Chapter 30

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_ CHAPTER XXX

At the words Alston turned to Jeff in an involuntary questioning. Jeff was inscrutable. His face, as Alston saw it, the lines of the mouth, the down-dropped gaze, was sad, tender even, as if he were merely sorry. They walked along the street together and it was Choate who began awkwardly.

"Miss Lydia came to me, some weeks ago, about these jewels."

Here Jeff stopped him, breaking in upon him indeed when he had got thus far.

"Alston, let's go down under the old willow and smoke a pipe."

Alston was rather dashed at having the tentative introduction of Lydia at once cut off, and yet the proposition seemed to him natural. Indeed, as they turned into Mill Street it occurred to him that Jeff might be providing solitude and a fitting place to talk. As they went down the old street, unchanged even to the hollows worn under foot in the course of the years, something stole over them and softened imperceptibly the harsh moment. There was Ma'am Fowler's where they used to come to buy doughnuts. There was the house where the crippled boy lived, and sat at the window waving signals to the other boys as they went past. At the same window a man sat now. Jeff was pretty sure it was the boy grown up, and yet was too absorbed in his thought of Lydia to ask. He didn't really care. But it was soothing to find the atmosphere of the place enveloped him like a charm. It wasn't possible they were so old, or that they had been mightily excited a minute before over a foolish thing. Presently after leaving the houses they turned off the road and crossed the shelving sward to the old willow, and there on a bench hacked by their own jackknives they sat down to smoke. Jeff remembered it was he who had thought to give the bench a back. He had nailed the board from tree to tree. It was here now or its fellow--he liked to think it was his own board--and he leaned against it and lighted up. The day's perturbation had taken Choate in another way. He didn't want to smoke. But he rolled a cigarette with care and pretended to take much interest in it. He felt it was for Jeff to begin. Jeff sat silent a while, his eyes upon the field across the flats where the boys were playing ball. Yet in the end he did begin.

"That necklace, Choate," said he, "is a regular little devil of a necklace. Do you realise how much mischief it's already done?"

Between Esther's asseverations and Lydia's theories Choate's mind was in a good deal of a fog. He thought it best to give a perfunctory grunt and hope Jeff would go on.

"And after all," said Jeff, "as I said, the devilish thing isn't of the slightest real value in itself. It can, in an indirect way, send a fellow to prison. It can excite an amount of longing in a woman's mind colossal enough to make one of the biggest motives possible for any sort of crime. Because it glitters, simply because it glitters. It can cause another woman who has done caring for glitter, to depend on it for a living."

"You mean Madame Beattie," said Alston. "If it's her necklace and she can sell it, why doesn't she do it? Royal personages don't account for that."

But Jeff went on with his ruminating.

"Alston," said he, "did it ever occur to you that, with the secrets of nature laid open before us as they are now--even though the page isn't even half turned--does it occur to you we needn't be at the mercy of sex? Any of us, I mean, men and women both. Have we got to get drunk when it assaults us? Have we got to be the cave man and carry off the woman? And lie to ourselves throughout? Have we got to say, 'I covet this woman because she is all beauty'? Can't we keep the lookout up in the cockloft and let him judge, and if he says, 'That isn't beauty, old man'--believe him?"

"But sometimes," said Alston, "it is beauty."

He knew what road Jeff was on. Jeff was speaking out his plain thought and at the same time assuring them both that they needn't, either of them, be submerged by Esther, because real beauty wasn't in her. If they ate the fruit of her witchery it would be to their own damnation, and they would deserve what they got.

"Yes," said Jeff, "sometimes it is real beauty. But even then the thing that grows out of sex madness is better than the madness itself. Sometimes I think the only time some fellows feel alive is when they're in love. That's what's given us such an idea of it. But when I think of a man and woman planking along together through the dust and mud--good comrades, you know--that's the best of it."

"Of course," said Alston stiffly, "that's the point. That's what it leads to."

"Ah, but with some of them, you'd never get there; they're not made for wives--or sisters--or mothers. And no man, if he saw what he was going into, would dance their dance. He wouldn't choose it, that is, when he thinks back to it."

Alston took out his match-box, and felt his fingers quiver on it. He was enraged with himself for minding. This was the warning then. He was told, almost in exact words, not to covet his neighbour's wife, cautioned like a boy not to snatch at forbidden fruit, and even, unthinkably, that the fruit was, besides not being his, rotten. And at his heart he knew the warning was fair and true. Esther had dealt a blow to his fastidious idealities. Her deceit had slain something. She had not so much betrayed it to him by facts, for facts he could, if passion were strong enough, put aside. But his inner heart searching for her heart, like a hand seeking a beloved hand, had found an emptiness. He was so bruised now that he wanted to hit out and hurt Jeff, perhaps, at least force him to naked warfare.

