Chapter 35

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_ CHAPTER XXXV

When the cold weather came and Alston Choate and Weedon Moore became rival candidates for the mayoralty of Addington, strange things began to happen. Choate, cursing his lot inwardly, but outwardly deferential to his mother who had really brought it on him, began to fulfil every last requirement of the zealous candidate. He even learned to make speeches, not the lucid exponents of the law that belonged to his court career, but prompt addresses, apparently unconsidered, at short notice. The one innovation he drew the line at was the flattering recognition of men he had never, in the beaten way of life, recognised before. He could not, he said, kiss babies. But he would tell the town what he thought it needed, coached, he ironically added when he spoke the expansive truth at home, by his mother and Jeff. They were ready to bring kindling to boil the pot, Mrs. Choate in her grand manner of beckoning the ancient virtues back, Jeff, as Alston told, him, hammer and tongs. Jeff also began to make speeches, because, at one juncture when Alston gave out from hoarseness--his mother said it was a psychological hoarseness at a moment when he realised overwhelmingly how he hated it all--Jeff had taken his place and "got" the men, labourers all of them, as Alston never had.

"It's a mistake," said Mrs. Choate afterward when he came to the house to report, and ask how Alston was, and the three sat eating one of Mary's quick suppers. "You're really the candidate. Those men know it. They know it's you behind Alston, and they're going to take him patiently because you tell them to. But they don't half want him."

Jeff was very fine now in his robustness, fit and strong, no fat on him and good blood racing well. He was eating bread and butter heartily, while he waited for Mary to serve him savoury things, and Mrs. Choate looked discontentedly at Mary bending over his plate, all hospitality, with the greater solicitude because he was helping Alston out. Mrs. Choate wished the nugatory Esther were out of the way, and she could marry Mary off to Jeff. Mary, pale, yet wholesome, fair-haired, with the definite Choate profile, and dressed in her favourite smoke colour and pale violet, her mother loved conscientiously, if impatiently. But she wished Mary, who had not one errant inclination, might come to her some day and say, "Mother, I am desperately enamoured of an Italian fruit-seller with Italy in his eyes." Mrs. Choate would have explained to her, with a masterly common-sense, that such vagrom impulses meant, followed to conclusions, shipwreck on the rocks of class misunderstanding; but it would have warmed her heart to Mary to have so to explain. But here was Mary to whom no eccentricity ever had to be elucidated. She could not even have imagined a fruit-seller outside his heaven-decreed occupation of selling fruit. Mrs. Choate smiled a little to herself, wondering what Mary would say if she could know her mother was willing to consign the inconvenient Esther to perpetual limbo and marry her to handsome Jeff. "Mother!" she could imagine her horrified cry. It would all be in that.

Jeff was more interested in his eating than in answering Mrs. Choate with more than an encouraging:

"We've got 'em, I think. But I wish," he said, "we had more time to follow up Weedie. What's he saying to 'em?"

"Ask Madame Beattie," said Alston, with more distaste than he could keep out of his voice. "I saw her last night on the outskirts of his crowd, sitting in Denny's hack."

"Speaking?" asked Jeff. "She'd have spoken, if she got half a chance."

Alston laughed quietly.

"Moore got the better of her. He was in his car. All he had to do was to make off. She made after him, but he's got the whip-hand, with a car."

The next night, doubtless taught the advisability of vying with her enemy, Madame Beattie, to the disgust of Esther, came down cloaked and muffled to the chin and took the one automobile to be had for hire in Addington. She was whirled away, where Esther had no idea. She was whirled back again at something after ten, hoarse yet immensely tickled. But Reardon knew what she had done and he telephoned it to Esther. She was making speeches of her own, stopping at street corners wherever she could gather a group, but especially running down to the little streets by the water where the foreign labourers came swarming out and cheered her.

"It's disgraceful," said Esther, almost crying into the telephone. "What is she saying to them?"

"Nobody knows, except it's political. We assume that," said Reardon. "All kinds of lingo. They tell me she knows more languages than a college professor."

