most pathetic in her wilful folly. She had alwaysbeen, she would always be, he knew, a creature who ruled through herweakness, found it an asset, traded on it perhaps, and whereas once thishad seemed to him enchanting, now, in the face of ill-fortune it lookedpitifully inadequate and base. 

"I was afraid of you, " she insisted. "I am now. "

"Well!" said Jeff. He found himself smiling at Madame Beattie, and shewas answering his smile. Perhaps it was rather the conventional tributeon his part, to conceal that he might easily have thrown himself back inhis chair behind the shelter of his hands, or gone down in any upheavalof primal emotions; and perhaps he saw in her answer, if not sympathy, for she was too impersonal for that, a candid understanding of thelittle scene and an appreciation of its dramatic quality. "Then, " saidhe, after his monosyllable, "there is nothing left me but to go. " Whenhe 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 ofits cherishing there made no difference to her embryo heart! A tinge ofirony 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 sensetaken me back, nor have you condoned anything I may have done. "

As he was opening the outer door, in a confusion of mind thatcommunicated itself disturbingly to his eyes and ears, he seemed to hearMadame Beattie adjuring Esther ruthlessly not to be a fool. 

"Why, he's a man, you little fool, " he heard her say, not with passionbut a negligent scorn ample enough to cover all the failings of theircommon sex. "He's more of a man than he was when he went into thathideous 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 salutaryhumbleness, even to touch a door which shut in Esther to the gods ofhome. He went back to his father's house, and there was Lydia singing asshe dusted the library. He walked in blindly not knowing whether she wasalone; 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 didshe think whether they were alone, though she did remember afterwardthat 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, shewent to him, and Jeff put his face down on her cheek, and his cheek, shefelt, was wet. And so they stood, their arms about each other, andLydia's heart beat in such a sick tumult of rage and sorrow that itseemed to her she could not stand so and uphold the heavy weight of hisgrief. 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 washis, came from him and overthrew all his old traditions of what he hadbeen 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 againstthe woman who had been cruel to him and an eternal pact betweenthemselves. And on the severing of the kiss, terrible to her in herinnocence, she flung herself away from him and ran upstairs. Her flightwas noiseless, as if now no one must know, but he heard the shutting ofa door and the sound of a turning key. 

XII

That night Anne was wakened from her sleep by a wisp of a figure thatcame slipping to her bedside, announced only by the cautious breathingof 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 toinvite Lydia in beside her. But Lydia put a hand on her shoulder andheld her still. 

"Whisper, " she said, and then was silent so long that Anne, waiting andhearing her breathe, stared at her in the dark and wondered at her. 

"What is it, lovey?" she asked at length, and Lydia's breathing hurriedinto sobs, and she said Anne's name again, and then, getting a littlecontrol 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 andshivered. 

"You've been having bad dreams, " said Anne. "Come in here, lovey, andAnne'll sing 'Lord Rendal. '"

"I mean, " said Lydia, from her knees, "could anybody kiss me, exceptFarvie, and not have it like Farvie--I mean have it terrible--and I kisshim 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 anightmare, a real kiss, and neither of us wanting to kiss anybody, andstill doing it and not being sorry. Being glad. "

She sounded so like herself in one of her fiercenesses that Anne at lastbelieved she was wholly awake and felt a terror of her own. 

"Who was it, Lydia?" she asked sternly. "Who is it you are thinkingabout?"

"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, leftsitting there, felt unreasoning alarm. She had a moment's determinationto follow her, and then she lay down again and thought achingly of Lydiawho was grown up and was yet a child. And still, Anne knew, she had tocome to woman's destiny. Lydia was so compact of sweetnesses that shewould be courted and married, and who was Anne, to know how to marry herrightly? So she slept, after a troubled interval; but Lydia lay awakeand 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 withJeff. He had been cruelly used. He must not be so dealt with any more. Her passion for his well-being, germinating and growing through theyears she had not seen him, had come to flower in a hot resolve that heshould be happy now. And in some way, some headlong, resistless way, sheknew she was to make his happiness, and yet in her allegiance to himthere was trouble and pain. He had made her into a new creature. Thekiss had done it. 

He would not, Lydia thought, have kissed her if it were wrong, and yetthe kiss was different from all others and she must never tell. Nor mustit come again. She was plighted to him, not as to a man free to loveher, but to his well-being; and it was all most sacred and not to beundone. She was exalted and she was shuddering with a formless sense ofthe 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 somethinghad come out of the earth or the air and called to her, and she hadanswered; and because it was so inevitable it was right--yet right foronly him to know. Who else could understand?

XIII

Lydia did not think she dreaded seeing him next morning. The fabric theyhad begun to weave together looked too splendid for covering triviallittle fears like that. Or was it strong enough to cover anything? Yetwhen he came into the room where they were at breakfast she could notlook at him with the same unwavering eyes. She had, strangely, and sadlytoo, the knowledge of life. But if she had looked at him she would haveseen how he was changed. He had pulled himself together. Whether whathappened or what might happen had tutored him, he was on guard, ready--for himself most of all. And after breakfast where Anne and thecolonel had contributed the mild commonplaces useful at least inbreaking such constraints, he followed the colonel into the library andsat down with him. The colonel, from his chair by the window, regardedhis son in a fond approval. Even to his eyes where Jeff was always agrateful visitant, the more so now after he had been so poignantlydesired, he was this morning the more manly and altogether fit. But Jeffwas 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 spokewith a reasonable mildness, desirous chiefly of meeting his boy halfway. 

"You said so. But not yet, I hope. "

"At once, " said Jeffrey. "I am going at once. To-day perhaps. To-morrowanyway. I've simply got to get away. "

The colonel, rather impatiently, because his voice would tremble, askedas Lydia had done:

"Have you seen Esther?"

This Jeff found unreasonably irritating. Bitter as the sight of her hadbeen and unspeakable her repudiation, he felt to-day as if they did notpertain. The thing that did pertain with a biting force was to removehimself before innocent young sisterly girls idealised him to theirharm. But he answered, and not too ungraciously:

"Yes, I've seen Esther. But that's nothing to do with it. Estheris--what she's always been. Only I've got to get away. "

The colonel, from long brooding over him, had a patience comparable onlyto a mother's. He was bitterly hurt. He could not understand. But hecould 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 itoff--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 theelder man's hands began to tremble, and he sat pathetically subject tothe seizure. Anne, if she had found him, would have known the name ofthe thing that had settled upon him. She would have called it a nervouschill. But to him it was one of the little ways of his predestined mate, old age. And presently, sitting there ignominiously shuddering, he beganto be amused at himself, for he had a pretty sense of humour, and tounderstand himself better than he had before. Face to face with thisironic weakness, he saw beyond the physiologic aspect of it, the moredeeply into his soul. The colonel had been perfectly sure that he hadtaken exquisite care of himself, these last years, because he desired tosee his son again, and also because Jeff, while suffering penalty, mustbe spared the pain of bereavement. So he had formed a habit, and now itwas 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 assailhim before he anchored in this calm? Daring was a lost word to him. Wasit true he was to have no more stormy risings of hot life, no morepassions of just rage or even righteous hate, because he had taughthimself to rule his blood? Now when his heart ached in anticipatorywarning over his son's going, why must he think of ways to be calm, asif being calm were the aim of man? Laboriously he had learned how not towaste himself, and the negation of life which is old age and then deathhad fallen upon him. He laughed a little, bitterly, and Anne, coming tofind 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 thatmoment he and life were having it out together. Even womanly sweetnesscould 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 hadcopied his own attitude. She had helped him not to die, and yet to sinkinto the ambling pace of these defended years. 

"Damn it, Anne!" he said, with suddenly frowning brow, and now shestarted. She had never heard an outbreak from courtly Farvie. "I wishI'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 allthree of them been possessed by that, the fear that he was going to beill. 

"Yes, " he said, "I wish I'd been more of a man. I should be more of aman now. "

She slipped away out of the room. He thought he had frightened her. Butin a moment she was back with some whiskey, hot, in a glass. The colonelwanted to order her off and swear his nerves would be as taut withoutit. But how could he? There was the same traitorous trembling in hislegs, and he put out his hand and took the glass, and thanked her. Thethanks sounded like the courteous, kind father she knew; but when shehad carried the glass into the kitchen she stood a moment, her hand onthe table, and thought, the lines of trouble on her forehead: what hadbeen the matter with him?

Jeff, when he got out of the house, walked in a savage hurry down to theend of the lot, and there, feeling no more at ease with himself, skirtedalong the bank bordered by inlets filled with weedy loveliness, and cameto the lower end of the town where the cotton mills were. He glanced upat them as he struck into the street past their office entrance, andwondered what the stock was quoted at now, and whether an influx offoreigners had displaced the old workmen. It had looked likely before hewent away. But he had no interest in it. He had no interest inAddington, he thought: only in the sad case of Lydia thrown up againstthe tumultuous horde of his released emotions and hurt by them andcharmed by them and, his remorseful judgment told him, insulted bythem. He could not, even that morning, have told how he felt aboutLydia, or whether he had any feeling at all, save a proper gratitude forher tenderness to his father. But he had found her in his path, when hishurt soul was crying out to all fostering womanhood to save him from theravening claw of woman's cruelty. She had felt his need, and they hadlooked at each other with eyes that pierced defences. And then, incarnate sympathy, tender youth, she had rested in his arms, and in thegenerosity of her giving and the exquisiteness of the gift, he had beenswept into that current where there is no staying except by an anguishof denial. It was chaos within him. He did not think of his allegianceto Esther, nor was he passionately desirous, with his whole mind, oflove for this new Lydia. He was in a whirl of emotion, and hated lifewhere you could never really right yourself, once you were wrong. 

He kept on outside the town, and presently walked with exhilarationbecause nobody knew him and he was free, and the day was of an exquisitebeauty, the topmost flower of the waxing spring. The road was marked byelms, aisled and vaulted, and birds called enchantingly. He was able tolay aside cool knowledge of the fight whereby all things live and, suchwas the desire of his mind, to partake of pleasure, to regard them aspoets do and children and pitiful women: the birds as lumps of freedelight, winged particles of joy. The song-birds were keen participantsof sport, killing to eat, and bigger birds were killing them. Butbecause they sang and their feathers were newly painted, he let himselfignore that open scandal and loved them for an angel choir. 

Coming to another village, though he knew it perfectly he assumed it wasundiscovered land, and beyond it lay in a field and dozed, his hat overhis eyes, and learned how blessed it is to be alone in freedom, evenafar from Lydias and Esthers. Healing had not begun in him until thatday. Here were none to sympathise, none to summon him to new relationsor recall the old. The earth had taken him back to her bosom, to cherishgravely, if with no actual tenderness, that he might be of the more useto her. If he did not that afternoon hear the grass growing, at leastsomething rose from the mould that nourished it, into his eyes and earsand mouth and the pores of his skin, and helped him on to health. Atfive he remembered his father, who had begged him not to go away, got upand turned back on his steps. Now he was hungry and bought rolls andcheese at a little shop, and walked on eating them. The dusk came, andonly the robin seemed of unabated spirit, flying to topmost twigs, andgiving 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 himinto town along the upland, and now he lingered purposely and choseindirect ways because, although it was unlikely that any one would knowhim, he shrank from the prospect of demanding eyes. At nine o'clock evenhe was no farther than the old circus ground, and, nearing it, he heard, through the evening stillness, a voice, loud, sharp, forensic. It washauntingly familiar to him, a voice he might not know at the moment, yetone that had at least belonged to some part of his Addington life. Theresponse it brought from him, in assaulted nerves and repugnant ears, was entirely distasteful. Whatever the voice was, he had at some timehated 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, hethought 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 youdon'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 hadsuddenly the sense of presences. The nerves on his skin told himhumanity was near. He went on, with an uncalculated noiselessness, forthe moment loomed important, and since what humanity was there wassilent--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. Thecountry that serves him is the one without a king. Has this country aking? It has a thousand kings and a million more that want to be. Howmany kings do you want to reign over you? How many are you going toaccept? 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 onenow: Weedon Moore's. He read at once the difference between Moore'svoice and this that followed. Moore's had been imploring in itsassertiveness, the desire to convince. The other, in the strangelanguage, 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 thescene. An automobile had halted on a slight elevation and in it stoodMoore and a taller man gesticulating as he spoke. And about them, like apulsing carpet lifted and stirred by a breeze of feeling, were the menJeff's instinct had smelled out. They were packed into a mass. And theywere silent. Weedon Moore began again. 

"Kill out this superstition of a country. Kill it out, I say. Kill outthis idea of going back to dead men for rules to live by. The dead aredead. Their Bibles and their laws are dead. There's more life in one ofyou men that has tasted it through living and suffering and beingoppressed than there is in any ten of their kings and prophets. They aredead, I tell you. We are alive. It was their earth while they lived onit. 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 Jeffunderstood 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 ortwo men turned as he moved and glanced at him, he seemed to rouse nouneasiness. 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, itseemed, coolness in this too warm adjuration. 

"Their symbol, " said Moore, "is the flag. They carry it into foreignlands. 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 ofthe industrial slave. Down with the flag. Our symbol is the sword. "

The voice of the interpreter, in an added passion, throbbed upon theclimbing period. Moore had moved him and, forgetful of himself, he wasdramatically ready to pass his ardour on. Jeff also forgot himself. Heclove like a wedge through the thin line before him, and leaped on therunning-board. 

"You fool, " he heard himself yelling at Moore, who in the insecurity ofhis tubbiness was jarred and almost overturned, "you're robbing them oftheir country. You're taking away the thing that keeps them fromfalling 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 wereinterrogatory syllables directed to the interpreter. Moore recoveredhimself. He gave a sharp sound of distaste, and then, assuming hiscivilised habit, said to Jeff in a voice of specious courtesy, yet, Jeffknew, 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 themthat he was a capitalist found out and punished?

"Tell and be damned, " he said. "See here!" He was addressing theinterpreter. "You understand English. Fair play. Do you take me? Fairplay is what English men and American men work for and fight for. It'sfair play to give me a chance to speak, and for you to tell these poordevils what I say. Will you?"

The man nodded. His white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. Jeff fanciedhis eyes gleamed, too. He was a swarthy creature and round his neck wasknotted a handkerchief, vivid red. Jeff, with a movement of the arm, crowded Moore aside. Moore submitted. Used, as he was, to being sweptout of the way, all the energies that might have been remonstrant in himhad combined in a controlling calm to serve him until the day when heshould be no longer ousted. Jeff spoke, and threw his voice, he hoped, to the outskirts of the crowd, ingenuously forgetting it was not lungshe wanted but a bare knowledge of foreign tongues. 

"This man, " said he, "tells you you've no country. Don't you let himlie to you. Here's your country under your feet. If you can't love itenough to die for it, go back to your own country, the one you were bornin, and love that, for God's sake. " He judged he had said enough to becarried in the interpreter's memory, and turned upon him. "Go on, " saidhe imperatively. "Say it. "

But even then he had no idea what the man would do. The atmosphere aboutthem was not thrilling in responsive sympathy. Silence had waited uponMoore, and this, Jeff could not help feeling, was silence of a differentspecies. But the interpreter did, slowly and cautiously, it seemed, convey his words. At least Jeff hoped he was conveying them. When hisvoice 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 notbig enough. Only a few of them are, the prophets and the great dead menhe thinks so little of. Dig up a tract of ground and call it yourcountry 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 awayand played upon. A man's country isn't the spot where he can get thebest money to put into his belly. His country is his country, just ashis mother is his mother. He can worship the Virgin Mary, but he loveshis mother best. "

Whether the name hit them like blasphemy, whether the interpreter caughtfire from it or Moore gave a signal, he could not tell. But suddenly hewas being hustled. He was pulled down from the car with a gentle yetrelentless force, was conscious that he was being removed and mustsubmit. There were sounds now, the quick syllables of the southernraces, half articulate to the uninstructed ear but full of idiom andpassion, and through his own silent struggle he was aware that theinterpreter was soothing, directing, and inexorably guiding the assault. They took him, a resistless posse of them, beyond the gap, and theautomobile followed slowly and passed him just outside. It halted, andMoore addressed him hesitatingly:

"I could take you back to town. "

Moore didn't want to say this, but he remembered Miss Amabel and the twocharming girls, all adoring Jeff, and his ever-present control bade himbe civilised. Jeff did not answer. He was full of a choking rage andblind desire for them to get their hands off him. Not in hisimprisonment even had he felt such debasement under control as whenthese lithe creatures hurried him along. Yet he knew then that his ragewas not against them, innocent servitors of a higher power. It wasagainst 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 theirprey. He felt as if he had been merely detained, gently on the whole, atthe point the master had designated, and looked about for theinterpreter. It seemed to him if he could have speech with that man hecould tell him in a sentence what Weedon Moore was, and charge him notto deliver these ignorant creatures of another race into his muckyhands. But if the interpreter was there he could not be distinguished. Jeff called, a word or two, not knowing what to say, and no oneanswered. The crowd that had been eagerly intent on a common purpose, toget him out of the debating place, split into groups. Individualsdetached themselves, silently and swiftly, and melted away. Jeff heardtheir footsteps on the road, and now the voices began, quietly but withan eager emphasis. He was left alone by the darkened field, for eventhe moon, as if she joined the general verdict, slipped under a cloud. 

Jeff stood a moment nursing, not his anger, but a clearheaded certaintythat something must be done. Something always had to be done to blockWeedon Moore. It had been so in the old days when Moore was notdangerous: only dirty. Now he was debasing the ignorant mind. He was ademagogue. The old never-formulated love for Addington came back to Jeffin a rush, not recognised as love an hour ago, only the carelessaffection of usage, but ready, he knew, to spring into something warmerwhen her dear old bulwarks were assailed. You don't usually feel aromantic passion for your mother. You allow her to feed you and bepatronised by you and stand aside to let victorious youth pass on. Butsee unworthy hands touching her worn dress--the hands of WeedonMoore!--and you snatch it from their grasp. 

Jeff still stood there thinking. This, the circus-ground was where heand the other boys had trysted in a delirious ownership of everypossible "show", where they had met the East and gloated on nature'spoor eccentricities. Now here he was, a man suddenly set in his purposeto deliver the old town from Weedon Moore. They couldn't suffer it, heand the rest of the street of solid mansions dating back to ancientdignities. These foreign children who had come to work for them shouldnot be bred in disbelief in Addington traditions which were as good asanything America had to offer. Jeff was an aristocrat from skin toheart, because he was sensitive, because he loved beauty and he didn'twant the other man to come too close; he didn't like tawdry ways topress upon him. But while he had been shut into the seclusion of his ownthoughts, these past years, he had learned something. He hadstrengthened passions that hardly knew they were alive until now eventsawoke them. One was the worship of law, and one was that savage desireof getting to the place where we love law so much that we welcomepunishment. He recalled himself from this dark journey back into hiscell, and threw up his head to the heavens and breathed in air. It wasthe air of freedom. Yet it was only the freedom of the body. If heforgot now the beauty of that austere goddess, the law, then was he morea prisoner than when he had learned her face in loneliness and pain. Hewalked out of the grounds and along the silent road, advised throughkeen memory, by sounds and scents, of spots he had always known, andwent into the town and home. There were lights, but for all the sight ofpeople Addington might have been abed. 

He opened the front door softly and out of the library Anne came at onceas if she had been awaiting him. 

"Oh, " she said, in a quick trouble breaking bounds, though gently, nowthere 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 forhim. 

"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 theway, 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 youhad gone. I found him there, shaking. He just said to me: 'I'll go tobed. ' So I helped him. That's all I know. "

Jeff felt an instant and annoyed compunction. He had dashed off, to thetune of his own wild mood, and left his father to the assaults ofemotions perhaps as overwhelming and with no young strength to meetthem. 

"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'sdoor. She looked pathetically tired and anxious. And so young: if shehad arranged herself artfully to touch the sympathies she couldn't havedone it to more effect. Her round arms were bare to the elbow, her handswere loosely clasped, and she was sitting, like a child, with her feetdrawn up under her on the rung of the chair. She looked at him in asolemn relief but, he saw with a relief of his own, no sensitiveness tohis 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 certaintythat 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 tonicbraced him. He opened the door of his father's room and went in. Thecolonel's voice came at once:

"That you, Jeff?"

"Yes, " said Jeff. He sat down by the bedside in the straight-backedchair 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 eyesbrightened, Jeff noted by the light of the shaded lamp. He was glad toget 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 ofcourtesy to the little watcher there. He came back to the bed, not witha creaking caution, but like a man bringing a man's rude solace. Hecould not believe his father was seriously undone. But, whatever was thematter, the colonel was glad to talk. Perhaps, loyal as he was, even hecould scarcely estimate his own desire to turn from soft indulgences tothe 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 thegood. Don't you worry. "

"Ah, but the last enemy isn't Death, " said the colonel wisely. "Don'tyou think it. The last enemy is Fear. Death's only the executioner. Feardelivers you over, and then Death has to take you, whether or no. ButFear is the arch enemy. "

Sane as he looked and spoke, this was rather impalpable, and Jeffreybegan to doubt his own fitness to deal with psychologic quibbles. Buthis 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 equalcandour. 

"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, "tillI'm punk. I can't stand a knockdown blow. I couldn't stand your goingaway. I went to bed. "

"Is my going a knockdown blow?"

There was something pathetic in hearing that, but pleasurable, too, in awarm, 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'drather go with you. I told you that. But it wouldn't do. I should beginto 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 anythinglike their mother. " Then he stopped, remembering she was not Jeff'smother, too. But Jeff knew all about his own mother, the speed and shineand bewildering impulse of her, and how she was adored. But nobodycould have been soothed and brooded over by her, that gallant fierycreature. Whatever she might have become if she had lived, love of herthen was a fight and a devotion, flowers and stars and dreams. "And itisn't a thing for me to take, this sort of attachment, Jeff. I ought togive it. They ought to be having the kind of time girls like. They oughtnot to be coddling an old man badly hypped. "

Jeff nodded here, comprehendingly. Yes, they did need the things girlslike: money, clothes, fun. But he vaulted away from that disquietingprospect, 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 clotheson, and I'll forage round and fish out cold hash or something, and we'llhave 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. Hisown was the harder part. He had to meet the tired, sweet servitorswithout and announce a man's fiat. There they were, Lydia still in herpatient attitude, and Anne on the landing, her head thrown back and thepure outline of her chin and throat like beauty carved in the air. Atthe opening of the door they were awake with an instant alertness. Lydia's feet came noiselessly to the floor, and Jeff understood, with apang of pity for her, that she had perched uncomfortably to keep herselfawake. This soft creature would never understand. He addressed himselfto Anne, who believed in the impeccable rights of man and could takeuncomprehended 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 ather, she knew she was not to pass. "I'll see to him. You two run off tobed. "

They were both regarding him with a pale, anxious questioning. ButAnne's look cleared. 

"Come, Lydia, " said she, and as Lydia, cramped with sleep, trudged afterher, she added wisely, "It'll be better for them both. "

When they were gone, Jeffrey did go down to the kitchen, rigid in theorder Mary Nellen always left. He entered boldly on a campaign ofruthless ravaging, found bread and cheese and set them out, and a roastmost attractive to the eye. He lighted candles, and then a lamp with agay piece of red flannel in its glass body, put there by Mary Nellen, who, though on Homeric knowledge bent, kept religiously all the ritualof home. The colonel's slippered step was coming down the stairs. Jeffrey went out into the hall and beckoned. He looked stealth andmischief, and the colonel grimaced wisely at him. They went into thekitchen and sat down to their meal like criminals. The colonel had toeat, in vying admiration of Jeff, ravenous from his day's walk. Whenthey drew back, Jeff pulled out his pipe. He was not an incessantsmoker, but in this first interval of his homecoming all smallindulgences 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 factis--Jeff, I'm nothing but a malingerer. I thought--my heart--"

"Very wise, " said Jeffrey, his eyes half-closed in a luxurious lightingup. "Very wise indeed. But just to-night--don't you think you'dbetter have a whiff to-night?" The colonel shook his head, but Jeff sentout an advance signal of blue smoke. "Where is it?" said he. 

"Oh, I suppose it's in my bureau drawer, " said the colonel, withimpatience. "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 admirablequiet, and put his hand on the old briarwood. From Anne's room he hearda low crooning. She was awake then, but with mind at ease or shewouldn't sing like that. He could imagine how Lydia had dropped off tosleep, 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 wasto look trouble in the face, and he returned to his father not sothoroughly 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 thethumb, indicating a resumed habit, caressing a smooth, warm boss. Thecolonel soberly but luxuriously lighted up, and they sat and puffed awhile in silence. Jeffrey drew up a chair for his father's feet andanother 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 anoutcast from the gang. 

"Everything, " said Jeffrey briefly. "And told of it, " he added. 

The colonel nodded. Jeffrey put Moore aside for later consideration, andmade up his mind pretty generously to talk things over. The habit of hislater years had been all for silence, and the remembered confidences ofthe time before had involved Esther. Of that sweet sorcery he would notthink. As he stood now, the immediate result of his disaster had been tocallous surfaces accessible to human intercourse and at the same timecause him, in the sensitive inner case of him, to thank the rulingpowers that he need never again, seeing how ravaging it is, give himselfaway. But now because his father had got to have new wine poured intohim, he was giving himself away, just as, on passionate impulse, he hadgiven himself away to Lydia. He put his question desperately, knowinghow 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 privatelycherishing. 

"Alston Choate--"

"I know, " said Jeffrey. "I sha'n't go to Choate. You know what Addingtonis. Before I knew it, I should be a cause. Can't you and I hatch upsomething?"

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. Whatyou've got you must save for the girls. "

The same doubt was in both their minds. Would Addington let him earn hisliving in the bald give and take of everyday commerce? Would it halfpatronise and half distrust him? He thought, from old knowledge of it, that Addington would behave perfectly but exasperatingly. It waspassionate in its integrity, but because he was born out of the besttraditions in it, a temporary disgrace would be condoned. If he opened ashop, Addington would give him a tithe of its trade, from duty and, asit would assuredly tell itself, for the sake of his father. But hedidn't want that kind of nursing. He was sick enough at the acceptedways of life to long for wildernesses, ocean voyages on rough liners, where every man is worked hard enough to let his messmate alone. He washurt, irremediably hurt, he knew, in what stands in us for theaffections. But here were affections still, inflexibly waiting. They hadto be reckoned with. They had to be nurtured and upheld, no matter howthe contacts of life hit his own skin. He tried vaguely, and still withangry difficulty, to explain himself. 

"I want to stand by you, father. But you won't get much satisfaction outof me. "

The colonel thought he should get all kinds of satisfaction. His glancetold that. How much of the contentment of it, Jeffrey wondered, with acynical indulgence for life as it is, came from tobacco and how muchfrom him?

"You see I'm not the chap I was, " he blundered, trying to open hisfather's eyes to the abysmal depth of his futility. 

"You're older, " said the colonel. "And--you'll let me say it, won'tyou, Jeff?" He felt very timid before his rough-tongued, perhapscoarsened 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 tookout his pipe, emptied it carefully and laid it down. 

"Father, " he said slowly, "I'm going to tell you the truth. When we'reyoung we're full of yeast. We know it all. We think we're going to do itall. But we're only seething and working inside. It's a dream, Isuppose. We live in it and we think we've got it all. But it's ahorribly 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 atsea as I was then. It's not the same turmoil, but it's a turmoil. I waspulled up short. I was given plenty of time to think. Well, Ithought--when I hadn't the nerve to keep myself from doing it. "

"You said some astonishing things in the prison paper, " his fatherventured. The whole thing seemed so gravely admirable to him--Jeff andthe prison as the public knew them--that he wished Jeff himself couldget comfort out of it. 

"Some few things I believe I settled, so far as I understand them. " Jeffwas frowning at the table where his hand beat an impatient measure. "Isaw things in the large. I saw how the nations--all of 'em, in livingunder present conditions--could go to hell quickest. That's what they'rebent on doing. And I saw how they could call a halt if they would. Buthow to start in on my own life, I don't know. You'd think I'd had timeenough to face the thing and lick it into shape. I haven't. I don't knowany more what to do than if I'd been born yesterday--on a newplanet--and not such an easy one. "

While the colonel had bewailed his own limitations a querulousdiscontent had ivoried his face. Now it had cleared and left the facesedate 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. Youdon't care a hang about yourself. "

Jeffrey debated a moment. It was true. His troublesome self did not seemto 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 hispipe away in the drawer. He left it on the mantel, conveniently athand. 

XV

Next morning Anne, after listening at the colonel's door and hearingnothing, decided not to tap. She went on downstairs to be saluted by asound she delighted in: a low humming. It came from the library whereher father was happily and most villainously attacking the only song heknew: "Lord Lovell. " Anne's heart cleared up like a smiling sky. Shewent in to him, and he, at the window, his continued humming like thespinning of a particularly eccentric top, turned and greeted her, and heseemed to be very well and almost gay. He showed no sign of evenremembering yesterday, and when presently Jeffrey came in and thenLydia, they all behaved, Anne thought, like an ordinary family with noqueer problems round the corner. 

After breakfast Jeffrey turned to Lydia and said quite simply: "Comeinto the orchard and walk a little. "

But to Lydia, Anne saw, with a mild surprise, his asking must have meantsomething not so simple. Her face flushed all over, and a mistysweetness, like humility and gratitude, came into her eyes. Jeffrey, too, caught that morning glow, only to find his task the sadder. How tosay things to her! and after all, what was it possible to say? They wentdown into the orchard, and Lydia, by his side, paced demurely. He sawshe was trying to fit her steps to his impatient stride, and shortenedup on it. He felt very tender toward Lydia. At last, when it seemed asif 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 withthat wonderful, exasperating look, half humility, and waited. It seemedto her he must have a great deal to say. "I don't believe it's possiblefor you--for a girl--to understand what it would be for a man in myplace to come home and find everybody so sweet and kind. I mean you--andAnne. "

Now he felt nothing short of shame. But she took him quickly enough. Hedidn't have to go far along the shameful road. She glanced round at himagain, and, knowing what the look must be, he did not meet it. He couldfancy well the hurt inquiry leaping into those innocent eyes. 

"What have I done, " she asked, and his mind supplied the accusatoryinference, "that you don't love me any more?"

He hastened to answer. 

"You've been everything that's sweet and kind. " He added, whether wiselyor not he could not tell, what seemed to him the truth: "I haven't gothold of myself. I thought it would be an easy stunt to come back andstay a while and then go away and get into something permanent. But it'sno such thing. Lydia, I don't understand people very well. I don'tunderstand 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, andthat new sensation of its actually bleeding; but she had a fine courgeof her own, and she knew grief over that inexplicable pang must be putaway until the sight of it could not trouble him. 

"I'm going to ask you a question, " said Jeffrey shortly, in hisdistaste for asking it at all. "Do you want me to take father away withme, 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 wassomething dauntless in her, something that could endure. He felt for hera quick passion of comradeship and the worship men have for women whoseem to them entirely beautiful and precious enough to be saved fromdisillusion. 

"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 incomfort--wouldn't you and Anne like to have some life of your own? Youhaven't had any. Like other girls, I mean. "

She threw her own question back to him with a cool and clear decision hehadn'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 hideousimage 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'sonly 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 dothings other fellows couldn't. Because I was brilliant. Because I knewwhen to strike. Because I wasn't afraid. Well, it wasn't so. I muddledthe whole thing. And the consequence is, I've got to keep on beingmuddled. It's as if you began a chemical experiment wrong. You might goon 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 adirectness he thought splendid. 

"Yes. It would be infernally hard. And what are you going to get out ofit? Go away, Lydia. Live your life, you and Anne, and marry decent menand 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 theuniverse had thrown them together, and she was letting that one minuteseal her unending devotion. But her staunchness made it easier to talkto 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 onseeming 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 thoughtsabout you--because there's Esther. Oh, I know there's Esther. But Ididn't mean to be wicked. And you didn't. It was so--so above things. Soabove everything. "

Her voice trembled too much for her to manage it. He glanced at her andsaw her lip was twitching violently, and savagely thought a man sometimewould have a right to kiss it. And yet what did he care? To kiss awoman's lips was a madness or a splendour that passed. He knew theremight be, almost incredibly, another undying passion that did last, madeup of endurance and loyalty and the free rough fellowship between men. This girl, this soft yet unyielding thing, was capable of that. But shemust not squander it on him who was bankrupt. Yet here she was, in herhouse of dreams, tended by divine ministrants of the ideal: the oldlying servitors that let us believe life is what we make it and deaf tothe creatures raging there outside who swear it is made irrevocably forus. He was sure they lied, these servitors in the house of maidendreams. 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 alwayshave. To make things nice for you in the house. I don't believe you andFarvie'd like it at all without Anne and me. "

She was announcing, he saw, quite plainly, that she didn't want aromantic pact with him. They had met, just once, for an instant, in themeeting of their lips, and Lydia had simply taken that shred oftriumphant life up to the mountain-top to weave her nest of it: a nestwhere she was to warm all sorts of brooding wonders for him and for herfather. There was nothing to be done with her in her innocence, herignorance, her beauty of devotion. 

"It doesn't make any difference about me, " he said. "I'm out of therunning in every possible way. But it makes a lot of difference aboutyou and Anne. "

"It doesn't make any difference to Anne, " said Lydia astutely, "becauseshe'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 toheaven. 

"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 fiercelittle barbarian might even find it better to eat bitter bread with herown 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 Ican't talk any more. I told Mary Nellen I'd dust while they do thesilver. "

The atmosphere of a perfectly conventional living was about them. Jeffrey had to adjure himself to keep awake to the difficulties he alonehad made. He had come out to confess to her the lawlessness of his mindtoward her, and she was deciding merely to go on living with him and herfather, which meant, in the first place, dusting for Mary Nellen. Theywalked along the orchard in silence, and Jeffrey, with relief, also tooka side track to the obvious. Absently his eyes travelled along theorchard's level length, and his great thought came to him. The grounddid it. The earth called to him. The dust rose up impalpably and spoketo 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 tragicplans 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. Therelief of hearing that homespun plan had chilled her blood, and she wasfaint for an instant with the sickness of hearty youth that only knowsit feels odd to itself and concludes the strangeness is of the soul. Butshe 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, wasin the library. Anne looked excited and the colonel, there also, quitepleasurably stirred. Lydia was hardly within the door when Anne threwthe news at her. 

"Dancing classes!"

"At my house, " said Miss Amabel. She put a warm hand on Lydia's shoulderand looked down at her admiringly: wistfully as well. "Can anything, "the look said, "be so young, so unthinkingly beautiful and have a rightto its own richness? How could we turn this dower into the treasury ofthe poor and yet not impoverish the child herself?" "We'll have anItalian 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 atmoney. If the classes were for the poor, they proposed giving their timeas Miss Amabel gave her house. But she disposed of that with aconclusive gravity, and a touch, Jeffrey was amused to see, of theAddington manner. Miss Amabel was pure Addington in all her unconsideredimpulses. She wanted to give, not to receive. Yet if you reminded herthat giving was the prouder part, she would vacate her ground ofprivilege with a perfect simplicity sweet to see. When she got upJeffrey rose with her, and though he took the hand she offered him, hesaid:

"I'm going along with you. "

And they were presently out in Addington streets, walking togetheralmost as it might have been when they walked from Sunday school and shewas "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 instinctiveremonstrance, she struck it the more forcibly on the sidewalk and had tostop 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 tosay some things myself. You know, Jeffrey, you're very unjust toWeedon. "

"No, I'm not, " said Jeff. 

"Alston Choate is, too. "

"Choate and I know him, better than you or any other woman can in athousand 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 whenhe 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, Choateand I. " They were climbing the rise to her red brick house, large andbeautiful and kindly. It really looked much like Miss Amabel herself, alittle unkempt, but generous and belonging to an older time. They wentin and Jeffrey, while she took off her bonnet and gloves, stood lookingabout 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 morethan 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 roomtogether, which also had not changed, and Jeff took his accustomed placeon the sofa under the portrait of the old judge, Miss Amabel'sgrandfather. 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 bemayor 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 renewedattention, "have you the slightest idea what kind of things Moore ispouring 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 strongprejudice here against labour meetings. So Weedon very wisely talks tothe men when he can get them alone. "

"Why wisely? Why do you say that?"

"Because we want to spread knowledge without rousing prejudice. Thenthere 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 ofgreat joy. "

"Don't get on horseback, dear, " he said, inexorably, but fondly. "I'm aplain 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 inmisery all these centuries because he hasn't known his own power? It'slike a man's dying of thirst and not guessing the water is just insidethe rock and the rock is ready to break. He's only to look and there arethe lines of cleavage. " She sought in the soft silk bag that was ever ather hand, took out paper and pen and jotted down a line. 

"What are you writing there?" Jeffrey asked, with a certainty that ithad something to do with Moore. 

"What I just said, " she answered, with a perfect simplicity. "Aboutlines of cleavage. It's a good figure of speech, and it's something themen 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 tenderestlove of her, "you are a perfectly unspoiled piece of work from the handof God Almighty. But if you're running with Weedon Moore, you're goingto 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'sdestroying. He's giving those fellows an idea of this country that'sgoing to make them hate it, trample it--" He paused as if the emotionthat choked him made him the more impatient of what caused it. 

"That's it, " said she, her own face settling into a mournfulacquiescence. "We've earned hate. We must accept it. Till we can turn itinto love. "

"But he's preaching discontent. "

"Ah, Jeffrey, " said she, "there's a noble discontent. Where should we bewithout it?"

He got up, and shook his head at her, smilingly, tenderly. She had madehim feel old, and alien to this strange new day. 

"You're impossible, dear, " said he, "because you're so good. You've onlyto see right things to follow them and you believe everybody's thesame. "

"But why not?" she asked him quickly. "Am I to think myself better thanthey are?"

"Not better. Only more prepared. By generations of integrity. Think ofthat old boy up there. " He glanced affectionately at the judge, a friendsince his childhood, when the painted eyes had followed him about theroom and it had been a kind of game to try vainly to escape them. "Takea mellow soil like your inheritance and the inheritance of a lot of 'emhere 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 determinationto play a square game. Not to gorge, but make the pile go round. Plantin 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 factorywall. It's the darkness of a mine. "

"Exactly. Knock a window in here and there, but don't chuck the reins ofgovernment into the poor chaps' hands and tell 'em to drive to thedevil. "

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 manhandletill 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 andthe rest of us eat the bread they make for us. "

"But, good God, Amabel! there isn't any curse on work. If your Bibletells 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 seethose people. I hear them crying out to me. "

"Well, it's uncomfortable. But it's no reason for your delivering themover to demagogues like Weedon Moore. "

"He's not a demagogue. "

There was a sad bravado in her smile, and he answered with an obstinacyhe 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 hewouldn't sit down at the same table with Weedie, and he wouldn't letyou. "

She followed him to the door; her comfortable hand was on his arm. 

"Weedon will begin his campaign this fall, " she said. Evidently she feltbound 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. Theyconsulted Denny as to recognised ways of persuading the earth, andsummoned a ploughman and his team, and all day Jeffrey walked behind theplough, not holding it, for of that art he was ignorant, but in pureadmiration. He asked questions about planting, and the ploughman, beingdeaf, answered in a forensic bellow, so that Addington, passing thebrick wall in its goings to and fro, heard, and communicated to those athome that Jeffrey Blake, dear fellow, was going back to the land. Jeffrey did, as he had cynically foreseen, become a cause. All personsof social significance came to call, and were, without qualification, kind. Sometimes he would not see them, but Anne one day told him howwrong he was. If he hid himself he put a burden on his father, who stoodin the breach, and talked even animatedly, renewing old acquaintancewith a dignified assumption of having nothing to ignore. But when thevisitors were gone the red in his cheek paled something too much, andAnne 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 querywhether he was going into business by the facer that he and his fatherhad gone into it. They were market-gardening. The visitors regrettedthat, so far as Addington manners would permit, because they hadnoticed the old orchard was being ploughed, and that of course meantbeans at least. Some of the older ladies recalled stories of dear DoctorBlake's pacing up and down beside the wall. They believed you could evenfind traces of the sacred path; but one day Jeffrey put an end to thatcredulous ideal by saying you couldn't now anyway, since it had beenploughed. Then, he saw, he hurt Addington and was himself disquieted. Years ago he had been amused when he hit hard against it and they flewapart equally banged; now he was grown up, whether to his advantage ornot, and it looked to him as if Addington ought by this time to be grownup too. 

It was another Addington altogether from the one he had left, though asurface of old tradition and habit still remained to clothe it in asemblance of past dignity and calm. Not a public cause existed in theknown world but Addington now had a taste of it, though no one but MissAmabel did much more than talk with fervour. The ladies who had oncegone delicately out to teas and church, as sufficient intercourse withthis world and preparation for the next, now had clubs and classes wherethey pounced on subjects not even mentionable fifty years ago, and shookthem to shreds in their well-kept teeth. There was sprightly talk aboutclass-consciousness, and young women who, if their incomes had beendissipated by inadequate trusteeship, would once have taught schoolaccording to a gentle ideal, now went away and learned to be socialworkers, and came back to make self-possessed speeches at the Woman'sClub and present it with new theories to worry. This all went on underthe sanction of Addington manners, and kept concert pitch rather high. 