"You want me to believe," he said, "that--Esther--" he stumbled over the word, but at such a pass he would not speak of her more decorously--"years ago took Madame Beattie's necklace."

Jeff was watching the boys across the flats, critically and with a real interest.

"She did," he said.

Alston bolstered himself with a fictitious anger.

"And you can tell me of it," he blustered.

"You asked me."

"You believe she did?"

"It's true," said Jeff, with the utmost quietness. "I never have said it before. Not to my father even. But he knows. He did naturally, in the flurry of that time."

"Yet you tell me because I ask you."

Alston seemed to be bitterly defending Esther.

"Not precisely," said Jeff. "Because you're bewitched by her. You must get over that."

The distance wavered before Choate's eyes, He hated Jeffrey childishly because he could be so calm.

"You needn't worry," he said. "She is as completely separated from me as if--as if you had never been away from her."

"That's it," said Jeff. "You can't marry her unless she's divorced from me. She's welcome to that--the divorce, I mean. But you can't go drivelling on having frenzies over her. Good God, Choate, don't you see what you're doing? You're wasting yourself. Shake it off. You don't want Esther. She's shocked you out of your boots already. And she doesn't know there's anything to be shocked at. You're Addington to the bone, and Esther's a primitive squaw. You've nothing whatever to do with one another, you two. It's absurd."

Choate sat looking at the landscape which no longer wavered. The boys ran fairly straight now. Suddenly he began to laugh. He laughed gaspingly, hysterically, and Jeff regarded him from time to time tolerantly and smoked.

"I know what you're thinking," he said, when Alston stopped, with a last splutter, and wiped his eyes. "You're thinking, between us we've broken all the codes. I have vilified my wife. I've warned you against her and you haven't resented it. It shows the value of extreme common-sense in affairs of the heart. It shows also that I haven't an illusion left about Esther, and that you haven't either. And if we say another word about it we shall have to get up and fight, to save our self-respect."

So Alston did now light his cigarette and they went on smoking. They talked about the boys at their game and only when the players came down to the scow, presumably to push over and buy doughnuts of Ma'am Fowler, did they get up to go. As they turned away from the scene of boyish intimacies, involuntarily they stiffened into another manner; there was even some implication of mutual dislike in it, of guardedness, one against the other. But when they parted at the corner of the street Alston, out of his perplexity, ventured a question.

"I should be very glad to be told if, as you say, you took the necklace out of Esther's bag, why you took it."

"Sorry," said Jeff. "You deserve to be told the whole business. But you can't be."

So he went home, knowing he was going to an inquiring Lydia. And how would an exalted common-sense work if presented to Lydia? He thought of it all the way. How would it do if, in these big crises of the heart, men and women actually told each other what they thought? It was not the way of nature as she stood by their side prompting them to their most picturesque attitude, that her work might be accomplished, saying to the man, "Prove yourself a devil of a fellow because the girl desires a hero," and to the girl, "Be modesty and gentleness ineffable because that is the complexion a hero loves." And the man actually believes he is a hero and the girl doesn't know she is hiding herself behind a veil too dazzling to let him see her as she is. How would it be if they outwitted nature at her little game and gave each other the fealty of blood brothers, the interchange of the true word?

Lydia came to the supper table with the rest. She was rather quiet and absorbed and not especially alive to Jeff's coming in. No quick glance questioned him about the state of things as he had left them. But after supper she lingered behind the others and asked him directly:

"Couldn't we go out somewhere and talk?"

"Yes," said he. "We could walk down to the river."

They started at once, and Anne, seeing them go, sighed deeply. Lydia was shut away from her lately. Anne missed her.

Lydia and Jeff went down the narrow path at the back of the house, a path that had never, so persistent was it, got quite grown over in the years when the maiden ladies lived here. Perhaps boys had kept it alive, running that way. At the foot and on the river bank were bushes, alder and a wilderness of small trees bound by wild grape-vines into a wall. Through these Lydia led the way to the fallen birch by the waterside. She turned and faced Jeffrey in the gathering dusk. He fancied her face looked paler than it should.

"Does she know it?" asked Lydia.

"Who?"

"Esther. Does she know I stole it out of the bag?"

"Yes," said Jeff. Suddenly he determined to tell the truth to Lydia. She looked worthy of it. He wouldn't save her pain that belonged to the tangle where they groped. He and she would share the pain together. "She guessed it. Nobody told her she was right."

"Then," said Lydia, "I must go away."

"Go away?"

