The Prisoner Part 36

"I can't speak to my aunt about it," said Esther. "I can't trust myself.

I mustn't wound her as I should be forced to do. So I have sent for you.

Mr. Moore, has she given you other material?"

"Not a word," said Weedon earnestly. "If you could prevail upon her--"

There he stopped, remembering Esther was on the other side.

"I shall have to be very frank with you," said Esther. "But you will remember, won't you, that it is in confidence?"

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

"My aunt," said Esther delicately, with an air of regret and several other picturesque emotions mingled carefully, "my aunt has one delusion.

It is connected with this necklace, which she certainly did possess at one time. She imagines things about it, queer things, where it went and where it is now. But you mustn't let her tell you about it, and if she insists you mustn't allow it to get into print. It would be taking advantage, Mr. Moore. Truly it would." And as a magnificent concession she drew forward a chair, and Weedon, without waiting to see her placed, sank into it and put his hands on his knees. "You must promise me,"

Esther half implored, half insisted. "It isn't I alone. It's everybody that knows her. We can't, in justice to her, let such a thing get into print."

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

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

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

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

"I have met with a great deal of misrepresentation," he replied solemnly. "Justice is no more alive to-day than liberty." Then he remembered this was a sentence he intended to use in his speech to-night on the old circus-ground, and added, as more apposite, "I'd give anything to serve you, Mrs. Blake, I a.s.sure you I would. But I owe a certain allegiance--a certain allegiance--I do, really."

With that he made his exit, backing out and bowing ridiculously over his hat. And Esther had hardly time to weigh her defeat, for callers came.

They began early and continued through the afternoon, and they all asked for Madame Beattie. It was a hot day and Madame Beattie, without her toupee and with iced _eau sucree_ beside her, was absorbedly reading. She looked up briefly, when Sophy conveyed to her the summons to meet lingering ladies below, and only bade her: "Excuse me to them.

Say I'm very much engaged."

Then she went on reading. Esther, when the message was suavely but rather maliciously delivered by Sophy, who had a proper animosity for her social betters, hardly knew whether it was easier to meet the invaders alone or run the risk of further disclosure if Madame Beattie appeared. For though no word was spoken of diamonds or interviews or newspapers, she could follow, with a hot sensitiveness, the curiosity flaring all over the room, like a sky licked by harmless lightnings.

When a lady equipped in all the panoply of feminine convention asked for grandmother's health, she knew the thought underneath, decently suppressed, was an interest, no less eager for being unspoken, in grandmother's att.i.tude toward the interview. Sometimes she wanted to answer the silent question with a brutal candour, to say: "No, grandmother doesn't care. She was perfectly horrible about it. She only laughed." And when the stream of callers had slackened somewhat she telephoned Alston Choate, and asked if he would come to see her that evening at nine. She couldn't appoint an earlier hour because she wasn't free. And immediately after that, Reardon telephoned her and asked if he might come, rather late, he hesitated, to be sure of finding her alone.

And when she had to put him off to the next night, he spoke of the interview as "unpardonable ". He was coming, no doubt, to bring his condolence.

XX

Jeffrey himself had not seen the interview. He had only a mild interest in Addington newspapers, and Anne had carefully secreted the family copy lest the colonel should come on it. But on the afternoon when Esther was receiving subtly sympathetic townswomen, Jeffrey, between the rows of springing corn, heard steps and looked up from his hoeing. It was Lydia, the _Argosy_ in hand. She was flushed not only with triumph because something had begun at last, but before this difficulty of entering on the tale with Jeff. Pretty child! his heart quickened at sight of her in her blue dress, sweet arms and neck bare because Lydia so loved freedom.

But, in that his heart did respond to her, he spoke the more brusquely, showing he had no right to find her fair.

"What is it?"

Lydia, in a hurry, the only way she knew of doing it, extended the paper, previously folded to expose the headline of Madame Beattie's name. Jeff, his hoe at rest in one hand, took the paper and looked at it frowningly, incredulously. Then he read. A word or two escaped him near the end. Lydia did not quite hear what the word was, but she thought he was appropriately swearing. Her eyes glistened. She had begun to agitate. Jeff had finished and crushed the paper violently together, with no regard to folds.