On all topics but one Addington agreed to such an extent that discussionreally became more like axioms chanted in unison; but when it came towoman suffrage society silently but exactly split. There were those whowould stick at nothing, even casting a vote. There were those who saidcasting a vote was unwomanly, and you couldn't possibly leave the babylong enough to do it. Others among the antis were reconciled to itscoming, if it came slowly enough not to agitate us. "Of course, " saidone of these, a Melvin who managed her ample fortune with the acumen ofa financier, "it will come sometime. But we are none of us ready. Wemust delay it as long as we can. " So she and the like-minded drove intothe country round and talked about preventing the extension of thesuffrage to women until hard-working, meagre-living people who had notbegun to think much about votes, save as a natural prerogative of man, thought about them a great deal, and incidentally learned to organiseand lobby, and got a very good training for suffrage when it shouldcome. It did no harm, nor did the fervour of the other side do good. Thetwo 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 someoccult sense of decorum, was tabu. If an anti were setting forth herviews when a suffragist entered the room she instantly ceased and beganto talk about humidity or the Balkans. A suffragist would no more havemarshalled her arguments for the overthrow of an equal than she wouldhave corrected a point of etiquette. But each went out with zeal intoNew England villages for the conversion of social underlings. 

When they elected Jeffrey into a cause they did it with a rush, and theyalso elected his wife. Through her unwelcoming door poured a stream ofvisitors, ostensibly to call on Madame Beattie, but really, as Esthersaw with bitterness, to recommend this froward wife to live with herhusband. Feeling ran very high there. Addington, to a woman, knewexactly the ideal thing for Esther to have done. She should have"received" him--that was the phrase--and helped him build up hislife--another phrase. This they delicately conveyed to her in acceptedinnuendos Addington knew how to handle. Esther once told Aunt Patriciathere 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 ofthe old stock who, with an arrogant induration in their own position, out of which no attacking humour could deliver them, held, as theyjudged, the contract to put questions. These it was who would ask Estherover 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 andthe step-children stay on there?" And the other women, of a morecircuitous method or a more sensitive touch, would listen and, Estherfelt sure, discuss afterward what the inquisitors had found out: with anamused horror of the inquisitors and a grateful relish of the result. Esther sometimes thought she must cry aloud in answer; but though aflush came into her face and gave her an added pathos, she managed, in away of gentle obstinacy, to say nothing, and still not to offend. AndMadame Beattie sat by, never saving her, as Esther knew she might, outof her infernal cleverness, but imperturbably and lightly amused andsmoking cigarettes all over the tea things. As a matter of fact, the teathings and their exquisite cloth were unpolluted, but Esther sawfiguratively the trail of smoke and ashes, like a nicotian Vesuvius, over the home. She still hated cigarettes, which Addington had not yetaccepted as a feminine diversion, though she had the slight comfort ofknowing it forgave in Madame Beattie what it would not have toleratedin an Addingtonian. "Foreign ways, " the ladies would remark to oneanother. "And she really is a very distinguished woman. They say shevisits everywhere abroad. "

Anne and Lydia were generally approved as modest and pretty girls; andMiss Amabel's classes in national dances became an exceedinglyinteresting feature of the town life. Anne and Lydia were in thisdancing scheme all over. They were enchanted with it, the strangenessand charm of these odd citizens of another world, and made friends withlittle workwomen out of the shops, and went home with them to see oldpieces of silver and embroidery, and plan pageants--this in the limitedEnglish common to them. Miss Amabel, too, was pleased, in her wistfulway that always seemed to be thanking you for making things come outdecently well. She had one big scheme: the building up of homespuninterests between old Addington and these new little aliens who didn'tknow the Addington history or its mind and heart. 

One night after a dancing class in her dining-room the girls went, withpretty good-nights, and Anne with them. She was hurrying down town onsome forgotten errand, and refused Lydia's company. For Lydia was tired, and left alone with Miss Amabel, she settled to an hour's laziness. Sheknew Miss Amabel liked having her there, liked her perhaps better thanAnne, who was of the beautiful old Addington type and not so piquing. Lydia had, across her good breeding, a bizarre other strain, notbohemian, not gipsy, but of a creature who is and always will be, evenbeyond youth, new to life. There were few conventions for Lydia. She didnot instinctively follow beaten paths. If the way looked feasible andpleasant, she cut across. 

"You're a little tired, " said Miss Amabel, hesitating. She knew this wasviolating 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 shewould. 

"No. But you've seemed tired a good deal of the time lately. Doesanything worry you?"

"No, " said Lydia soberly. She looked absent-minded, as if she soughtabout 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. ButFarvie sleeps and eats and smokes. And laughs! That's Jeffrey. He canalways make Farvie laugh. " She said the last rather wonderingly, becauseshe knew Jeffrey hadn't, so far as she had seen him, much light give andtake and certainly no hilarity of his own. "But I suppose, " she addedwisely, as she had many times to herself, "Farvie's so pleased even tolook at him and think he's got him back. "

Miss Amabel disposed a pillow more invitingly on the old sofa that hadspacious hollows in it, and Lydia obeyed the motion and lay down. It wasnot, she thought, because she was tired. Only it would please MissAmabel. 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 ofyouth to wash the colour out of it. She felt an impulse now to giveherself 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 nonecessity but the tranquillity induced by its rhythmic sway. 

"Oh, no. About Jeffrey. Didn't you know we meant to clear him, Anne andI?"

"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 savesomebody else. "

"Not exactly to save her, " said Miss Amabel. "She wouldn't have beentried, 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 morallyso. "

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 withhurried fingers. At least if she could talk about it with some one whowasn't Anne with whom she had talked for years knowing exactly what Annewould say at every point, it seemed as if she were getting, even at asnail'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 outand sold his shares while they were up, and let the crash come onJeffrey 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 prettysulkiness. "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 ontrying to--to place the shares--and when Jeffrey went under he wassafely 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, " shesaid. "You see, dear, there are things the law doesn't take intoaccount. It can't. You believe in Jeffrey. So do I. But I think you'llhave 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 mindto 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 twosisters were less than sisters to him. What she herself knew, they toomust have learned; out of this believing candour she spoke. 

"You mustn't forget there was the necklace, and Madame Beattie expectingto 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 soundedlike repeated onslaughts, a mental pounce, to shake it out of her. "Whatdo 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 totell me or I shall go crazy. "

"We must both control ourselves, " said Miss Amabel, with a furtherretreat 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 tellyou. "

Lydia ran out of the room. There was no other word for the quickness ofher going. She fled like running water, and having worn no hat, shefound herself bareheaded in the street, hurrying on to Esther's. Aninstinct told her she could only do her errand, make her assault, itseemed, on those who knew what she did not, if she never paused to weighthe difficulties: her hatreds, too, for they had to be weighed. Lydiawas sure she hated Madame Beattie and Esther. She would not willinglyspeak to them, she had thought, after her last encounters. But now shewas letting the knocker fall on Esther's door, and had asked thediscreet maid with the light eyelashes, who always somehow had an air ofsecret knowledge and amusement, if Madame Beattie were at home, and gaveher name. The maid, with what seemed to Lydia's raw consciousness anironical courtesy, invited her into the library and left her there inits twilight tranquillity. Lydia stood still, holding one of herpathetically small, hard-worked hands over her heart, and shortly, toher gratitude, Sophy was back and asked her to go up to Madame Beattie'sroom. 

The maid accompanying her, Lydia went, with her light step, afraid ofitself lest it turn coward, and in the big dark room at the back of thehouse, its gloom defined by the point of light from a shaded readingcandle, she was left, and stood still, almost wishing for Sophy whosefootfalls lessened on the stairs. There were two bits of light in theroom, the candle and Madame Beattie's face. Madame Beattie had taken offher toupée, and for Lydia she had not troubled to put it on. She lay onthe bed against pillows, a down quilt drawn over her feet, regardless ofthe 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 eyeglasseswith it, and turned the candle so that the light from the reflector fellon Lydia's face. 

"I wasn't sure which girl it was, " she said, in a tone of mildgood-nature. "It's not the good one. It's you, mischief. Come and sitdown. "

Madame Beattie did not apologise for giving audience in her bedchamber. In the old royal days before the downfall of her kingdom she hadaccorded it to greater than Lydia French. Lydia's breath came so fastnow that it hurt her. She stepped forward, but she did not take the lowchair which really had quite a comfortable area left beyond MadameBeattie's corset and stockings. She stood there in the circle of lightand 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 thatwill help Jeff. "

She broke down here, and cried bitterly. Madame Beattie lay therelooking at her, at first with sharp eyes narrowed, as if she ratherdoubted whose emissary Lydia might be. Then her face settled into anastonished yet astute calm and wariness. 

"You'll have to sit down, " said she. "It's a long story. " So Lydia sankupon the zone left by the corset and stockings. "Who's been talking toyou?" asked Madame Beattie: but Lydia looked at her and dumbly shook herhead. "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. Butshe controlled herself. If she meant to enter on the task of exoneratingJeffrey, she must, she knew, make herself impervious to snubs. 

"Anne and I are doing all we can to help Jeffrey, " she said. "He doesn'tknow 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 toknow. "

Madame Beattie chuckled. Her worn yellowed face broke into satiricallines, hateful ones, Lydia thought. She was like a jeering unpleasantperson 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 thedusk about them, and Lydia sitting rapt in expectation while MadameBeattie's yellowed face lay upon the obscurity, an amazing portraitureagainst the dark. It was a picture of a perfect consistency, of youthand innocence and need coming to the sybil for a reading of the leavesof life. 

"You see, my dear, " said Madame Beattie, "years ago I had a necklacegiven me--diamonds. " She said it with emotion even. No one ever heardher rehearse her triumphs on the lyric stage. They were the foundationof such dignity as her life had known; but the gewgaws time had flung ather she did like, in these lean years, to finger over. "It was given meby a Royal Personage. He had to do a great many clever things to getahead 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. MadameBeattie's eyes narrowed slightly. You could see what she had been in theday of her power. 

"He had to, " said she, with an admiringly dramatic simplicity. "I wantedit. "

"But--" began Lydia, and Madame Beattie put up a small hand with agesture of rebuttal. 

"Well, time went on, and he needed the necklace back. However, thatdoesn't belong to the story. Some years ago, just before your Jeff gotinto trouble, I came over here to the States. I was singing then more orless. " A concentrated power, of even a noble sort, came into her face. There was bitterness too, for she had to remember how disastrous aventure it had been. "I needed money, you understand. I couldn't havegot an audience over there. I thought here they might come to hearme--to say they'd heard me--the younger generation--and see my jewels. Ihadn't many left. I'd sold most of them. Well, I was mistaken. Icouldn't get a house. The fools!" Scorn ate up her face alive and openedit out, a sneering mask. They were fools indeed, she knew, who would notstir the ashes of such embers in search of one spark left. "I'm a verystrong woman. But I rather broke down then. I came here to Esther. Shewas the only relation I had, except my stepsister, and she was offtravelling. Susan was always ashamed of me. She went to Europe onpurpose. Well, I came here. And Esther wished I was at the bottom of thesea. But she liked my necklace, and she stole it. "

Esther, as Lydia had seen her sitting in a long chair and eating candiedfruit, had been a figure of such civilised worth, however odious, thatLydia 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 coolnessof 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 waswhy he wasn't sorry to go to jail. If he'd stayed out there was thequestion of the necklace. And Esther. He didn't know what to do withher. "

"But he made her give it back, " said Lydia, out of agonised certaintythat 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 ofyouth and age confronting each other was of the sybil dealing inexorablehurts and youth anguished in the face of them. 

"She said she'd lost it, " Madame Beattie went on, in almost chucklingenjoyment of her tale. "She said it had bewitched her. That was trueenough. She'd gone to New York. She came back by boat. Crazy thing for awoman to do. And she said she stayed on deck late, and stood by the railand took the necklace out of her bag to hold it up in the moonlight. Andit slipped out of her hands. "

"Into the water?"

"She said so. "

"You don't believe it. " Lydia read that clearly in the contemptuous oldface. 

"Well, now, I ask you, " said Madame Beattie, "was there ever such asilly tale? A young woman of New England traditions--yes, they'reridiculous, but you've got to reckon with them--she comes home on a FallRiver boat and doesn't even stay in her cabin, but hangs round on decksand plays with priceless diamonds in the moonlight. Why, it's enough tomake the cat laugh. "

Madame Beattie, in spite of her cosmopolitan reign, was at least localenough to remember the feline similes Lydia put such dependence on, andshe 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 inNew York perhaps. Don't ask me. "

"But don't you care?" cried Lydia, all of a heat of wonder--terror alsoat melodramatic thieving here in simple Addington. 

"I can care about things without screaming and sobbing, " said MadameBeattie briefly. "Though I sobbed a little at the time. I was a gooddeal unstrung from other causes. But of course I laid it before Jeff, asher husband--"

"He must have been heartbroken. "

"Well, he was her husband. He was responsible for her, wasn't he? I toldhim I wouldn't expose the creature. Only he'd have to pay me for thenecklace. "

The yellow-white face wavered before Lydia. She was trying to make herbrain accept the raw material Madame Beattie was pouring into it andevolve 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 inby helping herself to my necklace. He turned crazy over it. He hadn'tenough 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 subscribedfor his mines, you know, or whatever they were--and that minute therewas a panic. And the courts, or whatever it was, got hold of him forusing the mails for fraudulent purposes or whatever, and he lost hishead. And that's all there was about it. "

Lydia's thoughts were racing so fast it seemed to her that she--someinner 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 mighthave 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 wasgoing to. But he'd encouraged me to come on my concert tour, and whenthat 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 fittedin. 

"But you've come back here, " she said, incredulous that things as theyactually were could supplement the foolish tale Madame Beattie mighthave stolen out of a silly book. "You think Esther did such a thing asthat, and yet you're here with her in this house. "

"That's why I'm here, " said Madame Beattie patiently. "Jeff's backagain, and the necklace hasn't been fully paid for. I've kept my word tohim. I haven't exposed his wife, and yet he hasn't recognised my notdoing it. "

The vision of Jeffrey fleeing before the lash of this implacabletaskmaster was appalling to Lydia. 

"But he can't pay you, " said she. "He's no money. Not even to settlewith his creditors. "

"That's it, " said Madame Beattie. "He's got to make it. And I'm hisfirst 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 inthat absurd garden. "

"And when you think he has, you'll tell him?"

"Why, of course. " Madame Beattie reached for her book and smoothed thepages open with a beautiful hand. "It'll do him good, too. Bring him outof thinking he's a man of destiny, or whatever it is he thinks. You tellhim. I daresay you've got some influence with him. That's why I've goneinto it with you. "

"But you said you promised him not to tell all this about Esther. Andyou've told me. "

"That's why. Get him to work. Spur him up. Talk about his creditors. Nowrun away. I want to read. "

XVII

Lydia did run away and really ran, home, to see if the dear surroundingsof her life were intact after all she had heard. Since this temporaryseclusion in a melodramatic tale, she almost felt as if she should neveragain see the vision of Mary Nellen making cake or Anne brushing herlong hair and looking like a placid saint. The library was dim, but sheheard interchanging voices there, and knew Jeffrey and his father werein tranquil talk. So she sped upstairs to Anne's room, and there Annewas actually brushing her hair and wearing precisely that look ofevening peace Lydia had seen so many times. 

"I thought I'd go to bed early, " she said, laying down the brush andgathering round her hair to braid it. "Why, Lyd!"

It was a hot young messenger invading her calm. Anne looked like onewho, the day done, was placidly awaiting night; but Lydia was the dayitself, 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 mightthink of a thing like this, finally with dragging utterance, for hervitality was gone; and at the end, challenging Anne with a glance, sheturned cold: for it came over her that Anne did not believe her. 

Anne began braiding her hair again. During Lydia's incredible story shehad let it slip from her hand. And Lydia could see the fingers thatbraided 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 likeher. "

"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 hertalk. Sometimes I hated her. But I understand her somehow. And she'sclean. Really she is. It's the kind of clothes she wears. " Lydia, to herown surprise at this tragic moment, giggled a little here. MadameBeattie, when in full fig, as she had first seen her, looked to her likepictures 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 werein her place and felt as she does, I would, too. "

Anne, with an air of now being ready for bed, threw the finished braidover her back. She was looking at Lydia with her kind look, but, Lydiacould also see, compassionately. 

"But, Lyd, " she said, "the reason I call her a dreadful old woman isthat she's told you all this rigmarole. It makes me quite hot. Shesha'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 themcomfortable, but she had no appetite for the incredible. "Do you supposeEsther 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 asbad. But stealing, Lyd! Why, think! Esther's a lady. "

"Ladies are just like anybody else, " said Lydia sulkily. She thought shemight have to consider that when she was alone, but at this moment theworld was against her and she had to catch up the first generality shecould find. 

"And for a necklace to be so valuable, " said Anne, "valuable enough forJeff 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 andthousands of dollars, and so do pearls. "

"Why, yes, " said Anne, "royal jewels or something of that sort. But adiamond 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 stampher foot or scream. 

"Why, you simpleton!" said she. 

"Lydia!" Anne threw in, the only stop-gap she could catch at in heramaze. This was her "little sister", but of a complexion she had neverseen. 

"Don't you know what kind of a person Madame Beattie is? Why, she's aprincess. She's more than a princess. She's had kings and emperorswallowing round the floor after her, begging to kiss her hand. "

Anne looked at her. Lydia afterward, in her own room, thought, with agale of hysterical laughter, "She just looked at me. " And Anne couldn'tfind a word to crush the little termagant. Everything that seemed topertain was either satirical, as to ask, "Did she tell you so?" orcompassionate, implying cerebral decay. But she did venture thecompassion. 

"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 fashionshe had in moments of triumph, tooting through closed lips, like atrumpet, the measures of a march. In half an hour Anne followed her, tolisten at her door. Lydia was silent. Anne hoped she was asleep. 

In the morning there was the little termagant again with that sametriumph on her face, talking more than usual at the breakfast table, andfoolishly, as she hadn't since Jeffrey came. It had always beenunderstood that Lydia had times of foolishness; but it had seemed, afterJeffrey appeared among them clothed in tragedy, that everything would behenceforth on a dignified, even an austere basis. But here she was, chaffing the colonel and chattering childish jargon to Anne. Jeffreylooked at her, first with a tolerant surprise. Then he smiled. Seeingher so light-hearted he was pleased. This was a Lydia he approved of. Heneed neither run clear of her poetic emotions nor curse himself forcalling on them. He went out to his hoeing with an unformulated ideathat the tension of social life had let up a little. 

Lydia did no dusting of tables or arranging of flowers in a vase. By ahand 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 washigh. She looked prodigiously excited, and as if something was sosplendid it could hardly be true. And then, as Anne continued to stareat her with last night's stare, she added, not as if she launched athunderbolt, but as giving Anne something precious that would please hervery 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 turnedaway. 

"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, followinghelplessly 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 thecustoms of Addington, she had put on her head the littlewhite-rose-budded hat she had snatched from the hall and fiercely pinnedit, and she was walking, though swiftly, in great decorum to MadisonStreet where the bank was and the post-office and the best stores, andupstairs in the great Choate building, the office of Alston Choate. Lydia tapped at the office door, but no one answered. Then she began todislike her errand, and if it had not been for the confounding of Anne, perhaps she would have gone home. She tapped again and hurt herknuckles, and that brought her courage back. 

"Come in, " called a voice, much out of patience, it seemed. She openedthe 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 hadopened his mail and dictated half a dozen letters, and the stenographer, in another room, was writing them out. He looked up under a frowningbrow, 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 inthe attitude of conventional deference, began to feel proper supremacy. She spoke with a demure dignity of which the picturesque value was wellknown 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 hadno 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 hehad taken the opposite one, that they were in the technical position forinquisitor and victim. He waited scrupulously, and when she had seatedherself, also sat down. 

"Now, " said he. 

It was gravely said, and reconciled Lydia somewhat to the hardness ofher 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 waswistful in it. She hesitated in her beginning. 

"I understand, " she said, "that everything I say to you will be inconfidence. O Mr. Choate!" she implored him, with a sudden breaking ofher self-possession, "you wouldn't tell, would you?"

Alston Choate did not allow a glint to lighten the grave kindliness ofhis glance. Perhaps he felt no amusement; she was his client and verysweet. 

"Never, " said he, in the manner of an uncle to a child. "Tell meanything you like. I shall respect your confidence. "

"I saw Madame Beattie last night, " said Lydia; and she went on to tellwhat Madame Beattie had said. She warmed to it, and being of a dramatictype, she coloured the story as Madame Beattie might have done. Therewas a shade of cynicism here, a tang of worldliness there; and itsounded like the hardest fact. But when she came to Esther, she saw hisglance quicken and fasten on hers the more keenly, and when she told himMadame Beattie believed the necklace had not been lost at all, he waslooking at her with astonishment even. 

"You say--" he began, and made her rehearse it all again in snatches. Hecross-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 twoor three times and she felt excited and breathless and greatly fagged bythe strain of saying the same thing in different ways, she saw in hisface 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, andthen threw down the paper knife he had been bending while she talked. Itwas 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 wasin 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, withlifted glance:

"Esther?"

"Yes. Mrs. Jeffrey Blake. "

"She took the necklace, " said Lydia. She spoke with the dull obstinacythat made Anne shake her sometimes and then kiss her into kindness, shewas so pretty. 

But Alston Choate, she saw, was not going to find it a road toprettiness. He was after the truth like a dog on a scent, and he didn'tthink he had it yet. 

"Madame Beattie, " he said, "tells you she believes that Esther--" hisvoice slipped caressingly on the word with the lovingness of usage, andLydia saw he called her Esther in his thoughts--"Madame Beattie tellsyou she believes that Esther did this--this incredible thing. "

The judicial aspect fell away from him, and the last words carried onlythe man's natural distaste. Lydia saw now that whether she was believedor 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 oncereckless and astute. "Esther's just the woman to take a necklace, andMadame Beattie's just the woman to tell you she's taken it. "

"Miss Lydia, " said Choate gravely, "I'm bound to warn you in advancethat 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 ifthey're true. And you needn't try to mix me up by your law terms, for Idon'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 herbecause she didn't know any better. "I am being very unprofessionalindeed. And I still advise you, in plain language, not to draw that sortof inference about a lady--" There he hesitated. 

"About Esther?" she inquired viciously. 

"Yes, " said he steadily, "about Mrs. Jeffrey Blake. She is agentlewoman. "

So Anne had said: "Esther is a lady. " For the moment Lydia felt moreimbued with the impartiality of the law than both of them. Esther'sbeing a lady had, she thought, nothing whatever to do with her stealinga necklace, if she happened to like necklaces. She considered herself alady, but she could also see herself, under temptation, doing adesperado's deeds. Not stealing a necklace: that was tawdry larceny. Butshe could see herself trapping Esther in a still place and cutting herdusky hair off so that she'd betray no more men. For she began tosuspect that Alston Choate, too, was caught in the lure of Esther'sinexplicable charm. Lydia was at the moment of girlhood nearly donewhere her accumulated experience, half of it not understood, wasprepared to spring to life and crystallise into clearest knowledge. Shewas a child still, but she was ready to be a woman. Alston Choate nowwas 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 bringMrs. 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 forJeffrey. "

"But, Jeffrey--" Alston paused. He wanted to put it with as littleoffence as might be. "Jeffrey has been tried for a certain offence andfound guilty. "

"He wasn't really guilty, " said Lydia. "Can't you see he wasn't? Estherstole the necklace, and Madame Beattie wanted it paid for, and Jeffreytried to do it and everything went to pieces. Can't you really see?"

She asked it anxiously, and Alston answered her with the more gentlenessbecause her solicitude made her so kind and fair. 

"Now, " said he, "this is the way it is. Jeffrey pleaded guilty and wassentenced. If everything you say is true--we'll assume it is--he wouldhave been tried just the same, and he would have been sentenced just thesame. I don't say his counsel mightn't have whipped up a lot of sympathyfrom the jury, but he wouldn't have got off altogether. And besides, youwouldn't have had him escape in any such conceivable way. You wouldn'thave had him shield himself behind his wife. "

Lydia was looking at him with brows drawn tight in her effort to getquite clearly what she thought might prove at any instant a befoggedtechnicality. But it all sounded reasonable enough, and she gratefullyunderstood he was laying aside the jurist's phraseology for her sake. 

"But, " said she, "mightn't Esther have been tried for stealing thenecklace?"

He couldn't help laughing, she seemed so ingenuously anxious to layEsther by the heels. Then he sobered, for her inhumanity to Estherseemed to him incredible. 

"Why, yes, " said he, "if she had been suspected, if there'd beenevidence--"

"Then I call it a wicked shame she wasn't, " said Lydia. "And she's gotto be now. If it isn't my business, it's Madame Beattie's, and I'll askher to do it. I'll beg it of her. "

With that she seemed still more dangerous to him, like an explosive putup in so seemly a package that at first you trust it until you see howimpossible it is to handle. He spoke with a real and also a calculatedimpressiveness. 

"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 thingthat it never fails. And it's this: it is very easy to begin a course ofproceeding, but, once begun, it's another thing to stop it. Now beforeyou start this ball rolling--or before you egg on Madame Beattie--let'ssee what you're going to get out of it. "

"I don't expect to get anything, " said Lydia, on fire. "I'm not doing itfor 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 anattack 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 thrownat 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-questioningwas 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 tohear so irrational an explosion. He hurried on lest she should callsatiric attention to its thinness. "And as for Madame Beattie, she'llget 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 onthe human side until the legal one was fairly hidden, "but we don'tthink 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 ofsounding more accurate every minute. "We don't think she did lose it. Wethink she lied. "

Alston Choate remembered Esther as he had lately seen her, sitting inher harmonious surroundings, all fragility of body and sweetness offeeling, begging him to undertake the case that would deliver her fromJeffrey because she was afraid--afraid. And here was this horriblyself-possessed little devil--he called her a little devil quite plainlyin his mind--accusing that flower of gentleness and beauty of a vulgarcrime. 

"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 shedid not take his outstretched hand. He was receiving such professionalinsult, Anne felt, from one of her kin that she could scarcely expectfrom him the further grace of shaking hands with her. Lydia, looking ather, saw with an impish glee that Anne, the irreproachable, was angry. There was the spark in her eye, decision in the gesture with which shemade 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 oflife seemed to her at stake when she must stand here before this mostdignified 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 anycase. "

She turned to Choate and he gave her a confirming glance. 

"I've been telling your sister that, virtually, " said he. "I tell hershe doesn't need my services. You may persuade her. "

"Well, " said Lydia cheerfully, rising, for they seemed to her much olderthan she and, though not to be obeyed on that account, to be placated byoutward civilities, "I'm sorry. But if you don't take the case I shallhave to go to some one else. "

"Lydia!" said Anne. Was this the soft creature who crept to her arms ofa cold night and who prettily had danced her way into public favour?

Alston Choate was looking thoughtful. It was not a story to be spreadbroadcast over Addington. He temporised. 

"You see, " he ventured, turning again to Lydia with his delightful smilewhich was, with no forethought of his own, tremendously persuasive, "youhaven't told me yet what anybody is to get out of it. "

"I thought I had, " said Lydia, taking heart once more. If he talkedreasonably 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 onenight. Don't you see, Madame Beattie's here to hound Jeffrey intopaying 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 ona dream. The hideous old woman with the ostrich feathers had played asatiric joke on her, and here was Lydia in good faith assuming the jokewas real. 

"And if we can get this cleared up, " said Lydia calmly, feeling verymature as she scanned their troubled faces, "Madame Beattie can justhave her necklace back, and Jeff, instead of thinking he's got to startout with that tied round his neck, can set to work and pay hiscreditors. "

Alston Choate was looking at her, frowning. 

"Do you realise, Miss Lydia, what amount it is Jeffrey would have to payhis creditors? Unless he went into the market again and had a run ofunbroken luck--and he's no capital to begin on--it's a thing he simplycouldn't do. And as to the market, God forbid that he should ever thinkof it. "

"Yes, " said Anne fervently, "God forbid that. Farvie can't say enoughagainst 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 topay what he can. If he should die to-morrow with ten dollars savedtoward paying back his debts--"

"Do you happen to know what sum of money represents his debts?" Alstonthrew 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 paythe interest too. And it's so much it doesn't mean anything at all to meone minute, and another time I wake up at night and feel it sitting onme, 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 trulyseen her, turned upon Choate, her beautiful eyes distended in a tragicalappeal. 

"Oh, " said she, "you'll have to help us somehow. "

So Alston Choate thought. He was regarding Lydia, and he spoke with adeference 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 howundone she really was. "That's nice. You think it over, and we'll haveanother talk. Come along, Anne. Mary Nellen wants some lemons. "

XVIII

What Alston Choate did, after ten minutes' frowning thought, was to sitdown and write a note to Madame Beattie. But as he dipped his pen hesaid aloud, half admiring and inconceivably irritated: "The littledevil!" 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 beexpressed by the plumes, and at once she told him why. 

"I believe that little wild-fire's been here to see you already. Hasshe? and talking about necklaces?"

Madame Beattie was sitting upright in the office chair, fanning herselfand regarding him with a smile as sympathetic as if she had been thecause of no disturbing issue. 

"You'll pardon me for asking you to come here, " said Alston. "But Ididn't know how to get at you without Mrs. Blake's knowledge. "

"Of course, " said Madame Beattie composedly. "She was there when thenote 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, MadameBeattie--started from you. "

"Yes, " said she, "that pretty imp has been here. Quite right. She's aclever child. Let her stir up something, and they may quiet it if theycan. "

"Do you mind telling me, " said Alston, "what this story is--about anecklace?"

"I've no doubt she's told you just as well as I could, " said MadameBeattie. "She sat and drank it all in. I bet ten pounds she rememberedword for word. "

"As I understand, you say--"

"Don't tell me I 'say. ' I had a necklace worth more money than I daredtell that imp. She wouldn't have believed me. And my niece Esther is asfond 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 somewherenow. "

Alston tapped noiselessly, and regarded her from under brows judiciallystern. He wished he knew recipes for frightening Madame Beattie. But, hesuspected, there weren't any. She would tell the truth or she would not, as she preferred. He hadn't any delusions about Madame Beattie'scherishing truth as an abstract duty. She was after results. He made athrust at random. 

"I can't see your object in stirring up this matter. If you had anyground of evidence you'd have made your claim and had it settled longago. "

"Not fully, " said Madame Beattie, fanning. 

"Then you were paid something?"

"Something? How far do you think 'something' would go toward paying forthe loss of a diamond necklace? Evidently you don't know the history ofthat necklace. If you were an older man you would. The papers were fullof it for years. It nearly caused a royal separation--they werereconciled after--and I was nearly garroted once when the thievesthought I had it in a hand-bag. There are historic necklaces and this isone. Did you ever hear of Marie Antoinette's?"

"Yes, " said Alston absently. He was thinking how to get at her in thehouse where she lived. How would some of his novelists have written outMadame Beattie and made her talk? "And Maupassant's. " This he saidruminatingly, but the lawyer in him here put down a mark. "Note, " saidthe mark, "Maupassant's necklace. She rose to that. " There was no doubtof it. A quick cross-light, like a shiver, had run across her eyes. "Youknow 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 herhusband ruined themselves to pay for it, and then they found it wasn'tdiamonds at all, but paste. "

"I remember, " said Madame Beattie composedly. "But if it had been anecklace such as mine an imitation would have cost a pretty penny. "

"So it wasn't the necklace itself, " he hazarded. "You wouldn't havebrought 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 hostilecommunication. 

"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 youhad with you here in America the necklace given you by--" Here hehesitated. He wondered whether, according to her standards, he wasunbearably insulting, or whether the names of royal givers could reallybe mentioned. 

"A certain Royal Personage, " said Madame Beattie calmly. 

"Or, " said Alston, beginning after a safe hiatus, "whether you had hadan imitation made, and whether the necklace said to be lost was theimitation. "

"Well, then I'll tell you plainly, " said Madame Beattie, in a cheerfulconcession, "I didn't have an imitation made. And you're quite withinthe 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 thattime 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 orsnatch your hat off to her. "

"Yes, I really know her. "

"Then why should you assume she's not a liar?" Madame Beattie asked thiswith the utmost tranquillity. It almost robbed the insult of offence. But Alston's face arrested her, and she burst out laughing. "My dearboy, " said she, "you deal with evidence and you don't know a liar whenyou 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 makeyou jump, I should tell you there was a tiger sitting on the top of thatbookcase. I should do it because it would amuse me. But Esther never'dthink of such a thing. " She was talking to him now with perfectgood-humour because he actually had glanced up at the bookcase, and itwas tribute to her dramatic art. "She tells only the lies she has to. Esther's the perfect female animal hiding under things when there'ssomething she's afraid of in the open and then telling herself she hidbecause she felt like being alone. The little imp wouldn't do that, "said Madame Beattie admiringly. "She wouldn't be afraid of anything, orif she was she'd fight the harder. I shouldn't want to see the bloodshe'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 knewI was worshipped, simply worshipped in Paris, and he wrote me somethingscriptural 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 walkedover. I thought it would be good for me, but it wasn't. Isn't that ahack out there? If it's that Denny, I think I'll get him to take me fora little drive. Don't come down. "

But Alston went in a silence he recognised as sulky, and put her intothe 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 thepot, you and that imp. Tell him to drive out into the country somewherefor 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 hisoffice again, giving himself another ten minutes of grave amusedconsideration, before he called the stenographer, he looked up, at theopening of the door, and saw Anne. She came forward at once and withoutclosing the door, as if to assure him she would not keep him long. Therewas no misreading the grave trouble of her face. He met her, and nowthey shook hands, and after he had closed the door he set a chair forher. 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'tknow what could stop her, " Anne admitted truthfully. "But I shall dowhat I can. Farvie mustn't be told. He'd be horrified. Nor Jeff. I mustsee 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 anothertime, not even of his mother's perhaps, but of his grandmother's whenladies were a mixture of fine courage and delicate reserve. That typehad, in his earliest youth, seemed inevitable. If his mother had escapedfrom 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 beenimpulsive, but not unmanageable. And I don't in the least know what todo. "

"Suppose you leave it with me, " said Alston, his deference an exquisitebalm to her hurt feeling. Then he smiled, remembering Lydia. "I don'tknow what to do either, " he said. "Your sister's rather terrifying. ButI 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 tothe door with her but down the stairs as well. And she walked hometreasuring the memory of his smile. 

XIX

The day Jeffrey began to spade up the ground he knew he had got hold ofsomething bigger than the handle of the spade. It was something rudelybeneficent, because it kept him thinking about his body and the best wayto use it, and it sent him to bed so tired he lay there aching. Notaching for long though: now he could sleep. That seemed to him the onlyuse he could put himself to: he could work hard enough to forget he hadmuch of an identity except this physical one. He had not expected toescape that horrible waking time between three and four in the morningwhen he had seen his life as an ignorant waste of youth and power. Itwas indeed confusion, nothing but that: the confusion of overwhelminglove for Esther, of a bravado of display when he made money for themboth to spend, of the arrogant sense that there was always time enough, strength enough, sheer brilliant insight enough to dance with life anddrink with it and then have abundance of everything left. And suddenlythe clock had struck, the rout was over and there was nothing left. Ithad all been forfeit. He hardly knew how he had come out of prison sodrained of courage when he had been so roistering with it before he wentin. Sometimes he had thought, at three o'clock in the morning, that itwas Esther who had drained him: she, sweet, helpless, delicate flower oflife. She had not merely been swayed by the wind that worsted him. Shehad perhaps been broken by it. Or at least it had done somethinginexplicable which he, entirely out of communication with her, had notbeen able to understand. And he had come back to find her more lovelythan ever, and wearing no mark of the inner cruelties he had sufferedand had imagined she must share with him. 

He believed that his stay in prison had given him an illuminating ideaof what hell really is: the vision of heaven and a certainty of theclosed door. Confronted with an existence pared down to the satisfyingof its necessities, he had loathed the idea of luxury while he hated thedaily meagreness. Life had stopped for him when he entered inexorablebounds. It could not, he knew, be set going. Some clocks have merelystopped. Others are smashed. It had been the only satisfaction of hiscraving 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 dreamsand destined to eternal exile. Now all these aches and agonies of thepast were lulled by the surge of tired muscles. He worked like a furyand the colonel, according to his strength, worked with him. They talkedlittle, and chiefly about the weather prospects and the ways of theearth. Sometimes Anne would appear, and gently draw the colonel in, toadvise her about something, and being in, he was persuaded to an egg-nogor a nap. But he also was absorbed, she saw, though he went at a slowerpace than Jeff. He who had been old seemed to be in physical revolt; hewas 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 waswaiting for him. It might be the earthly angel of a renewed and sturdylife. 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 towrite, too sleepy at night. For Lydia and Anne, it was, so far as familylife went, a time of arrested intercourse. Their men were planting andcould not talk to them, or tired and could not talk then. The colonelhad even given up pulling out classical snags for Mary Nellen. He woulddo it in the evening, he said; but every evening he was asleep. Lydiahad developed an astounding intimacy with Madame Beattie, and Anne wastroubled. She told Alston Choate, who came when he thought there was achance of seeing her alone, because he was whole-heartedly sorry forher, at the mercy of the vagaries of the little devil, as he permittedhimself 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 MadameBeattie's face, and was not prepared wholly to condemn her. He thoughtshe could be a good fellow by habit without much trying, and he was verysure that, with a girl, she would play fair. But if he had heard MadameBeattie this morning in June, as she took Lydia to drive, he might nothave felt so assured. These drives had become a matter of custom now. Atfirst, Madame Beattie had taken Denny and an ancient victoria, but shetired of that. 

"The man's as curious as a cat, " she said to Lydia. "He can move hisears. 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 knownthere was a victoria, and when Madame Beattie had set her mind uponeach, it was in due course forthcoming, vehicles apparently of an equalage and the same extent of disrepair. So they set forth together, thestrange couple, and jogged, as Madame Beattie said. She would send theunwilling Sophy, who had a theory that she was to serve Esther andnobody else, and that scantily, over with a note. The Blake house hadno telephone. Jeff, for unformulated reasons, owned to a nervousdistaste for being summoned. And the note would say:

"Do you want to jog?"

Lydia always wanted to, and she found it the more engaging becauseMadame Beattie told her it drove Esther to madness and despair. 

"She's furious, " said Madame Beattie, with her lisp. "It's very silly ofher. She doesn't want to go with me herself. Not that I'd have her. Butyou are an imp, my dear, and I like you. "

This warm morning, full of sun and birds, they were jogging up HaldonHill, a way they took often because it only led down again and motoristsavoided it. Madame Beattie, still thickly clad and nodded over byplumes, lounged and held her parasol with the air of ladies in the Bois. Lydia, sitting erect and hatless, looked straight ahead, though thereins were loose, anxiously piercing some obscurity if she might, butalways a mental one. Her legal affairs were stock still. Alston Choatetalked with her cordially, though gravely, about her case, dissuadingher always, but she was perfectly aware he was doing nothing. When shetaxed him with it, he reminded her that he had told her there wasnothing to do. But he assured her everything would be attempted to saveher father and Anne from anxiety, and incidentally herself. About thisMadame Beattie was asking her now, as they jogged under the flicker ofleaves. 

"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 wereJeff. 

"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 toagitate--agitate--until he leaves his absurd plaything--carrots, is it, or summer squash?--and gets into business in a civilised way. The man'sa genius, if only his mind wakes up. Let him think we're going to spreadthe necklace story far and wide, let him see Esther about to be hauledbefore 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 crookher finger. Agitate. Why, I'll do it myself. There's that dirty littleman 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. Heisn't nice, she thinks. I don't know who told her. "

"Choate, my dear, " said Madame Beattie. "He's afraid Moore will get holdof you. He's blocking your game, that's all. "

Madame Beattie, the next day, did go to Weedon Moore's office. He wasunprepared for her and so the more agonisingly impressed. Here was arough-spoken lady who, he understood, was something like a princess inother countries, and she was offering him an interview. 

Madame Beattie showed she had the formula, and could manage quite wellalone. 

"The point is the necklace, " said she, sitting straight and fanningherself, regarding him with so direct a gaze that he pressed his kneesin nervous spasms. "You don't need to ask me how old I am nor whether Ilike this country. The facts are that I was given a very valuablenecklace--by a Royal Personage. Bless you, man! aren't you going to takeit down?"

"Yes, yes, " stammered Moore. "I beg your pardon. "

He got block and pencil, and though the attitude of writing relieved himfrom the necessity of looking at her, he felt the sweat break out on hisforehead and knew how it was dampening his flat hair. 

"The necklace, " said Madame Beattie, "became famous. I wore it justenough to give everybody a chance to wonder whether I was to wear it ornot. The papers would say, 'Madame Beattie wore the famous necklace. '"

"Am I permitted to say--" Weedon began, and then wondered how he couldproceed. 

"You can say anything I do, " said Madame Beattie promptly. "No more. Ofcourse not anything else. What is it you want to say?"