"To save Farvie and Anne. They mustn't know it. I wanted to go this afternoon, just as soon as you took the necklace away from me and I realised what people would say. But I knew that would be silly. People can't run away and leave notes behind. But I can tell Anne I want to go to New York and get pupils. And I could get them. I can do housework, too."

She was an absolutely composed Lydia. She had forestalled him in her colossal common-sense.

"But, Lydia," said he, "you don't need to. Madame Beattie has her necklace. I gave it back into her hand. I daresay the old harpy will want hush money, but that's not your business. It's mine. I can't give her any if I would, and she knows it. She'll simply light here like a bird of prey for a while and harry me for money to shield Esther, to shield you, and when she finds she can't get it she'll sail peacefully off."

"Madame Beattie wouldn't do anything hateful to me," said Lydia.

"Oh, yes, she would, if she could get an income out of it. She wouldn't mean to be hateful. That night-hawk isn't hateful when it spears a mole."

"Do you mean," said Lydia, "that just because Madame Beattie has her necklace back, they couldn't arrest me? Because if they could I've certainly got to go away. I can't kill Farvie and Anne."

"Nobody will arrest anybody," said Jeff. "You are absolutely out of it. And you must keep your mouth tight and stay out."

"But you said Esther knew I did it."

"She guessed. Let her keep on guessing. Let Madame Beattie keep on. I have told them I did it and I shall keep on telling them so."

Lydia turned upon him.

"You told them that? Oh, I can't have it. I won't. I shall go to them at once."

She had even turned to fly to them.

"No," said Jeff. "Stay here, Lydia. That damnable necklace has made trouble enough. It goes slipping through our lives like a detestable snake, and now it's stopped with its original owner, I propose it shall stay stopped. It's like a property in a play. It goes about from hand to hand to hand, to bring out something in the play. And after all the play isn't about the necklace. It's about us--us--you and Esther and Choate and Madame Beattie and me. It's betraying us to ourselves. If it hadn't been for the necklace in the first place and Esther's coveting it, I might have been a greasy citizen of Addington instead of a queer half labourer and half loafer; my father wouldn't have lost his nerve, Choate wouldn't have been in love with Esther, and you wouldn't have been doing divine childish things to bail me out of my destiny."

Lydia selected from this the fact that hit her hardest.

"Is Alston Choate in love with Esther?"

"He thinks he is."

"Then I must tell Anne."

"For God's sake, no! Lydia, I'm talking to you down here in the dusk as if you were the sky or that star up there. The star doesn't tell."

"But Anne worships him."

"Do you mean she's in love with Choate?"

"No," said Lydia, "I don't mean that. I mean she thinks he's the most beautiful person she ever saw."

"Then let her keep on thinking so," said Jeff. "And sometime he'll think that of her."

Lydia was indignant.

"If you think Anne----" she began, and he stopped her.

"No, no. Anne is a young angel. Only a feeling of that kind--Lydia, I am furious because I can't talk to you as I want to."

"Why can't you?" asked Lydia.

"Because it isn't possible, between men and women. Unless they've got a right to. Unless they can throw even their shams and vanities away, and live in each other's minds. I am married to Esther. If I tell you I won't ask you into my mind because I am married to her you'll think I am a hero. And if I do ask you in, you'll come--for you are very brave--and you'll see things I don't want you to see."

"You mean," said Lydia, "see that you know I am in love with you. Well, I'm not, Jeff, not in the way people talk about. Not that way."

His quick sense of her meanings supplied what she did not say: not Esther's way. She scorned that, with a youthful scorn, the feline domination of Esther. If that was being in love she would have none of it. But Jeff was not actually thinking of her. He was listening to some voice inside himself, an interrogatory voice, an irresponsible one, not warning him but telling him:

"You do care. You care about Lydia. That's what you're facing--love--love of Lydia."

It was disconcerting. It was the last thing for a man held by the leg in several ways to contemplate. And yet there it was. He had entered again into youth and was rushing along on the river that buoys up even a leaf for a time and feels so strong against the leaf's frail texture that every voyaging fibre trusts it joyously. The summer air felt sweet to him. There were wild perfumes in it and the smell of water and of earth.

"Lydia!" he said, and again he spoke her name.

"Yes," said Lydia. "What is it?"

She stood there apart from him, a slim thing, her white scarf held tight, actually, to his quickened sense, as if she kept the veil of her virginity wrapped about her sternly. For the moment he did not feel the despair of his greater age, of his tawdry past or his fettered present. He was young and the night air was as innocently sweet to him as if he had never loved a woman and been repulsed by her and dwelt for years in the anguish of his own recoil.

"Lydia," he said, "what if you and I should tell each other the truth?"