"Oh, don't," said Lydia. "You can't get any more. They couldn't print them fast enough."

Jeff pa.s.sed it to her with a curt gesture of relinquishing any last interest in it.

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

Lydia was at once relieved. She had been afraid he wasn't going to discuss it at all.

"You don't blame her, do you?" she prompted.

"Madame Beattie?" He was thinking hard and scowling. "No."

"Anne blames her. She says no lady would have done it."

"Oh, you can't call names. That's Madame Beattie," said Jeff absently.

"She's neither principles nor morals nor the kind of shame other women feel. You can't judge Madame Beattie."

"So I say," returned Lydia, inwardly delighted and resolving to lose no time in telling Anne. "I like her. She's nice. She's clever. She knows how to manage people. O Jeff, I wish you'd talk with her."

"About this?" He was still speaking absently. "It wouldn't do any good.

If it amuses her or satisfies her devilish feeling toward Esther to go on talking and that slob will get it into print--and he will--you can't stop her."

"What do you mean by her feeling toward Esther?" Lydia's heart beat so that she drew a long breath to get it into swing again.

"We can't go into that," said Jeff. "It runs back a long way. Only everything she can do to worry Esther or frighten her--why, she'd do it, that's all. That's Madame Beattie."

Lydia knew this was the path that led to the necklace. Why couldn't she tell him she knew the story and enlist him on Madame Beattie's side and hers, the side that was fighting for him and nothing else? But she did not dare. All she could do was to say, her hands cold against each other and her voice choked:

"O Jeff, I wish you'd give this up."

"What?"

He was recalled now from memories the printed paper had wakened in him, and looking at her kindly. At least Lydia was sure he was, because his voice sounded so dear. She could not know his eyes were full of an adoring gentleness over her who seemed to him half child, half maiden, and tumultuously compa.s.sionate. She made a little timid gesture of the hand over the small area about them.

"This," she said. "You mustn't stay here and hoe corn. You must get into business and show people--"

Her voice choked. It refused absurdly to go on.

"Why, Lydia," said he, "I thought you knew. This is the only way for a man to keep alive. When I've got a hoe in my hand--" He could not quite explain it. He had always had a flow of words on paper, but since he had believed his life was finished his tongue had been more and more lethargic. It would not obey his brain because, after all, what could the brain report of his distrustful heart? Lydia had a moment of bitter mortification because she had not seemed to understand. Anne understood, she knew, and had tried, with infinite patience, to help on this queer experiment, both for Jeff's sake and Farvie's. Tears rushed to her eyes.

"I can't help it," she said. "I want you to be doing something real."

"Lydia!" said Jeff. His kind, persuasive voice was recalling her to some ground of conviction where she could share his certainty that things were going as well as they could. "This is almost the only real thing in the world--the ground. About everything else is a game. This isn't a game. It's making something grow that won't hurt anybody when it's grown. I can't harm anybody by planting corn. And I can sell the corn,"

said Jeff, with a lighter shade of voice. Lydia knew he was smiling to please her. "Denny's going to peddle it out for me at backdoors. I'd do it myself, only I'm afraid they'd buy to help on 'poor Jeffrey Blake'."

When he spoke of the ground Lydia gave the loose dirt a little scornful kick and got the powdered dust into her neat stockings. She, too, loved the ground and all the sweet usages of homely life; but not if they kept him from a spectacular triumph. She was desperate enough to venture her one big plea.

"Jeff, you know you've got a lot of money to earn--to pay back--"

And there she stopped. He was regarding her gravely, but the moment he spoke she knew it was not in any offence.

"Lydia, I give you my word I couldn't do the kind of thing you want me to. I've found that out at last. You'd like me to cut into the market and make a lot of money and throw it back at the people I owe. I couldn't do it. My brain wouldn't let me. It's stopped--stopped short. A man knows when he's done for. I'm absolutely and entirely done. All I hope for is to keep father from finding it out. He seems to be getting his nerve back, and if he really does that I may be able to go away and do something besides dig. But it won't be anything spectacular, Lydia.

It isn't in me."