Weedon dropped the pencil, and under the table began to squeezeinspiration from his knees. 

"Am I permitted, " he continued, aghast at the liberty he was taking, "toknow the name of the giver?"

"Certainly not, " said Madame Beattie, but without offence. "I told you aRoyal Personage. Besides, everybody knows. If your people here don't, it's because the're provincial and it doesn't matter whether they knowit or not. I will continue. The necklace, I told you, became almost asfamous as I. Then there was trouble. "

"When?" ventured Weedon. 

"Oh, a long time after, a very long time. The Royal Personage was goingto be married and her Royal Highness--"

"Her Royal Highness?"

"Of course. Do you suppose he would have been allowed to marry acommoner? That was always the point. She made a row, very properly. Thenecklace was famous and some of the gems in it are historic. She was athrifty person. I don't blame her for it. She wasn't going to seehistoric jewels drift back to the rue de la Paix. So they made me aproposition. "

Moore was forgetting to be shy. He licked his lips, the story promisedso enticingly. 

"As I say, " Madame Beattie pursued, "they made me a proposition. " Shestopped and Moore, pencil poised, looked at her inquiringly. She closedher fan, with a decisive snap, and rose. "There, " said she, "you canelaborate that. Make it as long as you please, and it'll do for oneissue. "

Weedon felt as if somehow he had been done. 

"But you haven't told me anything, " he implored. "Everybody knows asmuch as that. "

"I reminded you of that, " said Madame Beattie. "But I know severalthings everybody doesn't know. Now you do as I tell you. Head it: 'TheTrue Story of Patricia Beattie's Necklace. First Instalment. ' And you'llsell a paper to every man, woman and baby in this ridiculous town. Andwhen the next day's paper doesn't have the second instalment, they'llbuy 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 underthe strain of recollection unable to continue her reminiscences. MadameBeattie overcome by her return to the past. ' I'm a better journalistthan 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 todictate, that he did publish the fragment, and Addington bought itbreathlessly and looked its amused horror over the values of the foreignvisitor. 

"Of course, my dear, " said the older ladies--they called each other "mydear" a great deal, not as a term of affection, but in moments ofconviction and the desire to impress it--"of course her standards arenot 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 penetratedto her grandmother's room to rehearse the circumstance, and beg MadamBell to send Aunt Patricia away. Madam Bell was lying with her faceturned to the wall, but the bedclothes briefly shook, as if shechuckled. 

"You must tell her to go, " said Esther again. "It's your house, and it'sa 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 themost remote. "Will you, " Esther insisted, "will you tell her to leave?"

"No, " said grandmother, from under the bedclothes. "Go away and callRhoda Knox. "

Esther went, angry but not disconcerted. The result of her invasion wasperhaps no more bitter than she had expected. She had sometimes talkedto 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 inher heart, she took the letter and went downstairs. Everybody, thisswelling heart told her, was against her. She still did not darewithstand Rhoda, for the woman took care of grandmother perfectly, andif she left it would be turmoil thrice confounded. She hated Rhoda themore, having once heard Madame Beattie's reception of a request to carrya message when she was going downstairs. 

"Certainly not, " said Madame Beattie. "That's what you are here for, mygood woman. Run along and take down my cloak and put it in thecarriage. "

Rhoda went quite meekly, and Esther having seen, exulted and thought shealso 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 hadnot the courage. She could hear the little satiric chuckle MadameBeattie 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 beenpublished, and Weedon, coming at dusk, was admitted by Sophy to thedining-room, where Madame Beattie seldom went. Esther received him witha cool dignity. She was pale. Grandmother would no doubt have said shemade herself pale in the interest of pathos; but Esther was trulysuffering. Moore, fussy, flattered, ill at ease, stood before her, holding his hat. She did not ask him to sit down. There was an unspokentradition in Addington, observed by everybody but Miss Amabel, thatMoore 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 atonce, 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, andmissed 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 willremember, won't you, that it is in confidence?"

"Yes, ma'am, " said Moore. He had never fully risen above formerconditions of servitude when he ran errands and shovelled paths forAddington gentry. "You can rely on me. "

"My aunt, " said Esther delicately, with an air of regret and severalother picturesque emotions mingled carefully, "my aunt has one delusion. It is connected with this necklace, which she certainly did possess atone time. She imagines things about it, queer things, where it went andwhere it is now. But you mustn't let her tell you about it, and if sheinsists you mustn't allow it to get into print. It would be takingadvantage, Mr. Moore. Truly it would. " And as a magnificent concessionshe 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 everybodythat knows her. We can't, in justice to her, let such a thing get intoprint. "

Weedon was much impressed, by her beauty, her accessibility and his ownincredible position of having something to accord. But he had a systemof mental bookkeeping. There were persons who asked favours of him, whomhe put down as debtors. "Make 'em pay, " was his mentally jotted note. Ifhe did them an obliging turn, he kept his memory alert to require theequivalent at some other time. But he did not see how to make Estherpay. So he could only temporise. 

"I'd give anything to oblige you, Mrs. Blake, " he said, "anything, Iassure you. But I have to consider the paper. I'm not alone there, youknow. It's a question of other people. "

Esther was familiar with that form of withdrawal. She herself was alwaysescaping by it. 

"But you own the paper, " she combated him. "Everybody says so. "

"I have met with a great deal of misrepresentation, " he repliedsolemnly. "Justice is no more alive to-day than liberty. " Then heremembered this was a sentence he intended to use in his speech to-nighton the old circus-ground, and added, as more apposite, "I'd giveanything to serve you, Mrs. Blake, I assure you I would. But I owe acertain allegiance--a certain allegiance--I do, really. "

With that he made his exit, backing out and bowing ridiculously over hishat. And Esther had hardly time to weigh her defeat, for callers came. They began early and continued through the afternoon, and they allasked for Madame Beattie. It was a hot day and Madame Beattie, withouther toupée and with iced _eau sucrée_ beside her, was absorbedlyreading. She looked up briefly, when Sophy conveyed to her the summonsto 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 butrather maliciously delivered by Sophy, who had a proper animosity forher social betters, hardly knew whether it was easier to meet theinvaders alone or run the risk of further disclosure if Madame Beattieappeared. For though no word was spoken of diamonds or interviews ornewspapers, she could follow, with a hot sensitiveness, the curiosityflaring all over the room, like a sky licked by harmless lightnings. When a lady equipped in all the panoply of feminine convention asked forgrandmother's health, she knew the thought underneath, decentlysuppressed, was an interest, no less eager for being unspoken, ingrandmother's attitude toward the interview. Sometimes she wanted toanswer the silent question with a brutal candour, to say: "No, grandmother doesn't care. She was perfectly horrible about it. She onlylaughed. " And when the stream of callers had slackened somewhat shetelephoned Alston Choate, and asked if he would come to see her thatevening at nine. She couldn't appoint an earlier hour because she wasn'tfree. And immediately after that, Reardon telephoned her and asked if hemight 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 theinterview as "unpardonable ". He was coming, no doubt, to bring hiscondolence. 

XX

Jeffrey himself had not seen the interview. He had only a mild interestin Addington newspapers, and Anne had carefully secreted the family copylest the colonel should come on it. But on the afternoon when Esther wasreceiving subtly sympathetic townswomen, Jeffrey, between the rows ofspringing corn, heard steps and looked up from his hoeing. It was Lydia, the _Argosy_ in hand. She was flushed not only with triumph becausesomething had begun at last, but before this difficulty of entering onthe tale with Jeff. Pretty child! his heart quickened at sight of her inher 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 thepaper, previously folded to expose the headline of Madame Beattie'sname. Jeff, his hoe at rest in one hand, took the paper and looked at itfrowningly, incredulously. Then he read. A word or two escaped him nearthe end. Lydia did not quite hear what the word was, but she thought hewas appropriately swearing. Her eyes glistened. She had begun toagitate. 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 printthem fast enough. "

Jeff passed it to her with a curt gesture of relinquishing any lastinterest in it. 

"That's Moore, " he said. "It's like him. "

Lydia was at once relieved. She had been afraid he wasn't going todiscuss 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 womenfeel. You can't judge Madame Beattie. "

"So I say, " returned Lydia, inwardly delighted and resolving to lose notime in telling Anne. "I like her. She's nice. She's clever. She knowshow 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 goon talking and that slob will get it into print--and he will--you can'tstop her. "

"What do you mean by her feeling toward Esther?" Lydia's heart beat sothat 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. Onlyeverything 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 shetell him she knew the story and enlist him on Madame Beattie's side andhers, the side that was fighting for him and nothing else? But she didnot dare. All she could do was to say, her hands cold against each otherand 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 hisvoice sounded so dear. She could not know his eyes were full of anadoring gentleness over her who seemed to him half child, half maiden, and tumultuously compassionate. She made a little timid gesture of thehand over the small area about them. 

"This, " she said. "You mustn't stay here and hoe corn. You must get intobusiness 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 aman to keep alive. When I've got a hoe in my hand--" He could not quiteexplain it. He had always had a flow of words on paper, but since he hadbelieved his life was finished his tongue had been more and morelethargic. It would not obey his brain because, after all, what couldthe brain report of his distrustful heart? Lydia had a moment of bittermortification because she had not seemed to understand. Anne understood, she knew, and had tried, with infinite patience, to help on this queerexperiment, 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 someground of conviction where she could share his certainty that thingswere going as well as they could. "This is almost the only real thing inthe world--the ground. About everything else is a game. This isn't agame. It's making something grow that won't hurt anybody when it'sgrown. 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 toplease her. "Denny's going to peddle it out for me at backdoors. I'd doit 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 scornfulkick and got the powdered dust into her neat stockings. She, too, lovedthe ground and all the sweet usages of homely life; but not if they kepthim from a spectacular triumph. She was desperate enough to venture herone 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 hespoke she knew it was not in any offence. 

"Lydia, I give you my word I couldn't do the kind of thing you want meto. I've found that out at last. You'd like me to cut into the marketand make a lot of money and throw it back at the people I owe. Icouldn't do it. My brain wouldn't let me. It's stopped--stopped short. Aman knows when he's done for. I'm absolutely and entirely done. All Ihope for is to keep father from finding it out. He seems to be gettinghis nerve back, and if he really does that I may be able to go away anddo 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 droppingas she walked. "Oh, dear!" he heard her say. "Oh, dear!"

"Lydia!" he called, in an impatience of tenderness and misery. "Comeback here. Don't you know I'd do anything on earth I could for you? Butthere'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 acripple, Lydia. Don't you see?"

She had turned obediently, and now she smeared the tears away with onesmall hand. 

"You don't understand, " she said. "You don't understand a thing. We'vethought of it all this time, Anne and I, how you'd come out and beproved not guilty--"

"But, Lydia, " he said gravely, "I was guilty. And besides being guiltyof things the courts condemned me for, I was guilty of things I had tocondemn myself for afterward. I wasn't a criminal merely. I was a wasterand a fool. "

"Yes, " said Lydia, looking at him boldly, "and if you were guilty whomade 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 inwhat she thought his confirmation. The red had run into his face and helooked 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 meto-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 andshe both knew it was Esther, and a little more likelihood of MadameBeattie's blackguarding Esther in print must rouse him to command thesituation. 

Jeffrey finished his row, and then hurried into the house. It was thelate 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'vestirred him up, at least. Now what is he going to do?"

Jeffrey went strolling down the drive, and quickened his steps when theshrubbery had him well hidden from the windows. Something assured him itwas likely Weedon Moore lived still in the little sharp-gabled house ona side street where he had years ago. His mother had been with him then, and Jeff remembered Miss Amabel had scrupulously asked for her whenMoore came to call. The little house was unchanged, brightly painted, gay in diamond trellis-work and picked out with scarlet tubs ofhydrangea in the yard. A car stood at the gate, and Weedon, buttoninghis coat, was stepping in. The car ran past, and Jeff saw that the manbeside 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 incredibleleadership. It seemed monstrous. Here was ignorance fallen into thehands of the demagogue. It was an outrage on the decencies. And thenMadame Beattie waved to him from Denny's hack, and he stepped into theroad 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 crampedinterior, redolent now of varied scents, all delicate but mingled to asuffocating potency. 

"Tell him to drive along outside the town, " she bade. "Were you going tosee me?"

"No, " said Jeffrey, after executing her order. "I've told you I can't goto 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 amsummoned. "

"She's a fool. "

"But I don't mind telling you where I was going, " said Jeff. "I wasgoing to lick Weedon Moore--or the equivalent. "

"Not on account of my interview?" said Madame Beattie, laughing very fardown in her anatomy. Her deep laugh, Jeff always felt, could only havebeen attained by adequate support in the diaphragm. "Bless you, dearboy, you needn't blame him. I went to him. Went to his office. Blameme. "

"Oh, I blame you all right, " said Jeff, "but you're not a responsibleperson. 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 talkingto Poles and Finns and Italians and Greeks, telling them the country wasno good and they owned it. "

"Why, the fellow can't speak to them. " Madame Beattie, being a fluentlinguist, 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. Ishould dearly like to see them. Poles, do you say? I didn't know therewere such people in town. "

Jeffrey, rather curious himself, told Denny, and they bowled cumbrouslyalong. He felt in a way obliged to proffer a word or two about theinterview. 

"What the devil made you do it anyway?" he asked her; but Madame Beattiechuckled and would not answer. 

XXI

All the way along, in the warm twilight, Madame Beattie was gay over theprospect of being fought for. With the utmost precision and unflaggingspirit she arranged a plausible cause for combat, and Jeffrey, not inthe least intending to play his allotted part, yet enjoyed the momentfully. 

"You shall do it, " Madame Beattie assured him, as if she permitted himto enter upon a task for which there was wide competition. "You shallthrash him, and he will put it in his paper, and the European paperswill copy. "

"I haven't much idea the _Argosy_ is read in foreign capitals, " Jefffelt bound to assure her. 

"Oh, but we can cable it. The French journals--they used to be very goodto me. "

With that her face darkened, not in a softening melancholy, but oldbitterness and defeat. She was not always able to ignore the contrastbetween the spring of youth and this meagre eld. Jeffrey saw thetremendous recognition she assuredly had had, grown through the illusivefructifying of memory into something overwhelming, and he was gladstarved vanity might once more be fed. She seemed to him a most piteousspectacle, youth and power in ruins, and age too poor to nourish even avine to drape the crumbling walls. 

"Patricia Beattie, " she continued, "again a _casus belli_. Combatbetween two men--" "There won't be any combat, " Jeff reminded her. "If Ikick Weedie, he'll take it lying down. That's Weedie. "

"I shall stand by, " said Madame Beattie. "If you go too far I shallinterfere. 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'tkick 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 womanstanding 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 couldimagine that this was the moment of his arrival that other night, savethat he was not now footsore or dull in the mind. But the same dusk ofcrowding forms lay thickly on the field, and there, he knew, was thestationary car; there were the two figures standing in it, Moore and hisinterpreter. 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 sayinsects make noises with their hind legs. It's more like that than avoice. Take me round there, Jeffrey. "

He was quite willing. With a good old pal like this to egg you on, hethought, there actually was some fun left. So he handed her out, andtold Denny to wait for them, and they skirted the high board fence tothe gap in the back. Madame Beattie, holding up her long dress in onehand and tripping quite nimbly, was clinging to his arm. By the gap theyhalted 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 mechanicallyrubbed her face. Jeff looked on indulgently. He knew she did not expectto 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 tellyou it breaks my heart every time I go back to worm-eaten precedent. ButI have to do it, because, if I didn't talk that language the judgeswouldn't understand me. Do you know what precedent is? It is the opinionof some man a hundred years ago on a case tried a hundred years ago. Dowe want that kind of an opinion? No. We want our own opinions on casesthat are tried to-day. "

The warm rapid voice of the interpreter came in here, and MadameBeattie, who was standing apart from Jeffrey, touched his arm. He bentto listen. 

"The man's a fool, " said she. 

"No, " said Jeffrey, "he's not a fool. He knows mighty well what he'ssaying and how it'll take. "

"If I had all the lawbooks in the world, " said Weedon, "I'd pile them uphere on this ground we've made free ground because we have free speechon it, and I'd touch a match to them, and by the light they made we'dsit down here and frame our own laws. And they would be laws for therich as well as the poor. Columbus did one good thing for us. Hediscovered a new world. The capitalists have done their best to spoilit, and turn it into a world as rotten as the old ones. But Columbusshowed us you can find a new world if you try. And we're going to have anew world out of this one yet. New laws, new laws, I tell you, newlaws!"

He screamed it at the end, this passion for new laws, and theinterpreter, though he had too just an instinct to take so high a key, followed him with an able crescendo. Weedie thought he had his audiencein hand, though it was the interpreter who really had it, and heventured another stroke:

"I don't want them to tell me what some man taught in Bible days. I wantto know what a man thinks right here in Addington. I don't want them totell 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 andadored 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 throughthe gap in the fence and drew her august person after, and Jeffreyfollowed her. He had a gay sense of irresponsibility, of seeking theevent. He was grateful to Madame Beattie. They went on, and as it wasthat other night, some withdrew to leave a pathway and others stared, but, finding no specific reason, did not hinder them. Madame Beattiespoke once or twice, a brief mandate in a foreign tongue, and that, Jeffnoted, was effective. She stepped up on the running-board of the car andlaid her hand on the interpreter's arm. 

"You may go, my friend, " said she, quite affectionately. "I do not needyou. " Then she said something, possibly the same thing, Jeff thought, in another language, and the man laughed. Madame Beattie, withoutshowing sign of recognising Moore, who was at her elbow, bent forwardinto the darkness and gave a shrill call. The crowd gathered nearer. Itsbreath was but one breath. The blackness of the assemblage was as if youpoured ink into water and made it dense. Jeffrey felt at once howsympathetic they were with her. What was the cry she gave? Was it someinternational password or a gipsy note of universal import? Had shecalled them friend in a tongue they knew? Now she began speaking, huskily at first, with tumultuous syllables and wide open vowels, and atthe first pause they cheered. The inky multitude that had kept silence, by preconcerted plan, while Weedon Moore talked to them, lost control ofitself and yelled. She went on speaking and they crashed in on herpauses with more plaudits, and presently she laid her hand on Jeffrey'sshoulder and said to him:

"Come up here beside me. "

He shook his head. He was highly entertained, but the mysterious gamewas hers and Weedie's. She gave an order, it seemed, in a foreigntongue, and the thing was managed. The interpreter had stepped from thecar, and now gentle yet forcible hands lifted down Weedon Moore, and sethim 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 thecarrying power of her mystery that he did not feel himself a fool. Itwas quite natural to be there for some unknown purpose, at one with herand that warmly breathing mass: for no purpose, perhaps, save that theywere all human and meant the same thing, a general good-will. She wenton speaking, and Jeffrey knew there was fire in her words. He bent tothe 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 morethan three inches apart, and Jeffrey, gazing into the passionate blackeyes, tasting, as it were, the odour of the handsome creature andfeeling his breath, was not repelled, but had a sudden shyness beforehim, 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 interpretersnatched one of Jeff's hands and seemed about to kiss it. 

"For God's sake, don't do that, " Jeff heard himself saying, and withdrewhis hand and straightened at a safe distance from the adoring face, andhe heard Madame Beattie going on in her fiery periods. Whatever she wassaying, they loved it, loved it to the point of madness. They cheeredher, and the interpreter did not check them, but cheered too. To Jeffreyit was all a medley of strange thoughts. Here he was, in the crowd andnot of it, greatly moved and yet not as the others were, because he didnot understand. And though the voice and the answering enthusiasm wenton for a long time, and still he did not understand, he was not tiredbut exhilarated only. The moon, the drifting clouds, the dramatic voiceplaying upon the hearts of the multitude, their hot responses, all thisgave him a sense of augmented life and the feel of his own past youth. Suddenly he fancied Madame Beattie's voice failed a little; somethingebbed in it, not so much force as quality. 

"That's all, " she said, in a quick aside to him. "Let's go. " She gave anorder, in English now, and a figure started out of the crowd and crankedthe 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 evenwere portentous in the moonlight, like the plumage of some giganticbird. She gave another order, whereupon the man who had cranked themachine 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 theysail 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 outat the gate, at least. "

But Madame Beattie was bowing graciously to right and left. Once sherose for an instant and addressed a curt sentence to the crowd, and inanswer they cheered, a full-mouthed chorus of one word in differenttongues. 

"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 freecourse before him, the man put on speed and they were away. Jeffrey bentforward 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 poordevils without making them pay for being corrupted? Jeffrey, take offyour coat. "

"What for?" He had resigned himself to his position. It was a fit partof 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 hadhad 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 backto 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 andwould talk no more. Without further interchange they drew up at herhouse. 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 nolisping ornament, "this is a night. To think I should have to come backhere to this God-forsaken spot for a minute of the old game. Hundredshanging on my voice--" he fancied she had forgotten now whether she hadnot sung to them--"and feeling what I told them to feel. They're capitalpeople. We'll talk to them again. "

She had turned toward the door and now she came back and struck his armviolently with her hand. 

"Jeff, " said she passionately, "you're a fool. You've still got youryouth and you won't use it. And the world looks like this--" she glancedup at the radiant sky. "Even in Addington, the moon is after us tryingto seduce us to the old pleasures. You've got youth. Use it. For God'ssake, use it. "

Now she did go up the steps and having rung the bell for her, ignoringthe grim knocker that looked as if it would take more than one summonsto 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 Jeffreysuspected 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 whatAddington streets were and what proprieties lined them. Then the doordid 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 heardthe door shut cautiously and walked away, but not to go immediatelyhome. What did Madame Beattie mean by telling him to use his youth? Allhe wanted was to hold commerce with the earth and dig hard enough tokeep himself tired so that he might sleep. For since he had come out ofprison he was every day more subject to this besetment of recalling thepast. It was growing upon him that he had always made wrong choices. Youth, what seemed to him through the vista of vanished time a childhoodeven, when he was but little over twenty, had been a delirium ofexpectation in a world that was merely a gay-coloured spot where, if youwere reasonably fit, as youth should be, you could always snatch thechoicest fruit from the highest bough. Then he had met Esther, and theworld stopped being a playground and became an ordered pageant, and hewas the moving power, trying to make it move faster or more lightly, toplease Esther who was sitting in front to see it move, and who was of adecided 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 rightcauses that brought him there should turn his brain. But now he hadleisure and freedom and a measure of solitude, and it began to strikehim that heretofore, being in the pageant and seeing it move, he hadnot enjoyed it over much. There had been a good deal of laughter andlight and colour--there had to be, since these were the fruits Estherlived on--but there had been no affectionate converse with the world. Strange old Madame Beattie! she had brought him the world to-night. Shehad taken strangers from its furthest quarters and welded them into alittle community that laughed and shouted and thought according things. That they had hailed him, even as a prisoner, brought him a littlewarmth. It was mysterious, but it seemed they somehow liked him, and hewent into the quiet house and to bed with the feeling of having toucheda hand. 

XXII

Within a week Jeffrey, going down town in his blue blouse to do anerrand at the stores, twice met squads of workmen coming from themill--warm-coloured, swarthy men, most of them young. He was looking atthem in a sudden curiosity as to their making part of Weedon Moore'saudience, when bright pleasure rippled over the dark faces. They knewhim; they were mysteriously glad to see him. Caps were snatched off. Jeffrey snatched at his in return. There was a gleam of white teeth allthrough the squad; as he passed in the ample way they made for him, hefelt foolishly as if they were going to stretch out kind detaininghands. They looked so tropically warm and moved, he hardly knew whatgreeting he might receive. "What have I done?" he thought. "Are theygoing to kiss me?" He wished he could see Madame Beattie and ask herwhat she had really caused to happen. 

But on a later afternoon, at his work in the field, he saw Miss Amabelcarefully treading among corn hills, very hot though in her summer silkand with a parasol. She always did feel the heat but patiently, as oneunder bonds of meekness to the God who sent it; but to-day herdiscomfort 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 sothat his father might be beguiled into resting after work. When shereached the edge of the corn, he advanced and took her parasol and heldit over her. 

"Ladies shouldn't come out here, " he said. "They must send Mary Nellento 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 beendoing. "

"I've been hoeing, " said Jeff. "Here, let me. "

He took her large fine handkerchief, still in its crisp folds, and withan absurd and yet pretty care wiped her face with it. He wiped it allover, 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 itsbag. "Now you're a nice dry child. I suppose you've got your shoes fullof dirt. Mine are when I've been out here. "

"Never mind my shoes, " said she. "Jeff, how nice you are. How much youare 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. Exceptthat 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 andnot play tricks on other people. "

Jeff drew up his knees and clasped his hands about them. His eyes wereon 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'tsay 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 hishands 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 hearus saying that?"

"No, I can't. You wouldn't say it that way. Don't chaff me, Jeff. Whatdo 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 ignorantthan the rest of us, and tell them things they ought to know. About thecountry, 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 withthe purest motives, to fitting our foreign population for the duties ofcitizenship. He doesn't disturb the public peace. He takes the men awayafter their day's work--"

"Under cover of the dark. "

"He doesn't run any risk of annoying people by assembling in thestreets. "

"Weedie doesn't want any decent man to know his game, whatever his gameis. "

"I won't answer that, Jeffrey. But I feel bound to say you areungenerous. 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 agrudge 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 asgreat a surprise to me as it was to Moore. I hadn't the slightestintention of breaking up the meeting. "

"Yet you went there and you took that impossible Martha Beattie withyou--"

"Patricia, not Martha. "

"I have nothing to do with names she assumed for the stage. She wasMartha Shepherd when she lived in Addington. No doubt she is entitled tobe called Beattie; but Martha is her Christian name. "

"Now you're malicious yourself, " said Jeff, enjoying the human warmth ofher. "I never knew you to be so hateful. Why can't you live and letlive? If I'm to let your Weedie alone, can't you keep your hands offpoor old Madame Beattie?"

Miss Amabel turned upon him a look where just reproof struggled withwounded 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'vegot. 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--severallanguages, I understand, quick as lightning, one after the other--and tosay things that counteracted at once all Mr. Moore's influence. "

"Now, " said Jeffrey, in a high degree of interest, "we're gettingsomewhere. What did I say to them? What did I say through MadameBeattie?"

"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 ahoot 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 anincredulous pleasure. "Now what spell has that extraordinary old womanover 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 wardpoliticians yet. Who is Andrea? This is the first time I have heard hishonourable 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 givenme 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 alook at the cards old Madame Beattie holds. I feel a fool. Why can't Iknow what they're talking about when they can kick up row enough undermy very nose to make you come and rag me like this?"

"Jeff, " said Miss Amabel, "unless you are prepared to go into socialwork seriously and see things as Mr. Moore sees them--"

Jeff gave a little crow of derision and she coloured. "It wouldn't hurtyou, Jeff, to see some things as he does. The necessity of getting intotouch 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 manydialects. "

"Oh, I can't compete with Madame Beattie. She's got the devil on herside. "

Miss Amabel rose to her feet and stood regarding him sorrowfully. Helooked up at her with a glance full of affection, yet too merry for herheavy 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 praisethe 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 hisface; it even touched his eyes, mysteriously, and dulled them. "I'm nottanned 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 stepafter 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 letWeedie 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 thatmanifest. 

"I can't bear to have you doing irresponsible things with MadameBeattie. 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 harmLydia. "

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 toher--affectionately, charmingly, as if to assure her that, after all, she needn't fear him even with Weedie who wasn't important enough toslay--he entered the house in definite search of Lydia. He went to thelibrary, and there she was, in the window niche, where she sat to watchhim. Day by day Lydia sat there when he was in the garden and she wasnot busy and he knew it was a favourite seat of hers for, glancing overhis rows of corn, he could see the top of her head bent over a book. Hedid not know how long she pored over a page with eyes that saw him, awraith of him hovering over the print, nor that when their passionatedepths grew hungrier for the actual sight of him, how she threw oneglance at his working figure and bent to her book again. As he camesuddenly in upon her she sprang up and faced him, the book closed upon atrembling 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 sheexpected him to ask her she did not know, but there were strange warmfeelings in her heart she would not have shown to Jeff. She could haveshown them before that minute--when he had said the thing that ought noteven to be remembered: "I only love you. " Before that, she thought, shehad been quite simply his sister. Now she was a watchful servitor of amore fervid sort. Jeffrey thought she was afraid of being scolded abouther queer old crony. 

"Sit down, " he said. "There's nothing to be ashamed of in liking MadameBeattie. 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 inher 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 duskhid the deep, crisp lines of his face. Under his moist tossed hair itwas a young face, as Miss Amabel had told him, and his attitude became aboy. 

"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 shedid not want to tell. When Esther didn't want to tell, a certain softglaze came over her eyes. Jeffrey had seen the glaze for a number ofyears before he knew what it meant. And when he found out, though it hadbeen a good deal of a shock, he hardly thought the worse of Esther. Hegeneralised quite freely and concluded that you couldn't expect the samestandards of women as from men; and after that he was a little nervousand rather careful about the questions he asked. But Lydia's eyes had noglaze. They were desperate rather, the eyes of a little wild thing thatis going to be frightened and possibly caught. Jeffrey felt quiteexcited, 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 herlie, it seemed. 

"No, " said she, "we don't. But I tell Anne if people ask questions it'sat 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 MadameBeattie. She's a battered old party, Lydia. She's seen lots of thingsyou 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 tothem. But she wouldn't want me to. Madame Beattie is--" She saw noadequate way to put it. 

But Jeffrey understood her. He, too, believed Madame Beattie had adecency of her own. 

"Never mind, " said he. "Only I want to keep you as you are. So wouldfather. And Anne. "

Lydia sat straight in her chair, her cheeks scarlet from excitement, hereyes speaking with the full power of their limpid beauty. What if shewere to tell him how they talked of Esther and her cruelty, and of himand his misfortunes, and of the need of his at once setting out toreconstruct his life? But it would not do. This youth here astride thechair didn't seem like the Jeff who was woven into all she could imagineof tragedy and pain. He looked like the Jeff she had heard the coloneltell about, who had been reckless and impulsive and splendid, and hadbeen believed in always and then had grown up into a man who made andlost money and was punished for it. He was speaking now in his newcoaxing 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 WeedonMoore'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 roundlike 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 ofher 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 herjudgment, "to be the most popular man in Addington. "

"Gammon!" This he didn't think very much of. If this was how Lydia andMadame Beattie spent their hours of talk, let them, the innocents. Itdid nobody harm. But he was still conscious of a strong desire: toprotect Lydia, in her child's innocence, from evil. He wondered if shewere not busy enough, that she had time to take up Madame Beattie. Yetshe and Anne seemed as industrious as little ants. 

"Lydia, " said he, "what if I should have an Italian fruit-seller come uphere 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'slittle secrets were to be guarded. 

"We'll have him up here if he'll come, and we'll learn to pass the breadin 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 ofdialects. From the classes, you know, Miss Amabel's classes. It'sridiculous to be seeing these foreigners twice a week and not understandthem or not have them half understand us. "

"It's ridiculous anyway, " said Jeffrey absently. He was regarding theshine on Lydia's brown hair. "What's the use of Addington's beingoverrun with Italy and Greece and Poland and Russia? We could get menenough to work in the shops, good straight stock. "

"Well, " said Lydia conclusively, "we've got them now. They're here. Sowe 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 whohad had quartered on her a larger family than the house would hold andyet knew the invaders must be accommodated in decent comfort somewhere. He sat there and stared at her until she grew red and fidgety. He seemedto 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 hadbeen thinking of her clear beauties of simple youthful outline and purerestraints, and wondering why the world wasn't made so that he couldtake her little brown hand in his and walk off with her and sit all dayon a piney bank and listen to birds and find out what she thought aboutthe 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 dewymemory of her kiss she could not be his love. Yet she was most dear tohim. 

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 ofEsther. That Esther had become sanctuary from his thoughts of Lydia wasan ironic fact indeed, enough to make mirth crack its cheeks. But sincehe was bound to Esther, the more he thought of her the better. He wasnot 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 onher island. Its lights hung high above the wave, the sound of its musicbeat 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, atime when he had been in a way compelled to; and though it was thesimplest commonplace, something new was beating in his voice. Choate hadheard Esther's music, he had seen the dancing lights, and Esther hadbeen willing he and all men should. There was no mariner who sailed theseas so insignificant as not to be hailed by Esther. That was thetrouble. Circe's isle was there, and she was glad they knew it. Jeffreydid not go so far as to think she wanted inevitably to turn them intobeasts, but he knew she was virtually telling them she had the power. That had been one of the first horrors of his disenchantment, when shehad placed herself far enough away from him by neither writing to himnor visiting him; then he had seen her outside the glamour of herpresence. 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 emperyseemed equal in degree to his. Something brutal used to come up in himwhen men looked boldly at her, and while he wanted to quench the assaultof 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 whenhe knew she called it tribute, a rage more just than jealousy came upin 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 washers to the end of earthly time. There was no task for him to do butsomehow to shield Lydia from the welling of her wonderful devotion tohim. If Esther was Circe on her island, Lydia was the nymph in a clearmountain brook of some undiscovered wood where the birds came to bathe, but no hoof had ever muddied the streams. If she had, out of herhero-worship, conceived a passion for him, he had an equal passion forher, of protectingness and sad certainty that he could do no better thanensure her distance from him. 

XXIII

Jeffrey, in his working clothes, went down to Mill Street and foundAndrea presiding over a shop exhaling the odour of pineapple andentrancing to the eye, with its piled ovals and spheres of red andyellow, its diversities of hue and surface. It was a fruit shop, and Godhad 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 shirtwaist with islands of lace over a full bosom, her black hair braided andput round and round her head, and a saving touch of long earrings totell you she was still all peasant underneath. A soft round-faced boywas in charge, and ran out to tell Jeffrey prices. But they all knewhim. Jeffrey felt the puzzle begin all over when Andrea came hurryingout, like a genial host at an inn, hands outstretched, and his wifefollowed him. They looked even adoring, and again Jeffrey wondered, sodroll was their excess of welcome, if he were going to be embraced. Theboy, too, was radiant, and, like an acolyte at some ritual, more humblythough exquisitely proffered his own fit portion of worship. Jeffrey, itbeing the least he could offer, shook hands all round. Then he askedAndrea:

"Who do you think I am? What did Madame Beattie tell you?"

Andrea spread his hands dramatically, palms outward, and impliedbrokenly that though he understood English he did not speak it to suchan extent as would warrant him in trying to explain what was best leftalone. He would only repeat a word over and over, always with an accessof affection, and when Jeffrey asked:

"Does that mean 'prisoner'?" he owned it did. It seemed to hold for thethree the sum of human perfectibility. Jeffrey was The Prisoner, andtherefore they loved him. He gave up trying to find out more; it seemedto him he could guess the riddle better if he had a word or two ofAndrea's language to help him, and he asked summarily if they couldn'thave some lessons together. Wouldn't Andrea come up to the house andtalk Italian? Andrea blossomed out in gleam of teeth and incredibleshininess of eyes. He would come. That night? Yes, he would come thatnight. So Jeffrey shook hands again all round and went away, curiouslyill at ease until he had turned the corner; the warmth of theiradoration seemed burning into his back. 

But that night Andrea did not come. The family had assembled, Anne alittle timid before new learning, Lydia sitting on the edge of her chairdetermined to be phenomenal because Jeffrey must be pleased, and evenMary Nellen with writing pads and pencils at the table to scrape up suchof the linguistic leavings as they might. At nine o'clock the generalattention began to relax, and Lydia widely yawned. Jeffrey, looking ather, caught the soft redness of her mouth and thought, forgetful ofCirce's island where he had taken refuge, how sweet the little barbarianwas. 

But nobody next day could tell him why Andrea had not come, not evenAndrea himself. Jeffrey sought him out at the fruit-stand and Andreaagain shone with welcome. But he implied, in painfully halting English, that he could not give lessons at all. Nor could any of his countrymenin Addington. 

Jeffrey stood upon no ceremony with him. 

"Why the devil, " said he, "do you talk to me as if you'd begun Englishyesterday? You forget I've heard you translating bunkum up on thecircus-ground. "

Andrea's eyes shone the more enchantingly. He was shameless, though. Hetook nothing back, and even offered Jeffrey an enormous pineapple, withthe air of wanting to show his good-will and expecting it to be receivedwith an equal open-heartedness. Jeffrey walked away with the pineapple, beaten, and reflecting soberly, his brow tightened into a knot. Thingswere going on just outside his horizon, and he wasn't to know. Who didknow? Madame Beattie, certainly. The old witch was at the bottom of it. She had, for purposes of her own, wound the foreign population round herfinger, and she was going to unwind them when the time came to spin aweb. A web of many colours, he knew it would be, doubtless strong insome spots and snarled in others. Madame Beattie was not the person tospin a web of ordinary life. 

He went on in his blue working clothes, absently taking off his hat tothe ladies he met who looked inquiringly at him and then quite eagerlybowed. Jeff was impatient of these recognitions. The ladies were eventoo gracious. They were anxious to stand by him in the old Addingtonway, 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 upthe stairs into Alston Choate's office, and there, hugging hispineapple, he entered, and found Alston sitting by the window in theafternoon light, his feet on a chair and a novel in his hand. This backwindow of the office looked down over the river, and beyond a line ofwillows to peaceful flats, and now the low sun was touching up the scenewith afternoon peace. Alston, at sight of him, took his legs downpromptly. He, too, was more eager in welcome because Jeffrey was amarked figure, and went so seldom up other men's stairs. Alston threwhis book on the table, and Jeffrey set his pineapple beside it. 

"There's a breeze over here, " said Alston, and they took chairs by thewindow. 

For a minute Jeffrey looked out over the low-lying scene. He drew aquick breath. This was the first time he had overlooked the oldplayground 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 unexpectedlyrestful to be together and need not even say so. Yet they were not hereat all. They were boys of Addington, trotting along side by side in theinherited games of Addington. Alston offered Jeffrey a smoke, and Jeffrefused it. 

"See here, " said he, "what's Madame Beattie up to?"

Choate turned a startled glance on him. He did not see how Jeffrey, astranger 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. Butnow, it seems, she's got some devil's influence over Moore's gang. She'stold 'em something queer about me. "

"She's told 'em something that makes things infernally uncomfortable forother people, " said Choate bluntly. "Did you know she had squads ofthem--Italians, Poles, Abyssinians, for all I know, playing ondulcimers--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 informalclub--in that house. "

Alston's irritation was extreme. It was true Addington to refer toforeign tongues as jabber, and "that house", Jeffrey saw, was a stiffparaphrase for Esther's dwelling-place. He perceived here the same angrypartisanship Reardon had betrayed. This was the jealous fire kindledinvariably in men at Esther's name. 

"How do you know?" he asked. 

Alston hesitated. He looked, not abashed, but worried, as if he did notsee precisely the road of good manners in giving a man more news abouthis 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 neededcounsel. "

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. Hehad done a good deal of it himself in the way of his profession, and hewas aware that it always led to conclusions the victim had not foreseenand was seldom willing to face. And he had in his mind not whollyrecognised yet unwelcome feelings about Esther. They were not feelingssuch as he would have allowed himself if he had known her as a youngwoman living with her husband in the accepted way. He did not permithimself to state that Esther herself might not, in that case, havemingled for him the atmosphere she breathed about him now. But Jeffreydid not pursue the dangerous road of too great candour. He veered, andasked, 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 asummer landscape--you know the kind. You walked into the picture theminute you heard the name of Addington. It was full of nice trees andhad a stream and cows with yellow light on them. When you got intoAddington you could take a long breath. "

For the first time in his talk with anybody since he came home Jeff wasfeeling lubricated. He couldn't express himself carelessly to hisfather, who took him with a pathetic seriousness, nor to the girls, towhom he was that horribly uncomfortable effigy, a hero. But here wasanother fellow who, he would have said, didn't care a hang, and Jeffcould talk to him. 

"There's no such picture now, " Alston assured him. "The Addington weknew 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 hisown hobbies that he couldn't ride in Addington for fear of knockingladies 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. Butwe'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 maidto 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 ofus 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 totuck me up at night same as she used to after I'd been in swimming andgot 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 greatfellows and very much abused and ought to own the earth. Weedie wantstheir votes. "

"Then Weedie is up for office? Amabel told me so, but I didn't thinkAddington'd stand for it. Time was when, if a man like Weedie had put uphis head, nobody'd have taken the trouble to bash it. We should havelaughed. "

"We don't laugh now, " said Choate gravely. There was even warning in hisvoice. "Not since Weedie and his like have told the working class itowns the earth. "

"And doesn't it?"

"Yes. In numbers. It can vote itself right into destruction--which iswhat it's doing. "

"And Weedie wants to be mayor. "

"God knows what he wants. Mayor, and then governor and--I wouldn'tundertake to say where Weedie'd be willing to stop. Not short of anambassadorship. "

"Choate, " said Jeffrey cheerfully, "you're an alarmist. "

"Oh, no, I'm not. A man like Weedie can get anywhere, because he's noscruples and he can rake in mere numbers to back him. And it's allright. This is a democracy. If the majority of the people want ademagogue to rule over them, they've a perfect right to go to the deviltheir 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 getshold 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 apresent of the machinery he runs--or let him break it--and the poordevil believes him. Weedie has told him that's the kind of a countrythis is. And nobody else is taking the trouble to tell him anythingelse. "

"Well, for God's sake, why don't they?"

