The Prisoner Part 11

"Don't cry for her. She isn't worth it. She's a hateful woman."

VII

Madame Beattie was near, and had that morning telegraphed Esther. The message was explicit, and, in the point of affection, diffuse.

Old-fashioned, too: she longed to hold her niece in her arms. A more terrified young woman could not easily have been come on that day than Esther Blake, as she opened the envelope, afraid of detectives, of reporters, of anything connected with a husband lately returned from jail. But this was worse than she could have guessed. In face of an ordinary incursion she might shut herself up in her room and send Sophy to tell smooth fictions at the door. Reporters could hardly get at her, and her husband himself, if he should try, could presumably be routed.

Aunt Patricia Beattie was another matter. Esther was so panicky that she ran upstairs with the telegram and tapped at grandmother's door. Rhoda Knox came in answer. She was a large woman of a fine presence, red cheekbones with high lights, and smooth black hair brushed glossy and carefully coiled. She was grandmother's attendant, helplessly hated by grandmother but professionally unmoved by it, a general who carried on intricate calculations to avoid what she called "steps." In the matter of steps, she laid bonds on high and low. A deed that would have taken her five minutes to do she pa.s.sed on to the next available creature, even if it required twenty minutes' planning to hocus him into accepting it. She had the intent look of the schemer: yet she was one who meant well and simply preferred by nature to be stationary. Grandmother feared her besides hating her, though loving the order she brought to pa.s.s.

Esther slipped by her, and went to the bed where grandmother was lying propped on pillows, an exceedingly small old woman who was even to life-long friends an enigma presumably without an answer. She had the remote air of hating her state of age, which did not seem a natural necessity but a unique calamity, a trap sprung on her and, after the nature of traps, most unexpectedly. When she was young she had believed the old walked into the trap deliberately because it was provided on a path they were tired of. But she wasn't tired, and yet the trap had clutched her. She had a small face beautifully wrought upon by lines, as if she had given a cunning artificer the preparation of a mask she was paying dearly for and yet didn't prize at all. An old-fashioned nightcap with a frill covered her head, and she had tied herself so tightly into it that he must be a bold adventurer who would get at the thoughts inside. Her little hands were shaded by fine frills. She looked, on the whole, like a disenchanted lingerer in the living world, a useless creature for whom fostering had done so much that you might ask: "What is this ill.u.s.tration of a clean old woman? What is it for? What does it teach?"

Esther, with her telegram, stood beside the bed.

"Grandmother," said she, in the perfect tone she used toward her, clear and not too loud, "Aunt Patricia Beattie is coming."

Grandmother lifted large black eyes dulled by the broken surface of age, to Esther's face. There was no envy in the gaze but wonder chiefly.

"Is that youth?" the eyes inquired. "Useless, not especially admirable--but curious."

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

"Aunt Patricia is coming," she repeated. "When I heard from her last she was in Poland."

"Her name is Martha," said grandmother. "Don't let her come in here."

She had a surprising voice, of a barbaric quality, the ring of metal.

Hearing it you were mentally translated for an instant, and thought of far-off, palm-girt islands and savages beating strange instruments and chanting to them uncouth syllables. "Rhoda Knox, don't let her get up here."

"How can I keep her out?" asked Esther. "You'll have to see her. I can't live down there alone with her. I couldn't make her happy."

A satirical light shivered across grandmother's eyes.

"Where is your husband?" she inquired. "Here?"

"Here?" repeated Esther. "In this house?"

"Yes."

"He isn't coming here. It would be very painful for him."

The time had been when grandmother, newer to life, would have asked, "Why?" But she knew Esther minutely now; all her turns of speech and habits of thought were as a tale long told. Once it had been a mildly fascinating game to see through what Esther said to what she really meant. It was easy, once you had the clue, too easy, all certainties, with none of the hazards of a game. Esther, she knew, lived with a lovely ideal of herself. The imaginary Esther was all sympathy; she was even self-sacrificing. No shining quality lay in the shop window of the world's praise but the real Esther s.n.a.t.c.hed it and adorned herself with it. The Esther that was talked in the language of the Esther that ought to be. If she didn't want to see you, she told you it would be inconvenient for you to come. If she wanted to tell you somebody had praised the rose of her cheek, she told you she was so touched by everybody's goodness in loving to give pleasure; then she proved her point by naive repet.i.tion of the pretty speech. Sometimes she even, in the humility of the other Esther, deprecated the flattery as insincere; but not before she had told you what it was.

"I haven't seen her since--I haven't seen her for years," she said. "She wasn't happy with me then. She'll be much less likely to be now."

"Older," said grandmother. "More difficult. Keep her out of here."

It seemed to Esther there was no sympathy for her in the world, even if she got drum and fife and went out to beat it up. One empty victory she had achieved: grandmother had at least spoken to her. Sometimes she turned her face to the wall and lay there, not even a ruffle quivering.

Esther moved away, but Rhoda Knox was beforehand with her. Rhoda held a letter.

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

Esther accepted the letter helplessly. She knew how Rhoda sat planning to get her errands done. Yet there was never any reason why you should not do them. She ran downstairs carrying the letter, hating it because it had got itself carried against her will, and went at once to the telephone. And there her voice had more than its natural appeal, because she was so baffled and angry and pitied herself so much.

"Could you come in? I'm bothered. Yes," in answer to his question, "in trouble, I'm afraid."

Alston Choate came at once; her voice must have told him moving things, for he was full of warm concern. Esther met him with a dash of agitation admirably controlled. She was not the woman to alarm a man at the start.

Let him get into a run, let him forget the spectators by the way, and even the terrifying goal where he might be crowned victor even before he chose. Only whip up his blood until the guidance of them both was hers, not his. So he felt at once her need of him and at the same time her distance from him. It was a wonderfully vivifying call: nothing to fear from her, but exhilarating feats to be undertaken for her sake.

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

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

"What's gone wrong?" he asked.

"Aunt Patricia is coming."

Choate had quite forgotten Aunt Patricia. She had been too far in the depths of Poland for Esther to summon up her shade. Possibly it was a dangerous shade to summon, lest the substance follow. But now she sketched Aunt Patricia with hesitating candour, but so that he lost none of her undesirability, and he listened with a painstaking courtesy.

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

"She is so--different," faltered Esther. She looked at him with humid eyes. It was apparent that Aunt Patricia was different in a way not to be commended.

Now Choate thought he saw how it was.

"You mean she's been banging about Europe," he said, "living in _pensions_, trailing round with second-rate professionals. I get that idea, at least. Am I right?"

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

"But she's not young, you know," said Choate, in an indulgent kindliness Esther was quite sure he kept for her alone. "She won't be very rackety.

People don't want the same things after they're sixty."

"She smokes," said Esther, in a burst of confidence. "She did years ago when nice women weren't doing it."

He smiled at this, but tenderly. He didn't leave Addington very often, but he did know what a blaze the vestals of the time keep up.

"No matter," said he, "so long as you don't."

"She drinks brandy," said Esther, "and tells things. I can't repeat what she tells. She's different from anybody I ever met--and I don't see how I can make her happy."

By this time Choate saw there was nothing he could do about Aunt Patricia, and dismissed her from his orderly mind. She was not absolutely pertinent to Esther's happiness. But he looked grave. There was somebody, he knew, who was pertinent.

"I haven't succeeded in seeing Jeff yet," he began, with a slight hesitation. It seemed to him it might be easier for her to hear that name than the formal words, "your husband". She winced. Choate saw it and pitied her, as she knew he would. "Is he coming--here?"

She looked at him with large, imploring eyes.

"Must I?" he heard her whispering, it seemed really to herself.