"Find out," Esther besought him. "Ask her. Ask whom you shall vote for. It'll get her started."

That seemed to Reardon a valuable idea, and he actually did ask her, lingering before the door one night when she came out to take her car. He put her into it with a florid courtesy she accepted as her due--it was the best, she thought, the man had to offer--and then said to her jocosely:

"Well, Madame Beattie, who shall I vote for?"

Madame Beattie looked at him an instant with a quizzical comprehension it was too dark for him to see.

"I can tell whom you'd better not vote for," she said. "Don't vote for Esther. Tell him to go on."

Reardon did tell the man and then stood there on the pavement a moment, struck by the certainty that he had been warned. She seemed to him to know everything. She must know he was somehow likely to get into trouble over Esther. Reardon was bewitched with Esther, but he did so want to be safe. Nevertheless, led by man's destiny, he walked up to the door and Esther, as before, let him in. He thought it only fair to tell her he had found out nothing, and he meant, in a confused way, to let her see that things must be "all right" between them. By this he meant that they must both be safe. But once within beside her perfumed presence--yet Esther used no vulgar helps to provoke the senses--he forgot that he must be safe, and took her into his arms. He had been so certain of his stability, after his recoil from Madame Beattie, that he neglected to resist himself. And Esther did not help him. She clung to him and the perfume mounted to his brain. What was it? Not, even he knew, a cunning of the toilet; only the whole warm breath of her.

"Look here," said Reardon, shaken, "what we going to do?"

"You must tell me," she whispered. "How could I tell you?"

Reardon afterward had an idea that he broke into rough beseeching of her to get free, to take his money, everything he had, and buy her freedom somehow. Then, he said, in an awkwardness he cursed himself for, they could begin to talk. And as she withdrew from him at sound of Rhoda Knox above, he opened the door and ran away from her, to the ordered seclusion of his own house. Once there he wiped his flustered brow and cursed a little, and then telephoned her. But Sophy answered that Mrs. Blake was not well. She had gone to her room.

Reardon had a confused multitude of things to say to her. He wanted to beg her to understand, to assure her he was thinking of her and not himself, as indeed he was. But meantime as he rehearsed the arguments he had at hand, he was going about the room getting things together. His papers were fairly in order. He could always shake them into perfect system at an hour's notice. And then muttering to himself that, after all, he shouldn't use it, he telephoned New York to have a state-room reservation made for Liverpool. The office was closed, and he knew it would be, yet it somehow gave him a dull satisfaction to have tried; and next day he telephoned again.

Within a week Jeff turned his eyes toward a place he had never thought of, never desired for a moment, and yet now longed for exceedingly. A master in a night school founded by Miss Amabel had dropped out, and Jeff went, hot foot, to Amabel and begged to take his place. How could she refuse him? Yet she did warn him against propaganda.

"Jeff, dear," she said, moving a little from the open fire where he sat with her, bolt upright, eager, forceful, exactly like a suppliant for a job he desperately needs, "you won't use it to set the men against Weedon Moore?"

Jeff looked at her with a perfectly open candour and such a force of persuasion in his asking eyes that she believed he was bringing his personal charm to influence her, and shook her head at him despairingly.

"I won't in that building or the school session," he said. "Outside I'll knife him if I can."

"Jeff," said Miss Amabel, "if you'd only work together."

"We can't," said Jeff, "any more than oil and water. Or alkali and acid. We'd make a mighty fizz. I'm in it for all I'm worth, Amabel. To bust Weedie and save Addington."

"Weedon Moore is saving Addington," said she.

"Do you honestly believe that? Think how Addington began. Do you suppose a town that old boy up there helped to build--" he glanced at his friend, the judge--"do you think that little rat can do much for it? I don't."

"Perhaps Addington doesn't need his kind of help now, or yours. Addington is perfectly comfortable, except its working class. And it's the working man Weedon Moore is striving for."