"Because we're riddled with compassion, I tell you. If we see a manpoorer than we are, we get so apologetic we send him bouquets--our womendo. "

"Is that what the women here are doing?"

"Oh, yes. If there's a strike over at Long Meadow they put on their fursand go over and call on a few operatives and find eight living in oneroom, in a happy thrift, and they come back and hold an indignationmeeting and 'protest'. "

"You're not precisely a sentimentalist, are you?" said Jeff. He wasseeing Choate in the new Addington as Choate presented it. 

"No, by George! I want to see things clarified and the goodold-fashioned virtues come back into their place--justice andcommon-sense. Compassion is something to die for. But you can't buildstates out of it alone. It makes me sick--sick, when I see men gettingdry-rot. "

Jeff's face was a map of dark emotion. His mind went back over the pastyears. He had not been made soft by the nemesis that laid him by theheels. He had been terribly hardened in some ways, so calloused that itsometimes seemed to him he had not the actual nerve surface for feelinganything. The lambent glow of beauty might fall upon him unheeded; evenits lightnings might not penetrate his shell. But that had been betterthan the dry-rot of an escape from righteous punishment. 

"You know, Choate, " said he, "I believe the first thing for a man tolearn is that he can't dodge penalties. "

"I believe you. Though if he dodges, he doesn't get off. That's theother penalty, rot inside the rind. All the palliatives in theworld--the lying securities and false peace--all of them together aren'tworth the muscle of one man going out to bang another man for justcause. 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 questionand found the answer disheartening. 

"Don't know. Guess I'm a non-resident everywhere. I curse aboutAddington by the hour--the new Addington. But it's come, and come tostay. "

"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 manto touch. "

Jeffrey thought he had heard the sound of that before. Even in the olderdays there had been some among the ultra-conservative who refused topollute their ideals by dropping a ballot. But it hadn't mattered muchthen. Public government had been as dual in its nature as good andevil, sometimes swaying to the side of one party, sometimes the other;but always, such had been traditionary influence, the best man of aparty had been nominated. Then there was no talk of Weedon Moores. 

"Do you suppose Weedie's going on with his circus-ground rallies?" heasked. 

"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 talkthings over. And I hear from reliable sources, Weedie summons them andthe men simply won't go. So I assume Madame Beattie forbids it. "

"It's not possible. " Jeff had withdrawn his gaze from the old playgroundand sat staring thoughtfully at his legs, stretched to their fullestlength. "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 haverecalled them. But he made the best of a rash matter, and when Jefffrowned 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 andimmovably 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 yourecognise it, why, you see, Jeff, you really mustn't, you know. "

"Mustn't go there?" said Jeff almost foolishly, the thing seemed to himso queer. "Mustn't see my wife, because she says she is afraid of me?"

"Because she _is_ afraid of you, " corrected Choate impulsively, in whathe might have told himself was his liking for the right word. But he hada savage satisfaction in saying it. For the instant it made it seem asif he were defending Esther. 

"I'd give a good deal, " said Jeff slowly, "to hear just how Esther toldyou she was afraid of me. When was it, for example?"

"It was at no one time, " said Choate unwillingly. Yet it seemed to himJeff 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 yougather Esther has told other people she is afraid of me, or that she hastold 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 itto nobody but me. "

"Not to Reardon, " Jeff's inner voice was commenting satirically. "Whatwould you think if you knew she had said it to Reardon, too? And howmany more? She has spun her pretty web, and you're a prisoner. So isReardon. 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 seemedto Alston that he had been sacrificing all sorts of delicacies that Jeffmight be justly used, and the laugh belittled them both. But Jeff atthat instant saw, not Alston, but a new vision of life. It might havebeen that a tide had rushed in and wiped away even the prints ofEsther's little feet. It might have been that a wind blew in at thewindows of his mind and beat its great wings in the corners of it andwinnowed out the chaff. As he saw life then his judgments softened andhis irritations cooled. Nothing was left but the vision of life itself, the uncomprehended beneficence, the consoler, the illimitable beauty welook in the face and do not see. For an instant perhaps he had caughtthe true proportions of things and knew at last what was worth weepingover 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 takeit dumbly. He had hoped we should see at every turn how queer it is, andyet how orderly, and get our comfort out of that. He had put laughterbehind every door we open, to welcome us. Grief was there, too, but ifwe 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 ofseeing Alston Choate, who thought he was a free man, hobbled by Esther'sweb. 

Jeffrey got up and Alston looked at him in some concern, he was soqueer, flushed, laughing a little, and with a wandering eye. At the doorhe 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 ratherthink you'll have to get into politics. You'd be mayor yourself if you'dget busy. "

Jeffrey had no impulse to-day to go and ask Esther if she were afraid ofhim as he had when Reardon told him the same tale. He wasn't thinking ofEsther 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 penand 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 inthe curve of her arm. Lydia with no cares, either of the house or herdancing class or Jeff's future, but given up to the idleness of a summerafternoon, was one of the most pleasing sights ever put into the hollowof 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 foundhow 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 hisallegiance 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 gladto see it so. He must, he knew, hereafter see things as they are. Andthey would not be tragic to him. They would be curious and funny anddear: 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 foreignersMadame 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 itin--love. "

Jeff made a little gesture of the hand, as if he tossed off something solightly won. 

"Never mind how they mean it. That's not what I'm coming to. It's thatthey call me The Prisoner. Well, ten minutes ago it just occurred to methat we're all prisoners. I saw it as it might be a picture of life andall of us moving in it. Alston Choate's a prisoner to Esther. So'sReardon. Only it's not to Esther they're prisoners. It's to the bigforce behind her, the sorcery of nature, don't you see? Blind nature. "

She was looking at him with the terrified patience of one compelled tolisten and yet afraid of hearing what threatens the safe crystal of herown bright dream: that apprehensive look of woman, patient in listening, but beseeching the speaker voicelessly not to kill warm personalcertainties with the abstractions he thinks he has discovered. Jeffreydid not understand the look. He was enamoured of his abstraction. 

"And all the mill hands have been slaves to Weedon Moore because he toldthem lies, and now they're prisoners to Madame Beattie because she'stelling them another kind of lie, God knows what. And Addington isprisoner to catch-words. "

"But what are we prisoner to?" Lydia asked sharply, as if these thingswere terrifying. "Is Farvie a prisoner?"

"Why, father, God bless him!" said Jeff, moved at once, remembering whathis 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'veno rights over Anne. She's so good I'm shy of her. But if I find you'rea prisoner, Lydia, I mean you shall be liberated. If nature drives youon 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 andmiserable. 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 toherself and felt surprisingly at ease over it. She was born to thedictates of nice tradition, but when that inner warmth told her sheloved Jeff, even though he was bound to Esther, she didn't even heartradition, if it spoke. All she could possibly do for Jeff, whounconsciously appealed to her every instant he looked at her with thatdeep frown between his brows, seemed little indeed. Should she say sheloved him? That would be easy. But were his generalities about lifestrong enough to push her and her humilities aside? That was hard tobear. 

"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 puttingyourself under the law. "

Lydia's heart fell beyond plummet's sounding. She did not want to putherself under any stricter law than that of heart's devotion. She hadbeen listening to it a great deal, of late. They were sweet things ittold her, and not wicked things, she thought, but all of humble serviceand unasked rewards. 

Jeff was roaming on, beguiled by his new thoughts and the sound of hisown 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 bigparadox. Do you know what I'm going to do?"

She shook her head. He was probably, her apprehensive look said, goingto do something that would take him out of the pretty paradise where shelonged 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 knewthere in the prison. What does God Almighty care about him? I'm going towrite a book and call it 'Prisoners, ' and show how I was a prisonermyself, to money, and luxury, and the game and--" he would not mentionEsther, but Lydia knew where his mind stumbled over the thought ofher--"and how I got my medicine. And how other fellows will have to taketheirs, these fellows Weedie's gulling and Addington, because it's afool wrapped up in its own conceit and stroking the lion's cub till it'sgrown 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 isby chucking the raw meat at it and the saucers of blood. And pretty soonit'll eat us and eat Weedie too. "

He went in and up the stairs and Lydia fancied she heard the tearing ofpapers in his room. 

XXIV

The dry branch has come alive. The young Jeff Lydia had known throughFarvie was here, miraculously full of hope and laughter. Jeff was asdifferent after that day as a man could be if he had been buried andrevived and cast his grave-clothes off. He measured everything by hisnew idea and the answers came out pat. The creative impulse shot up inhim and grew. He knew what it was to be a prisoner under penalty, everycruel phase of it; and now that he saw everybody else in bonds, one toan unbalanced law of life we call our destiny, one to cant, one togreed, one to untended impulse, he was afire to let the prisoners out. If they knew they were bound they could throw off these besetments ofmortality and walk in beauty. Old Addington, the beloved, must freeherself. Too long had she been held by the traditions she had erectedinto forms of worship. The traditions lasted still, though now nobodytruly believed in them. She was beating her shawms and cymbals in theold way, but to a new tune, and the tune was not the song of liberty, hebelieved, but a child's lullaby. In that older time she had decentlycovered discomfiting facts, asserted that she believed revealedreligion, and blessed God, in an ingenuous candour, for setting her feetin paths where she could walk decorously. But now that she was reallyconsidering new gods he wanted her to take herself in hand and find outwhat she really worshipped. What was God and what was Baal? Had she thenerve to burn her sacrifices and see? He began to understand her betterevery day he lived with her. Poor old Addington! she had been suddenlyassaulted by the clamour of the times; it told her shameful things werehappening, and she had, with her old duteous responsiveness, snatched atremedies. The rich, she found, had robbed the poor. Therefore let therebe no more poverty, though not on that account less riches. And here thedemagogue arose and bade her shirk no issue, even the red flag. GodHimself, the demagogue informed her, gives in His march of timespectacular illustration of temporal vanity. The earthquake ruins us, the flood engulfs us, fire and water are His ministers to level the pompof power. Therefore, said the demagogue, forget the sweet abidingness ofhome, the brooding peace of edifices, the symbolic uses of matter toshow us, though we live but in tents of a night, that therein is a signof the Eternal City. Down with property. Addington had learned todistrust one sort of individual, and she instantly believed she couldtrust the other individual who was as unlike him as possible. BecauseDives had been numb to human needs, Lazarus was the new-discoveredleader. And the pitiful part of it all was that though Addington usedthe alphabet and spoke the language of "social unrest", it did it merelywith the relish of playing with a new thing. It didn't make a jot ofdifference in its daily living. It didn't exert itself over its localgovernment, it didn't see the Weedon Moores were honeycombing the soilwith sedition. It talked, and talked, and knew the earth would last itstime. 

When Jeffrey tore up the life of his fellow prisoner he did it as if hetore 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 tothink they were crudely honest, and he meant now to tell the truth asbrutally as the older men: how, in his seething youth, when he scarcelyknew the face of evil in his arrogant confidence that he was strongenough to ride it bareback without falling off, if it would bring him tohis ends, he leaped into the money game. And at that point, he ownedingenuously, he would have to be briefly insincere. He could unroll hisown past, but not Esther's. The minute the stage needed her he realisedhe could never summon her. He might betray himself, not her. It was she, the voice incarnate of greed and sensuous delight, that had whipped himalong his breathless course, and now he had to conceal her behind awilful lie and say they were his own delights that lured him. 

He sat there in his room writing on fiery nights when the moths crowdedoutside the screen and small sounds urged the freedom and softbeguilement of the season, even in the bounds of streets. The colonel, downstairs, sat in a determined patience over Mary Nellen's linguisticknots, what time he was awake long enough to tackle them, and wishedJeff would bring down his work where he could be glanced at occasionallyeven if he were not to be spoken to. The colonel had thought he wantednothing but to efface himself for his son, and yet the yearning of lifewithin him made him desire to live a little longer even by sapping thatyoung energy. Only Lydia knew what Jeff was doing, and she gloried init. He was writing a book, mysterious work to her who could only compassnotes of social import, and even then had some ado to spell. But sheread his progress by the light in his eyes, his free bearing and hisbroken silence. For now Jeff talked. He talked a great deal. He chaffedhis father and even Anne, and left Lydia out, to her own pain. Whyshould he have kissed her that long ago day if he didn't love her, andwhy shouldn't he have kept on loving her? Lydia was asking herself theoldest question in the woman's book of life, and nobody had told herthat nature only had the answer. "If you didn't mean it why did you doit?" This was the question Lydia heard no answer to. 

Jeff was perpetually dwelling upon Addington, torn between the factionsof the new and old. He asked Lydia seriously what she should recommenddoing, to make good citizens out of bamboozled aliens. Lydia had but oneanswer. She should, she said, teach them to dance. Then you could getacquainted with them. You couldn't get acquainted if you set them downto language lessons or religious teaching, or tried to make them readthe Constitution. If people had some fun together, Lydia thought, theypretty soon got to understand one another because they were doing athing they liked, and one couldn't do it so well alone. That was herrecipe. Jeff didn't take much stock in it. He was not wise enough toremember how eloquent are the mouths of babes. He went to Miss Amabel asbeing an expert in sympathy, and found her shy of him. She was on theveranda, shelling peas, and in her checked muslin with father's portraitbraided round with mother's hair pinning together her embroideredcollar. To Jeff, clad in his blue working-clothes, she looked likemotherhood and sainthood blended. He sat himself down on the lower step, clasped his knees and watched her, following the movements of her plumphands. 

"We can't get too homesick for old Addington while we have you to lookat, " said he. 

She stopped working for one pod's space and looked at him. 

"Are you homesick for old Addington?" she asked. "Alston Choate saysthat. 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 wehaven't got?"

Jeff thought of several words, but they wouldn't answer. Beauty? No, oldAddington 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 tosleep over the task of the day. 

"I just want old Addington, " he said. "Anyway I want to drop in to it asyou'd drop into the movies. I want to hesitate on the brink of doingthings that shock people. Nobody's shocked at anything now. I want tosee 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 theywere?"

He loved her beautiful indirection. 

"I don't want 'em to be what they were, " said he, "if they have to lieto do it. I don't know exactly what I do want. Only I'm homesick for oldAddington. Amabel, what should you say to my going into kindergartenwork?"

"You always did joke me, " said she. "Get a rise out of me? Is that whatyou call it?"

"I'm as sober as an owl, " said Jeff. "I want these pesky Poles andSyrians and all the rest of them to learn what they're up against whenthey come over here to run the government. I'm on the verge, Amabel, ofhiring a hall and an interpreter, and teaching 'em something aboutAmerican history, if there's anything to teach that isn't disgraceful. "

"And yet, " said she, "when Weedon Moore talks to those same men you goand break up the meeting. "

"But bless you, dear old girl, " said Jeff, "Weedon was teaching 'em therules for wearing the red flag. And I'm going to give 'em a straighttip about Old Glory. When I've got through with 'em, you won't know 'emfrom New Englanders dyed in the wool. "

She meditated. 

"If only you and Weedon would talk it over, " she ventured, "and combineyour forces. You're both so clever, Jeff. "

"Combine with Weedie? Not on your life. Why, I'm Weedie's antidote. Hepreaches riot and sedition, and I'm the dose taken as soon as you canget it down. "

Then she looked at him, though affectionately, in sad doubt, and Jeffsaw he had, in some way, been supplanted in her confidence though not inher affection. He wouldn't push it. Amabel was too precious to be lostfor kindergarten work. 

When they had talked a little more, but about topics less dangerous, thegarden and the drought, he went away; but Amabel padded after him, bowlin hand. 

"Jeff, " said she, "you must let me say how glad I am you and Weedon arereally seeing things from the same point of view. "

"Don't make any mistake about that, " said Jeff. "He's trying to bustAddington, and Tin trying to save it. And to do that I've got to bustWeedie himself. "

He went home then and put his case to Lydia, and asked her why, if MissAmabel was so willing to teach the alien boy to read and teach the aliengirl to sew, she should be so cold to his pedagogical ambitions. Lydiawas curiously irresponsive, but at dusk she slipped away to MadameBeattie's. To Lydia, what used to be Esther's house had now becomesimply Madame Beattie's. She had her own shy way of getting in, so thatshe need not come on Esther nor trouble the decorous maid. Perhaps Lydiawas a little afraid of Sophy, who spoke so smoothly and looked suchcool hostility. So she tapped at the kitchen door and a large cook ofsound principles who loved neither Esther nor Sophy, let her in andpassed her up the back stairs. Esther had strangely never noted thisadventurous way of entering. She was rather unobservant about somethings, and she would never have suspected a lady born of coming in bythe kitchen for any reason whatever. Esther, too, had some of theAddington 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 younggirl's flossy crown. She always had a cool drink by her, and she wasalways reading. Sometimes she put out her little ringed hand and movedthe 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 shehad for all the irresponsible exuberance Madame Beattie presented herwith, of boundless areas where you could be gay. Madame Beattie shut herbook and motioned to the door. But Lydia was already closing it. Thatwas the first thing when they had their gossips. Lydia came then andperched on the foot of the bed. Her promotion from chair to bed markedthe 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 goabroad. This was only an expression of her pleasure in sitting on a bedand chatting with a game old lady. What she wanted was to mull alonghere in Addington with occasional side dashes into the realms ofdiscontent, 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 asThey. 

"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 andtelling them things. "

"But that isn't dressing 'em in Governor Winthrop's knee breeches, " saidMadame Beattie, "and making Puritans of 'em. I'm just filling 'em upwith Jeff Blake, so they'll follow him and make a ringleader of himwhether he wants it or not. They'll push and push and not see they'repushing, and before he knows it he'll be down stage, with all hiswar-paint on. You never saw Jeff catch fire. "

"No, " said Lydia, lying. The day he took her hands and told her what shestill believed at moments--he had caught fire then. 

"When he catches fire, he'll burn up whatever's at hand, " said the oldlady, with relish. "Get his blood started, throw him into politics, andin 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 outof her boots. "

"Esther?" Lydia whispered. 

Madame Beattie whispered, too, now, and a cross-light played over hereyes. 

"Yes. I've searched her room. And she knows it. She thinks I'm searchingfor the necklace. "

"And aren't you?"

"Bless you, no. I shouldn't find it. She's got it safely hid. But whenshe finds her upper bureau drawer gone over--Esther's verymethodical--and the next day her second drawer and the next day theshelves in her closet, why, then--"

"What then?" asked Lydia, breathless. 

"Then, my dear, she'll get so nervous she'll put the necklace into alittle bag and tell me she is called to New York. And she'll take thebag 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 wantsomebody 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 waydownstairs to the carriage. 'Esther, ' I shall say, 'get back to yourroom and take that little bag with you. And make up to handsome Jeff andtell him he's got to stir himself and pay me something on account. Andyou 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 whenshe goes to her room early and locks the door? She's sitting before theglass with that necklace on, cursing God because there's no man to seeher. "

"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: eventhe kind of woman Esther is. That type hasn't changed since thecreation, as they call it. "

"But I don't like it, " said Lydia. "I don't think it's fair. She hatesJeff--"

"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 shecan keep diamond necklaces she never ought to have had. "

"Make him pay money for anything, " said the old witch astutely, "moneyhe'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 onthe next man and getting to the top. "

Lydia didn't want him to tussle, but she did want him at the top. Shehad not told Madame Beattie about the manuscript growing and growing onJeff'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 terminatinginterviews when she wanted to get back to literature. "Only when hebegins to address his workingmen you tell me. "

Lydia, on her way downstairs, passed Esther's room and even stood asecond breathlessly taking in its exquisite order. Here was the bowerwhere the enchantress slept, and where she touched up her beauty by thesecret processes Lydia, being very young and of a pollen-like freshness, despised. This was not just of Lydia. Esther took no more than a normalcare of her complexion, and her personal habits were beyond praise. Lydia stood there staring, her breath coming quick. Was the necklacereally there? If she saw it what could she do? If the little bag withthe necklace inside it sat there waiting to be taken to New York, whatcould she do then? She fled softly down the stairs. 

Addington was a good deal touched when Jeffrey Blake took the old townhall and put a notice in the paper saying he would give a talk there onAmerican History in the administration of George Washington. He wouldspeak in English and parts of the lecture would be translated, ifnecessary, by an able interpreter. Ladies considered seriously whetherthey ought not to go, to encourage him, and his father was sure it washis own right and privilege. But Jeff choked that off. He settled thematter 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, whenhe came in, at a little after ten, that there had been five Italianspresent and one of them had slept. Two ladies, deputed by the Woman'sClub, had also come, and he wished to thunder women would mind theirbusiness 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. Hewould give his next lecture, he said, unless nobody was there but theWoman's Club. He drew the line. And next day Lydia slipped away toMadame Beattie and told her the second lecture would be on the followingWednesday night. 

That night Jeff stood up before his audience of three, no ladies thistime. But Andrea was not there. Jeff thought a minute and decided therewas no need of him. 

"Will you tell me, " said he, looking down from the shallow platform athis three men, "why I'm not talking in English anyway? You vote, don'tyou? You read English. Well, then, listen to it. "

But he was not permitted to begin at once. There was a stir without andthe sound of feet. The door opened and men tramped in, men and men, more than the little hall would hold, and packed themselves in theaisles and at the back. And with the foremost, one who carried himselfproudly as if he were extremely honored, came Madame Beattie in along-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 heraudience and was cheered. When she spoke to Jeff, it was with a perfectself-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 beganquite robustly and thought he was doing very well. In twenty minutes hewas, he thought, speaking excellently. The men were warmly pleased. Theysat up and smiled and glistened at him. Once he stopped short and threwMadame Beattie a quick aside. 

"What are they laughing at?"

"I have to put it picturesquely, " said Madame Beattie, in a statelycalm. "That's the only way they'll understand. Go on. "

It is said in Addington that those lectures lasted even until eleveno'clock at night, and there were petitions that The Prisoner should goto the old hall and talk every evening, instead of twice a week. TheWoman's Club said Madame Beattie was a dear to interpret for him, andsome of the members who had not studied any language since theseventies, when they learned the rudiments of German, to read Faust, judged it would be a good idea to hear her for practice. But somebodytold her that, and she discouraged it. She was obliged, she said, toskip hastily from one dialect to another and they would only beconfused; therefore they thought it better, after all, to remainundisturbed in their respective calm. Jeff sailed securely on throughLincoln's administration to the present day, and took up the tariffeven, in an elementary fashion. There he was obliged to be drilytechnical at points, and he wondered how Madame Beattie could accuratelyreproduce him, much less to a response of eager faces. But then Jeffknew she was an old witch. He knew she had hypnotised wives that hatedher and husbands sworn to cast her off. He knew she had sung after shehad no voice, and bamboozled even the critics, all but one who wrote foran evening paper and so didn't do his notice until next day. And he sawno 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 arefreshing drink, and of meeting Esther the next day at dinner andtelling her what a good house they had. Business, Madame Beattie calledit, splendid business, and Esther hated her for that, too. It soundedlike shoes or hosiery. But Ether didn't dare gainsay her, for fear shewould put out a palmist's sign, or a notice of séances at twenty-fivecents a head. Esther knew she could get no help from grandmother. Whenshe sought it, with tears in her eyes, begging grandmother to turn theunprincipled old witch out for good, grandmother only pulled the sheetup to her ears and breathed stertorously. 

But Madame Beattie was tired, though this was the flowering of her laterlife. 

"My God!" she said to Lydia one night, before getting up to dress for alecture, "I'm pretty nearly--what is it they call it--all in? I may dropdead. 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 hetells their folk tales and their stories. I give you my word, Lydia, I'dno 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 withmodern 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'swhat he thinks. The trusts!"

XXV

The colonel thrived, about this time, on that fallacious feeling, bornof hope eternal, that he was growing young. It is one of theprecautionary lies of nature, to keep us going, that, the instant we aretinkered in any part, we ignore its merely being fitted up for shorteneduse. 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 poethears the grass. A nostrum on your toil-hardened hands brings back, tokeen anticipation, the skin of youth. All mankind is prepared to aperfect 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 tocry his wares. The colonel, doing a good day's work and getting tiredenough to sleep at night, felt, on waking, as if life were to last themeasure of his extremest appetite. The household went on wings, soclever and silent was Anne in administration and so efficient MaryNellen. Only Anne was troubled in her soul because Lydia would goslipping away for these secret sessions with Madame Beattie. She evenproposed going with her once or twice, but Lydia said she had put it offfor that night; and next time she slipped away more cleverly. Once inthese calls Lydia met Esther at the head of the stairs, and they said"How do you do?" in an uncomfortable way, Esther with reproving dignityand Lydia in a bravado that looked like insolence. And then Esther sentfor Alston Choate, and in the evening he came. 

Esther was a pathetic pale creature, as she met him in the dusk of thecandle-lighted room, little more than a child, he thought, as he notedher round arms and neck within the film of her white dress. Esther didnot need to assume a pathos for the moment's needs. She was very sorryfor herself. They sat there by the windows, looking out under the shadeof the elms, and for a little neither spoke. Esther had some primitivefeminine impulses to put down. Alston had an extreme of pity that gavehim fervencies of his own. To Esther it was as natural as breathing toask a man to fight her battles for her, and to cling to him while shetold him what battles were to be fought. Alston had the chafed feelingof one who cannot follow with an unmixed ardency the lines his heartwould lead him. He was always angry, chiefly because she had to sufferso, after the hideousness of her undeserved destiny, and yet he saw noway to help that might not make a greater hardship for her. At last shespoke, 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 heartenher. "What is it that's different?"

"Everything. Aunt Patricia has those horrible men come here and talkwith 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 hereforever. "

"Oh, yes, she will. She gets her food, at least, and I don't believe shecould pay for even that abroad. And this sort of thing amuses her. It'slike 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, sothat Alston nervously hoped she wouldn't cry. "But I can't do that. Ihaven't enough to live on, away from here, and I'm afraid. "

"Esther, " said he, daring at last to bring out the doubt that assailedhim when he mused over her by himself, "just what do you mean by sayingyou are afraid?"

"You know, " said Esther, almost in a whisper. She had herself in handnow. 

"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 ofme. 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 wherethe candles were, and stood there leaning against the shelf. He heardher catch her breath, and knew she was near sobs. He came back to hischair, and his voice had resumed so much of its judicial tone that herbreath 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 astartling gush of words--"you are the last man I could tell. "

It was a confession, a surrender, and he felt the tremendous weight ofit. 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? Hepulled himself together. 

"Perhaps I can't do anything for you, " he said, "in my own person. But Ican see that other people do. I can see that you have counsel. "

"Alston, " said she, in what seemed to him a beautiful simplicity, "whycan'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 yourhusband, could I be the man to try your case? Could I? When you havejust said I am the last man you could tell? I can't get you adivorce----" he stopped there. He couldn't possibly add, "and then marryyou afterward. "

"I see, " said Esther, yet raging against him inwardly. "You can't helpme. "

"I can help you, " said Alston. "But you must be frank with me. I mustknow whether you have any case at all. Now answer me quite simply andplainly. 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 Ilive?"

"But you told me there was none. "

"How do you think I could live here with grandmother and expect her todress 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 aquestion of Jeff's allowing you money, or not allowing you money. Doeshe, or does he not?"

"His father sends me some, " said Esther, in a voice almost inaudible. Itsounded 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 fathersigns the cheques. "

"Isn't it probable that his father would do that when Jeff was inprison, 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 Alstoncertain she had balked. He recognised that pause in the human animalunder inquisition, and for a wonder, since he had never been wound up tobreaking point himself, knew how it felt. The machinery in the brain hadsuddenly stopped. He was not surprised that Esther could not go on. Itwas not obstinacy that deterred her. It was panic. He had put her, heknew, to too harsh a test. Now he had to soothe her affrighted mind andbring it back to its clear uses; and since he could honestly do it, asthe lawyer exercising professional medicine, he gave himself gladly tothe 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 decidewhether you have any case and whether I can send you to another man. Butif you do engage counsel, you'll have to talk to him freely. You'll haveto answer all sorts of questions. It's a pretty comprehensive thing toadmit the law into your private life, because you've got to give itevery right there. You'll be questioned. And you'll have to answer. "

Esther sat looking at him steadily. As she looked, her pale cheek seemedto fill and flush and a light ran into her eyes, until the glow spilledover and dazzled him, like something wavering between him and her. Hehad 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 playthe honest game between an unattached woman and a man who sees herfetters where she has ceased to see them, but can only feel them gallher? Had not the inner spirit of him been speaking through all thisinterview to the inner spirit of her, and was she not willing now to letit 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. Thelustrous lights of her eyes dwelt upon him, unwavering. Then her lipsconfirmed 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 notcooling it, he realised he was carrying his hat in his hand, and put iton hastily. He was Addington to the backbone, when he was not roamingthe fields of fiction, and one of the rules of Addington was againstlooking queer. He walked to his office and let himself in. The windowswere closed and the room had the crude odour of public life: dust, staletobacco and books. He threw up the windows and hesitated an instant bythe gas jet. It was his habit, when the outer world pressed him tooheavily, to plunge instantly into a book. But books were no anodyne forthe turmoil of this night. Nor was the light upon these familiarfurnishings. He sat down by the window, laid his arms on the sill andlooked out over the meadows, unseen now but throwing their dampexhalations up to him through the dark. His heart beat hard, and in thephysical vigour of its revolt he felt a fierce pleasure; but he wasshamed all through in some way he felt he could not meet. Had he seen anew Esther to-night, an Esther that had not seemed to exist under thesoft lashes of the woman he thought he knew so well? He had a stifflydrawn picture of what a woman ought to be. She really conformed toAddington ideals. He believed firmly that the austere and noble dweltwithin woman as Addington had framed her. It would have given him nopleasure to find a savage hidden under pretty wiles. But Alston believedso sincerely in the control of man over the forces of life, of whichwoman was one, that, if Esther had stepped backward from her brightestate 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 thesepitfalls of the earth. It is a pity those ideals of old Addington thatmade Alston Choate believe in women as little lower than the angelsand, if they proved themselves lower, not really culpable because theyare children and not rightly guided--it is a pity that garden cannotkeep on blooming even out of the midden of the earth. But he had keptthe garden blooming. Addington had a tremendous grip on him. It was notthat he had never seen other customs, other manners. He had travelled areasonable amount for an Addington man, but always he had been able tobelieve that Eden is what it was when there was but one man in it andone woman. There was, of course, too, the serpent. But Alston wasfastidious, and he kept his mind as far away from the serpent aspossible. He thought of his mother and sister, and instantly ceasedthinking 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 plainindeed, Addington owned, but with beautiful manners. She was not likeAlston, not like his sister, who had a highbred charm, something in theway of Alston's own. Mother was different. She was of the Griswolds whohad land in Cuba and other islands, and were said to have kept slavesthere while the Choates were pouring blood into the abolitionist cause. There was a something about mother quite different from anybody inAddington. She conformed beautifully, but you would have felt sheunderstood your not conforming. She never came to grief over theneutralities of the place, and you realised it was because she expressedso few opinions. You might have said she had taken Addington for what itwas and exhausted it long ago. Her gaze was an absent, yet, of lateyears, a placid one. She might have been dwelling upon far-off islandswhich excited in her no desire to be there. She was too cognisant ofthe infinite riches of time that may be supposed to make up eternity. Ifshe was becalmed here in Addington, some far-off day a wind would fillher sails and she might seek the farther seas. And, like her son, sheread novels. 

Alston, going home at midnight, saw the pale glimmer in her room andknew she was at it there. He went directly upstairs and stopped at herdoor, open into the hall. He was not conscious of having anything tosay. Only he did feel a curious hesitation for the moment. Here inAddington was an Esther whom he had just met for the first time. Herewas another woman who had not one of Esther's graces, but whom he adoredbecause she was the most beautiful of mothers. Would she be horrified atthe 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 toldhimself, was because she was so calm. The Woman's Club of Addingtoncould have told him it was because she had poise. She looked up, as hestood 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, sothat the hood should shield his eyes. But to-night she gently turned ittoward him, and Alston did not realise that was because his fagged faceand disordered hair had made her anxious to understand the quicker whathad happened to him. 

I "Sit down, " she said. 

And then, having fairly seen him, she did turn the hood. Alston droppedinto 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 smoothlyback into its two braids, and her nightgown, with its tiny edge, was ofthe most pronouncedly sensible cut, of high neck and long sleeves. Yetthere was nothing uncouth about her in her elderly ease of dress andmanner. She was a wholesome woman, and the heart of her son turnedpathetically to her. 

"Mary gone to bed?" he asked. 

"Yes, " said Mrs. Choate. "She was tired. She's been rehearsing a dancewith those French girls and their class. "

Alston lay back in his chair, regarding her with hot, tired eyes. Hewanted to know what she thought of a great many things: chiefly whethera woman who had married Jeff Blake need be afraid of him. But there wasa well-defined code between his mother and himself. He was not willingto 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 wasgoing 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 youcame in. And I shall be again when you are gone. Among the rogues, suchas we don't see. "

"What is it?"

"Mysteries of Paris. "

"That's our vice, isn't it, " said Alston, "yours and mine, novelreading?"

"You're marked with it, " said she. 

There was something in the quiet tone that arrested him and made himlook at her more sharply. The tone seemed to say she had not only readnovels for a long time, but she had had to read them from a gravedesign. "It does very well for me, " she said, "but it easily mightn'tfor 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 youlike me to take you?"

"Oh, no, " said Mrs. Choate. "Mary wouldn't want to. She's bewitched withthose French girls. And I don't want to. I couldn't go the only way I'dlike. "

"You could go any way you chose, " said Alston, touched. He knew therewas a war chest, and it irked him to think his mother wouldn't have ittapped for her. 

"Oh, no, " said she. "I should need to be slim and light, and put onshort petticoats and ride horses and get away from tigers. I don't wantto 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 MadameBeattie. "

"What's Madame Beattie done that any--" he paused; Esther's wrongs atMadame Beattie's hands were too red before him--"that any lady would bewilling to do?"

"I really don't know, Alston, " said his mother frankly. "It's only thatwhen 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 goodnessknows what to the descendants of the oldest civilisations, and theirbringing 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 sotall by three inches. "

"And then I realise that when women say they want to vote, it isn'tbecause they're all piously set on saving the country. It's becausethey've peeped over the fence and got an idea of the game, and they'recrazy 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 playthem. "

"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 woodand 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 toyou they're having just as much fun organising and stirring the pot asif it was the other pot they were stirring? Besides they attitudinisewhile 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 exceptyour Weedon Moores. Any more than a nice girl puts on a ribbon to trapher 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. Choateimpatiently, "they've gone on putting down cards since the rules werechanged. "

Alston rose and stood looking down at her. She glanced up brightly, methis eyes and laughed. 

"All is, " said she, in a current phrase even cultured Addington hadcaught from its "help" from the rural radius outside, "I just happenedto feel like telling you if you want to run away, you go. And if Iweighed 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 stirthe 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 implacablemistress of destiny. In spite of her large tolerance, there were momentswhen she did speak. So she had looked when he said, as a boy, that heshouldn'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 ofultra-moderns and swamped himself in decoration and the beguilements ofa spurious art, he had seen that look; then she had told him theclassics were not to be neglected. Now here was the look again. Alstonbegan to have an uncomfortable sense that he might have to run foroffice in spite of every predilection he ventured to cherish. He couldhave thrown himself on the floor and bellowed to be let alone. 

"But keep your head, dear, " she was saying. "Keep your head. Don't letany 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 suddenlyand too close together. Alston meant to kiss her, as he did almost everynight, but he awkwardly could not. He went out of the room in a shyhaste, 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 hehad come from Esther and how fast his blood was running. 

XXVI

Jeff, writing hard on his book to tell men they were prisoners and hadto get free, was tremendously happy. He thought he saw the whole gamenow, the big game these tiny issues reflected in a million mirrors. Youwere given life and incalculable opportunity. But you were allowed to goit blind. They never really interfered with you, the terrible They upthere: for he could not help believing there was an Umpire of the game, though nobody, it seemed, was permitted to see the score until longafterward, when the trumpery rewards had been distributed. (Some of themwere not trumpery; they were as big as the heavens and the sea. ) Hefound a great many things to laugh over, sane, kind laughter, in the waythe game was played there in Addington. Religion especially seemed tohim the big absurd paradox. Here were ingenuous worshippers preserving aform of observance as primitive as the burnt-offerings before a god ofbronze or wood. They went to church and placated their god, and sworethey believed certain things the acts of their lives repudiated. Theymade a festival at Christmas time and worshipped at the manger anddeclared God had come to dwell among men. They honored Joseph who wasthe spouse of Mary, and who was a carpenter, and on the twenty-sixth ofDecember they nodded with condescension to their own carpenter, if theymet him in the street, or they failed to see him at all. And theircarpenter, who was doing his level best to prevent them from grindingthe face of labour, himself ground the face of his brother carpenter ifhis brother did not heartily co-operate in keeping hours down andprices up. And everybody was behaving from the prettiest of motives;that was the joke of it. They not only said their prayers before goingout 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 anarch apostle of impudence who pricked bubbles for them--a modernliterary 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 impudencewasn't so busy pricking bubbles that he didn't have time to blow bubblesof his own, and even he didn't know how thin and hollow his own bubbleswere, which was the reason they could float so high. He saw the sun onthem and thought they were the lanterns that lighted up the show. Jeffbelieved he had discovered the clever little trick at the bottom of thegame, the trick that should give over to your grasp the right handle atlast. This was that every man, once knowing he was a prisoner, shouldlaugh at his fetters and break them by his own muscle. 

"The trouble is, " he said, at breakfast, when Mary Nellen was bringingin the waffles, "we're all such liars. "

The colonel sat there in a mild peaceableness, quite another man underthe tan of his honest intimacy with the sun. He had been up hoeing anhour before breakfast, and helped himself to waffles liberally, whileMary Nellen looked, with all her intellectual aspirations in her eyes, at Jeff. 

"No, no, " said the colonel. He was conscious of very kindly feelingswithin himself, and believed in nearly everybody but Esther. She, hethought, 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 apretence of business at the side table, and listened greedily. She wouldtake what she had gathered to the kitchen and discuss it to rags. Shefound the atmosphere very stimulating. "If I asked Lydia here whethershe 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 arat. "

"It is beautiful, " said Lydia. "It doesn't need to be thick. "

Jeff had refused waffles. He thrust his hands in his pockets and leanedback, regarding his father with a smile. The lines in his face, Lydiathought, fascinated, were smoothed out, all but the channels in theforehead and the cleft between his brows. That last would never go. 

"I am simply, " said Jeff, "so tickled I can hardly contain myself. Ihave discovered something. "

"What?" said Lydia. 

"The world, " said Jeff. "Here it is. It's mine. I can have it to playwith. It's yours. You can play, too. So can that black-eyed army MadameBeattie has mobilised. So can she. "

Anne was looking at him in a serious anxiety. 

"With conditions as they are--" said she, and Jeff interrupted herwithout scruple. 

"That's the point. With conditions as they are, we've got to dig intothings and mine out pleasures, and shake them in the faces of the moband the mob will follow us. "

The colonel had ceased eating waffles. His thin hand, not so delicatenow that it had learned the touch of toil, trembled a little as it heldhis fork. 

"Jeff, " said he, "what do you want to do?"

"I want, " said Jeff, "to keep this town out of the clutch of WeedieMoore. "

"You can't do it. Not so long as Amabel is backing him. She's gotunlimited cash, and she thinks he's God Almighty and she wants him to bemayor. "

"It's a far cry, " said Jeff, "from God Almighty to mayor. But AlstonChoate 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, whileFarvie held the morning paper for a cursory glance, before separatingfor their different deeds. When Farvie and Anne had gone Jeff took upthe 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 brainto be let in. He threw the paper down. 

"Well?" said he. 

Lydia was all alive. Her small face seemed drawn to a point ofeagerness. 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 likeAddington. It wouldn't stand for me, but it would be too well-bred tostand against me. No, Lyddy, I shouldn't get a show. And I don't want ashow. All I want is to bust Weedon Moore. "

Lydia looked the unmovable obstinacy she felt stiffening every fibre ofher. 

"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 thedevil. I'm not going to run for office. "

"What are you going to do?" asked Lydia, in a small voice. She wasresting 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 thereto the hall and make an ass of myself talking history and be dished bythat old marplot. But if I can get hold of the same men--havingpreviously gagged Madame Beattie or deported her--I'll make them actsome 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, withher dramatics up there on the platform, and the way they answered. They're children, and they want to play. She had the cleverness to seeit. And they shall play with me. "

"But they won't act Shakespeare, " said Lydia. "They only care abouttheir 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 mycompliments to Madame Beattie and tell her if she blocks my game I'llblock hers. She'll understand. And they've got to learn what England wasand 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 thescuppers 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 easilylift 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 andscrambled for, and eaten. Anyway, the chicken isn't. And you want me tosteal another--"

"No, no. "

"Yes, you do. I should have to steal it. I haven't time enough in mywhole 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 nowI'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 hedespairingly tried to show her his true mind. 

