The Prisoner Part 75

"But why the deuce," said Jeff, "Andrea and his gang look so mournful I can't see."

"Why," said Lydia, "don't you know? They voted for you, and their votes were thrown out."

"For me?"

"Yes, Madame Beattie told them to. She'd planned it before she went away, but somehow it fell through. They were to put stickers on the ballot, but at the last the stickers scared them, and they just wrote in your name."

"Lydia," said Jeff, "you're making this up."

"Oh, no, I'm not," said Lydia. "Mr. Choate told me. I knew it was going to 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 to write 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. She thought it very benevolent of Madame Beattie to have prepared such a dramatic surprise, and that it was definite ill-fortune for Jeff to have missed the full effect of it. But the earth to Lydia was a flare of dazzling 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 Jeff said nothing. Lydia was not sure whether he had even really heard. Then Amabel said if there were going to be speeches she hardly thought she cared 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 told him 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, turned upon 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 any romancing about that old enchantress. If you know so much, tell me one thing 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 G.o.d. No, I'll tell you how they treated me. As savages treat the first white man they'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 by Weedon 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 them their decent wages, and had the nice little houses built down at Mill End. And there was a conspiracy against you, and she heard of it and came over to tell them how it was. But you were in prison because you stood 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. Sometimes she'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 think we're crazy."

They walked down the path and out between the stone pillars where he had met Esther. Jeff remembered it, and out of his wish to let Lydia into his mind said, as they pa.s.sed 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 cup dashed from her lips. Jeff didn't wait for her to answer.

"From the boat," he said. "It was very short. She was with him. We weren'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 her unthinking innocence. It was not the outcome of ignorance that cramps and 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 the narrow 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--and both of us work on plays--and sometime--"

"Yes," said Jeff, "sometime--"

One tremendous desire, of all the desires tumultuous in him, was strongest. If Lydia was to be his--though already she seemed supremely his in all the shy fealties of the moment--not a petal of the flower of love should be lost to her. She should find them all dewy and unwithered in her bridal crown. There should not be a kiss, a hot protestation, the tawdry path of love half tasted yet long deferred. Lydia should, for the present, stay a child. His one dear thought, the thought that made him feel 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 what he had imperfectly written, that he meant to be eternally free through fulfilling 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 up to it and say we'll wait."

"I can stand up to it," said Lydia. "I can stand up to anything--for you."

"I don't know," he said, "just how we're coming out. I mean, I don't know whether I'm coming out something you'll like or not like. How can a man be sure what's in him? Shall I wake up some time and know, because I've been a thief, I ought never to think of anything now but money--paying back, cent for cent, or cents for dollars, what I lost? I don't know. Or shall I think I'm right in not doing anything spectacular and plodding along here and working for the town? I don't know that. One thing I know--you. If I said I loved you it wouldn't be a millionth part of what I do. I'm founded on you. I'm rooted in you. There! that's enough. 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 was a Lydia he meant never to call out from her maiden veiling after to-night until the day when he could summon her for open vows and unstinted cherishing. He wanted to learn her face by heart. How was her brave soul answering him? The child face, sweet in every tint and line of it, turned to him in an unhesitating response. It was the garden of love, and, too, a pure unhindered happiness.

"I'm going in," said Lydia, "to get something ready for them to eat--Farvie and Anne. For us, too."

She took a little run away from him, and he watched her light figure until the shrubbery hid her. At the door, it must have been, she gave a clear call. Jeff answered the call, and then went on to find his father and Anne. He knew he should not see just the Lydia that had run away from him until the day she came back again, into his arms.