"Addington is comfortable on a red-hot crater," said Jeff. "She's like all the rest of America. She's sat here sentimentalising and letting the crater get hotter and hotter under her, and unless we look out, Amabel, there isn't going to be any America, one of these days. Mrs. Choate says it's going to be the spoil of damned German efficiency. She thinks the Huns are waking up and civilisations going under. But I don't. I believe we're going to be a great unwieldy, industrial monster, no cohesion in us and no patriotism, no citizenship."

"No patriotism!" Miss Amabel rose involuntarily and stood there trembling. Her troubled eyes sought the pictured eyes of the old Judge. "Jeff, you don't know what you're saying."

"I do," said Jeff, "mighty well. Sit down, dear, or I shall have to salute the flag, too, and I'm too lazy."

She sat down, but she was trembling.

"And I'm going to save Addington, if I can," said Jeff. "I haven't the tongue of men and angels or I'd go out and try to salvage the whole business. But I can't. Addington's more my size. If there were invasion, you know, a crippled man couldn't do more than try to defend his own dooryard. Dear old girl, we've got to save Addington."

"I'm trying," said she. "Jeff, dear, I'm trying. And I've a lot of money. I don't know how it rolled up so."

"Don't give it to Weedon Moore, that's all," he ventured, and then, in the stiffening of her whole body, he saw it was a mistake even to mention Moore. Her large charity made her fiercely partisan. He ventured the audacious personal appeal. "Give me some, Amabel, if you've really got so much. Let me put on some plays, in a simple way, and try to make your workmen see what we're at, when we talk about home and country. They despise us, Amabel, except on pay day. Let's hypnotise 'em, please 'em in some other way besides shorter hours and easier strikes. Let's make 'em fall over themselves to be Americans."

Miss Amabel flushed all over her soft face, up to the line of her grey hair.

"Jeff," she said.

"What'm?"

"I have always meant when you were at liberty again--" that seemed to her a tolerable euphemism--"to turn in something toward your debt."

"To the creditors?" Jeff supplied cheerfully. "Amabel, dear, I don't believe there are any little people suffering from my thievery. It's only the big people that wanted to be as rich as I did. Anne and Lydia are suffering in a way. But that's my business. I'm going to confess to you. Dear sister superior, I'm going to confess."

She did not move, hardly by an eyelash. She was afraid of choking his confidence, and she wanted it to come abundantly. Jeff sat for a minute or two frowning and staring into the fire. He had to catch himself back from what threatened to become silent reverie.

"I've thought a good deal about this," he said, "when I've had time to think, these last weeks. I'd give a lot to stand clear with the world. I'd like to do a spectacular refunding of what I stole and lost. But I'd far rather pitch in and save Addington. Maybe it means I'm warped somehow about money, standards lowered, you know, perceptions blunted, that sort of thing. Well, if it's so I shall find it out sometime and be punished. We can't escape anything, in spite of their doctrine of vicarious atonement."

She moved slightly at this, and Jeff smiled at her.

"Yes," said he, "we have to be punished. Sometimes I suppose the full knowledge of what we've done is punishment enough. Now about me. If anybody came to me to-day and said, 'I'll make you square with the world,' I should say, 'Don't you do it. Save Addington. I'd rather throw my good name into the hopper and let it grind out grist for Addington.'"

Miss Amabel put out the motherly hand and he grasped it.

"And I assure you," he said again, "I don't know whether that's common-sense--tossing the rotten past into the abyss and making a new deal--or whether it's because I've deteriorated too much to see I've deteriorated. You tell, Amabel."

She took out her large handkerchief--Amabel had a convenient pocket--and openly wiped her eyes.

"I'll give you money, Jeff," she said, "and you can put it into plays. I'd like to pay you something definite for doing it, because I don't see how you're going to live."

"Lydia'll help me do it," said Jeff, "she and Anne. They're curiously wise about plays and dances. No, Amabel, I sha'n't eat your money, except what you pay me for evening school. And I have an idea I'm going to get on. I always had the devil's own luck about things, you know. Look at the luck of getting you to fork out for plays you've never heard the mention of. And I feel terrible loquacious. I think I shall write things. I think folks'll take 'em. They've got to. I want to hand over a little more to Esther."