"You mustn't think for a minute I can wipe out my old score and show youa 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 veryordinary, 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 franklywanted something and asked for it. Addington, he told them, if theybuilt more factories and put in big industries, as they were trying todo, was going to call in more and more foreign workmen. It was going tobe a melting-pot of small size. That was a current catchword. Jeff usedit as glibly as the women of the clubs. The pot was going to seethe andbubble over and some demagogue--he did not mention Weedie--was going tostir it, and the Addington of our fathers would be lost. The businessmen looked at him with the slow smile of the sane for the fanatic andanswered from the fatuous optimism of the man who expects the world tolast at least his time. Some of them said something about "this greatcountry", as if it were chartered by the Almighty to stand the assaultsof other races, and when he reminded them that Addington was not tryingto amalgamate its aliens with its own ideals, and was giving them overinstead to Weedon Moore, they laughed at him. 

"What's Weedon Moore?" one man said. "A dirty little shyster. Let himtalk. 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 themthey hold the key of the treasury and they've only to turn it to beinside. He's giving no credit to brains and leadership and tradition andlaw and punishment for keeping the world moving. He's telling the manwith the hod and the man with the pickaxe that simply by virtue of thehod 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 withit. "

They smoothed him down after one fashion or another, and put their feetup and offered him a cigar and wanted to hear all about his prisonexperiences, but hardly liked to ask, and so he went away in a queercoma of disappointment. They had not turned him out, but they didn'tknow what he was talking about. Every man of them was trying either tosave the dollar he had or to make another dollar to keep it warm. Jeffwent home sore at heart; but when he had plucked up hope again out ofhis sense of the ironies of things, he went back and saw the same menand hammered at them. He explained, with a categorical clearness, thathe 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 itcould 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 ofallowing the seeds of anarchy to be planted in them before they even gotover the effects of the voyage. If there were any virtue left in therepublic, 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 couldhave unless men are going to fight out the old brute battle for baresupremacy. 

Then one day a man said to him, "Oh, you're an idealist!" and all hisantagonists breathed more freely because they had a catchword. Theylooked at him, illuminated, and repeated it. 

One man, a big coal dealer down by the wharves, did more or less agreewith him. 

"It's this damned immigration, " he said. "They make stump speeches andtalk about the open door, but they don't know enough to shut the doorwhen 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 ofanswering. "I don't want to wait for legislation to crawl along and shutthe stable door. I only say, we've invited in a lot of foreigners. We'vegot to teach 'em to be citizens. They've got to take the country on ourplan, and be one of us. "

But the coal man had tipped back in his chair against the coal shed andwas scraping his nails with his pocket knife. He did it with exquisitecare, and his half-closed eyes had a look of sleepy contentment; hemight have been shaping a peaceful destiny. His glimmer ofresponsiveness 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'regoing to keep Weedon Moore out. "

"Moore ain't no good, " said the coal man. "But I dunno's he'd do anyharm. "

The eyes of them all were holden, Jeff thought. They were prisoners totheir own greed and their own stupidity. So he sat down and ran theminto his book, as blind custodians of the public weal. His book wasbeing written fast. He hardly knew what kind of book it was, whether itwasn't a queer story of a wandering type, because he had to put what hethought into the mouths of people. He had no doubt of being able to sellit. When he first came out of prison three publishing firms of thegreatest enterprise had asked him to write his prison experiences. Toone of these he wrote now that the book was three-quarters done, andasked what the firm wanted to do about it. The next day came anup-to-date young man, and smoked cigarettes incessantly on the verandawhile he asked questions. What kind of a book was it? Jeff brought outthree or four chapters, and the young man whirled over the leaves with apractised and lightning-like faculty, his spectacled eyes probing as heturned. 

"Sorry, " said he. "Not a word about your own experiences. "

"It isn't my prison experience, " said Jeff. "It's my life here. It'severybody's life on the planet. "

"Couldn't sell a hundred copies, " said the young man. Jeff looked at himin admiration, he was so cocky and so sure. "People don't want to betold they're prisoners. They want you to say you were a prisoner, andtell how innocent you were and how the innocent never get a show and theguilty 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 whathe likes and tell the publisher he can take it and be damned. Thepublisher knows mighty well what the public wants. He's going to give itto 'em, too. "

"You'd say it won't sell. "

"My dear fellow, I know. I'm feeling the pulse of the public all thetime. It's my business. "

Jeff put out his hands for the sheets and the censor gave them upwillingly. 

"I'm frightfully disappointed, " he said, taking off his eyeglasses towipe them on his handkerchief and looking so babyishly ingenuous thatJeff broke into a laugh. "I thought we should get something 'live out ofyou, something we could push with conviction, you know. But we can'tthis; we simply can't. " He had on his glasses now, and theall-knowingness had come mysteriously back. His eyes seemed to shootarrows, and clutch and hold you so that you wanted to be shot by themagain. "Tell you what, though. We might do this. It's a crazy book, youknow. "

"Is it?" Jeff inquired. 

"Oh, absolutely. Daffy. They'd put it in the eccentric section of alibrary, with books on perpetual motion and the fourth dimension. But ifyou'd let us publish your name--"

"Decidedly. "

"And do a little preliminary advertising. How prison life had underminedyour health and even touched your reason, so you weren't absolutely--youunderstand? _Then_ we'd publish it as an eccentric book by an eccentricfellow, a victim of prison regulations. "

Jeff laid his papers down on the table beside him and set a glass onthem to keep them from blowing away. 

"No, " said he. "I never was saner in my life. I'm about the only saneman 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 yousee what that would do in an ad? My dear chap, they all think the otherman's daffy. "

Jeff carried the manuscript into the house, and asked the wise youngjudge to come out and see his late corn, and offered him a platter ofit if he'd stay to supper. And he actually did, and proved to be a verygood fellow indeed, born in the country, and knowing all its ways, onlygifted with a diabolical talent for adapting himself to all sorts ofplaces 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 tookhim to the station he had lost, for the moment, his rapier-like actionof intellect for an almost maudlin gratitude over the family he had beenprivileged to meet. 

Anne and Lydia had paid him only an absent-minded courtesy. They were onthe point of giving an evening of folk-dancing, under Miss Amabel'spatronage, and young foreigners were dropping in all the time now to askquestions 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 ThePrisoner. 

XXVII

With these folk dances began what has been known ever since as theDramatic Movement in Addington. On this first night the proudlydespairing ticket-seller began to repeat by seven o'clock: "Every seattaken. " Many stood and more were turned away. But the families of thesons 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 goneearly, with Anne and Lydia, to carry properties and help them with thestage. And when he wasn't needed behind the scenes, he went out and satamong the gay contingent from Mill End, magnificent creatures byphysical inheritance, the men still rough round the edges from the day'swork, but the women gay in shawls and beads and shiny combs. Andrea wasthere and bent forward until Jeff should recognise him, and again Jeffrealised that smiles lit up the place for him. Even the murmured nameran round among the rows. They were telling one another, here was ThePrisoner. Whatever virtue there was in being a prisoner, it had earnedhim adoring friends. 

He sat there wondering over it, and conventional Addington came inbehind 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 forcritical comment. It was Miss Amabel's pathetic scheme for bringing theEast and the West together and, in an exquisite hospitality, making theEast at home. 

But when the curtain went up, he opened his eyes to the scene andceased thinking of philanthropy and Miss Amabel. Here was beauty, thebeauty of grace and traditionary form. They were dancing the tarantella. Jeff had seen it in Italy, more than one night after the gay littledinners Esther had loved to arrange when they were abroad. She hadrefused all the innocent bohemianisms of foreign travel; she had takenher own atmosphere of expensive conventionalities with her, and they hadseen Europe through that medium. In all their travelling they had nevertouched racial intimacies. They were like a prince and princess convoyedalong in a royal progress, seeing only what is fitting for royal eyes tosee. 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 ofhis own, felt hot waves of homesickness for the beauties of foreignlands, and yet not those lands as he had seen them unrolled for theperusal of the traveller. He sat in a dream of the heaven of beauty thatlies across the sea, and he felt toward the men who had left it to comehere to better themselves a compassion in the measure of his compassionfor himself. How bare his own life had been, even when the world openedbefore him her illuminated page! He had not really enjoyed theseexquisite delights of hers; he had not even prepared himself forenjoying. He had kept his eyes fixed on the game that ensures mereluxury, and he had let Esther go out into the market and buy for themboth the only sort of happiness her eyes could see. He loved thisdancing rout. He envied these boys and girls their passion and facility. They were, the most ignorant of them, of another stripe from arid NewEnglanders encased in their temperamental calm, the women, in alaughable self-satisfaction, leading the intellectual life and their menset on "making good". The poorest child of the East and South had aninheritance that made him responsive, fluent, even while it left himhot-headed and even froward. There was something, he saw, in this ideaof the melting-pot, if only the mingling could be managed by gods thatsaw the future. You couldn't make a wonder of a bell if you poured yourmetal into an imperfect mould. The mould must be flawless and the metalcunningly mixed; and then how clear the tone, how resonant! It wasn'tthe tarantella only that led him this long wandering. It was the qualityof the dancers; and through all the changing steps and measures Anne andLydia, too, were moving, Lydia a joyous leader in the temperamental rushand swing. 

Mrs. Choate, stately in dark silk and lace and quite unlike therevolutionary matron who had lain in bed and let her soul loose with the"Mysteries of Paris, " sat between her son and daughter and was silentthough 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 Annefar finer in the rout than gipsy Lydia. His mother followed his thoughtsexactly, but while she placidly agreed, it was Lydia she inwardlyenvied, Lydia who had youth and a hot heart and not too much scruple tokeep her from giving each their way. 

When it was over, Jeff waited for Anne and Lydia, to carry home theirparcels. He stood for a moment beside Andrea, and Andrea regarded himwith that absurd devotion he exuded for The Prisoner. Jeff smiled at himeven affectionately, though quizzically. He wished he knew what pictureof him was under Andrea's skull. A sudden impulse seized him to make theman 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, ifyou're going to live here. "

Andrea's face died into a dull denial. A sort of glaze even seemed tosettle over the surface of his eyes. He gave a perfunctory grunt, andJeff caught him up on it. 

"Won't she allow it?" he hazarded. "Madame Beattie?"

Andrea was really caught and quite evidently relieved, too, if Jeffunderstood so well. He smiled again. His eyes took on their wontedshining. Jeff, relying on Anne's and Lydia's delay, stayed not aninstant, but ran out of the side door and along to the front whereMadame Beattie, he knew, was making a stately progress, acceptinggreetings in a magnificent calm. He got to the door as she did, and shegave him the same royal recognition. She was dressed in black, her headdraped with lace, and she really did look a distinguished personage. ButJeff 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 heavilyand luxuriously. "Good Lord, Jeff, why can't New Englanders dance likethose shoemakers' daughters? What is it in this climate that dries upthe blood?"

"Madame Beattie, " said Jeff, "you've got to give away the game. You'vegot to tell me how you've hypnotised every man Jack of those peoplethere to-night so they won't do a reasonable thing I ask 'em unlessthey've had your permission. "

"What do you want to do?" But she was pleased. There was somebody underher foot. 

"I want to rehearse some plays in English. And I gather from the leaderof 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 thatcomes 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 theycome 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 rathercackling laugh. 

"What?" Jeff asked her sternly. He shook her arm involuntarily. 

"Freedom. That's talked about still. And a lot of demagogues like yourWeedon 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'regods and all they've got to do is to climb up on a throne and crownthemselves. "

"Then why won't you, " said Jeff, in wrath, "let me knock something elseinto their heads. You can't do it by facts. There aren't many factsjust 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 andsure her voice would sound quite over the world. She seldom challengedthe stars now, they moved her so, in an almost terrible way. What hadshe made of life, they austerely asked her, she who had been driven bythem to love and all the excellencies of youth? But then, in answer, shewould ask them what they had done for her. 

"Jeff, " said she, "you couldn't do it in a million years. They'll doanything for me, because I bring their own homes to them, but theycouldn'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 offeeling. You can't persuade men and women born in Italy and Greece andSyria and Russia that they're happy in this little bare town. It doesn'tsmell right to them. Their hearts are somewhere else. And they wantnothing so much in the world as to get a breath from there or hear astory 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 auntscarved up into little pieces there?" Jeff asked scoffingly. But she washypnotising him, too. He could believe they did. 

"What have you to offer 'em, Jeff, besides wages and a prospect of notbeing assassinated? That's something, but by God! it isn't everything. "She swore quite simply because out in the night even in the straightstreet of a New England town she felt like it and was carelessly willingto 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 shedid. 

"Because now, Jeff, they do think you're a god. If they saw you tryingto produce the Merchant of Venice they'd be bored and they wouldn'tthink so any more. "

"Have you any objection, " said Jeff, "to my trying to produce theMerchant of Venice with English-speaking children of foreigners?"

"Not a grain, " said Madame Beattie cordially. "There's your chance. Oryou can get up a pageant, if you like-, another summer. But you'll haveto 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 atthe darkened window above was looking down on them. Esther had not goneto the dances because she knew who would be there. She told herself shewas afraid of seeing Jeff and because she had said it often enough shebelieved it. "Tell Lydia to come to see me to-morrow, " said MadameBeattie. Sophy had opened the door. It came open quite easily now sincethe 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 theearly afternoon, she was taking her unabashed course by the back stairsto Madame Beattie's bedchamber. She would not allow herself to beembarrassed or ashamed. If Esther treated Madame Beattie with a properhospitality, she reasoned when her mind misgave her, it would not benecessary to enter by a furtive way. Madame Beattie was dressed and in ahigh state of exhilaration. She beckoned Lydia to her where she sat by awindow 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 goingaway. "

The clouds over Lydia seemed to lift. Yet it was incredible that Esther, this charming sinister figure always in the background or else blockingeverybody'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 boundto find the necklace. "

Lydia was tired from the night before; her vitality was low enough towaken in her the involuntary rebuttal, "I don't believe there is anynecklace. " But she only passed a hand over her forehead and pushed upher 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 supposeshe'd leave me here to conspire with Susan? She'll put the necklace intoa 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 inlove 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 distastefor the accomplished fact of Esther face to face with justice. Yet shedid not flinch in her certainty that nemesis must be obeyed and evenaided. Only the secrecy of it led her to a hatred of her own silent waysin the house, and as she often did, she turned to her right instead ofto her left and walked to the front stairs. There at her hand wasEsther's room, the door wide open. Downstairs she could hear her voicein colloquy with Sophy. Rhoda's voice, on this floor, made some curtremark. Everybody was accounted for. Lydia's heart was choking her, butshe stepped softly into Esther's room. It seemed to her, in herquickened feeling, that she could see clairvoyantly through the matterthat kept her from her quest. A travelling bag, open, stood on thefloor. There was a hand-bag on the bed, and Lydia, as if taking apredestined step, went to it, slipped the clasp and looked. A purse wasthere, a tiny mirror, a book that might have been an address book, andin the bottom a roll of tissue paper. Nothing could have stopped hernow. She had to know what was in the roll. It was a lumpy parcel, throwntogether in haste as if, perhaps, Esther had thought of making it lookas if it were of no account. She tore it open and found, with nosurprise, as if this were an old dream, the hard brightness of thejewels. 

"There it is, " she whispered to herself, with the scant breath herchoking heart would lend her. "Oh, there it is!"

She rolled the necklace in its paper and closed the bag. With noprecaution she walked out of the room and down the stairs. The voicesstill went on, Esther's and Sophy's from the library, and she did notknow whether Madame Beattie had already left the house. But opening thefront door, still with no precaution, she closed it sharply behind herand 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 theunfriendliness of the world. Madame Beattie, her ally up to this moment, was now a foe. For whether justly or not, Madame Beattie would claim thenecklace, 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 herlap and said, "Look! I took it out of Esther's bag. " She was thinkingvery clearly, it seemed to her, and the solution that looked most like ahigh business sagacity made it likely that she ought to carry it toAlston Choate. He was her lawyer. And yet indeed he was not, for he didnothing for her. He was only playing with her, to please Anne. But allthe while she was debating her feet carried her to the only person shehad known they would inevitably seek. She went directly upstairs toJeffrey'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 thesense the writer sometimes has, in a fortunate hour, of divine intentionin his task. Jeff was enjoying an egoistic interlude of feeling that thethings which had happened to him had been personally intended to bringhim to a certain deed. The richness of the world was crowding on him, the bigness of it, the dangers. He could scarcely choose, among suchdiversities, what to say. And dominating everything he had to say in thecompass of this one book was the sense of life, life at its full, andthe stupidity of calling such a world bare of wonders. And to him in hishalf creative, half exulting dream came Lydia, her face drawn to anextremity of what looked like apprehension. Or was it triumph? She mighthave been under the influence of a drug that had induced in her a wildexcitement 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 therebefore him. It was the more shapeless and disordered from the warmclutch 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 thetable. There it lay, glittering up at him. Lydia might have expectedsome wondering or tragic exclamation; but she did not get it. He wasastonished. He said quite simply:

"Aunt Patricia's necklace. " Then he looked up at her, and their eyesmet, hers with desperate expectation and his holding her gaze in anunmoved questioning. "Did she give it to you?" he asked, and she shookher head with a negation almost imperceptible. "No, " said Jeffrey tohimself. "She didn't have it. Who did have it?"

He let it lie on the table before him and gazed at the bauble in astrong distaste. Here it was again, a nothingness coming between him andhis vision of the real things of the earth. It seemed singularly trivialto him, and yet powerful, too, because he knew how it had moved men'sminds. 

"Where did you get it?" he asked, looking up at Lydia. 

Something inside her throat had swollen. She swallowed over it withdifficulty before she spoke. But she did speak. 

"I took it. "

"Took it?"

He got up, and, with a belated courtesy, pulled forward a chair. ButLydia did not see it. Her eyes were fixed on his face, as if in itschanges 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. Shewas conscious of but one desire: that he would not scowl so. And yet sheknew 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 herface. 

"I had to, " said she. "It has made all the trouble. "

"But I don't want it, " said Jeffrey. "Whatever trouble it made is overand done with. However this came into Esther's hands--"

"Oh, I know how that was, " said Lydia. "She stole it. Madame Beattiesays so. "

"And whatever she is going to do with it now--that isn't a matter for meto meddle with. "

"Don't you care?" said Lydia, in a passionate outcry. "Now you've got itin 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 hershe 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 andpay 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 todo 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 hiseyes. This, a sad certainty told him, was love, the love that isunthinking. She was suffocated by the pure desire to give the earth tohim and herself with it. What disaster might come from it to her or tothe earth, her lulled brain did not consider. The self-immolation ofpassion had benumbed her. And now she looked at him beseechingly, as ifto beg him only not to scorn her gift. Her emotion transferred itself tohim. He must be the one to act; but disappointingly, he knew, with themind coming in to school disastrous feeling and warn it not again toscale 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 thereglittering 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 ityourself. "

Lydia nodded, watching him. It had not occurred to her that there needbe any concealment. She had meant to indicate that to herself when shewalked so boldly down the front stairs and clanged the door and wentalong the street with the parcel plainly in her hand. If there was aslight drop in her expectation now, she did not show it. What she hadindeed believed was that Jeff would greet the necklace with anincredulous 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 itwould 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 grimway. He had been, for a long time, calling himself plain thief, andtaking no credit because his theft was what might have seemed a crime ofpassion of a sort. He had put himself "outside ", and now this child hadcommitted a crime of passion and she was outside, too. Her ignorantdaring frightened him. At any instant she might declare her guilt. Sheneeded to be brought face to face, for her own safety, with the names ofthings. 

"Lydia, " said he, "you know what it would be called--this takingsomething out of another woman's bag?"

"No, " said Lydia. 

"Theft, " said he. He meant to have no mercy on her until he had rousedher 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 lipand he could go no further. 

"Leave it with me, " he said. "And promise me one thing. Don't speak toanybody about it. "

"Unless they ask me, " said Lydia. 

"Not even if they ask you. Go to your room and shut yourself in. Anddon't talk to anybody till I see you again. "

She turned obediently, and her slender back moved him with a compassionit would have been madness to recognise. The plain man in him was inphysical rebellion against the rules of life that made it criminal totake a sweet creature like this into your arms to comfort her when shemost needed it and pour out upon her your gratitude and adoration. 

Jeff took the necklace and its bed of crumpled paper with it, wrapped itup and, holding it in his hand as Lydia had done, walked downstairs, gothis hat and went off to Esther's. What he could do there he did notfully know, save to fulfil the immediate need of putting the jewels intosome hand more ready for them than his own. He had no slightest wish tosettle the rights of the case in any way whatever. "Then, " his mind wassaying in spite of him, "Esther did have the necklace. " But even that hewas 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 beenEsther and smear it over with these blackening certainties. "Let be, "his young self cried to him. "She was at least a part of youth, andyouth was dear. " Why should she be pilloried since youth must standfettered with her for the old wrongs that were a part of the oldimagined sweetness? The sweetnesses and the wrongs had grown togetherlike roots inextricably mingled. To tear out the weeds you would rendalso the roots they twined among. 

In a stern musing he was at Esther's door before he had decided what tosay, had knocked and Sophy, large-eyed and shaken out of her speciouscalm, had admitted him. She did not question him nor did Jeffrey evenask for Esther. With the opening of the door he heard voices, and nowthe sound of an angry crying, and Sophy herself had the air of anunwilling servitor at a strange occasion. Jeffrey, standing in thedoorway of the library, faced the group there. Esther was seated on alow chair, her face crumpled and red, as if she had just wiped it freeof tears. The handkerchief, clutched into a ball in her angry fist, gavefurther evidence. Madame Beattie, enormously amused, sat in the handsomestraight-backed chair that became her most, and unaffectedly and broadlysmiled. And Alston Choate, rather pale in a sternness of judicialconsideration, stood, hands in his pockets, and regarded them. AtJeffrey's entrance they looked up at him and Esther instantly sprang toher feet and retreated to a position at the right of Choate, where hemight be conceived of as standing in the position of tacitly protectingher. Jeff, the little parcel in his hand, advanced upon them. 

"Here is the necklace, " said he, in a perfectly commonplace tone. "Isuppose 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 nowit was here. Esther did not wait for any one to put that question. Shespoke 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 nowhe saw Lydia as he had left her, in her childish misery, and answeredinstantly: "I took it. "

Alston Choate gave a little exclamation, of amazement, of disgust. Thenhe drew the matter into his own judicial hands. "Where did you take itfrom?" he asked. 

Jeffrey looked at him in a grave consideration. Alston Choate seemed tohim a negligible quantity; so did Esther and so did Madame Beattie. Allhe wanted was to clear the slender shoulders of poor savage, wretchedLydia at home. 

"Do you mind telling me, Jeffrey?" Alston was asking, in quite a humanway considering that he embodied the majesty of the law. "You couldn'thave walked into this house and taken a thing which didn't belong to youand carried it away. "

His tone was rather a chaffing one, a recall to the intercourse ofeveryday life. "Be advised, " it said. "Don't carry a dull joke too far. "

"Certainly I took it, " said Jeffrey, smiling at Alston broadly. He wasamused now, little more. He saw how his background of wholesale thieverywould serve him in the general eye. Not old Alston's. He did not thinkfor a moment Alston would believe him, but it seemed more or less of agrim 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. Youknow more about 'em than you do about law anyway. "

Then he saw, with a shock, that Alston really did believe him. He alsoknew at the same instant why. Esther was pouring the unspoken flood ofher persuasion upon him. Jeff could almost feel the whiff and wind ofthe temperamental rush. He knew how Esther's belief set upon you like anarmy with banners when she wanted you also to believe. And still he heldthe little crumpled packet in his hand. 

"Will you open it?" Alston asked him, with a gentleness of courtesy thatindicated he was sorry indeed, and Jeffrey laid it on the table, unrolled the paper and let the bauble lie there drinking in the lightand throwing it off again a million times enhanced. Alston advanced toit and gravely looked down upon it without touching it. Madame Beattieturned upon it a cursory gaze, and gave a nod that seemed to accept itsidentity. But Esther did not look at all. She put her hand on the tableto 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 shehad clasped about her neck a thousand times, and pored over while it layin some hidden nest. 

"Ask her, " said Madame Beattie, in her tiniest lisp, "if the necklace ishers. "

There flashed into Alston Choate's mind the picture of Lydia, as shecame to his office that day in the early summer, to bring her childishaccusation against Esther. The incident had been neatly pigeonholed, butonly 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 hadbeen 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, thelow lamenting had moved him beyond hope of endurance, and he hadwondered what he could do if she kept on crying. But now she drewherself up and looked, not at him, but at Madame Beattie. 

"How dare you?" she said, in a low tone, not convincingly to the ears ofthose who had heard it said better on the stage, yet with a reprovingpassion 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'tyou run away and let Jeffrey and his wife--and me, you know--let ussettle it?"

Alston, dismissed, forgot he had been summoned and that Esther might bestill depending on him. He turned about to the door, but she recalledhim. 

"Don't go, " she said. The words were all in one breath. "Don't go far. Iam 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 twoinquisitors. 

XXIX

That she did look upon Jeff as her tormentor he could see. She took adarting step to the door, but he was closing it. 

"Wait a minute, " he said. "There are one or two things we've got to getat. Where did you find the necklace?"

She met his look immovably, in the softest obstinacy. It smote him likea blow. There was something implacable in it, too, an aversion almost asfierce as hate. 

"This is the necklace, " he went on. "It was lost, you know. Where didyou 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 isAunt Patricia's, you have taken it from her. "

"No, " said Aunt Patricia easily, "it isn't altogether mine. Jeff made mea 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 thenecklace. That was when you stole it, Esther. He meant to pay me thefull value. He will, in time. But he paid me what he could to keep youfrom being found out. Hush money, Esther. "

Queer things were going on in Jeff's mind. The necklace, no matter whatits market price, seemed to him of no value whatever in itself. Thereit lay, a glittering gaud; but he had seen a piece of glass that threwout colours as divinely. Certainly the dew was brighter. But asevidence, it was very important indeed. The world was a place, herealised, where we play with counters such as this. They enable us tospeak a language. When Esther had stolen it, the loss had not been somuch the loss of the gems as of his large trust in her. When MadameBeattie had threatened him with exposing her he had not paid her what hecould because the gems were priceless, but that Esther's reputation was. And so he had learned that Madame Beattie was unscrupulous. What was helearning now? Nothing new about Madame Beattie, but something astoundingabout Esther. The first upheaval of his faith had merely caused him toadjust himself to a new sort of Esther, though only to the old idea ofwomen as most other men had had the sense to take them: children, destitute of moral sense and its practical applications, immaturemammals desperately in love with enhancing baubles. He had not believedthen 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 signof hearing. "We'll give this back to Madame Beattie. "

"No, you won't, Jeff, " said Madame Beattie. "I'd rather have the moneyfor it. Just as soon as you get into the swing again, you'll pay me alittle 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 anunctious little relish to the words. 

"Why can't you?"

"My dear Jeffrey, because, when the Royal Personage who gave it to mewas married, I signed certain papers in connection with this necklaceand I can't sell it, either as a whole or piecemeal. I assure you Ican't. "

"Very well, " said Jeff. "That's probably poppycock, invented for theoccasion. But you've got your necklace. There it is. Make the most ofit. I never shall pay you another cent. "

"Oh, yes, you will, " said Madame Beattie. She was unclasping andclasping a bracelet on her small wrist, and she looked up at him idlyand in a perfect enjoyment of the scene. "Don't you want to pay me fornot continuing my reminiscences in that horrid little man's paper?Here's the second chapter of the necklace. It was stolen. You comewalking in here and say you've stolen it again. But where from? Out ofEsther'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 finalsnap. 

"You're quite a clever boy, " said she. "Alston Choate wouldn't have seenthat if he'd hammered at it a week. Yes, it was in Esther's bag. I don'tcare much how it got out. The question is, how did it get in? How areyou going to shield Esther?"

He was aware that Esther was looking at him in a breathless waiting. Thehatred, he knew, must have gone out of her face. She was the abjecthuman animal beseeching mercy from the stronger. That she could ask himwhom she had repudiated to stand by her in her distress, hurt him like apersonal degradation. But he was sorry for her, and he would fight. Heanswered roughly, at a venture, and he felt her start. Yet the roughnesswas not for her. 

"No. I shall do nothing whatever, " he said, and heard her little cry andMadame Beattie's assured tone following it, with an uncertainty whetherhe 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'spaper? It'll be something more than publicity here. My word! Her namewill fly over the globe. "

He heard Esther's quick breathing nearer and nearer, and then he felther hand on his arm. She had crept closer, involuntarily, he couldbelieve, but drawn by the instinct to be saved. He felt his own heartbeating thickly, with sorrow for her, an agonising ruth that she shouldhave to sue to him. But he spoke sharply, not looking at her, his eyeson Madame Beattie's. 

"I shall not assume the slightest responsibility in the matter. I havetold you I took the necklace. You can say that in Weedon Moore's papertill you are both of you--" he paused. 

The hand was resting on his arm, and Esther's breathing presence chokedhim with a sense of the strangeness of things and the poignant sufferingin mere life. 

"I sha'n't mention you, " said Madame Beattie. "I know who took thenecklace. "

"What?"

His movement must have shaken the touch on his arm, for Esther's handfell. 

"You don't suppose I'm a fool, do you?" inquired Madame Beattie. "I knewit was going to happen. I saw the whole thing. "

"Then, " said Esther, slipping away from him a pace, "you didn't do itafter all. "

If he had not been so shaken by Madame Beattie's words he could havelaughed 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 giveyou time. But I shall assuredly publish the name of the person who tookthe necklace out of Esther's bag, as well as the fact that it had to bein 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 toher 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 aword--till you've thought twice. But you must think quick, Jeff. I can'twait 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 shouldbe as mild--you can't think!"

He turned and, without a look at Esther, strode out of the room. Estherhardly waited for the door to close behind him before she fell uponMadame Beattie. 

"Who did it?" she cried. "That woman?"

Madame Beattie was exploring a little box for a tablet, which she tookcomposedly. 

"What woman?" she asked. 

"That woman upstairs. "

"Rhoda Knox? God bless me, no! Rhoda Knox wouldn't steal a button. She'sNew 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 littlechains and yawned broadly. "Don't forget Alston Choate sitting in thedining-room waiting like a messenger boy. "

"In the dining-room?"

"Yes. Did you think he'd go? He's waiting there to hear Jeff assaultyou, and come to the rescue. You told him you were afraid. " She was onher way to the door, but she turned. "I may as well take this, " she saididly, and swept the necklace into her hand. She held it up and shook itin the light, and Esther's eyes, as she knew they would, dwelt on itwith a hungry passion. 

"You are taking it away, " said Esther. "You've no right to. He said hehad 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 actas if you were his wife. "

A quick madness shot into Esther's brain and overwhelmed it, anger, orfright, she could not tell what. She did not cry out because she knewAlston 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 itback into your hands. "

Madame Beattie laughed pleasantly and went upstairs. And Esther crossedthe little hall and stood in the dining-room door looking at AlstonChoate. As she looked, her heart rose, for she saw conquest easy, in hisbowed head, his frowning glance. He had not wanted to stay, his attitudetold her; he was even yet raging against staying. But he could not leaveher. Passion in him was fighting side by side with feminineimplacability in her against the better part of him. She went forwardand stood before him droopingly, a most engaging picture of the purelyfeminine. But he did not look at her, and she had to throw what argumentshe might into her voice. 

"You were so good to stay, " she said, with a little tired sigh. "They'vegone. Come back into the other room. "

He rose heavily and followed her, but in the library he did not sitdown. Esther sank into a low chair, leaned back in it and closed hereyes. She really needed to give way a little. Her nerves were tremblingfrom the shock of more than one attack on them; fear, anger, these werewhat her husband and Madame Beattie had roused in her. Jeffrey wasrefusing to help her, and she hated him. But here was another man deftlymoved to her proximity by the ever careful hand of providence that hadmade the creatures for her. 

Alston stood by the mantel, leaning one elbow on it, with a strangeimplication of wanting to put his head down and hide his face. 

"Esther!" said he. There was no pretence now of being on terms toodistant to let him use her name. 

She looked up at him, softly and appealingly, though he was not lookingat her. But Esther, if she had played Othello, would have blackedherself all over. Alston began again in a voice of what sounded like anextreme 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 knowwhere he took it from. "

"She told you, " said Esther scornfully. 

He gained a little courage now and ventured to look at her. If she couldrepel Madame Beattie's insinuation, it must mean she had something onher side. And when he looked he wondered, in a rush of pity, how hecould have felt anything for that crushed figure but ruth and love. Sowhen he spoke again his voice was gentler, and Esther's courage leapedto 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 countercry, Lydia's voice, saying, "She stole it. " Had Esther stolen it? ButEsther did not know Lydia had said it, or that it had ever been said tohim at all, and she was daring more than she would have dared if she hadknown 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 theplot was and what they were to gain by it. What do you believe the plotto have been?"

This was all very stupid, Esther felt, when he might be assuring her ofhis 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 itwas, " he was insisting, in what she thought his stupid way. "What isyour idea it was?"

This was really, she saw, the same question over again, which wasanother instance of his heavy literalness. She had to answer, she knewnow, unless she was to dismiss him, disaffected. 

"She put the necklace in my bag, " she ventured, with uncertainty as tothe value of the statement and yet no diminution of boldness in makingit. 

"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 sheis? She might have had a hundred reasons. She might have thought if hetried 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 obstinatewhen they are crowded too far; yet she still remembered she must notcease to be engaging. 

"Why was it better to have him find it in your bag than anywhere else inthe 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 responsibilitynot to trap and torture. But she had begun to wonder how she couldescape 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 manwho had had a rage and got over it, who had even heard good news, or hadin some way been recalled. And he had. On the way home, when he hadnearly reached there, in haste to find Lydia and tell her the necklacewas back in Madame Beattie's hands, he had suddenly remembered that hewas a prisoner and that all men were prisoners until they knew theywere, and it became at once imperative to get back to Esther and see ifhe could let her out. And the effect of this was to make his face toshine as that of one who was already released from bondage. To Estherhe looked young, like the Jeff she used to know. 

"Don't go, Choate, " he said, when Alston picked himself up from themantel and straightened, as if his next move might be to walk away. "Iwanted to see Esther, but I'd rather see you both. I've been thinkingabout 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, andMadame Beattie's quick disclaimer when he ventured to hint the necklacemight be paste. Did Jeff know it was actually of no value?

Jeff began to walk about the room, expressing himself eagerly as if itwere difficult to do it at all and it certainly could not be done if hesat. 

"I mean, " said he, "the only value of anything tangible is to help youget at something that isn't tangible. The necklace, in itself, isn'tworth anything. It glitters. But if we were blind we shouldn't see itglitter. "

"We could sell it, " said Choate drily, "or its owner could, to help uslive 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 businessand 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 shedecided she could only listen attentively and see what Choate might findin him. 

"It's almost impossible to say what I want to, " said Jeff. The sweatbroke out on his forehead and he plunged his hands in his pockets andstood in an obstinate wrestling with his thought. "I mean, thisnecklace, as an object, is of no more importance, really, than thatdoorstone out there. But the infernal thing has captured us. It's madeus prisoner. And we've got to free ourselves. "

Now Esther was entirely certain he was mad. Being mad, she did not seethat he could say anything she need combat. But her own name arrestedher and sent the blood up into her face. 

"Esther, " said he, "you're a prisoner to it because you've fallen inlove 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 wasgoing to accuse her of appropriating it in the beginning. 

"Choate is a prisoner, " said Jeff earnestly and with such simplicitythat even Choate, with his fastidious hatred of familiarity, could notresent it. "He's a prisoner to your charm. But here's where the necklacecomes in again. If he could find out you'd done unworthy things to getit your charm would be broken and he'd be free. "

This was so true that Choate could only stare at him and wish he wouldeither 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, becauseit 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'tfathomed, 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 manin Paris who is getting it for me. "

"Good!" said Jeff. "Now I propose we all escape from the necklace. We'reprisoners, 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 itnow?"

This he asked of Esther and she returned bitterly:

"Aunt Patricia's got it. She walked out of the room with it, shaking itin 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 anequal gravity. He knew how ridiculous the situation could be made by aword 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 todo if all offenders and all witnesses told the truth. They don't, because they're prisoners--prisoners to fear and prisoners toselfishness and hunger. But if we three told each other the truth--andourselves, too--we could be free this instant. You, Esther, if you wouldtell Choate here how you've loved that necklace and what you've done forit, 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 yourtalk is leading. "

"No, no, " said Jeff earnestly. "I assure you it isn't. But if you ownedthat, Esther, you'd be ashamed to want glittering things. And Choatewould 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 couldhave made anybody--but an angry woman--believe also. Jeff was tellinghim that he mustn't love Esther, and virtually also that this wasbecause Esther was not worthy to be loved. But if Choate's only armorwas silence, Esther had gathered herself to snatch at something moreeffectual. 

"You say we're all prisoners to something, " she said to Jeffrey. Herface was livid now with anger and her eyes glowed upon him. "How aboutyou? You came into this house and took the necklace. Was that being aprisoner to it? How about your being free?"

Choate turned his eyes away from her face as if it hurt him. The taunthurt him, too, like unclean words from lips beloved. But he lookedinvoluntarily at Jeff to see how he had taken them. Jeff stood insilence looking gravely at Esther, but yet as if he did not see her. Heappeared to be thinking deeply. But presently he spoke, and as if stillfrom deep reflection. 

"It's true, Esther. I'm a prisoner, too. I'm trying to see how I can getout. "

Choate spoke here, adopting the terms of Jeff's own fancy. 

"If you want us all to understand each other, you could tell Esther whyyou took the necklace. You could tell us both. We seem to be throwntogether over this. "

"Yes, " said Jeff. "I could. I must. And yet I can't. " He looked up atAlston with a smile so whimsical that involuntarily Alston met it with aglimmer of a smile. "Choate, it looks as if I should have to be aprisoner a little longer--perhaps for life. "

He went toward the door like a man bound on an urgent errand, andinvoluntarily Alston turned to follow him. The sight hurt Esther like anindignity. They had forgotten her. Their man's country called them tosettle man's deeds, and the accordance of their going lashed her brainto quick revolt. It had been working, that shrewd, small brain, throughall their talk, ever since Madame Beattie had denied Jeff's having takenthe necklace, and now it offered its result. 

"You didn't take it at all, " she called after them. "It was that girlthat's had the entry to this house. It's Lydia French. "

XXX

At the words Alston turned to Jeff in an involuntary questioning. Jeffwas inscrutable. His face, as Alston saw it, the lines of the mouth, thedown-dropped gaze, was sad, tender even, as if he were merely sorry. They walked along the street together and it was Choate who beganawkwardly. 

"Miss Lydia came to me, some weeks ago, about these jewels. "

Here Jeff stopped him, breaking in upon him indeed when he had got thusfar. 

"Alston, let's go down under the old willow and smoke a pipe. "

Alston was rather dashed at having the tentative introduction of Lydiaat 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 beproviding solitude and a fitting place to talk. As they went down theold street, unchanged even to the hollows worn under foot in the courseof the years, something stole over them and softened imperceptibly theharsh moment. There was Ma'am Fowler's where they used to come to buydoughnuts. There was the house where the crippled boy lived, and sat atthe window waving signals to the other boys as they went past. At thesame 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'treally care. But it was soothing to find the atmosphere of the placeenveloped him like a charm. It wasn't possible they were so old, orthat they had been mightily excited a minute before over a foolishthing. Presently after leaving the houses they turned off the road andcrossed the shelving sward to the old willow, and there on a benchhacked by their own jackknives they sat down to smoke. Jeff rememberedit was he who had thought to give the bench a back. He had nailed theboard from tree to tree. It was here now or its fellow--he liked tothink it was his own board--and he leaned against it and lighted up. Theday's perturbation had taken Choate in another way. He didn't want tosmoke. But he rolled a cigarette with care and pretended to take muchinterest in it. He felt it was for Jeff to begin. Jeff sat silent awhile, his eyes upon the field across the flats where the boys wereplaying ball. Yet in the end he did begin. 

"That necklace, Choate, " said he, "is a regular little devil of anecklace. Do you realise how much mischief it's already done?"

Between Esther's asseverations and Lydia's theories Choate's mind was ina good deal of a fog. He thought it best to give a perfunctory grunt andhope Jeff would go on. 

"And after all, " said Jeff, "as I said, the devilish thing isn't of theslightest real value in itself. It can, in an indirect way, send afellow to prison. It can excite an amount of longing in a woman's mindcolossal enough to make one of the biggest motives possible for any sortof crime. Because it glitters, simply because it glitters. It can causeanother woman who has done caring for glitter, to depend on it for aliving. "

"You mean Madame Beattie, " said Alston. "If it's her necklace and shecan sell it, why doesn't she do it? Royal personages don't account forthat. "

But Jeff went on with his ruminating. 

