Chapter 22

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_ CHAPTER XXII

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

But on a later afternoon, at his work in the field, he saw Miss Amabel carefully treading among corn hills, very hot though in her summer silk and with a parasol. She always did feel the heat but patiently, as one under bonds of meekness to the God who sent it; but to-day her discomfort 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 so that his father might be beguiled into resting after work. When she reached the edge of the corn, he advanced and took her parasol and held it over her.

"Ladies shouldn't come out here," he said. "They must send Mary Nellen to 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 been doing."

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

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

"Never mind my shoes," said she. "Jeff, how nice you are. How much you are 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. Except that 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 and not play tricks on other people."

Jeff drew up his knees and clasped his hands about them. His eyes were on 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't say 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 his hands 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 hear us saying that?"

"No, I can't. You wouldn't say it that way. Don't chaff me, Jeff. What do 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 ignorant than the rest of us, and tell them things they ought to know. About the country, 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 with the purest motives, to fitting our foreign population for the duties of citizenship. He doesn't disturb the public peace. He takes the men away after their day's work--"

"Under cover of the dark."

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

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

"I won't answer that, Jeffrey. But I feel bound to say you are ungenerous. 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 a grudge 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 as great a surprise to me as it was to Moore. I hadn't the slightest intention of breaking up the meeting."

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

"Patricia, not Martha."

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

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

Miss Amabel turned upon him a look where just reproof struggled with wounded 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've got. 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--several languages, I understand, quick as lightning, one after the other--and to say things that counteracted at once all Mr. Moore's influence."

"Now," said Jeffrey, in a high degree of interest, "we're getting somewhere. What did I say to them? What did I say through Madame Beattie?"

"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 a hoot 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 an incredulous pleasure. "Now what spell has that extraordinary old woman over 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 ward politicians yet. Who is Andrea? This is the first time I have heard his honourable 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 given me 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 a look at the cards old Madame Beattie holds. I feel a fool. Why can't I know what they're talking about when they can kick up row enough under my very nose to make you come and rag me like this?"

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

Jeff gave a little crow of derision and she coloured. "It wouldn't hurt you, Jeff, to see some things as he does. The necessity of getting into touch 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 many dialects."

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

Miss Amabel rose to her feet and stood regarding him sorrowfully. He looked up at her with a glance full of affection, yet too merry for her heavy 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 praise the 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 his face; it even touched his eyes, mysteriously, and dulled them. "I'm not tanned 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 step after 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 let Weedie 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 that manifest.

"I can't bear to have you doing irresponsible things with Madame Beattie. 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 harm Lydia."

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 to her--affectionately, charmingly, as if to assure her that, after all, she needn't fear him even with Weedie who wasn't important enough to slay--he entered the house in definite search of Lydia. He went to the library, and there she was, in the window niche, where she sat to watch him. Day by day Lydia sat there when he was in the garden and she was not busy and he knew it was a favourite seat of hers for, glancing over his rows of corn, he could see the top of her head bent over a book. He did not know how long she pored over a page with eyes that saw him, a wraith of him hovering over the print, nor that when their passionate depths grew hungrier for the actual sight of him, how she threw one glance at his working figure and bent to her book again. As he came suddenly in upon her she sprang up and faced him, the book closed upon a trembling 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 she expected him to ask her she did not know, but there were strange warm feelings in her heart she would not have shown to Jeff. She could have shown them before that minute--when he had said the thing that ought not even to be remembered: "I only love you." Before that, she thought, she had been quite simply his sister. Now she was a watchful servitor of a more fervid sort. Jeffrey thought she was afraid of being scolded about her queer old crony.

"Sit down," he said. "There's nothing to be ashamed of in liking Madame Beattie. 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 in her 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 dusk hid the deep, crisp lines of his face. Under his moist tossed hair it was a young face, as Miss Amabel had told him, and his attitude became a boy.

"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 she did not want to tell. When Esther didn't want to tell, a certain soft glaze came over her eyes. Jeffrey had seen the glaze for a number of years before he knew what it meant. And when he found out, though it had been a good deal of a shock, he hardly thought the worse of Esther. He generalised quite freely and concluded that you couldn't expect the same standards of women as from men; and after that he was a little nervous and rather careful about the questions he asked. But Lydia's eyes had no glaze. They were desperate rather, the eyes of a little wild thing that is going to be frightened and possibly caught. Jeffrey felt quite excited, 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 her lie, it seemed.

"No," said she, "we don't. But I tell Anne if people ask questions it's at 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 Madame Beattie. She's a battered old party, Lydia. She's seen lots of things you 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 to them. But she wouldn't want me to. Madame Beattie is--" She saw no adequate way to put it.

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

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

Lydia sat straight in her chair, her cheeks scarlet from excitement, her eyes speaking with the full power of their limpid beauty. What if she were to tell him how they talked of Esther and her cruelty, and of him and his misfortunes, and of the need of his at once setting out to reconstruct his life? But it would not do. This youth here astride the chair didn't seem like the Jeff who was woven into all she could imagine of tragedy and pain. He looked like the Jeff she had heard the colonel tell about, who had been reckless and impulsive and splendid, and had been believed in always and then had grown up into a man who made and lost money and was punished for it. He was speaking now in his new coaxing 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 Weedon Moore'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 round like 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 of her 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 her judgment, "to be the most popular man in Addington."

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

"Lydia," said he, "what if I should have an Italian fruit-seller come up here 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's little secrets were to be guarded.

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

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

"Well," said Lydia conclusively, "we've got them now. They're here. So we 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 who had had quartered on her a larger family than the house would hold and yet knew the invaders must be accommodated in decent comfort somewhere. He sat there and stared at her until she grew red and fidgety. He seemed to 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 had been thinking of her clear beauties of simple youthful outline and pure restraints, and wondering why the world wasn't made so that he could take her little brown hand in his and walk off with her and sit all day on a piney bank and listen to birds and find out what she thought about the 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 dewy memory of her kiss she could not be his love. Yet she was most dear to him.

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 of Esther. That Esther had become sanctuary from his thoughts of Lydia was an ironic fact indeed, enough to make mirth crack its cheeks. But since he was bound to Esther, the more he thought of her the better. He was not 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 on her island. Its lights hung high above the wave, the sound of its music beat 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, a time when he had been in a way compelled to; and though it was the simplest commonplace, something new was beating in his voice. Choate had heard Esther's music, he had seen the dancing lights, and Esther had been willing he and all men should. There was no mariner who sailed the seas so insignificant as not to be hailed by Esther. That was the trouble. Circe's isle was there, and she was glad they knew it. Jeffrey did not go so far as to think she wanted inevitably to turn them into beasts, but he knew she was virtually telling them she had the power. That had been one of the first horrors of his disenchantment, when she had placed herself far enough away from him by neither writing to him nor visiting him; then he had seen her outside the glamour of her presence. 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 empery seemed equal in degree to his. Something brutal used to come up in him when men looked boldly at her, and while he wanted to quench the assault of 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 when he knew she called it tribute, a rage more just than jealousy came up in 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 was hers to the end of earthly time. There was no task for him to do but somehow to shield Lydia from the welling of her wonderful devotion to him. If Esther was Circe on her island, Lydia was the nymph in a clear mountain brook of some undiscovered wood where the birds came to bathe, but no hoof had ever muddied the streams. If she had, out of her hero-worship, conceived a passion for him, he had an equal passion for her, of protectingness and sad certainty that he could do no better than ensure her distance from him. _

Read next: Chapter 23

Read previous: Chapter 21

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