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The Prisoner, a novel by Alice Brown |
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Chapter 20 |
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_ CHAPTER 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 passed 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 compassionate. 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." Lydia turned away from him, and he could fancy the bright tears dropping as she walked. "Oh, dear!" he heard her say. "Oh, dear!" "Lydia!" he called, in an impatience of tenderness and misery. "Come back here. Don't you know I'd do anything on earth I could for you? But there'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 a cripple, Lydia. Don't you see?" She had turned obediently, and now she smeared the tears away with one small hand. "You don't understand," she said. "You don't understand a thing. We've thought of it all this time, Anne and I, how you'd come out and be proved not guilty--" "But, Lydia," he said gravely, "I was guilty. And besides being guilty of things the courts condemned me for, I was guilty of things I had to condemn myself for afterward. I wasn't a criminal merely. I was a waster and a fool." "Yes," said Lydia, looking at him boldly, "and if you were guilty who made 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 in what she thought his confirmation. The red had run into his face and he looked 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 me to-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 and she both knew it was Esther, and a little more likelihood of Madame Beattie's blackguarding Esther in print must rouse him to command the situation. Jeffrey finished his row, and then hurried into the house. It was the late 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've stirred him up, at least. Now what is he going to do?" Jeffrey went strolling down the drive, and quickened his steps when the shrubbery had him well hidden from the windows. Something assured him it was likely Weedon Moore lived still in the little sharp-gabled house on a side street where he had years ago. His mother had been with him then, and Jeff remembered Miss Amabel had scrupulously asked for her when Moore came to call. The little house was unchanged, brightly painted, gay in diamond trellis-work and picked out with scarlet tubs of hydrangea in the yard. A car stood at the gate, and Weedon, buttoning his coat, was stepping in. The car ran past, and Jeff saw that the man beside 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 incredible leadership. It seemed monstrous. Here was ignorance fallen into the hands of the demagogue. It was an outrage on the decencies. And then Madame Beattie waved to him from Denny's hack, and he stepped into the road 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 cramped interior, redolent now of varied scents, all delicate but mingled to a suffocating potency. "Tell him to drive along outside the town," she bade. "Were you going to see me?" "No," said Jeffrey, after executing her order. "I've told you I can't go to 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 am summoned." "She's a fool." "But I don't mind telling you where I was going," said Jeff. "I was going to lick Weedon Moore--or the equivalent." "Not on account of my interview?" said Madame Beattie, laughing very far down in her anatomy. Her deep laugh, Jeff always felt, could only have been attained by adequate support in the diaphragm. "Bless you, dear boy, you needn't blame him. I went to him. Went to his office. Blame me." "Oh, I blame you all right," said Jeff, "but you're not a responsible person. 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 talking to Poles and Finns and Italians and Greeks, telling them the country was no good and they owned it." "Why, the fellow can't speak to them." Madame Beattie, being a fluent linguist, 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. I should dearly like to see them. Poles, do you say? I didn't know there were such people in town." Jeffrey, rather curious himself, told Denny, and they bowled cumbrously along. He felt in a way obliged to proffer a word or two about the interview. "What the devil made you do it anyway?" he asked her; but Madame Beattie chuckled and would not answer. _ |
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