"Alston, " said he, "did it ever occur to you that, with the secrets ofnature laid open before us as they are now--even though the page isn'teven half turned--does it occur to you we needn't be at the mercy ofsex? Any of us, I mean, men and women both. Have we got to get drunkwhen it assaults us? Have we got to be the cave man and carry off thewoman? And lie to ourselves throughout? Have we got to say, 'I covetthis woman because she is all beauty'? Can't we keep the lookout up inthe cockloft and let him judge, and if he says, 'That isn't beauty, oldman'--believe him?"

"But sometimes, " said Alston, "it is beauty. "

He knew what road Jeff was on. Jeff was speaking out his plain thoughtand at the same time assuring them both that they needn't, either ofthem, be submerged by Esther, because real beauty wasn't in her. If theyate the fruit of her witchery it would be to their own damnation, andthey would deserve what they got. 

"Yes, " said Jeff, "sometimes it is real beauty. But even then the thingthat grows out of sex madness is better than the madness itself. Sometimes I think the only time some fellows feel alive is when they'rein love. That's what's given us such an idea of it. But when I think ofa man and woman planking along together through the dust and mud--goodcomrades, you know--that's the best of it. "

"Of course, " said Alston stiffly, "that's the point. That's what itleads to. "

"Ah, but with some of them, you'd never get there; they're not made forwives--or sisters--or mothers. And no man, if he saw what he was goinginto, would dance their dance. He wouldn't choose it, that is, when hethinks back to it. "

Alston took out his match-box, and felt his fingers quiver on it. Hewas enraged with himself for minding. This was the warning then. He wastold, 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 athis heart he knew the warning was fair and true. Esther had dealt a blowto his fastidious idealities. Her deceit had slain something. She hadnot so much betrayed it to him by facts, for facts he could, if passionwere strong enough, put aside. But his inner heart searching for herheart, like a hand seeking a beloved hand, had found an emptiness. Hewas so bruised now that he wanted to hit out and hurt Jeff, perhaps, atleast force him to naked warfare. 

"You want me to believe, " he said, "that--Esther--" he stumbled over theword, but at such a pass he would not speak of her moredecorously--"years ago took Madame Beattie's necklace. "

Jeff was watching the boys across the flats, critically and with a realinterest. 

"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 itbefore. Not to my father even. But he knows. He did naturally, in theflurry 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 mustget over that. "

The distance wavered before Choate's eyes, He hated Jeffrey childishlybecause he could be so calm. 

"You needn't worry, " he said. "She is as completely separated from me asif--as if you had never been away from her. "

"That's it, " said Jeff. "You can't marry her unless she's divorced fromme. She's welcome to that--the divorce, I mean. But you can't godrivelling on having frenzies over her. Good God, Choate, don't you seewhat you're doing? You're wasting yourself. Shake it off. You don't wantEsther. She's shocked you out of your boots already. And she doesn'tknow 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 oneanother, you two. It's absurd. "

Choate sat looking at the landscape which no longer wavered. The boysran fairly straight now. Suddenly he began to laugh. He laughedgaspingly, hysterically, and Jeff regarded him from time to timetolerantly and smoked. 

"I know what you're thinking, " he said, when Alston stopped, with a lastsplutter, and wiped his eyes. "You're thinking, between us we've brokenall the codes. I have vilified my wife. I've warned you against her andyou haven't resented it. It shows the value of extreme common-sense inaffairs of the heart. It shows also that I haven't an illusion leftabout Esther, and that you haven't either. And if we say another wordabout 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. Theytalked about the boys at their game and only when the players came downto 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 boyishintimacies, involuntarily they stiffened into another manner; there waseven some implication of mutual dislike in it, of guardedness, oneagainst the other. But when they parted at the corner of the streetAlston, out of his perplexity, ventured a question. 

"I should be very glad to be told if, as you say, you took the necklaceout of Esther's bag, why you took it. "

"Sorry, " said Jeff. "You deserve to be told the whole business. But youcan't be. "

So he went home, knowing he was going to an inquiring Lydia. And howwould an exalted common-sense work if presented to Lydia? He thought ofit 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 theway of nature as she stood by their side prompting them to their mostpicturesque attitude, that her work might be accomplished, saying to theman, "Prove yourself a devil of a fellow because the girl desires ahero, " and to the girl, "Be modesty and gentleness ineffable becausethat is the complexion a hero loves. " And the man actually believes heis a hero and the girl doesn't know she is hiding herself behind a veiltoo dazzling to let him see her as she is. How would it be if theyoutwitted nature at her little game and gave each other the fealty ofblood brothers, the interchange of the true word?

Lydia came to the supper table with the rest. She was rather quiet andabsorbed and not especially alive to Jeff's coming in. No quick glancequestioned him about the state of things as he had left them. But aftersupper 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 wasshut away from her lately. Anne missed her. 

Lydia and Jeff went down the narrow path at the back of the house, apath that had never, so persistent was it, got quite grown over in theyears 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, alderand 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 facelooked 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. Shelooked worthy of it. He wouldn't save her pain that belonged to thetangle where they groped. He and she would share the pain together. "Sheguessed 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 thisafternoon, just as soon as you took the necklace away from me and Irealised what people would say. But I knew that would be silly. Peoplecan't run away and leave notes behind. But I can tell Anne I want to goto 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 hercolossal common-sense. 

"But, Lydia, " said he, "you don't need to. Madame Beattie has hernecklace. I gave it back into her hand. I daresay the old harpy willwant hush money, but that's not your business. It's mine. I can't giveher any if I would, and she knows it. She'll simply light here like abird of prey for a while and harry me for money to shield Esther, toshield you, and when she finds she can't get it she'll sail peacefullyoff. "

"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'tmean to be hateful. That night-hawk isn't hateful when it spears amole. "

"Do you mean, " said Lydia, "that just because Madame Beattie has hernecklace back, they couldn't arrest me? Because if they could I'vecertainly 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. Ihave 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 atonce. "

She had even turned to fly to them. 

"No, " said Jeff. "Stay here, Lydia. That damnable necklace has madetrouble enough. It goes slipping through our lives like a detestablesnake, and now it's stopped with its original owner, I propose it shallstay stopped. It's like a property in a play. It goes about from hand tohand to hand, to bring out something in the play. And after all the playisn't about the necklace. It's about us--us--you and Esther and Choateand Madame Beattie and me. It's betraying us to ourselves. If it hadn'tbeen for the necklace in the first place and Esther's coveting it, Imight have been a greasy citizen of Addington instead of a queer halflabourer and half loafer; my father wouldn't have lost his nerve, Choate wouldn't have been in love with Esther, and you wouldn't havebeen 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 asif 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 mostbeautiful person she ever saw. "

"Then let her keep on thinking so, " said Jeff. "And sometime he'll thinkthat 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 amfurious 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 aright to. Unless they can throw even their shams and vanities away, andlive in each other's minds. I am married to Esther. If I tell you Iwon't ask you into my mind because I am married to her you'll think I ama hero. And if I do ask you in, you'll come--for you are very brave--andyou'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: notEsther's way. She scorned that, with a youthful scorn, the felinedomination of Esther. If that was being in love she would have none ofit. But Jeff was not actually thinking of her. He was listening to somevoice inside himself, an interrogatory voice, an irresponsible one, notwarning him but telling him:

"You do care. You care about Lydia. That's what you'refacing--love--love of Lydia. "

It was disconcerting. It was the last thing for a man held by the leg inseveral ways to contemplate. And yet there it was. He had entered againinto youth and was rushing along on the river that buoys up even a leaffor a time and feels so strong against the leaf's frail texture thatevery voyaging fibre trusts it joyously. The summer air felt sweet tohim. 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 heldtight, actually, to his quickened sense, as if she kept the veil of hervirginity wrapped about her sternly. For the moment he did not feel thedespair 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 hehad never loved a woman and been repulsed by her and dwelt for years inthe 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 couldme. But you don't understand me quite. You think I'd die for you. Yes, Iwould. 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 howhappy they could be. But he held them back. All the sweet intimacies oflife ran before him, life here in Addington, secure, based on oldtraditions, if she were his wife and they had so much happiness theycould afford to be careless about it as other married folk werecareless. There might not be daily banquets of delight, but cool fruits, the morning and the evening, the still course of being that seemed tohim now, after his seething first youth, the actual paradise. But Lydiawas going on, an erect slim figure in her enfolding scarf. 

"And you mustn't be sorry I stole the necklace--except for Anne andFarvie, if she does anything to me. " "She" was always Esther, he hadlearned. "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 athief. We're just alike. You said, when you first came home, doing athing like that, breaking law, makes you feel outside. "

"It isn't only feeling outside, " he made haste to tell her. "You areoutside. You're outside the social covenant men have made. It's a goodrighteous covenant, Lydia. It was come to through blood and misery. It'spretty 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, Iwish you and Anne would go away and let father and me muddle alongalone. "

"Do you, " said Lydia joyously. "Then you do like me. You like meawfully. You think you'll tell me so if I stay round. "

"Do I, you little prying thing?" He thought he could establish someground of understanding between them if he abused her. "You're a goodlittle sister, Lydia, but you're a terrifying one. "

"No, " said Lydia. "I'm not a sister. " She let the enfolding scarf go andthe breeze took its ends and made them ripple. "Anne's a sister. Shelikes you almost as well as she does Farvie. But she does like Farviebest. I don't like Farvie best. I like you best of all the world. And Ilove to. I'm determined to. You ought to be liked over and over, becauseyou'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 himon. Lydia stepped back. "But if you touched me, Jeff, " she said, "if youkissed 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 asif 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 Icould make you a little happier--not so lonesome--why, you might kissme. 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 herpassion for him, stronger in her mastery of it, and she loved himoverwhelmingly and knew she loved him. "Now you see, " said Lydiaquietly. "You know the whole. You can call me your sister, if you wantto. I don't care what you call me. I suppose some sisters like theirbrothers 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 downon 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 waswholesome to him to sound rough to her. 

"Why, of course you do, " she said. "You did, one of those first days. Iwish you didn't. It makes me want to run out doors and scream because Ican't come in and 'poor' your hair. "

"I won't do it again, " said Jeff. "Lydia, I can't say one of the thingsI want to. Not one of them. "

"I don't expect you to, " said Lydia. "I understand you and me too. All Iwanted 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 scarfagain about her, tighter, it seemed, than it was before. "You and Idon'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 horseswe'd get on 'em bareback and ride and ride. "

Jeff stood and watched her while he could see the white scarf throughthe dusk. Then he turned to go along the river path, but he stopped. He, too, thought of galloping horses, devouring distance with her beside himthrough the night. He began to strip off his clothes and Lydia, on therise, 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 andrejoicing. Lydia had attained woman's lot at a bound. All she wanted wasfor him to have the full glories of a man. 

XXXI

Alston Choate went home much later consciously to his mother, and shecomforted him though he could not tell her why he needed it. She andMary were sitting on the back veranda, looking across the slope of theriver, doing nothing, because it was dusk, and dropping a word here andthere 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 awayagain. He caught the movement. He knew she was leaving him alone. 

"Mother, " he said, "you never were disgusted through and through. Withyourself. "

"Oh, yes, " said she. "It's more or less my normal state. I'm disgustedbecause I haven't courage. If I'd had courage, I should have escaped allthe things that make me bad company for myself now. "

Alston, in his quickened mood, wondered what it was she had wanted toescape. Was it Addington? Was it his father even, a courteous Addingtonman much like what Alston was afraid he might be in the end, when he waselderly and pottered down town with a cane? He hated to be what he wasafraid he inevitably must. It came upon him with renewed impetus, nowthat he had left Esther with a faint disgust at her, and only a weariedacquiescence in the memory that she had once charmed him. He wished hewere less fastidious even. How much more of a man he should have feltif he had clung to his passion for her and answered Jeffrey with theoath or blow that more elemental men found fitting in their rivalry. 

"Mother, " said he, "does civilisation rot us after all? Have we got tobe savages to find out what's in us?"

"Something seems to rot us round the edges, " said the mother. "Butthat's because there don't appear to be any big calls while we're socomfortable. You can't get up in the midst of dinner and give a war-cryto 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 burnup--anything that ought to be burned. Sometimes when Mary and I sitcrocheting 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 wastravelling miles from Addington in her novel. 

"You never owned these things before, mother, " he said. "What makes younow?"

"That I'm a buccaneer? Maybe because you've got to the same pointyourself. You half hate our little piffling customs, and yet they'vebound you hand and foot because they're what you're used to. And they'rethe very devil, Alston, unless you're strong enough to fight against 'emand live laborious days. "

"What's the matter with us? Is it Addington?"

"Good old Addington! Not Addington, any more than the world. It's growntoo fat and selfish. Pretty soon somebody's going to upset the balanceand 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 theonly 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 awayto Europe. "

"Oh, no, " said she. "They're going to fight harder than we are. Don'tyou see there's an ogre over there grinning at them and sharpening hisclaws? 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 theeast. There's going to be war, and whether we're righteous enough tostand up against the ogre, God knows. "

Alston was impressed, in spite of himself. His mother was not given toprophecy or passionate asseveration. 

"But anyhow, " said she, "you can't run away, for they're going to askyou to stand for mayor. "

"The dickens they are! Who said so?"

"Amabel. She was in here this afternoon, as guileless as a child. WeedonMoore told her they were going to ask you to stand and she hoped youwouldn't. "

"Why?"

"Because Moore's the rival candidate, and she thinks he has an influencewith the working-man. She thinks the general cause of humanity would bebetter 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 therough-and-tumble. Get on a soap box. Tell the working-man something thatwill make him think you haven't lived in a library all your life. Itmay 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 acquiescencein his well-bred actions. She knew he invited only the choice betweentwo equally irreproachable goods: not between the good and evil. Alstonhad a vague uncomfortable besetment that his mother would have had awarmer hope for him if he had been tempted of demons, tortured bydoubts. Then she would have bade him take refuge on heights, even havedragged him there. But she knew he was living serenely on a plain. Alston thought there ought to be some sympathy accorded men who likedliving on a plain. 

"Good Lord!" said he, looking down at her and liking her better withevery word she said. "You scare me out of my boots. You're a firebrandon a mountain. "

"No, " said his mother. "I'm a decent Addington matron with not ahundredth 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 iceclink. I'll draw in my horns. Mary'd take my temperature. "

Alston stayed soberly at home and read a book that evening, his nerveson edge, listening for a telephone call. It did not come, but still heknew Esther was willing him to her. 

Esther sat by the window downstairs, in the dusk, in a fever of desireto know what, since the afternoon, he was thinking of her, and for thefirst time there was a little fleeting doubt in her heart whether shecould make him think something else. As to Alston, she had thehesitations of an imperfect understanding. There were chambers where hehabitually dwelt, and these she never entered at all. His senses werekeenly yet fastidiously alive. They could never be approached savethrough shaded avenues she found it dull to traverse, and where shenever really kept her way without great circumspection. The passion ofmen was, in her eyes, something practically valuable. She did not go outto meet it through an overwhelming impetus of her own. It was a way ofcontrolling them, of buying what they had to give: comforts and prettyluxuries. She would have liked to live like an adored child, all herwhims supplied, all her vanities fed. And here in this little circle ofAddington Alston Choate was the one creature who could lift her out ofher barren life and give her ease at every point with the recognition ofthe most captious world. 

And she was willing him. As the evening wore on, she found she wasbreathing hard and her wrists were beating with loathing of her ownsituation and hatred of those who had made it for her, if she couldallow herself to think she hated. For Esther had still to preserve thecertainty that she was good. Madame Beattie, up there with hernight-light and her book, she knew she hated. Of Jeff she did not dareto think, he made her wrists beat so, and of Alston Choate she knew itwas deliberately cruel of him not to come. And then as if her need ofsomething kind and unquestioning had summoned him, a step fell on thewalk, 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 herwhite dress, but with wonderful colour blooming in her cheeks. He couldnot know that hate had brought it there. She seemed to him the flower ofher own beauty, rich, overpowering. She held the door open for him, andwhen he had followed her into the library, she turned and put both herhands upon his arm, her soft nearness like a perfume and a breath. ToReardon, 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, inher aloofness, she would reprove him. But Esther, to his infinite joyand amazement, melted into his arms and clung there. 

"God!" said Reardon. She heard him saying it more than once as ifentirely to himself and no smaller word would do. "You don't--" he saidto her then, "you don't--care about me? It ain't possible. " Reardon hadreverted 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 weresitting face to face, he holding her hands and leaning to hear herwhispered 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 amafraid. "

Reardon made the only answer possible, and felt the thrill of his ownadequacy. 

"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'retelling me to a lawyer. And I'll--" he hesitated. He hardly knew how toput it so that her sense of fitness should not be offended. "I'll findthe money, " he ended lamely. 

The small hands stayed willingly in his. Reardon was a happy man, but atthe same time he was curiously ashamed. He was a clean man who atemoderately and slept well and had the proper amount of exercise, andthis excess of emotion jarred him in a way that irritated him. He didblame 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 withthe white hands in his. But he was conscious of a disturbing element ofthe unlawful, like eating a hurtful dish at dinner. Reardon had livedtoo long in a cultivating of the middle way to embark with joyousness onillicit possessing. As the traditions of Addington were wafting AlstonChoate away from this primitive little Circe on her isle, so hisacquired habits of safe and healthful living were wafting him. If hisinner refusals could have been spoken crudely out they would haveamounted 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 wistfulawe on the traditions of Addington's upper class. He had tried honestlyto look like the men born to it; he never owned even to himself that hefelt ill at ease in it. Yet he did regard it with a reverence the menthat made it were far from feeling, and he knew something was due it. Hedrew back, releasing gently the white hands that lay in his. He wantedto kiss them, but he was not even yet sure they were enough his tojustify it. He cleared his throat. 

"The man for you to go to, " said he, "is Alston Choate. I don't likehim, but he's square as a die. And if you can get yourself where it'llbe possible to speak to you without knowing there's another man steppingbetween--" he hesitated, his own heart beating for her and the decenciesof Addington holding him back. "Hang it, Esther, " he burst forth, "youknow where I stand. "

"Do I?" said Esther. 

She rose, and, looking wan, gave him her hand. And Reardon got out ofthe room, feeling rather more of a sneak than Alston had when he wentaway. Esther stood still until she heard the door close behind him. Thenshe 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 hatedthem all. They owed her something, protection, or cherishing tenderness. She could not know it was Addington that had got hold of them in one wayor another and kept them doggedly faithful to its own ideals. As she wasstepping 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. Shelooked 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 knewwhat she should see if she did look: an old woman absolutely brazen inher defiance of the softening arts of dress, divested of everybewildering subterfuge, sitting in a circle of candlelight in theadequate company of her book. 

"Esther, " said Madame Beattie, "you may have the necklace. "

Then Esther did glance quickly at her. She wondered what Madame Beattiethought she could get out of giving up the adored gewgaw into otherhands. 

"I don't want it, " said Madame Beattie. "I'd much rather have the moneyfor it. Get the money and bring it to me. "

Esther curled her lip a little in the scorn she really felt. She couldnot conceive of any woman's being so lost to woman's perquisites as toconfess baldly her need of money above trinkets. 

"But you'd better go to the right man for it, " said Madame Beattie. "Itisn't Alston Choate. Jeff's the man, my dear. He's cleverer than thedevil if you once get him started. Not that I think you could. He'sdone with you, I fancy. "

Esther, still speechless, wondered if she could. It was a challenge ofprecisely 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 thehuman mind had given her a dramatic hold on the world when the worldloved her, and it was mechanically serving her now in these little deedsthat 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 herwhite dress with an artful parasol that cast a freshening glow. She hadthe right expression, too, the calmness of one who makes a commonplacemorning call. 

And it was not Lydia who saw her coming. It was Jeff, in his workingblouse and shabby trousers, standing on a cool corner of the veranda andfinishing his morning smoke before he went out to picking early apples. Esther knew at precisely what instant he caught sight of her, and sawhim knock out his pipe into the garden bed below the veranda and lay iton the rail. Then he waited for her, and she was almost amusedlyprepared for his large-eyed wonder and the set of the jaw which betrayedhis certainty of having something difficult to meet. It was not thus hehad been used to greet her on sweet October mornings in those otherdays. Suddenly he turned with a quick gesture of the hand as if he werewarning some one back, and Esther, almost at the steps, understood thathe had heard Lydia coming and had tried to stop her. Lydia evidentlyhad not understood and ran innocently out on some errand of her own. Seeing Esther, she halted an appreciable instant. Then something asquickly settled itself in her mind, and she advanced and stood at theside of Jeff. Esther furled her parasol and came up the steps, and herface did not for an instant change in its sweet seriousness. She lookedat Lydia with a faint, almost, it might seem, a pitying smile. 

"I thought, " said she, "after what I said, I ought to come, to reassureyou. "

Neither Jeff nor Lydia seemed likely to move, and Esther stood therelooking from one to the other with her concerned air of having somethingto do for them. It was only a moment, yet it seemed to Lydia as if theyhad been communing a long time, in some hidden fashion, and learningamazingly to understand each other. That is, she was understandingEsther, and the outcome terrified her. Esther seemed more dangerous thanever, bearing gifts. But Lydia could almost always do the sensible thingin an emergency and keep emotion to be quelled in solitude. 

"Come in, " said she, "and sit down. Jeff, won't you move the chairs intothe 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 tothe 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 littlegesture. It seemed she found some significance in the informality of thepronoun--"I told him I had found out who took the necklace. I knew ofcourse 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 theleast. "

Lydia, very pale now, was looking at Esther, in a fixed antagonism. Herhands were tightly clasped. She looked like a creature braced against ablow. But Esther seemed of all imaginable persons the least likely todeliver a blow of any sort. She was gracefully relaxed in her chair, onedelicate hand holding the parasol and the other resting, with thefingers upcurled like lily petals, on her knee. 

"No, " said Lydia, not looking at Jeff, though she answered him, "Isha'n't go in. It does concern me. That's what she came for. She's toldyou so. To accuse me of taking it. "

With the last words, a little scorn ran into her voice. It was a scornof what Esther might do, and it warmed her and made her suddenly feelequal to the moment. 

"No, " said Esther, in her softest tone, a sympathetic tone, full of agrave 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 thenecklace. You had sent it back. You had done wrong, but what bettercould you do than send it back? And I understand--" she glowed a littlenow, turning to Jeff--"I understand how wonderful it was of you to takeit on yourself. "

Jeff was frowning, and though facing her, looking no further than thelily-petalled hand. Esther was quite sure he was dwelling on the handwith inevitable appreciation. She had a feeling that he was frowningbecause it distracted him from his task of pleasing Lydia and at thesame time meeting her own sympathetic tribute. But he was not. Estherknew a great many things about men, but she was naïvely unconscious oftheir complete detachment from feminine allurements when they aresummoned 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. "Totell Lydia she mustn't be unhappy. "

Then Lydia found her tongue. 

"I'm not unhappy, " she said, with a brutality of incisiveness whichoffers the bare fact with no concern for its effect. "I took thenecklace. But I don't know, " said Lydia, with one of her happyconvictions that she really had a legal mind and might well follow itsinspirations, "I don't know whether it is stealing to take a thing awayfrom a person who has stolen it herself. "

"Lydia!" said Jeff warningly. 

He hardly knew why he was stopping her. Certainly not in compassion forEsther; she, at this moment, was merely an irritating cause of a spoiledmorning. But Lydia, he felt, like a careering force that had slippedcontrol, must be checked before she did serious harm. 

"You know, " said Lydia, now looking Esther calmly in the eye, "you knowyou were the first to steal the necklace. You stole it years ago, fromMadame Beattie. No, I don't know whether it's stealing to take it fromyou 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 alittle smiling look at Jeff. "Come on, " it seemed to say. "I can't beworse off than I am. Let's put her through her paces and get somethingout of it--fun, at least. "

Esther looked back at her in that pained forbearance which clothed herlike 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 somewild impulse of his own, loved her bravado. 

"Oh, come, Lydia, " he said. "We can't talk like that. If Esther means tobe civil--"

Yet he did not think Esther meant to be civil. Only he was hard pushedbetween the two, and said the thing that came to him. But it came emptyand went empty to them, and he knew it. 

"She doesn't mean to be civil, " said Lydia, still in her wickedenjoyment. "I don't know what she does mean, but it's not to be nice tome. And I don't know what she's come for--" here her old vision of Jefflanguishing unvisited in the dungeon of her fancy rose suddenly beforeher and she ended hotly--"after all this time. "

Again Esther turned to Jeff and spoke his name, as if summoning him in asituation she could not, however courageous, meet alone. But Lydia hadthought 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 forstealing from you something you'd stolen before, why then I shall sayright off I did it. And when I do it, I shall tell all I know about thenecklace and how you took it from Madame Beattie--and oh, my soul!" saidLydia, rising from her chair and putting her finger tips together in anunconsidered gesture, "there's Madame Beattie now. "

Esther too rose, murder in her heart but still a solicitous sadness inher eyes, and turned, following Lydia's gaze, to the steps where Dennyhad drawn up and Madame Beattie was alighting from the victoria. Jeff, going forward to meet her, took courage since Denny was not drivingaway. Whatever Madame Beattie had come to do, she meant to make quickwork of it. 

"Jeff, " said Esther, at his elbow, "Jeff, I must go. This is too painfulfor 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 herpanoply of black chiffon, velvet, ostrich feathers--clothes so rich inthe beginning and so well made that they seemed always too unchanged tobe thrown away and so went on in a squalid perpetuity--she laid a handon Esther's wrist. 

"Come, come, Esther, " said she, "don't run away. I came to see you asmuch as anybody. "

Esther longed to shake off the masterful old hand, but she would not. Asad passivity became her best unless she relinquished every possibleresult of the last ten minutes. And it must have had some result. Jeffhad, at least, been partly won. Surely there was an implied intimacy inhis quick undertone when he had bade her run along. So Madame Beattiewent on cheerfully leading her captive and yet, with an art Esther hatedher for, seeming to keep the wrist to lean on, and Lydia, who hadbrought another chair, greeted the new visitor with an unaffectedpleasure. She still liked her so much that it was not probable anythingMadame Beattie could say or do would break the tie. And Madame Beattieliked her: only less than the assurance of her own daily comfort. Thepure stream of affection had got itself sadly sullied in these lateryears. She hardly thought now of the way it started among green hillsunder a morning sun. 

She seated herself, still not releasing Esther until she also had sunkinto a chair by her side, and refreshed herself from a littleviniagrette. Then she winked her eyes open in a way she had, as ifreturning 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 Beattiegave 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 nodoubt. Jeff, I hope you're being nice to her. "

A startled look came into Lydia's eyes. Why should Madame Beattie wantJeff to be nice to her when she knew how false Esther had been and wouldalways be?

"Esther, " continued Madame Beattie, "has been a silly child. She took mynecklace, years ago, and Jeff very chivalrously engaged to pay me for itand--"

"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'tknow what you've come here to say, Madame Beattie, but whatever it is, Iprefer 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 wouldkeep 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 togive it back to me. Through Jeff, I understand. "

"No, I didn't, " said Lydia, in a passion to tell the truth at a momentwhen 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 toyou 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 neverwould 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 thehorrid thing. And now you've got it I don't owe you money but'"--hereone of her legal inspirations came to her and she addedtriumphantly--"'if anything, you owe me. '"

"You're a good imp, " said Madame Beattie, in careless commendation, "butif everybody told the truth as you do there wouldn't be any drama. NowI'm going to tell the truth. This is just what I propose doing, and whatI mean somebody else shall do. I've got the necklace. Good! But I don'twant 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 questionof honour, " she ended somewhat pompously. Yet it was only a dramaticpomposity. Jeff saw that. "When it was given me by a certain RoyalPersonage, " she continued and Jeff swore under his breath. He was tiredof the Royal Personage--"I signed an agreement that the necklace shouldbe 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 mightsay 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, AlstonChoate. He won't tell. But unless Jeff--you, Jeff dear--unless Jeffmakes himself responsible for my future, I propose to tell the wholestory of the necklace in print and make these two young women wish Ihadn't. Better protect them, Jeff. Better make yourself responsible forAunt Patricia. "

"You propose telling it in print, " said Jeff slowly. "You said soyesterday. But I ought to have warned you then that Weedon Moore won'tprint it--not after I've seen him. He knows I'd wring his neck. "

"There are plenty of channels, " said Madame Beattie, with an unmovedauthority. "Journals here, journals abroad. Why, Jeff!" suddenly hervoice rose in a shrill note and startled them. Her face convulsed and adeeper 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 hadseemed a second ago, to sacrifice her for the sake of squeezing moneyout of Jeff, she did not care. Something dramatic in her discerned itslike in the other woman and responded. But Jeff, startled for aninstant, felt only the brutal impulse to tell Madame Beattie if theworld were so much her friend, it might support her. And here appearedthe last person any of them desired to see if they were to fight mattersto 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 notso much outside work to do he had betaken himself to his gentlerpursuits, and in the renewed health of his muscles felt himself a betterman. 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 ignoringMadame Beattie as he stepped forward to Esther, with outstretched hand. There was a welcome in his manner, a pleasure it smote Lydia's heart tosee. She knew what the scene meant to him: some shadowy renewal of theold certainties that had made Jeff's life like other men's. For aninstant under the spell of the colonel's belief, she saw Jeff going backand loving Esther as if the break had never been. It seemed incrediblethat any one could look at her as the colonel was looking now, withwarmth, even with gratitude, after she had been so hateful. And Estherwas receiving it all with the prettiest grace. She might even have beenpinning 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 thebrilliant addition, "You'll stay to dinner. " As he said it he wasconscious, too late, that dinner was several hours away. And meantimeEsther stood and looked up in his eyes with an expression for whichLydia at once mentally found a name: soulful, that was what it was, sheviciously 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 businesson my hands. It's with that dirty little man Jeff's got such a prejudiceagainst. "

"Not Weedon Moore, " conjectured the colonel. "If you've any lawbusiness, Madame Beattie, you'd far better go to Alston Choate. Moore'sno kind of a man. "

"He's the right kind for me, " said Madame Beattie. "No manners, notraditions, no scruples. It's a dirty job I've got for him, and it takesa dirty man to do it. "

She had risen now, and was smiling placidly up at the colonel. Hefrowned at her, involuntarily. He was ready to accept Madame Beattie'sknowing neither good nor evil, but she seemed to him singularlyunpleasant in flaunting that lack of bias. She was quite conscious ofhis distaste, but it didn't trouble her. Unproductive opinions werenothing to her now, especially in Addington. 

"You're not going, too, " said the colonel, as Esther rose and followedher. "I hoped--" But what he hoped he kept himself from saying. 

"I must, " said Esther, with a little deprecatory look and anothersignificant one at Madame Beattie's back. "Good-bye. "

She threw Lydia, in her scornful silence there in the background, asmile and nod. 

"But--" the colonel began. Again he had to stop. How could he ask her tocome 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 hisword 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 shallwalk. "

But before she went, and well in the rear of the carriage, so that evenDenny should not see, she gave Jeff one look, a suffused, appealing lookthat bade him remember how unhappy she was, how unprotected and, most ofall, how feminine. She and the carriage also had in the next instantgone, and Jeff went stolidly back up the steps. There was sweat on hisforehead 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 anddecide with him whether she was to come again and stay, whether it wouldbe ill or well for him. The red mounted to the colonel's forehead, andJeff put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't help remembering that hisfather had called him "son" in a poignancy of sympathy all through thetrials of the past, and it hurt to hear it now. It linked that time withthis, as Madame Beattie, in her unabashed self-seeking, linked it. Perhaps he was never to escape. A prisoner, that was what he was. Theywere all prisoners, Madame Beattie to her squalid love of gain, Estherto her elementary love of herself, Lydia--he looked at her as she stoodstill in the background like a handmaid waiting. Why, Lydia was aprisoner, 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 thatstands the stress of all the homely services and disillusioning. A smilebroke over his face, and Lydia, incredulously accepting it, gave alittle sob that couldn't be prevented in time, and took one dancingstep. She ran up to the colonel, and pulled him away from Jeff. Itseemed 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 ofprison!"

She had said it, the cruel word, and Jeff knew she could not possiblyhave ventured it if she did not see in him something fortunate andfree. 

XXXIII

"Jeff!" said the colonel. Esther's coming seemed so portentous that hecould not brook imperfect knowledge of it. "Jeff, did Esther come to--"He paused there. What could Esther, in the circumstances, do? Makeadvances? 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, "tostay?"

"No, " said Jeff. "Esther doesn't want to stay. We mustn't think ofthat. "

"I am sorry, " said the colonel, and Lydia understood him perfectly. Hewas not sorry Esther had gone. But he was sorry the whole business hadbeen so muddled from the start, and that Jeff's life could not havemoved on like Addington lives in general: placid, all of a piece. Lydiathought this yearning of his for the complete and perfect was because hewas old. She felt quite capable of taking Jeff's life as it was, andfitting it together in a striking pattern. 

"Come in, Farvie, " she said. "You haven't corrected Mary Nellen'stranslation. "

Jeff was being left alone for his own good, and he smiled after the kindlittle schemer, before he took his hat and went down town to find WeedonMoore. As he went, withdrawn into a solitariness of his own, so that heonly absently answered the bows of those he met, he thought curiouslyabout his own life. And he was thinking as his father had: his life wasnot of a pattern. It was a succession of disjointed happenings. Therewas the first wild frothing of the yeast of youth. There was the nemesiswho didn't like youth to make such a fool of itself. She had to throwhim into prison. While he was there he had actually seemed to do thingsthat affected prison discipline. He was mentioned outside. He was even, because he could write, absurdly pardoned. It had seemed to him thendesirable to write the life of a gentleman criminal, but in that he hadquite lost interest. Then he had had his great idea of liberty: thefreedom of the will that saved men from being prisoners. But the squalidtasks remained to him even while he bragged of being free: to warn Mooreaway from meddling with women's names, no matter how Madame Beattiemight 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 ofpossession justified by a social tie, somehow a part of him, a burden ofwhich he could never rid himself and therefore to be borne patiently, since he could not know whether the burden were actually his or not. Andhe began to be conscious after that morning when Esther had looked athim with primitive woman's summons to the protecting male that Estherwas calling him. Sometimes it actually tired him as if he were runningin answer to the call, whether toward it or away from it he could nottell. All the paths were mazes and the lines of them bewildering to hiseyes. 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 hadalso, in differing ways, this same consciousness of Esther's calling itcould not have surprised him. He would not have known, in his ownturmoil, whether to urge them to go or not to go. Esther did not seemto him a disturbing force, only a disconcerting one. You might have tomeet it to have done with it. 

But now at Weedon's office door he paused a moment, hearing a voice, thelittle 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, signingpapers, and he instantly guessed the signatures were not in thepursuance of her business but to the advantage of Weedon Moore. Whatevershe might be doing, she was not confused at seeing him. Her designscould be shouted on the housetops. But Moore gave him a foolishlycordial greeting mingled with a confused blotting of signatures and ahasty shuffling of the papers. 

"Sit down, sit down, " he said. "You haven't looked me up before, notsince--"

"No, " said Jeff. "Not since I came back. I don't think I ever did. I'vecome 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'mmaking 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 theworst of me. "

"I always think the best of you, " said Miss Amabel, with dignity yethelplessly. She sat there in an attitude of waiting, her grave glancegoing from one to the other, as she tried to understand. 

"Madame Beattie, " said Jeff curtly to Moore, "is likely to give you somepersonal details of her life. If you print them you'll settle with meafterward. "

"O Jeffrey!" said Miss Amabel. "Why put it so unpleasantly? Mr. Moorewould never print anything which could annoy you or any one. We mustn'tassume he would. "

Moore, standing, one fat and not overclean hand on the table, looked apassionate gratitude to her. He seemed about to gush into protest. Ofcourse he wouldn't. Of course he would publish only what was of thehighest 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 stoodthere a minute, a stately figure in spite of her blurred lines. "I wishwe could have your cooperation, Jeff. Mr. Moore is going to run formayor. "

"So I hear, " said Jeff, and his mind added, "And you are financing hiscampaign, you old dear, and only a minute ago you were signing oversecurities. "

"It means so much, " said Miss Amabel, "to have a man who is a friend oflabour. We ought to combine on that. It's enough to heal ourdifferences. "

"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 itover, Jeff. We can't afford to let personal issues influence us when theinterest of the town is at stake. "

"Surely not, " said Jeff. "Addington forever!"

As he went down the stairs he smiled a little, remembering Weedie hadnot spoken a word after his first greeting. But Jeff didn't waste muchthought on Weedie. He believed, at the crisis, Weedie could be managed. Miss Amabel had startled his mind broad awake to what she called thegreat issues and what he felt were vital ones. He went on over thebridge, and up the stairs of the old Choate Building to Alston'soffice, 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 ofhis clients had found him, but idle, with not even a book at hand. Therewere packets of papers, in a methodical sequence, but everything on thetable bore the aspect of an order not akin to work. Choate looked paleand harassed. "You?" said his upward glance. "You, of all the peopleI've been thinking of? What are you here for?"

There was though, in the look, a faint relief. Perhaps he thoughtsomething connected with the harassing appeal of Esther, the brutalisingstir 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 moreremote. 

"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 inAddington. Don't you know that?"

"I'm a weak man, " said Alston, looking up at him unhappily. "I don'thalf care for these things. I like the decent thing done, but, Jeff, Idon't want to pitch into the dirty business and call names and be callednames and uncover smells. I'd rather quit the whole business and go toEurope. "

"And let Addington go to pot? Why, we'd all rather go to Europe, ifAddington could be kept on her pins without us. But she can't. We've gotto see the old girl through. "

"She's gone to pot anyway, " said Choate. "So's the country. There aren'tany Americans now. They're blasted aliens. "

"Ain't you an American?" asked Jeff, forgetting his grammar. "I am. AndI'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 statedin the history books that there was once a little tribe called NewEnglanders and if you want to learn about 'em the philologists send youto the inscriptions of Mary Wilkins and Robert Frost. "

(This was before Robert Frost had come into his fame, but New Englandhad 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 reallywas doing in me in jail was country--country--patriotism, a kind ofirrational thing--sort of mother love applied to the soil--the thing mendie for. Call it liberty, if you want to, but it's all boiled down nowto Addington. Choate, don't you see Addington took hold on eternalthings? Don't you know how deep her roots go? She was settled byEnglish. You and I are English. We aren't going to let east of Europe orsouth of Europe or middle Europe come over here and turn old Addingtoninto 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 toowere willing to speak out, "you live in a country where the majorityrules. 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 aliensimported to do his work and the beastly politician wants them all throwninto citizenship neck and heels, so he can have more votes. You'redefeated, Jeff, before you begin. You're defeated by sheer numbers. "

"Then, for God's sake, " said Jeff, "take your alien and make an Americanof him. "

"You can't. Could I take you to Italy and make an Italian of you, or toGermany 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 yournationalities in but they'll no more combine than Tarquin's andLucretia's blood. No, Jeff. America's gone, the vision, as she was inthe beginning. They've throttled her among them. "

Jeff stood looking at him, flushed, dogged, defiant. He had a vividbeauty at the moment, and Alston woke to a startled sense of what theyoung Jeff used to be. But this was better. There was something beateninto 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 andfaithfulnesses this government was founded on than a Hottentot goinginto his neighbour's territory. "

"Oh, come, " said Alston, "give 'em a fair show. They've come forliberty. You've got to take their word for it. "

"Some of 'em have come to avoid being skinned alive, by Islam, some toget money enough to go back with and be _rentiers_. The Germans havecome 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. Youcan't leaven the whole lump. "

"I can't look much beyond Addington, " said Jeff. "I believe I'm dottyover the old girl. I don't want her to go back to being Victorian, but Iwant 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 ofweight 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 constrainedhim; it was the look in his mother's eyes. 

XXXIV

The late autumn had a profusion of exhilarating days. The crops keptJeff in the garden and brought his father out for his quota of potteringcare. When the land was cleared for ploughing and even the pile ofrubbish burned, Jeff got to feeling detached again, discontented even, and went for long tramps, sometimes with Alston Choate. Esther, seeingthem go by, looked after them in a consternation real enough to blanchher damask cheek. What was the bond between them? Whatever bond they hadformed must be to the exclusion of her and her dear wishes, and theiramity enraged her. 

Once, in walking, she saw Jeff turn in at Miss Amabel's gate, and shedid not swerve but actually finished her walk and came back that waypraying, with the concentration of thought which is an assault of will, that he might be coming out and meet her. And it happened according toher desire. There, at the gate was Jeff, handsomer, according to awoman's jealous eye, than she had ever seen him, fresh-coloured, hisface set in a determination that was not feigned, hard, fit for anymuscular task more than the average man might do. Esther was looking herprettiest. She continued to look her prettiest now, so far as woman'sart could serve her, for she could not know what moment might summon herto bring her own special strength to bear. Jeff, at sight of her, tookoff his hat, but stopped short standing inside the gate. Estherunderstood. He wasn't going to commit her to walk with him whereAddington might see. She, too, stopped, her heart beating as fast as shecould have desired and giving her a bright accession of colour. Esthergreatly prized her damask cheek. 

Jeff, feeling himself summoned, then came forward. He looked at hergravely, and he was at a loss. How to address her! But Esther, with abeguiling accent of gentleness, began. 