"We do," said Lydia simply. "I tell you the truth anyway. And you could me. But you don't understand me quite. You think I'd die for you. Yes, I would. But I shouldn't think twice about wanting to be happier with you. I'm happy enough now."

A thousand thoughts rushed to his lips, to tell her she did not know how happy they could be. But he held them back. All the sweet intimacies of life ran before him, life here in Addington, secure, based on old traditions, if she were his wife and they had so much happiness they could afford to be careless about it as other married folk were careless. There might not be daily banquets of delight, but cool fruits, the morning and the evening, the still course of being that seemed to him now, after his seething first youth, the actual paradise. But Lydia was going on, an erect slim figure in her enfolding scarf.

"And you mustn't be sorry I stole the necklace--except for Anne and Farvie, if she does anything to me." "She" was always Esther, he had learned. "I'm glad, because it makes us both alike."

"You and me?"

"Yes. You took something that makes you call yourself a thief. Now I'm a thief. We're just alike. You said, when you first came home, doing a thing like that, breaking law, makes you feel outside."

"It isn't only feeling outside," he made haste to tell her. "You are outside. You're outside the social covenant men have made. It's a good righteous covenant, Lydia. It was come to through blood and misery. It's pretty bad to be outside."

"Well," said Lydia, "I'm outside anyway. With you. And I'm glad of it. You won't feel so lonesome now."

Jeff's eyes began to brim.

"You little hateful thing," he said. "You've made me cry."

"Got a hanky?" Lydia inquired solicitously.

"Yes. Besides, it isn't a hanky cry, unless you make it worse. Lydia, I wish you and Anne would go away and let father and me muddle along alone."

"Do you," said Lydia joyously. "Then you do like me. You like me awfully. You think you'll tell me so if I stay round."

"Do I, you little prying thing?" He thought he could establish some ground of understanding between them if he abused her. "You're a good little sister, Lydia, but you're a terrifying one."

"No," said Lydia. "I'm not a sister." She let the enfolding scarf go and the breeze took its ends and made them ripple. "Anne's a sister. She likes you almost as well as she does Farvie. But she does like Farvie best. I don't like Farvie best. I like you best of all the world. And I love to. I'm determined to. You ought to be liked over and over, because you've had so much taken away from you. Why, that's what I'm for, Jeff. That's what I was born for. Just to like you."

He took a step toward her, and the rippling scarf seemed to beckon him on. Lydia stepped back. "But if you touched me, Jeff," she said, "if you kissed me, I'd kill you. I'm glad you did it once when you didn't think. But if we did it once more----"

She stopped and he heard her breath and then the click of her teeth as if she broke the words in two.

"Don't be afraid, Lydia," he said. "I won't."

"I'm not afraid," she flashed.

"And don't talk of killing."

"You thought I'd kill myself. No. What would it matter about me? If I could make you a little happier--not so lonesome--why, you might kiss me. All day long. But you'd care afterward. You'd say you were outside." There was an exquisite pity in the words. She was older than he in her passion for him, stronger in her mastery of it, and she loved him overwhelmingly and knew she loved him. "Now you see," said Lydia quietly. "You know the whole. You can call me your sister, if you want to. I don't care what you call me. I suppose some sisters like their brothers more than anybody else in the world. But not as I like you. Nobody ever liked anybody as I like you. And when you put your arms down on the table and lay your head on them, you can think of that."

"How do you know I put my head on the table?" said Jeff. It was wholesome to him to sound rough to her.

"Why, of course you do," she said. "You did, one of those first days. I wish you didn't. It makes me want to run out doors and scream because I can't come in and 'poor' your hair."

"I won't do it again," said Jeff. "Lydia, I can't say one of the things I want to. Not one of them."

"I don't expect you to," said Lydia. "I understand you and me too. All I wanted was for you to understand me."

"I do," said Jeff. "And I'll stand up to it. Shake hands, Lydia."

"No," said Lydia, "I don't want to shake hands." She folded the scarf again about her, tighter, it seemed, than it was before. "You and I don't need signs and ceremonies. Now I'm going back and read to Farvie. You go to walk, Jeff. Walk a mile. Walk a dozen miles. If we had horses we'd get on 'em bareback and ride and ride."

Jeff stood and watched her while he could see the white scarf through the dusk. Then he turned to go along the river path, but he stopped. He, too, thought of galloping horses, devouring distance with her beside him through the night. He began to strip off his clothes and Lydia, on the rise, heard his splash in the river. She laughed, a wild little laugh. She was glad he was conquering space in some way, his muscles taut and rejoicing. Lydia had attained woman's lot at a bound. All she wanted was for him to have the full glories of a man. _

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