"Isn't it strange?" she said, wistfully and even humbly, as if it werenot a question but a reflection of her own, not necessarily to beanswered. 

"What is strange?" asked Jeff, with a kindly note she found reassuring. 

"You and me, " said Esther, "standing here, when--I don't believe youwere 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 notsummoning energy to distrust her, and this was as she hoped. 

"I'm sorry, Esther, " he said impulsively. "I did mean to speak. Itwasn't that. I only don't mean to make you--in other folks' eyes, youknow--seem to be having anything to do with me when--when you don't wantto. "

"When I don't want to!" Esther repeated. There was musing in the softvoice, a kind of wonder. 

"It's an infernal shame, " said Jeff. He was glad to tell her he hatedthe privation she had to bear of having cast him off and yet facing herbroken life without him. "I know what kind of time you have as well asyou could tell me. You've got Madame Beattie quartered on you. There'sgrandmother upstairs. No comfort in her. No companionship. I've oftenthought 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 youthat, at least. "

Esther stood looking up at him, her lips parted, as if she drank what hehad to say through them, and drank it thirstily. 

"How good you are!" she said. "O Jeff, how good! When I've--" There shepaused, still watching him. But Esther had the woman's instinctive trickof being able to watch accurately while she did it passionately. 

Jeff flushed to his hair, but her cleverness did not lead her to thesprings 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 thishorrible mix-up I've made for you. But I'm not good, Esther. I'm not thefaithful chap it makes me seem. I'm different. You wouldn't know me. Idon't believe we ever knew each other very well. "

Something like terror came into her beautiful eyes. Was he, that innerterror asked her, trying to explain that she had lost him? Although shemight not want him, she had always thought he would be there. 

"You mean--" she began, and strove to keep a grip on herself and decidetemperately whether this would be best to say. But some galled feelinggot the better of her. The smart was too much. Hurt vanity made herwince and cry out with the passion of a normal jealousy. "You mean, " shecontinued, "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, lestthese 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 righthave I to look at another woman while you are alive? How could I insulta 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, "youlove somebody else. O Jeff, I didn't think--" She lifted widened eyes tohis. Afterward he could have sworn they were wet with tears. "I stand inyour 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 mymouth. You can make over your life, if you know how, and I'll help youdo it, if I can. I thought you were trying to free yourself. You can dothat. I won't lift a hand. You can say you're afraid of me, as you havebefore. 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 aprisoner to me. "

"Jeff!" said Esther. 

"What is it?" he asked. 

She spoke tremblingly, weakly really as if she had not the strength tospeak, and he came a step nearer and laid his hand on the granitegatepost. It was so hard it gave him courage. There were blood-red vineson it, and when he disturbed their stems they loosened leaves and letthem drift over his hand. 

"Now I see, " said Esther, "how really alone I am. I thought I was whenyou were away, but it was nothing to this. "

She walked on, listlessly, aimlessly even though she kept the path andshe was going on her way as she had elected to before she saw him. Butto Jeff she seemed to be a drifting thing. A delicate butterfly floatedpast him, weakened by the coldness of last night and fluttering on intoa night as cold. 

"Esther, " he called, and hurried after her. "You don't want me to walkwith you?" he asked impatiently. "You don't want Addington to say we'vemade it up?"

"I don't care about Addington, " said Esther. "It can say what itpleases--if you're kind to me. "

"Kind!" said Jeff. "I could have you trounced. You don't play fair. Whatdo you mean by mixing me all up with pity and things--" Esther's lidswere 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 onirritably. "You ignore everything you've felt before to-day. And youbegin 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 sohappy for months. "

"Of course I scold you, " said Jeff. "I want to see you happy. I want tosee 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. Awoman like you--"

But Esther never discovered what he meant by "a woman like you. " He hadgone a little further than her brain would take her. Did he mean a womanaltogether charming, like her--or? She dropped the inquiry very soon, because it seemed to lead nowhere and it was pleasanter to think thethings that do not worry one. 

Jeff remembered afterward that he had known from the beginning of thewalk with her that they should meet all Addington. But it was not theAddington he had irritably dreaded. It was Lydia. His heart died as hesaw her coming, and his brain called on every reserve within him to keepEsther from knowing that here was his heart's lady, this brave creaturewhose honour was untainted, who had a woman's daring and a man'sendurance. He even, after that first alarm of a glance, held his eyesfrom seeing her and he kept on scolding Esther. 

"What's the use, " he said, "talking like that?" And then his mind toldhim 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, " hesaid, "to get away from here. Get away from Madame Beattie--get awayfrom grandmother--" Lydia was very near now. He felt he could afford tosee 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 wilfulstumbling--"where could I go--alone?"

They were at her own gate, and Jeff stopped with her. Since they leftLydia he had held his hat in his hand, and Esther, looking up at him sawthat he had paled under his tan. The merciless woman in her took stockof that, rejoicing. Jeff smiled at her faintly, he was so infinitelyglad to leave her. 

"We must think, " he said. "You must think. Esther, about money, I'lltry--I don't know yet what I can earn--but we'll see. Oh, hang it! thesethings can't be said. "

He turned upon the words and strode off and Esther, without lookingafter him, went in and at once upstairs. 

"Good girl!" Madame Beattie called to her, from her room. "Well begun ishalf done. "

Esther did not answer. Neither did she take the trouble to hate AuntPatricia for saying it. She went instantly to her glass, and smiled intoit. 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 thingpossible. 

Jeff went home and stood just inside his gateway to wait for Lydia. Hejudged that she had been going to Amabel's, and now, her thoughts thrownout of focus by meeting him with Esther, she would give up her visit andcome 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 toread her face before she drew its veil of proud composure, and he foundin it what he had expected: young sorrow, the anguish of the heartstricken and with no acquired power of staunching its own wounds. Whenshe saw him her face hardly changed, except that the mournful eyessought his. Had Esther got power over him? the eyes asked, and not outof jealousy, he believed. The little creature was like a cherishingmother. 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 itinto fastnesses, but it should be saved. To Jeff, in that instant ofmeeting the questioning eyes, she seemed an amazing person, capable ofexacting a tremendous loyalty. He didn't feel like explaining to herthat Esther hadn't got him in the least. The clarity of understandingbetween them was inexpressibly precious to him. He wouldn't break it bymuddling assertions. 

"I've been to Amabel's, " he said. "You were going there, too, weren'tyou?"

Lydia's face relaxed and cleared a little. She looked relieved, perhapsfrom 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 beforeAnne sees us and makes us eat things?"

He took her hand, this time of intention to make her feel befriended inthe intimacy of their common home, and they skirted the fence and wentacross the orchard to the bench by the brick wall. As they sat there andJeff gave back her little hand he suddenly heard quick breaths from herand 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'sbeen nothing to hurt you. "

Soon her breath stopped catching, and she gave her eyes a finaldesperate scrub. By that time Jeff had begun to talk about the land andwhat he hoped to do with it next year. He meant at least to prune theorchard and maybe set out dwarfs. At first Lydia did not half listen, knowing his purpose in distracting her. Then she began to answer. Onceshe 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 becalled a library agriculturist. He was reading agricultural papers now. He could answer almost any question you asked. As for bugs and theirnatural antidotes, he knew them like a book. He even called himself anagronomist. But when it came to potatoes! By and by they were talkingtogether and he had succeeded in giving her that homely sense ofintimacy he had been striving for. She forgot the pang that pierced herwhen she saw him walking beside the woman who owned him through thelaw. He was theirs, hers and her father's and Anne's, because they knewhim 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, ifthat 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 madegood as she was fair, by some apt miracle, could be trusted with the manshe had hurt. According to Lydia, Esther had not in her even the seedsof such compassion as Jeff deserved. 

XXXV

When the cold weather came and Alston Choate and Weedon Moore becamerival candidates for the mayoralty of Addington, strange things began tohappen. Choate, cursing his lot inwardly, but outwardly deferential tohis mother who had really brought it on him, began to fulfil every lastrequirement 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 oneinnovation he drew the line at was the flattering recognition of men hehad 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 itneeded, coached, he ironically added when he spoke the expansive truthat home, by his mother and Jeff. They were ready to bring kindling toboil the pot, Mrs. Choate in her grand manner of beckoning the ancientvirtues back, Jeff, as Alston told, him, hammer and tongs. Jeff alsobegan to make speeches, because, at one juncture when Alston gave outfrom hoarseness--his mother said it was a psychological hoarseness at amoment when he realised overwhelmingly how he hated it all--Jeff hadtaken his place and "got" the men, labourers all of them, as Alstonnever had. 

"It's a mistake, " said Mrs. Choate afterward when he came to the houseto report, and ask how Alston was, and the three sat eating one ofMary'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 himpatiently 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 himand good blood racing well. He was eating bread and butter heartily, while he waited for Mary to serve him savoury things, and Mrs. Choatelooked 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 couldmarry Mary off to Jeff. Mary, pale, yet wholesome, fair-haired, with thedefinite Choate profile, and dressed in her favourite smoke colour andpale violet, her mother loved conscientiously, if impatiently. But shewished Mary, who had not one errant inclination, might come to her someday and say, "Mother, I am desperately enamoured of an Italianfruit-seller with Italy in his eyes. " Mrs. Choate would have explainedto her, with a masterly common-sense, that such vagrom impulses meant, followed to conclusions, shipwreck on the rocks of classmisunderstanding; but it would have warmed her heart to Mary to have soto explain. But here was Mary to whom no eccentricity ever had to beelucidated. She could not even have imagined a fruit-seller outside hisheaven-decreed occupation of selling fruit. Mrs. Choate smiled a littleto herself, wondering what Mary would say if she could know her motherwas willing to consign the inconvenient Esther to perpetual limbo andmarry her to handsome Jeff. "Mother!" she could imagine her horrifiedcry. It would all be in that. 

Jeff was more interested in his eating than in answering Mrs. Choatewith more than an encouraging:

"We've got 'em, I think. But I wish, " he said, "we had more time tofollow up Weedie. What's he saying to 'em?"

"Ask Madame Beattie, " said Alston, with more distaste than he could keepout 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 tomake 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 herenemy, Madame Beattie, to the disgust of Esther, came down cloaked andmuffled to the chin and took the one automobile to be had for hire inAddington. She was whirled away, where Esther had no idea. She waswhirled back again at something after ten, hoarse yet immensely tickled. But Reardon knew what she had done and he telephoned it to Esther. Shewas making speeches of her own, stopping at street corners wherever shecould gather a group, but especially running down to the little streetsby the water where the foreign labourers came swarming out and cheeredher. 

"It's disgraceful, " said Esther, almost crying into the telephone. "Whatis 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 acollege 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--itwas the best, she thought, the man had to offer--and then said to herjocosely:

"Well, Madame Beattie, who shall I vote for?"

Madame Beattie looked at him an instant with a quizzical comprehensionit was too dark for him to see. 

"I can tell whom you'd better not vote for, " she said. "Don't vote forEsther. 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 toknow everything. She must know he was somehow likely to get into troubleover Esther. Reardon was bewitched with Esther, but he did so want to besafe. Nevertheless, led by man's destiny, he walked up to the door andEsther, as before, let him in. He thought it only fair to tell her hehad found out nothing, and he meant, in a confused way, to let her seethat things must be "all right" between them. By this he meant that theymust both be safe. But once within beside her perfumed presence--yetEsther used no vulgar helps to provoke the senses--he forgot that hemust be safe, and took her into his arms. He had been so certain of hisstability, after his recoil from Madame Beattie, that he neglected toresist himself. And Esther did not help him. She clung to him and theperfume mounted to his brain. What was it? Not, even he knew, a cunningof 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 herto get free, to take his money, everything he had, and buy her freedomsomehow. Then, he said, in an awkwardness he cursed himself for, theycould begin to talk. And as she withdrew from him at sound of RhodaKnox above, he opened the door and ran away from her, to the orderedseclusion of his own house. Once there he wiped his flustered brow andcursed 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 tobeg her to understand, to assure her he was thinking of her and nothimself, as indeed he was. But meantime as he rehearsed the arguments hehad at hand, he was going about the room getting things together. Hispapers were fairly in order. He could always shake them into perfectsystem at an hour's notice. And then muttering to himself that, afterall, he shouldn't use it, he telephoned New York to have a state-roomreservation made for Liverpool. The office was closed, and he knew itwould be, yet it somehow gave him a dull satisfaction to have tried; andnext day he telephoned again. 

Within a week Jeff turned his eyes toward a place he had never thoughtof, never desired for a moment, and yet now longed for exceedingly. Amaster in a night school founded by Miss Amabel had dropped out, andJeff went, hot foot, to Amabel and begged to take his place. How couldshe refuse him? Yet she did warn him against propaganda. 

"Jeff, dear, " she said, moving a little from the open fire where he satwith her, bolt upright, eager, forceful, exactly like a suppliant for ajob he desperately needs, "you won't use it to set the men againstWeedon Moore?"

Jeff looked at her with a perfectly open candour and such a force ofpersuasion in his asking eyes that she believed he was bringing hispersonal charm to influence her, and shook her head at himdespairingly. 

"I won't in that building or the school session, " he said. "Outside I'llknife 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 bustWeedie and save Addington. "

"Weedon Moore is saving Addington, " said she. 

"Do you honestly believe that? Think how Addington began. Do you supposea town that old boy up there helped to build--" he glanced at hisfriend, the judge--"do you think that little rat can do much for it? Idon't. "

"Perhaps Addington doesn't need his kind of help now, or yours. Addington is perfectly comfortable, except its working class. And it'sthe working man Weedon Moore is striving for. "

"Addington is comfortable on a red-hot crater, " said Jeff. "She's likeall the rest of America. She's sat here sentimentalising and letting thecrater 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 saysit's going to be the spoil of damned German efficiency. She thinks theHuns are waking up and civilisations going under. But I don't. I believewe're going to be a great unwieldy, industrial monster, no cohesion inus and no patriotism, no citizenship. "

"No patriotism!" Miss Amabel rose involuntarily and stood theretrembling. 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 tosalute 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 thetongue of men and angels or I'd go out and try to salvage the wholebusiness. 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 owndooryard. Dear old girl, we've got to save Addington. "

"I'm trying, " said she. "Jeff, dear, I'm trying. And I've a lot ofmoney. I don't know how it rolled up so. "

"Don't give it to Weedon Moore, that's all, " he ventured, and then, inthe stiffening of her whole body, he saw it was a mistake even tomention Moore. Her large charity made her fiercely partisan. He venturedthe audacious personal appeal. "Give me some, Amabel, if you've reallygot so much. Let me put on some plays, in a simple way, and try to makeyour 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'smake 'em fall over themselves to be Americans. "

Miss Amabel flushed all over her soft face, up to the line of her greyhair. 

"Jeff, " she said. 

"What'm?"

"I have always meant when you were at liberty again--" that seemed toher a tolerable euphemism--"to turn in something toward your debt. "

"To the creditors?" Jeff supplied cheerfully. "Amabel, dear, I don'tbelieve there are any little people suffering from my thievery. It'sonly the big people that wanted to be as rich as I did. Anne and Lydiaare suffering in a way. But that's my business. I'm going to confess toyou. Dear sister superior, I'm going to confess. "

She did not move, hardly by an eyelash. She was afraid of choking hisconfidence, and she wanted it to come abundantly. Jeff sat for a minuteor two frowning and staring into the fire. He had to catch himself backfrom what threatened to become silent reverie. 

"I've thought a good deal about this, " he said, "when I've had time tothink, 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'dfar rather pitch in and save Addington. Maybe it means I'm warpedsomehow about money, standards lowered, you know, perceptions blunted, that sort of thing. Well, if it's so I shall find it out sometime and bepunished. We can't escape anything, in spite of their doctrine ofvicarious atonement. "

She moved slightly at this, and Jeff smiled at her. 

"Yes, " said he, "we have to be punished. Sometimes I suppose the fullknowledge of what we've done is punishment enough. Now about me. Ifanybody came to me to-day and said, 'I'll make you square with theworld, ' I should say, 'Don't you do it. Save Addington. I'd rather throwmy 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'scommon-sense--tossing the rotten past into the abyss and making a newdeal--or whether it's because I've deteriorated too much to see I'vedeteriorated. You tell, Amabel. "

She took out her large handkerchief--Amabel had a convenient pocket--andopenly 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 seehow you're going to live. "

"Lydia'll help me do it, " said Jeff, "she and Anne. They're curiouslywise 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 goingto 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 heardthe mention of. And I feel terrible loquacious. I think I shall writethings. I think folks'll take 'em. They've got to. I want to hand over alittle 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 upsomehow--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 asimile. 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 thedeprecating air of asking for indulgence that was his charm when he wasgood. His eyes were the soft bright blue of happy seas. 

"Amabel, " said he, "I don't want to cry for mercy, though I'd ratherhave mercy from you than 'most anybody. Blame me if you've got to, butdon't make any mistake about me. I'm not good and I'm not all bad. I'mnothing but a confusion inside. I've got to pitch in and do the bestthing 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 colonelsitting by, looking over his glasses in a benevolent way. 

"I've been trying to undermine Weedie, " said Jeff, "with Amabel. I can'tquite do it, but I've got her to promise me some of her money. Forplays, Lydia, played by Mill End. What do you say?"

"She hasn't money enough for real plays, " said Lydia. "All she's gotwouldn't last a minute. "

"Not in a hall?" asked Jeff. "Not with scenery just sketched in, as itwere? But all of it patriotic. Teach them something. Ram it down theirthroats. English language. "

Lydia made a few remarks, and Jeff sat up and stared at her. The coloneland Anne, endorsing her, were not surprised. They had heard it allbefore. It seems Lydia had a theory that the province of art is simplynot to be dull. If you could charm people, you could make them doanything. The kite of your aspirations might fly among the stars. Butyou couldn't fly it if it didn't look well flying. The reason nobodyreally learns anything by plays intended to teach them something, Lydiasaid, is because the plays are generally dull. Nobody is going to listento "argufying" if he can help it. If you tell people what it isbeneficial for them to believe they are going home and to bed, unchanged. But they'll yawn in your faces first. Lydia had a theory thatyou might teach the most extraordinary lessons if you only made thembewitching enough. Look at the Blue Bird. How many people who loved tosee Bread cut a slice off his stomach and to follow the charmingpageant of the glorified common things of life, thought anything savethat this was a "show" with no appeal beyond the visual one? Yet thereit was, the big symbolism beating in its heart and keeping it alive. TheChildren of Light could see the symbolism quick as a wink. Still theChildren of Darkness who never saw any symbolism at all and who were theones to yawn and go home to bed, helped pay for tickets and keep thething running. We must bewitch them also. Jeff inquired humbly if shewould advise taking up Shakespeare with the Mill Enders and found shestill wouldn't venture on it at once. She'd do some fairy plays, quiteeasy to write on new lines. Everything was easy if you had "go" enough, Lydia said. Jeff ventured to inquire about scenic effects, anddiscovered, to his enlightenment, that Lydia had the greatest faith inthe imagination of any kind of audience. Do a thing well enough, shesaid, and the audience would forget whether it was looking at a paintedscene 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, andsought for a little Astyanax, were forbidden by an asinine citygovernment to bring on a real child. Think how the actors crouchedprotectingly over an imaginary Astyanax, and how plainly every eye sawthe child who was not there. Perhaps every woman's heart supplied thevision of her dream-child, of the child she loved. Think of the otherplay where the kettle is said to be hissing hot and everybody shuns itwith such care that onlookers wince too. Lydia thought she could writethe fairy plays and the symbolic plays, all American, if Jeff liked, andhe might correct the grammar. 

Just then Mary Nellen, passionately but silently grieved to have lostsuch an intellectual feast, came in on the tail of these remarks. Shebrought Jeff a letter. It was a publisher's letter, and the publisherwould print his book about prisoners. It said nothing whatever of tryingto advertise him as a prisoner. Jeff concluded the man was a decentfellow. He swaggered a little over the letter and told the family he hadto, 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 wasglad that way. Jeff thought it an excellent moment to tell them he wasgoing 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 youlet 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'schattering, except the ones that are shrieking. I'm going to see if Ican't down some of the rest. "

XXXVI

A carnival of motor cars kept on whirling to all parts of the town whereMadame Beattie was likely to speak. She spoke in strange places: atstreet corners, in a freight station, at the passenger station when theincoming train had brought a squad of workmen from the bridge repairingup the track. It was always to workmen, and always they knew, by someeffective communication, where to assemble. The leisure class, too, oldAddingtonians, followed her, as if it were all the best of jokes, andprotested they sometimes understood what she said. But nobody did, except the foreigners and not one of them would own to knowing. WeedonMoore made little clipped bits of speeches, sliced off whenever her carappeared and his audience turned to her in a perfect obedience andglowing interest. Jeff, speaking for Alston, now got a lukewarmattention, the courtesy born out of affectionate regard. None of theroars and wild handclappings were for him. Madame Beattie was eating upall the enthusiasm in town. Once Jeff, walking along the street, came onher standing in her car, haranguing a group of workmen, all intent, eager, warm to her with a perfect sympathy and even a species ofadoration. 

He stepped up in the car beside her. He had an irritated sense that, ifhe got near enough, he might find himself inside the mystic ring. Sheturned to him with a gracious and dramatic courtesy. She even put a handon his arm, and he realised, with more exasperation, that he wassupporting 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. "TalkEnglish for ten minutes. Play fair. "

But she only smiled on him the more sympathetically, and the crowdcheered them both anew. Jeff stuck by, that night. He stayed with heruntil, earlier than usual because she had tired her voice, she told theman to drive home. 

"I am taking you with me to see Esther, " she mentioned unconcernedly, asthey 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 theorder. 

"Poor Esther!" said Jeff, when the chauffeur had absented himself to asufficient distance, and, according to Madame Beattie's direction, waswalking up and down. "Isn't it enough for you to pester her withoutbringing me into it? Why are you so hard on her?"

"I've been quite patient, " said Madame Beattie, "with both of you. I'vesat down and waited for you to make up your minds what is going to bedone 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'vegot to be paid, among you. If I am not paid, the little dirty man isgoing 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, tosave her. "

"I have told Weedon Moore, " said Jeff succinctly, "in one form oranother 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 doubtwhether he will--I'll have it set up myself in leaflets, and I'll gothrough the town distributing them from this car. Jeff, I must havemoney. I must have it. "

He sat back immovable, arms folded, eyes on the distance, and frowninglythought. What use to blame her who acted after her kind and was no moreto 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 orwrong you should have it if it would buy you out of here. But I haven'tgot it. "

"It's there you are a fool, " she said, moved actually now by hisnumbness to his own endowment. "I could beat my head and scream, when Ithink how you're throwing things away, your time, in that beastly nightschool, your power, your personal charm. Jeff, you've the devil's ownluck. 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 hehad 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 unpleasantintensity of tone, as if she would have liked to scream it and the quietstreet denied her. "If you hadn't pleaded guilty, if you hadn't handedover every scrap of evidence, if you had been willing to take advantageof what that clerk was ready to swear--why, you might have got off andkept 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 MadameBeattie, willing to ask the most intimate questions, make the mostunscrupulous demands. He remembered the young clerk who had wanted toperjure himself for his sake. 

"That would have made a difference, I suppose, " he said, "youngWilliams' 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 knewat once. He turned white as a sheet. 'Yes, ' he said, 'and I'll swear toit. ' I told him we'd make it worth his while. "

"You did?" said Jeff. "Well, there's another illusion gone. I took alittle comfort in young Williams. I thought he was willing to perjurehimself because he had an affection for me. So you were to make it worthhis while. "

She laughed a little, indifferently, with no bitterness, but inretrospect of a scene where she had been worsted. 

"You needn't mourn that lost ideal, " she said. "Young Williams showed methe 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 forme. "

Jeff laughed out. 

"Well, " he said, "that's something to the good anyway. We haven't lostyoung Williams. He wrote to me, not long ago. When I answer it, I'lltell 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 afool. You had the world in your hand. You've got it still. You andEsther could run such a race! think what you've got, both of you, youth, beauty, charm. You could make your way just by persuasion, persuadingthis man to one thing and that man to another. How Esther could helpyou! Don't you see she's an asset? What if you don't love her? Love! Iknow 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 intohis soul. The red of nature had come into her cheeks and fought therewith 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 wasoverwhelmed with shame for her because she was avowedly what she was. Often he could laugh at her good-tempered cynicism. Over her now, for heactually did have a kind of affection for her, he could have cried. 

"Don't!" he said involuntarily, and she misunderstood him. His shame forher disgrace she had taken for yielding and she redoubled the hottorrent of temperamental persuasion. 

"I will, " she said fiercely, "until you get on your legs and act like aman. Go to Esther. Go to her now, this night. Come with me. Make love toher. She's a pretty woman. Sweep her off her feet. Tell her you're goingto make good and she's going to help you. "

Jeff rose and stepped out of the car. The ravenous old hand stilldragged at his arm, but he lifted it quietly and gave it back to her. Hestood there a moment, his hat off, and signalled the chauffeur. MadameBeattie leaned over to him until her eyes were again glittering intohis. 

"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 hadstarted. He felt like showing her an exaggerated courtesy. Jeff thoughthe had never been so sorry for anybody in his life as for MadameBeattie. 

Madame Beattie drew her cloak the closer, sunk her chin in it andconcluded Jeff was done with her. She was briefly sorry though not fromshame. It scarcely disconcerted her to find he liked her even less thanshe 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 nextday, seeing Lydia walk past the house, she went to call on Anne. Her waywas smooth. Anne herself came to the door in the neighbourly Addingtonfashion when help was busy, and took her into the library, expressingregret that her father was not there. The family had gone out on variouserrands. This she offered in her gentle way, even with a humorousruefulness, Madame Beattie would find her so inadequate. To Anne, MadameBeattie was exotic as some strange eastern flower, not less impressivebecause 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 thefender, an attitude which perilously tipped her chair. On this Annesolicitously volunteered to move the fender and did it, bringing thehigh-heeled shoes comfortably near the coals. Then Madame Beattie, wasting no time in preliminaries, began, with great circumspection andher lisp, and told Anne the later story of the necklace. To her calmstatement of Esther's thievery Anne paid a polite attention though nocredence. She had not believed it when Lydia told her. Why should she bethe more convinced from these withered lisping lips? But Madame Beattiewent on explicitly, through the picturesque tale of Lydia and thenecklace and the bag. Then Anne looked at her in unaffected horror. Shesat bolt upright, her slender figure tense with expectation, her handsclasped rigidly. Madame Beattie enjoyed this picture of a sympatheticattention, a nature played upon by her dramatic mastery. Anne had nobackwardness in believing now, the deed was so exactly Lydia's. Shecould see the fierce impulse of its doing, the reckless haste, no pausefor considering whether it were well to do. She could appreciate Lydia'ssilence afterward. "Poor darling" she murmured, and though MadameBeattie interrogated sharply, "What?" she was not to hear. All themother in Anne, faithfully and constantly brooding over Lydia, grew intopassion. She could hardly wait to get the little sinner into her armsand tell her she was eternally befriended by Anne's love. Madame Beattiewas coming to conclusions. 

"The amount of the matter is, " she said, "I must be paid for thenecklace. "

"But, " Anne said, with the utmost courtesy, "I understand you have thenecklace. "

"That isn't the point, " said Madame Beattie. "I have been given a greatdeal of annoyance, and I must be compensated for that. What use is anecklace 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 whichAnne listened humbly enough now, since it seemed to touch Lydia. MadameBeattie came to her alternative: if nobody paid her money to ensure hersilence, she would go to Weedon Moore and give him the story ofEsther'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 formoney--"

"You are to influence Jeff, " Madame Beattie lisped. "Jeff can do almostanything he likes if he doesn't waste himself muddling round withturnips and evening schools. You are to tell him his wife and the impare going to be shown up. He wouldn't believe me. He thinks he canthrash 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 tellhim. If he doesn't care for Esther he may for the little imp. He thinksshe's very nice. "

Madame Beattie here, in establishing an understanding, leered a littlein 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, herhand on a chair back, gazing at her. 

"I never, " said Anne, in a choked way, "I never heard such horriblethings in my life. " Then, to her own amazement, for she hardly knew thesensation and never with such intensity as overwhelmed her now, Annefelt 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 atonce. I can't have you here. "

Madame Beattie looked up at her in a pleasant indifference, as if itrather amused her to see the grey dove bristling for its young. Anneeven 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 mightcome in and be civil to you, and I won't have anybody civil to you inthis house. Lydia might come in, and Lydia likes you. Why, MadameBeattie, can you bear to think Lydia likes you, when you're willing tosay the things you do?"

Madame Beattie was still not moved except by mild amusement. Anne leftthe chair and took a step nearer. 

"Madame Beattie, " she said, "you don't believe a word I say. But I meanit. You've got to go out of this house, or I shall put you out of itwith 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 senseof physical inadequacy. About Anne there was playing the very spirit oftragic anger, none of it for effect, not in the least gauged by any ideaof its efficiency. Those slender hands, gripping each other until theknuckles blanched, were ready for their act. The girl's white face waslighted with eyes of fire. Madame Beattie rose and slowly assumed hercloak. 

"You're a silly child, " she said. "When you're as old as I am you'llhave more common-sense. You'd rather risk a scandal than tell Jeff hehas a debt to pay. By to-morrow you'll see it as I do. Come to me in themorning, 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 lastdoor also. But she closed it without saying good-bye, in answer toMadame Beattie's oblique nod over her shoulder and the farewell wave ofher hand. For an instant Anne felt like slipping the bolt lest heradversary should return, but she reflected, with a grimness new to hergentle nature, that if Madame Beattie did return her own two hands wereready. She stood a moment, listening, and when the carriage wheelsrolled away down the drive, she went to the big closet under the stairsand caught at her own coat and hat. She was going, as fast as her feetwould carry her, to see Alston Choate. 

XXXVII

Alston Choate was working, and he was alone. Anne, bright-eyed andanxious, came in upon him and brought him to his feet. Anne had learnedthis year that you should not knock at the door of business offices, butshe still half believed you ought, and it gave her entrance something ofdeprecation and a pretty grace. 

"I am so troubled, " she said, without preliminary. "Madame Beattie hasjust been to see me. "

Alston, smiling away her agitation, if he might, by a kind assumptionthat there was no conceivable matter that could not be at once putright, gave her a chair and himself went back to his judicial seat. Anne, not loosening her jacket, looked at him, her face pure andappealing above the fur about her throat, as if to beg him to be as kindas he possibly could, since it all involved Lydia. 

"I've no doubt it's Madame Beattie, " said Alston carelessly, even itmight have been a little amused at the possibilities. "If there's aferment anywhere north of Central America she's pretty certain to haveset it brewing. "

Anne told him her tale succinctly, and his unconcern crumbled. Hefrowned over the foolishness of it, and considered, while she talked, whether he had better be quite open with her, or whether it wassufficient to take the responsibility of the thing and settle it like aswaggering god warranted to rule. That was better, he concluded. 

"I'll go to see Madame Beattie, " he said. "Then I'll report to you. Butyou'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'tknow 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 befor you. "

Then for an instant, though so alive to her, he seemed to withdraw intoremote cogitation, and she wondered whether he was really thinking ofthe case at all. Because she was in a lawyer's office she called it acase, timorously; that made it much more serious. But Alston, in thatinstant, was thinking how strange it was that the shabby old office, witness of his unwilling drudgery and his life-saving excursions intothe gardens of fiction, should be looking now on her, seated there inher earnestness and purity, and that he should at last be recognisingher. She was a part of him, Alston thought, beloved, not because she wasso different but so like. There was no assault of the alien nature uponhis own, irresistible because so piquing. There were no unexploredtracts he couldn't at least fancy, green swards and clear waters where aman might be refreshed. Everything he found there would be, he knew, ofthe nature of the approaches to that gentle paradise. What a thing, remote, extraordinary to think of in his office while she brought himthe details of a tawdry scandal. Yet the office bore, to his eyes, invisible traces of past occupancy: men and women out of books werethere, absolutely vivid to his eyes, more alive than half theAddingtonians. The walls were hung with garlands of fancy, the windowshis dreaming eyes had looked from were windows into space beyondAddington. No, these were no common walls, yet unfitting to gaze onwhile you told a client you loved her. After all, on rapid secondthought, it might not seem so inapt seen through his mother's eyes, asshe was betraying herself now in more than middle age. "Ask her whereveryou find yourselves, " he fancied his mother saying. "That is part of theadventure. "

Alston looked at Anne and smiled upon her and involuntarily she smiledback, though she saw no cause for cheerfulness in the dismal errand shehad come on. She started a little, too, for Alston, in the most matterof 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 ahigher 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? Ishouldn't want to, either. But it isn't Esther we're talking about. It'sMadame Beattie. "

"I know, " said Alston, "but I want you to know I have been verymuch--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 athim with the colour rising higher and higher, hardly seemed tounderstand. 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'vewished I could ask her to marry me. But I don't any longer. You won'tunderstand at all why I say it now. Sometime I'll tell you when you'venoticed how I have to stand up against my cut and dried ways. Anne, I'mtalking to you. "

She had got on her feet and was fumbling with the upper button of hercoat which had not been unloosed. But that she didn't remember now. Shewas in a mechanical haste of making ready to go. Alston rose, too, andwas glad to find he was the taller. It gave him a mute advantage and heneeded all he could get. 

"I'm telling you something quite important, " he said, in a tone that sether momentarily and fallaciously at ease. "It's going to be veryimportant to both of us. Dear Anne! darling Anne!" He broke down andlaughed, her eyes were so big with the surprise of it, almost, it mightbe, 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 exceptthis miserable thing I've just told you. I had to tell you, so you'dknow 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 ofit in a proper place. Anne, I've had so much to do with proper placesI'm sick of 'em. That's why I've begun to say it here. Nothing could bemore improper in all Addington. Think about it. Be ready to tell me whenI come, though that won't be for a long time. I'm going to write youthings, 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 couldpossibly be a reproving one--and, with a fine dignity, walked to thedoor. Since he had begun to belie his nature, mischief possessed him. Hewanted to go as far as he audaciously could and taste the sweet andbitter 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 turnedfor 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 herwith 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. Heneeded his present cleverness too much to spend a grain of it onself-reproach. He went to his safe and took out a paper that had beenlying 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 summonher. And Madame Beattie came, finding him at the window, his back turnedon 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 subtleintimacies. At the sound of a step he turned, and Madame Beattie met himpeaceably, with outstretched hand. Alston dropped the hand as soon aspossible. Lydia might swear she was clean and that her peculiarilysecond-hand look was the effect of overworn black, but Alston she hadalways impressed as much-damaged goods that had lost every conceivableinviting freshness. She indicated a chair conveniently opposite her ownand he sat down and at once began. 

"Madame Beattie, I have come to talk over this unfortunate matter of thenecklace. "

"Oh, " said Madame Beattie, with a perfect affability and no apparentemotion, "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 veryinteresting personal questions, and I advise you to let them alone. Youwon't find any precedent for them in your books. "

"I have been unpardonably slow in coming to you, " said Alston. "And mycoming now hasn't so very much to do with Lydia and Anne. I might havecome just the same if you hadn't begun to annoy them. "

"Well, " said Madame Beattie impatiently. She wanted her nap, for she wasdue that evening at street corners in Mill End. "Get to the point, ifyou please. "

"The point is, " said Alston, "that some months ago when you began tomake things unpleasant for a number of persons--"

"Nonsense!" said Madame Beattie briskly. "I haven't made thingsunpleasant. 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, politicsare most exciting, everything's different since I came. "

"I sent at once to Paris, " said Alston, with an impartial air ofconveying information they were equally interested in, "for the historyof 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 tookit. He would have said she turned a shade more unhealthy, in a yellowway, but not a nerve in her seemed to blench. 

"Well, " said she, "have you come to tell me the history of the Beattienecklace?"

"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 nobusiness to give it to her at all. There were some rather shadytransactions before he could get his hands on it. And the Royal Familynever ceased trying to get it back. The Royal Personage was a young manwhen he gave it to her, but by the time the family'd begun to exertpressure he wasn't so impetuous, and he, too, wanted it back. Hismarriage gave the right romantic reason, which he used. He actuallyasked the famous singer to return it to him, and at the same time shewas approached by some sort of agent from the family who offered her afat compensation. "

"It was a matter of sentiment, " said Madame Beattie loftily. "You've noright 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 thejewels it would have been inexpedient to display. For by that time, shedidn't want to offend any royal families whatever. So she was boughtoff, and she gave up the necklace. "

"It is not true, " said she. "If it was money I wanted, I could have soldit. "

"Oh, no, I beg your pardon. There would have been difficulties in theway of selling historic stones; besides there were so many royalpersonages concerned in keeping them intact. It might have been verydifferent when the certain Royal Personage was young enough andimpetuous enough to swear he stood behind you. He'd got to the pointwhere 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 anylonger. She had a good many favours to ask of the world, and she didn'twant Europe made too hot to hold her. "

He paused to rest a moment from his thankless task, and they looked ateach other calmly, yet quite recognising they were at grips. 

"You forget, " said she, "that I have the necklace at this moment in mypossession. You have seen it and handled it. "

"No, " said Alston, "I have never seen the necklace. Nobody has seen iton this side the water. When you came here years ago and got Jeff intodifficulties you brought another necklace, a spurious one, paste, stagejewels, I daresay, and none of us were clever enough to know thedifference. You said it was the Beattie necklace, and Esther washypnotised 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 lookinto it. And as soon as he was out of prison you came here andhypnotised us all over again. But it's not the necklace. "

Madame Beattie put back her head and burst into hoarse and perfectlyspontaneous laughter. 

"And it was for you to find it out, " she said. "I didn't think you wereso clever, Alston Choate. I didn't know you were clever at all. Yourefresh me. God bless us! to think not one of them had the sense, fromfirst to last, to guess the thing was paste. "

Alston enjoyed his brief triumph, a little surprised at it himself. Hehad no idea she would back down instantly, nor indeed, though it werehammered into her, that she would own the game was up. The same recoilstruck her and she ludicrously cocked an eye. 

"I shall give you a lot of trouble yet though. The necklace may be adead issue, but I'm a living dog, Alston Choate. Don't they say a livingdog 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, invictorias, in motors, perpetually stirring two houses at least tonervous misery. There would be no running away from her. They would haveher 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, somuch daring to the square inch, into any day before. He lounged back alittle in his chair, put his hands in his pockets and tried to feelswaggering and at ease. Madame Beattie, he knew, wouldn't object toswagger. And if it would help him dramatically, so much the better. "Madame Beattie, " he repeated, "I've a proposition to make to you. Ithought of it within the last minute. "

Her eyes gleamed out at him expectantly, avariciously, with somesuspicion, too. She hoped it concerned money, but it seemed unlikely, sochill 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 tothink it over I sha'n't make it at all. What would you take to leaveAddington, lock, stock and barrel, cut stick to Europe and sign a papernever to come back? There'd be other things in the paper. I should makeit as tight as I knew how. "

Madame Beattie set her lips and looked him over, from his well-bred faceand his exceedingly correct clothes to his feet. She would never havesuspected an Addington man of such impetus, no one except perhaps Jeffin the old days. What was the utmost an Addington man would do? She hadbeen 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, soincredibly near. 

"You've got oceans of money, " said she, in a passion of eagerness, "allyou Addington bigwigs. You put it away and let it keep ticking on whileyou eat noon dinners and walk down town. What is two thousand pounds toyou? In another year you wouldn't know it. "

"I sha'n't haggle, " said Alston. "I'll tell you precisely what I'll putinto your hand--with conditions--if you agree to make this your farewellappearance. I'll give you five thousand dollars. And as a thriftyAddingtonian--you know what we are--I advise you to take it. I mightrepent. "

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 moneynow. You wouldn't ask me to wait, Alston Choate. You wouldn't play atrick on me. "

Alston drew himself up from his lounging ease, and as he lifted thetrembling old hand from his knee, gave it a friendly pressure before helet it fall. 

"I can't give it to you now, " he said. "Not this minute. Would you mindcoming to my office to-morrow, say at ten? We shall be less open tointerruption. "

"Of course I'll come, " she said, almost passionately. 

He had never seen her so shaken or indeed actually moved from hercynical calm. She was making her way out of the room without waiting forhis good-bye. At the door she turned upon him, her blurred old face asad sight below the disordered wig. Esther, coming downstairs, met herin the hall and stopped an instant to stare at her, she looked soterrible. 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 Ihave just been telling Madame Beattie. Then I must see Jeff and hissisters. " This sounded like an afterthought and yet he was consciousthat Anne was in his mind like a radiance, a glow, a warm sweet wind. "Everybody connected with Madame Beattie ought to understand clearlywhat she can do and what she can't. She seems to have such anextraordinary facility for getting people into mischief. "

He placed a chair for her and when she sank into it, her eyesinquiringly on his face, he began, still standing, to tell her brieflythe history of the necklace. Esther's face, as he went on, froze intodismay. He was telling her that the thing which alone had brought outpassionate emotion in her had never existed at all. Not until then hadhe realised how she loved the necklace, the glitter of it, the reputedvalue, the extraordinary story connected with it. Esther's life had beenbuilt 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 wascrying. 

"Don't, " said Choate helplessly. "Don't do that. The thing isn't worthit. It isn't worth anything to speak of. And it's made you a lot oftrouble, all of you, and now she's going back to Europe and she'll takeit with her. "

"Going back?" Esther echoed, through her tears. "Who says she's goingback?"

"She says so, " Alston rejoined weakly. He thought his hush money mightfairly be considered his own secret. It was like a candle burned ingratitude 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 hereand talk to mill hands and drag dirty people up those stairs. And Ishall live here forever with her and grandmother, and nobody will helpme. 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 andtremulously near. But Esther made no mistake of a too prodigal largess aman like Reardon was bewitched by, even if he ran from it. She stoodthere in sorrowful dignity and let her eyes plead for her. And Alston, though he had accomplished something for her as well as for Anne, feltonly a sense of shame and the misery of falling short. He had thought heloved her (he had got so far now as to say to himself he thought so) andhe loved her no more. He wished only to escape, and his wish took everyshred of the hero out of him. 

"We'll all help you, " he said with the cheerfulness exasperatingly readyto 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 accordedhim hers gave it what he thought an awkward, cowardly pressure and lefther. There are no graceful ways for leaving Circe's isle, Alstonthought, as he hurried away, unless you have at least worn the hog'sskin briefly and given her a showing of legitimate triumph. And thatnight, because he had a distaste for talking about it further, he wrotethe story to Jeff, still omitting mention of his candle-burninghonorarium. 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 inan ecstasy over Madame Beattie's electioneering, Reardon was the moreexplicitly settling his affairs and changing his sailing from week toweek as it intermittently seemed possible to stay. He was in anirritation of unrest when Esther did not summon him, and a panic of fearat the prospect of her doing it. He was beginning dimly to understandthat Esther, even if the bills were to be paid, proposed to do nothingherself about getting decently free. Reardon thought he could interpretthat, in a way that enhanced her divinity. She was too womanly, hedetermined. How could a creature like her give even the necessaryevidence? If any one at that time believed sincerely in Esther's clarityof soul, it was Reardon who had not thought much about souls until hemet her. Esther had been a wonderful influence in his life, transmutingeveryday motives until he actually stopped now to think a little overthe high emotions he was not by nature accustomed even to imagine. Therewas something pathetic in his desire to better himself even in spiritualways. No man in Addington had attained a higher proficiency in thepractical arts of correct and comfortable living, and it was owing tothe power of Esther's fastidious reserves that he had begun to think allwomen were not alike, after all. There must be something in class, something real and uncomprehended, or such a creature as she could notbe born with a difference. When she came nearer him, when she of her ownact surrendered and he had drawn the exquisite sum of her into hisarms, he still believed in her moral perfection to an extent that madeher act most terribly moving to him. The act grew colossal, for it meantso matchless a creature must love him unquestioningly or she could notstep outside her fine decorum. Every thought of her drew him toward her. Every manly and also every ambitious impulse of his entire life--theambition that bade him tread as near as possible to Addington's upperclass--forbade his seeking her until he had a right to. And if she wouldnot free herself, the right would never be his. 

One day, standing by his window at dusk moodily looking out while theinvisible filaments that drew him to her tightened unbearably, he sawJeff go past. At once Reardon knew Jeff was going to her, and he foundit monstrous that the husband whose existence meant everything to himshould be seeking her unhindered. He got his hat and coat and hurriedout into the street in time to see Jeff turn in at her gate. He strodealong that way, and then halted and walked back again. It seemed to himhe must know at least when Jeff came out. 

Jeff had been summoned, and Esther met him with no pretence at anartifice of coolness. She did not ask him to sit down. They stood theretogether in the library looking at each other like two people who haveurgent things to say and limited time to say them in. 

"Jeff, " she began, "you're all I've got in the world. Aunt Patrica'sgoing away. "

Jeff clutched upon his reason and hoped it would serve him whilesomething 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'slike being with a dead woman. I'm afraid of her. Jeff, if you'd onlythought of it yourself! but I have to say it. Won't you come here tolive?"

"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 wouldbe to come back to a hearth she was keeping warm?

"Esther, " he said, "only a little while ago you said you were afraid ofme. "

Esther had no answer to make. Yet she could take refuge in a perfecthumility, 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 ofthe room. Had he, in taking vows on him when he truly loved her, built aprison he must dwell in to the end of his life or hers? Did moral lawdemand it of him? did the decencies of Addington?

"I ask you to forgive me, " said Esther. "Are you going to punish me forwhat 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 itcautioned her not to own she knew. 

"I shouldn't be a burden on you, " she said. "I should be of use, socialuse, Jeff. You need all the pull you can get, and I could help youthere, tremendously. "

The same bribe Madame Beattie had held out to him, he remembered, with asorry smile. Esther, Madame Beattie had cheerfully determined, was tohelp him placate the little gods. Now Esther herself was offering herown abetment in almost the same terms. He saw no way even vaguely toresolve upon what he felt able to do, except by indirection. They mustconsider it together. 

"Esther, " he said, "sit down. Let me, too, so we can get hold ofourselves, find out what we really think. "

They sat, and she clasped her hands in a way prayerfully suggestive andlooked at him as if she hung on the known value of his words. Jeffgroped about in his mind for their common language. What had itbeen?--laughter, kisses, the feverish commendation of the pageant oflife. He sat there frowning, and when his brow cleared it was because hedecided the only way possible was to open the door of his own mind andlet her in. If she found herself lonesome, afraid even in itsfurnishings 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 Ihaven'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, allthe 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 ussomewhere. " He debated whether he should tell her he wanted to saveAddington. No, she wouldn't understand. Could he tell her that at thatminute he loved Addington better than anything but Lydia? and Lydia hemust still keep hidden in the back of his mind under the green leaves ofsecrecy. "Esther, " said he, "Esther, poor child, I don't want you to bea prisoner to me. And I don't want to be a prisoner to you. It would bea shocking wrong to you to be condemned to live with me all your lifejust because an old woman has scared you. What a penalty to pay forbeing afraid of Madame Beattie--to live with a husband you had stoppedthinking about at all. "

Esther gave a patient sigh. 

"I don't understand, " she said, "what you are talking about. And thisisn't the way, dear, for us to understand each other. If we love eachother, oughtn't we to forgive?"

"We do, " said Jeff. "I haven't a hostile thought toward you. I should bemighty sorry if you had for me. But, Esther, whatever we feel for eachother, will the thing stand the test of the plain truth? If it's goingto have any working basis, it's got to. Now, do you love me? No, youdon't. We both know we've changed beyond--" he paused for a mercifulsimile--"beyond recognition. Now because we promised to live togetheruntil death parted us, are we going to? Was that a righteous promise inview of what might happen? The thing, you see, has happened. If we hadchildren it might be righteous to hang together, for their sakes. Is itrighteous now? I don't believe it. "

Esther lifted her clasped hands and struck them down upon her knee. Therose of her cheek had paled, and all expression save a protestingincredulity 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 standit. 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 Annabelcalled his beautiful smile. "You can't possibly believe I want things tobe right for you. But it's true. I mean to make them righter than theyare, too. But I don't believe we can shackle ourselves together. I don'tbelieve 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 Jefffor the instant thought he said and turned to look at him. But Reardonwas striding on and the back of his excellent great-coat looked sohandsomely conventional that Jeff concluded he had been mistaken. Hewent on trying to sift his distastes and revulsions from what he wantedto do for Esther. Something must be done. Esther must no more be boundthan he. 

Reardon did not knock at her door. He opened it and went in and Esthereven passionately received him. They greeted each other likeacknowledged lovers, and he stood holding her to him while she sobbedbitterly 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 itagain. 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 nocompensating joys for her meagre life with grandmother upstairs and hermost uneasy one since Madame Beattie came. How could she, even ifReardon furnished money for it, be sure to free herself from Jeff intime to taste some of the pleasures she craved while she was at herprime of beauty? After all, there were other lands to wander in; itwasn't necessary to sit down here and do what Addingtonians had donesince they settled the wretched place on the date they seemed to find sosacred. 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 becajoled 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 hisconventions would fall from him like a garment he had forgotten, and heshould do some act that showed him to Addington as he was born. He hadtoo, sometimes, a nightmare, pitifully casual, yet causing him ananguish of shame: murdering his grammar or smoking an old black pipesuch as his father smoked and being caught with it, going to the club inoveralls. But now he realised what the malicious envy of fortune had instore for him. He was to run off with his neighbour's wife. For aninstant he weakly meant to recall her to herself, to remind her that shedidn't want to do it. But it seemed shockingly indecorous to assume ahigher standard than her own, and all he could do was to assure her, ashe had been assuring her while he was swept along that dark undergroundriver of disconcerted thought: "I'll take care of you. "

"What do you mean?" she returned, like a wild thing leaping at him. "Doyou mean really take care of me? over there?"

"Yes, " said Reardon, without a last clutch at his lost vision, "overthere. We'll leave here Friday, for New York. "

"I shall send my trunks in advance, " said Esther. "By express. I shallsay I am going for dressmaking and the theatre. "

Reardon settled down to bare details. It would be unwise to be seenleaving on the same train, and he would precede her to New York. Itwould be better also to stay at different hotels. Once landed theywould become--he said this in the threadbare pathetic old phrase--manand wife "in the sight of God". He was trying honestly to spare herexquisite sensibilities, and Esther understood that she was to be savedat all points while she reaped the full harvest of her desires. Reardonkissed her solemnly and went away, at the door meeting Madame Beattie, who gave him what he thought an alarming look, at the least a satiricalone. Had she listened? had she seen their parting? But if she had, shemade 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 quitesure Sophy would refuse and was immediately sorry she had given MadameBeattie even so slight a warning. What did Sophy's tempers matter now?She would be left behind with grandmother and Rhoda Knox. Whatdifference 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 MadameBeattie at all. She dared not openly show scorn of her, but she could atleast live apart from her. Yet it seemed to her now that she might, as asort of deputy hostess under grandmother, be told whether Madame Beattieactually did mean to go away. 

"Are you--" she hesitated. 

"Yes, " said Madame Beattie, "I am sailing. I leave for New York Fridaymorning. "

Esther had a rudimentary sense of humour, and it did occur to her thatit would be rather a dire joke if she and Madame Beattie, inexorablylinked by destiny, were to go on the same boat. But Madame Beattie drilyif innocently reassured her. And yet was it innocently? Esther could notbe sure. She was sailing, she explained, for Naples. She should neverthink of venturing the northern crossing at this season. 

And that afternoon while Madame Beattie took her drive, Esther had herown trunks brought to her room and she and Sophy packed. Sophy wasenchanted. Mrs. Blake was going to New York, so Mrs. Blake told her, andas soon as she got settled Sophy would be sent for. She was not to sayanything, however, for Mrs. Blake's going depended on its being carriedout quietly, for fear Madame Beattie should object. Sophy understood. She had been quiet about many things connected with the tranquillitydependent on Madame Beattie, and she even undertook to have the expresscome at a certain hour and move the trunks down carefully. Sophy heldmany reins of influence. 

When Madame Beattie came back from driving, Andrea was with her. She hadcalled at the shop and taken him away from his fruity barricades, andthey had jogged about the streets, Madame Beattie talking and Andrealistening with a profound concentration, his smile in abeyance, hisblack eyes fiery. When they stopped at the house Esther, watching fromthe window, contemptuously noted how familiar they were. Madame Beattie, she thought, was as intimate with a foreign fruit-seller as with one ofher own class. Madame Beattie seemed impressing upon him some command orat least instructions. Andrea listened, obsequiously attentive, and whenit was over he took his hat off, in a grand manner, and bending, kissedher hand. He ran up the steps and rang for her, and after she had gonein, Esther saw him, dramatic despondency in every drooping muscle, walksorrowfully 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 thebedside 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 thehabit of daily converse, while grandmother lay and pierced her withunyielding eyes. There was not emotion in the glance, no aversion orremonstrance. 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 doanything I don't want to do. I am in the last citadel of apparenthelplessness. You can't any of you drag me out of my bed. You can't evenmake me speak. " And she would not speak. Esther, creeping out on thelanding to listen, was confident grandmother never said a word. Whatspirit it was, what indomitable pluck, thought Esther, to lie there atthe mercy of Madame Beattie, and deny herself even the satisfaction of areply. All that Madame Beattie said Esther could not hear, but evidentlyshe was assuring her sister that she was an arch fool to lie there andleave Esther in supreme possession of the house. 

"Get up, " Madame Beattie said, at one point. "There's nothing the matterwith you. One day of liberty'd be better than lying here and dying byinches 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 daysshe'll be gone, too. "

So she knew it, Esther realised, with a quickened heart. She slippedback into her room and stood there silent until Madame Beattie, callingSophy to do some extra service for her, went away to her own room. Andstill grandmother did not speak. 

XXXIX

On the morning Madame Beattie went, a strange intermittent processiontrickled by the house, workmen, on their way to different activities, diverted from their usual road, and halting an instant to salute thewindows with a mournful gaze. Some of them took their hats off, and thefew who happened to catch a glimpse of Madame Beattie gave eagersalutation. At one time a group of them had collected, and these Estherlooked down on with a calm face but rage in her heart, wondering why shemust be disgraced to the last. But when Madame Beattie really went therewas no one in the street, and Esther, a cloak about her, stood by thecarriage in a scrupulous courtesy, stamping a little, ostensibly to keepher feet warm but more than half because she was in a fever ofimpatience lest the unwelcome guest should be detained. Madame Beattiewas irritatingly slow. She arranged herself in the hack as if for adrive long enough to demand every precaution. Esther knew perfectly wellshe was being exasperating to the last, and in that she was right. Butshe could hardly know Madame Beattie had not a malevolent impulse towardher: only a careless understanding of her, an amused acceptance. Whenshe had tucked herself about with the robe, undoing Denny's kind officesand doing them over with a tedious moderation, she put out her arms todraw Esther into a belated embrace. But Esther could not beareverything. She dodged it, and Madame Beattie, not at all rebuffed, gaveher 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 theencounter 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'llbe over there. " Again she laughed a little at a disconcerted stare fromEsther. "Tell him to go along, " she said. "You'd better make up yourmind to Italy. Everything seems right, there, even to NewEnglanders--pretty nearly everything. _Au revoir_. "

She drove away chuckling to herself, and Esther stood a moment staringblankly. It had actually happened, the incredible of which she haddreamed. Madame Beattie was going, and now she herself was following toosoon to get the benefit of it. 

Lydia was out that morning and Denny, who saw her first, drew up of hisown accord. It was not to be imagined by Denny that Madame Beattie andLydia should have spent long hours jogging together and not be gratefulfor 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 withme. "

Lydia stepped in at once, very glad indeed of a word with her unpopularfriend. 

"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 theonly soul in town that does, except perhaps those nice workmen I'veplayed the devil with. I only hope they'll succeed in playing the devilthemselves a little, even if I'm not here to coach them. I've explainedit all very carefully, just as I got the dirty little man to explain itto me, and I think they'll be able to manage. When it all comes out youcan tell Jeff I did it. I began it when I thought it might be of someadvantage to me, but I've told Andrea to go on with it. It'll be moreamusing, on the whole. "

"Go on with what?" inquired Lydia. 

"Never mind. But you must write me and tell me how the election went. Iwon'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 comeover here again if I were paid for it. "

At the station Lydia, a little sick and sorry, because she hated changesand also Madame Beattie kept some glamour for her, stepped out and gaveher old friend a firm hand to help her and then an arm to lean on. Madame Beattie bade Denny a carelessly affectionate farewell and lefthim her staunch ally. She knew how to bind her humbler adherents to her, and indeed with honesty, because she usually liked them better than thepeople who criticised her and combated and admired her from her ownplane. 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 talkedabout the greyness of New England and the lovely immortalities of Italy. When they saw the smoke far down the track, she stopped, still leaningon Lydia. 

"You've been a droll imp, " she said. "If I had money I'd take you withme and amuse myself seeing you in Italy. Your imp's eyes would berounder than they are now, and you'd fall in love with some handsomescamp and find him out and grow up and leave him and we'd take anapartment and sit there and laugh at everything. You can tell Jeff--"the train was really nearing now and she bent and spoke at Lydia'sear--"tell him he's going to be a free man, and if he doesn't make useof 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. "NotEsther?"

"Esther, to be sure. I gather they're off to-night. That's why I'm goingthis morning. I don't want to be concerned in the silly business, thoughwhen they're over there I shall make a point of looking them up. He'dpay me anything to get rid of me. "

The train was in, and her foot was on the step. But Lydia was holdingher 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 elseis there to go? No, I sha'n't say another word. I waited till youwouldn't have a chance to question me. Tell Jeff, but not till to-morrowmorning. 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 velvetand fur. Instead, to Lydia's confusion and wonder, ever-growing when shethought about it afterward, she caught up her hand and gave it a lightkiss. Then she stepped up into the car and was borne away. 

"I don't believe it, " said Lydia aloud, and she walked off, glancingdown once at the hand that had been kissed and feeling gravely moved bywhat 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, ina different sense from inherited power and place. She was of those whoare endowed and to whom the world must give something because they havegiven it so much. Should she obey her, and tell Jeff after the danger ofhis stopping Esther was quite past? Lydia thought she would. And sheowned to herself the full truth about it. She did not for an instantthink 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, shewas walking home fast, and when she got there she hurried into thelibrary 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 mostcorrect position for reading. He had been deep in one of his friendlylittle naps and had picked the book up when he heard her step and heldit with a convincing rigour. 

"He's gone off for a tramp, " said he, looking at her sleepily. "He'dbeen writing and didn't feel very fit. I advised him to go and make aday of it. "

Anne came in then, and Lydia stared at her, wondering if Anne couldhelp. And yet, whatever Anne said, she was determined not to tell Jeffuntil the morning. So she slowly took off her things and made brisktasks to do about the house. Only when the two o'clock train was nearlydue she seized her hat and pinned it on, slipped into her coat andwalked breathlessly to the station. She was there just before the traincame in and there also, a fine figure in his excellently fittingclothes, was Reardon. He was walking the platform, nervously Lydiathought, but he seemed not to be waiting for any one. Seeing her helooked, though she might have fancied it, momentarily disconcerted, buttook off his hat to her and turned immediately to resume his march. Suppose Esther came, Lydia wondered. What should she do? Should she stopher, block her way, bid her remember Jeff? Or should she watch her tothe last flutter of her hatefully pretty clothes as she entered the carwith Reardon and, in the noise of the departing train, give one loudhurrah because Jeff was going to be free? But the train came, andReardon, without a glance behind, though in a curious haste as if hewanted 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 thoughAnne wanted to minister to her she was not allowed, and Lydia sat thereand 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 thebenevolent act, Lydia called it. "There's a moon, and he'll probably getsomething to eat somewhere or even come back by train. It isn't hisnight at the school. "

At six o'clock Lydia began to realise that if Esther were going that dayshe would take the next train. It would not be at all likely that shetook 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 calledto 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 sheshould die--Lydia had frequent crises of dying when the consummations oflife eluded her--if she did not know whether Esther was going. Yet shewould not tell Jeff until it was too late, even if he were there on thespot and if he blamed her forever for not telling him. This time shestayed in a sheltering corner of the station, and not many minutesbefore the train a dark figure passed her, Esther, veiled, carrying herhand-bag, and walking fast. Lydia could have touched her arm, butEsther, 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 hadher ticket or she was depending on the last minute for getting it. Lydia, with a leap of conjecture concluded, and rightly, that she hadsent Sophy for it in advance. The local train came in, bringing theworkmen from the bridge, still being repaired up the track, and Lydiashrank back a little as they passed her. And among them, finishing atalk he had taken up on the train, was, incredibly, Jeff. Lydia did notparley with her dubieties. She slipped after them in the shadow, came upto him and touched him on the arm. 

"Jeff!" she said. 

He turned, dropped away from the men and stood there an instant lookingat her. Lydia's heart was racing. She had never felt such excitement inher 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 clickingon 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, mentionedEsther's name. 

"Madame Beattie told me. Look over by that truck. Don't let her seeyou. "

Jeff turned slightly and saw the figure by the truck. 

"She's going to take this train, " said Lydia. "She's going to Reardon. OJeff, it's wicked. "

Lydia had never thought much about things that were wicked. Either theywere brave things to do and you did them if you wanted to, or they wereunderhand, hideous things and then you didn't want to do them. Butsuddenly Esther seemed to her something floating, tossed and driven tobe 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 hadexpected it to be Esther he could not have said, but even as it shrankfrom him he knew. 

"Come, " said he. "Come home with me. "

Esther stood perfectly silent like a shrinking wild thing endowed with aprotective catalepsy. 

"Esther, " said he, "I know where you're going. You mustn't go. Yousha'n't. Come home with me. "

And as she did not move or answer he put his arm through hers and guidedher away. Just beyond the corner of the station in a back eddy ofsolitude, she flung him off and darted three or four steps obliquelybefore he caught her up and held her. Lydia, standing in the shadow, herheart beating hard, heard his unmoved voice. 

"Esther, you're not afraid of me? Come home with me. I won't touch youif you'll promise to come. I can't let you go. I can't. It would be theworst thing that ever happened to you. "

"How do you know, " she called, in a high hysterical voice, "where I'mgoing?"

"You were going with somebody you mustn't go with, " said Jeff. "We won'ttalk about him. If he were here I shouldn't touch him. He's only afool. 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 anythingelse tells lies. "

"The train is coming, " said Jeff. "Stand here, if you won't walk awaywith 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, Lydiasaw, he was compelling, but if he could have told the distractedcreature he had something to offer her beyond the bare protection of anhonourable intent, then she might have seen another gate open besidesthe one that led nowhere. Almost, at that moment, Lydia would have hadhim sorry enough to put his arms about her and offer the semblance oflove that is divinest sympathy. The train stopped for its appointedminutes 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 bedecent, too. You sha'n't feel you've been jailed. Only you can't walkoff and be a prisoner to--him. Things sha'n't be hard for you. Theyshall be easier. "

Lydia, behind, could believe he was going on in this broken flow ofwords 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'llstand 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 anythingwould kill her, even seeing Jeff walk away from her with this littlewisp of wrong desires to hold and cherish. 

Jeff took Esther up the winding path, opened the door and led her intothe library where his father sat yawning. Lydia slipped round the backway to the kitchen and took off her hat and coat. 

"Cold!" she said to Mary Nellen, to explain her coming, and warmed herhands a moment before she went into the front hall and put her thingsaway. 

"Father, " said Jeff, with a loud cheerfulness that sounded fatuous inhis own ears, "here's Esther. She's come to stay. "

The colonel got on his feet and advanced with his genial courtesy andoutstretched hand. But Esther stood like a stone and did not touch thehand. Anne came in, at that moment, Lydia following. Anne had caughtJeff's introduction and looked frankly disconcerted. But Lydia marchedstraight 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 doeverything we can to make it nice for you. "

Jeff had been fumbling at the back of Esther's veil and Anne now, seeingsome strange significance in the moment, put her quick fingers to work. The veil came off, and Esther stood there, white, stark, more tragicthan she had ever looked in all the troubles of her life. The colonelgave a little exclamation of sorrow over her and drew up the best chairto the fire, and Anne pushed back the lamp on the table so that itslight should not fall directly on her face. Then there were commonplacequestions and answers. Where had Jeff been? How many miles did he thinkhe had walked? And in the midst of the talk, while Lydia was upstairspatting pillows and lighting the fire in the spare-chamber, Esthersuddenly began to cry in a low, dispirited way, no passion in it butonly discouragement and physical overthrow. These were real enough tearsand they hurt Jeff to the last point of nervous irritation. 

"Don't, " he said, and then stopped while Anne knelt beside her and, in arhythmic way, began to rub one of her hands, and the colonel stared intothe fire. 

"Perhaps if you went upstairs!" Anne said to her gently. "I could reallyrub you if you were in bed and Lydia'll bring up something nice andhot. "

"No, no, " moaned Esther. "You're keeping me a prisoner. You must let mego. " Then, as Jeff, walking back and forth, came within range of herglance, 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'resafe. Stay to-night, Esther, and to-morrow, when you're rested, we'lltalk it over. "

"To-morrow, " she muttered, "it will be too late. "

"That's it, " said Jeff, understanding that it would be too late for herto 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 acruel glance, full of a definite repudiation. 

"No, no, " she said again, in a voice where fear was intentionallydominant. 

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, poorchild! Run away with Anne. "

So Esther rose unwillingly, and Anne took her up to the spacious chamberwhere firelight was dancing on the wall and Lydia had completed allsorts of hospitable offices. Lydia was there still, shrinking shyly intothe background, as having no means of communication with an Esther towhom she had been hostile. But Esther turned them both out firmly, ifwith courtesy. 

"Please go, " she said to Anne. "Please let me be. "

This seemed to Anne quite natural. She knew she herself, if she weretroubled, 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. Goodnight. "

She saw them to the door with determination even, and they wentdownstairs and sat in the dining-room in an excited silence, because itseemed 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, thecolonel pretending to read and Jeff with his elbows on the table, hishead resting on his hands. How was he to finish what he had begun? Forshe hated him, he believed, with a childish hatred of the discomfort hehad brought her. If there were some hot betrayal of the blood that haddriven her to Reardon he almost thought, despite Addington and itshonesties and honours, he would not lift his hand to keep her. Addingtonwas very strong in him that night, the old decent loyalties to theedifice men and women have built up to protect themselves from the beastin 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 manat last! but this was no more love than the puerile effort of a meagrediscontent to make itself more safe, more closely cherished, moreluxuriously served. 

"Father, " said he at last, breaking the silence where the clock tickedand the fire stirred. 

"Yes, " said the colonel. He did not put down his book or move his fingeron it. He meant, to the last line of precaution, to invite Jeff'sconfidence. 

"Whatever she does, " said Jeff, "I'm to blame for it. "

"Don't blame yourself any more, " the colonel said. "We won't blameanybody. "

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 wasnever finished. But what he did not understand was the old problem: howaccountability could be exacted from the irresponsible, how an asceticloyalty to law could be demanded of a woman who was nothing but a sweetbouquet of primitive impulses, flowered out of youth and naturalappetites. He saw what she was giving up with Reardon: luxury, a kindlyand absolutely honest devotion. If she went to him it would be to whatshe called happiness. If he kept her out of the radius of disapproval, she might never feel a shadow of regret. But Reardon would feel theshadow. Jeff knew him well enough to believe that. It would be the oldquestion of revolt against the edifice men have built. You thought youcould storm it, and it would capitulate; but when the winter rigourscame, when passion died and self got shrunken to a meagre thing, youwould 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 anarrival, an event. At eleven Anne came in. 

"I've been up and listened, " she said. "She's perfectly quiet. She mustbe asleep. "

Jeff rose. 

"Come, father, " he said. "You'll be drowsy as an owl to-morrow. We'dbetter get up early, all of us. "

"Yes, " said Anne. She knew what he meant. They had, somehow, adistasteful, puzzling piece of work cut out for them. They must be up tocope with this strange Esther. 

Lydia fell asleep almost, as the cosy saying goes, as soon as her headtouched the pillow. She was dead tired. But in what seemed to her themiddle 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. ButEsther's door was shut, the front door, too, for she crept into the halland peered over the railing. She went to the hall window and looked outon the dark shrubbery above the snow, and the night was still and thescene so kind it calmed her. But she could not see, beyond theshrubbery, the black figure running softly down the walk. Lydia wentback to bed, and when the "midnight" hooted she drew the clothes closerabout her ears and thought how glad she was to be so comfortable. It wasnot until the next morning that she knew the "midnight" had carriedEsther with it. 

XL

It was strangely neutral, the hue of the moment when they discovered shehad gone. They had not called her in the morning, but Anne had listenedmany 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 fortoasting. Jeff had stayed in the house, walking uneasily about, and at alittle after ten he came out of his chair as if he suddenly recognisedthe 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 wasthe bed untouched, on the hearth the cold ashes of last night's fire. She stood stupidly looking until Jeff, listening at the foot of thestairs, called to her and then himself ran up. He read the chill orderof 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 Iam! I ought to have watched her. But Esther wasn't daring. She never didanything by herself. I couldn't get to New York now--" He paused tocalculate. 

He ran downstairs, and without speaking to his father, on an irrationalimpulse, over to Madam Bell's. There he came unprepared upon thestrangest sight he had ever seen in Addington. Sophy, her cynical, pertface actually tied up into alarm, red, creased and angry, was standingin the library, and Madam Bell, in a wadded wrapper and her nightcap, was counting out money into her trembling hand. To Sophy, it was asterrifying as receiving money from the dead. She had always looked uponMadam Bell as virtually dead, and here she was ordering her to quit thehouse and giving her a month's wages, with all the practicality of ashrewd accountant. Madam Bell was an amazing person to look at in herwadded gown and felt slippers, with the light of life once moreflickering over her parchment face. 

"Rhoda Knox is gone, " she announced to Jeff, the moment he walked in. "Isent 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 wasas 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 thatwas 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 ofthese creatures that have been ruling here--except the cook. Tell Amabelto 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 inquirefurther. All that day he stayed at home, foolishly, he knew, lest somemessage come for him, not speaking of his anxiety even to Lydia, andvery much let alone. That Lydia must have given his father somepalliating 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 gripof contest. He had meant to do some persuasive speaking for Alston. Hethought he could rake in all Madame Beattie's contingent, now that shewas away, still leaving them so friendly. But he was dull andabsent-minded. Esther's going had been a defeat another braver, clevererman, he believed, need not have suffered. At Lydia he had hardly lookedsince 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. Hewas raging over what he might have done. Nothing was going to make Lydiarage, she determined. She had settled down into the even swing of herone task: to help him out, to watch him, above all, whatever theemergency, to be ready. 

Once, when Jeff was trying to drag his flagging energies into electionwork again, he met Andrea, and stopped to say he would be down at MillEnd that night. But Andrea seemed, while keeping his old fealty, betokened by shining eyes and the most open smiles, to care very littleabout him in a political capacity. He even soothingly suggested that heshould 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 hadexplained 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 tovote for the right man. That's what I'm coming down for. "

Andrea backed away, deferentially implying that Jeff would be mostwelcome always, but that it was a pity he should be put to so muchpains. And he did go, and found only a few scattering listeners. Theothers, he learned afterward, were peaceably at a singing club of theirown. They had not, Jeff thought, with mortification, considered him ofenough importance to listen to. 

Weedon Moore, in these last days, seemed to be scoring; at leastcircumstance gave him his own head and he was much in evidence. He spokea great deal, flamboyantly, on the wrongs suffered by labour, and hisown consecration to the holy joy of righting them. He spoke in Englishwholly, because Andrea, with picturesque misery, had regretted his owninability to interpret. Andrea's throat hurt him now, he said. He hadbeen forbidden to interpret any more. Weedie mourned the defection ofAndrea. It had, he felt, made a difference, not only in the size but theresponsiveness of his audiences. Sometimes he even felt they came to beamused, or to lull his possible suspicion of having lost their oldallegiance. But they came. 

That year every man capable of moving on two legs or of being supportedinto a carriage, turned out to vote. Something had been done byinfection. Jeff had done it through his fervour, and Madame Beattie athousand times more by pure dramatic eccentricity. People were at leastamusedly anxious to see how it was going, and old Addingtonians felt ita cheerful duty to stand by Alston Choate. The Mill Enders voted late, all of them, so late that Weedon Moore, who kept track of theiractivities, wondered if they meant to vote at all. But they did vote, they also to the last man, and a rumour crept about that someirregularity was connected with the ballot. But whatever they did, itwas by concerted action, after a definite design. Weedon Moore, anagitated figure, meeting Jeff, was so worried and excited by it that hehad 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 giveyou my word it's illegal. "

"What is it?" Jeff inquired, looking down on Weedie with something ofthe feeling once popularly supposed to be the desert of toads beforethat warty personality had been advertised as beneficent to gardens. 

"I don't know what it is, " said Moore, almost weeping. "But it's somedamned 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. "Sixmonths ago every man Jack of 'em was promised to me. Somebody's tamperedwith 'em. I don't know whether it's you or Madame Beattie. She led meon, a couple of weeks ago, into telling her what I knew about trickeryat the polls--"

"All you knew?" Jeff could not resist saying. "All you know abouttrickery, Weedie?"

"As a lawyer, " said Weedie, "I told her about writing in names. I toldher about stickers--"

"What did she want to know for?" Jeff asked. He, too, was roused tosudden startled interest. 

"You know as much as I do. She was interested in my election, said shewas speaking for me, wanted to know how we managed to crowd in an extraname 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 theinheritance of her unleashed energy, in some form, behind her. 

He did not go home that late afternoon and in the early evening strolledabout the streets, once meeting Choate and passing on Weedie's agonisedforecast. Alston was mildly interested. He thought she couldn't havedone 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 hisbooks. His mother could realise then that he had done his best, andleave him to a serene progress toward middle age. But when he got as faras that he remembered that his defeat would magnify Weedon Moore andmiserably concluded he ought rather to suffer the martyrdom of office. Would Anne like him if he were defeated? He, too, was wandering aboutthe town, and the bravado of his suit to her came back to him. It waseasy to seek her out, it seemed so natural to be with her, so strange tolive without her. Laughing a little, though nervously, at himself, hewalked up the winding pathway to her house and asked for her. No, hewould 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 beensitting by the hearth reading to the colonel. Alston took her hands anddrew her out to him. 

"It's not very cold, " he said. "One minute, Anne. Won't you love me if Iam not a mayor?"

Anne didn't answer. She stood there, her hands in his, and Alstonthought 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 hecould think of was the old foolishness, "Darling Anne. "

When he kissed her, immediately upon this, it was in quite a commonplaceway, as if they were parting for an hour or so and had the habit of easykissing. 

"Why don't you speak, " said Alston, in a rage of delight in her, "youlittle dumb person, you?"

Anne did better. She got her hands out of his and lifted them to drawhis face again to hers. 

"How silly we are, " said Anne. "And the door is swinging open, and it'lllet all the cold in on Farvie's feet. "

Alston said a few more things of his own, wild things he was surprisedat and forgot immediately and that she was always to remember, and theyreally parted now with the ceremonial of easy kissing. But both of themhad forgotten about mayors. 

Jeff, with the returns to take her, that night before going home ran into Amabel. He believed he ought to be the first to tell her. She wouldbe disappointed, for after all Weedon Moore was her candidate. As he gotto the top of the steps Moore came scuttling out at the front door andJeff stood aside to let him pass. He walked in, calling to her as hewent. She did not answer, but he found her in the library, standing, afigure of quivering dignity, of majesty hurt and humbled. When she sawhim Amabel's composure broke, and she gave a sob or two, and then twicesaid 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 meto marry him. "

"Wait a minute, " said Jeff. "I've forgotten something. "

He wheeled away from her and ran out and down the path after WeedieMoore. 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, alittle breathless, with eyes shining somewhat and his nostrils big, itmight be thought, from haste. She had composed herself, and he knew herconfidence was neither to be repeated nor enlarged upon. There she satawaiting him, dignity embodied, a little more tense than usual and herhead held high. All her ancestors might have been assembled about her, invisible but exacting, and she accounting to them for the indignitythat had befallen her, and assuring them it was to her, as it would havebeen to them, incredible. She was even a little stiff with Jeff atfirst, because she had told him what she would naturally have hidden, like a disgraceful secret. Jeff understood her perfectly. She had metWeedon Moore on philanthropic grounds, an equal so long as they wereboth avowed philanthropists. But when the little man aspired unduly andventured to pull at the hem of her maiden gown, Christian tolerance wentby the board and she was Addington and he was Weedon Moore. She wouldnever be able to summon Christian virtues to the point of a community ofinterests with him again. Jeff understood Moore, too, Moore who wasprobably on his way home at the moment getting himself together after adisconcerting bodily shock such as he had not encountered since theirold school days when he had done "everything--and told of it ". He hadcounted on her sympathy over his defeat, and chosen that moment to makehis 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 youthe 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'sher 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, " saidAmabel. 

She was aware Jeff was smoothing her down, ruffled feather afterfeather, and she was pathetically grateful. If she hadn't kept a stronggrip 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 shehates to see old traditions go to the dogs. I've an idea she'll standbehind Alston and really run the show. Put on your bonnet and come withme. 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 herto solitary thoughts of the indignity Moore had offered her, and alsoshe hated to be left. She put on her thick cloak and her bonnet--therewere no assumptions with Miss Amabel that she wasn't over sixty--andthey went forth. But Mrs. Choate was not at home, nor was Mary. The maidthought they had gone down town for the return. Jeff told her Mr. Choatewas to be mayor--no one in Addington seemed to pay much attention to therest of the ticket that year--and she returned quite prosaically, "Godsave us!"

"Save us from Alston?" asked Jeff, as they went away, and Miss Amabelforgot 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 ifthey were commiserating him although it was his candidate that won. Andrea, indeed, in the moment of their meeting and parting almost weptover 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, inher wistful way, at finding social Addington and working Addingtonshoulder to shoulder in their extraordinary interest in the electionthough never in the common roads of life. 

"But why the deuce, " said Jeff, "Andrea and his gang look so mournful Ican't see. "

"Why, " said Lydia, "don't you know? They voted for you, and their voteswere thrown out. "

"For me?"

"Yes, Madame Beattie told them to. She'd planned it before she wentaway, but somehow it fell through. They were to put stickers on theballot, but at the last the stickers scared them, and they just wrote inyour name. "

"Lydia, " said Jeff, "you're making this up. "

"Oh, no, I'm not, " said Lydia. "Mr. Choate told me. I knew it was goingto 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 towrite 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. Shethought it very benevolent of Madame Beattie to have prepared such adramatic surprise, and that it was definite ill-fortune for Jeff to havemissed the full effect of it. But the earth to Lydia was a flare ofdazzling 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 Jeffsaid nothing. Lydia was not sure whether he had even really heard. ThenAmabel said if there were going to be speeches she hardly thought shecared 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 toldhim 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, turnedupon 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 anyromancing about that old enchantress. If you know so much, tell me onething 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'lltell you how they treated me. As savages treat the first white manthey'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 byWeedon 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 themtheir decent wages, and had the nice little houses built down at MillEnd. And there was a conspiracy against you, and she heard of it andcame over to tell them how it was. But you were in prison because youstood 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. Sometimesshe'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 thinkwe're crazy. "

They walked down the path and out between the stone pillars where he hadmet Esther. Jeff remembered it, and out of his wish to let Lydia intohis 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 cupdashed from her lips. Jeff didn't wait for her to answer. 

"From the boat, " he said. "It was very short. She was with him. Weweren'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 herunthinking innocence. It was not the outcome of ignorance that crampsand 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 thenarrow 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--andboth of us work on plays--and sometime--"

"Yes, " said Jeff, "sometime--"

One tremendous desire, of all the desires tumultuous in him, wasstrongest. If Lydia was to be his--though already she seemed supremelyhis in all the shy fealties of the moment--not a petal of the flower oflove should be lost to her. She should find them all dewy and unwitheredin her bridal crown. There should not be a kiss, a hot protestation, thetawdry path of love half tasted yet long deferred. Lydia should, for thepresent, stay a child. His one dear thought, the thought that made himfeel 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 whathe had imperfectly written, that he meant to be eternally free throughfulfilling 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 upto it and say we'll wait. "

"I can stand up to it, " said Lydia. "I can stand up to anything--foryou. "

"I don't know, " he said, "just how we're coming out. I mean, I don'tknow whether I'm coming out something you'll like or not like. How can aman be sure what's in him? Shall I wake up some time and know, becauseI've been a thief, I ought never to think of anything now butmoney--paying back, cent for cent, or cents for dollars, what I lost? Idon't know. Or shall I think I'm right in not doing anything spectacularand plodding along here and working for the town? I don't know that. Onething I know--you. If I said I loved you it wouldn't be a millionth partof what I do. I'm founded on you. I'm rooted in you. There! that'senough. 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 wasa Lydia he meant never to call out from her maiden veiling afterto-night until the day when he could summon her for open vows andunstinted cherishing. He wanted to learn her face by heart. How was herbrave soul answering him? The child face, sweet in every tint and lineof it, turned to him in an unhesitating response. It was the garden oflove, and, too, a pure unhindered happiness. 

"I'm going in, " said Lydia, "to get something ready for them toeat--Farvie and Anne. For us, too. "

She took a little run away from him, and he watched her light figureuntil the shrubbery hid her. At the door, it must have been, she gave aclear call. Jeff answered the call, and then went on to find his fatherand Anne. He knew he should not see just the Lydia that had run awayfrom him until the day she came back again, into his arms. 

THE END

 * * * * *

Printed in the United States of America. 

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+--------------------------------------------------------------+| || Transcriber's note || || The following changes have been made in the text. || || 'cermony' changed to 'ceremony' || 'paraphase' changed to 'paraphrase' || 'hestitate' changed to 'hesitate' || 'fleering' changed to 'fleeting' || || All other inconsistencies are as in the original. || The author's spelling has been maintained. || |+--------------------------------------------------------------+