Even to her he had never mentioned the practical side of Esther's life. Miss Amabel looked at him sympathetically, inquiringly.

"Yes," he said, "she's having a devil of a time. I want to ease it up somehow--send her abroad or let her get a divorce or something."

"You couldn't--" said Amabel. She stopped.

His brows were black as thunder.

"No," said he, "no. Esther and I are as far apart as--" he paused for a simile. Then he smiled at her. "No," he said. "It wouldn't do."

As he went out he stopped a moment more and smiled at her with the deprecating air of asking for indulgence that was his charm when he was good. His eyes were the soft bright blue of happy seas.

"Amabel," said he, "I don't want to cry for mercy, though I'd rather have mercy from you than 'most anybody. Blame me if you've got to, but don't make any mistake about me. I'm not good and I'm not all bad. I'm nothing but a confusion inside. I've got to pitch in and do the best thing I know. I'm an undiscovered country."

"You're no mystery to me," she said. "You're a good boy, Jeff."

He went straight home and called Lydia and Anne to council, the colonel sitting by, looking over his glasses in a benevolent way.

"I've been trying to undermine Weedie," said Jeff, "with Amabel. I can't quite do it, but I've got her to promise me some of her money. For plays, Lydia, played by Mill End. What do you say?"

"She hasn't money enough for real plays," said Lydia. "All she's got wouldn't last a minute."

"Not in a hall?" asked Jeff. "Not with scenery just sketched in, as it were? But all of it patriotic. Teach them something. Ram it down their throats. English language."

Lydia made a few remarks, and Jeff sat up and stared at her. The colonel and Anne, endorsing her, were not surprised. They had heard it all before. It seems Lydia had a theory that the province of art is simply not to be dull. If you could charm people, you could make them do anything. The kite of your aspirations might fly among the stars. But you couldn't fly it if it didn't look well flying. The reason nobody really learns anything by plays intended to teach them something, Lydia said, is because the plays are generally dull. Nobody is going to listen to "argufying" if he can help it. If you tell people what it is beneficial for them to believe they are going home and to bed, unchanged. But they'll yawn in your faces first. Lydia had a theory that you might teach the most extraordinary lessons if you only made them bewitching enough. Look at the Blue Bird. How many people who loved to see Bread cut a slice off his stomach and to follow the charming pageant of the glorified common things of life, thought anything save that this was a "show" with no appeal beyond the visual one? Yet there it was, the big symbolism beating in its heart and keeping it alive. The Children of Light could see the symbolism quick as a wink. Still the Children of Darkness who never saw any symbolism at all and who were the ones to yawn and go home to bed, helped pay for tickets and keep the thing running. We must bewitch them also. Jeff inquired humbly if she would advise taking up Shakespeare with the Mill Enders and found she still wouldn't venture on it at once. She'd do some fairy plays, quite easy to write on new lines. Everything was easy if you had "go" enough, Lydia said. Jeff ventured to inquire about scenic effects, and discovered, to his enlightenment, that Lydia had the greatest faith in the imagination of any kind of audience. Do a thing well enough, she said, and the audience would forget whether it was looking at a painted scene or not. It could provide its own illusion. Think of the players, she reminded him, who, when they gave the Trojan Women on the road, and sought for a little Astyanax, were forbidden by an asinine city government to bring on a real child. Think how the actors crouched protectingly over an imaginary Astyanax, and how plainly every eye saw the child who was not there. Perhaps every woman's heart supplied the vision of her dream-child, of the child she loved. Think of the other play where the kettle is said to be hissing hot and everybody shuns it with such care that onlookers wince too. Lydia thought she could write the fairy plays and the symbolic plays, all American, if Jeff liked, and he might correct the grammar.

Just then Mary Nellen, passionately but silently grieved to have lost such an intellectual feast, came in on the tail of these remarks. She brought Jeff a letter. It was a publisher's letter, and the publisher would print his book about prisoners. It said nothing whatever of trying to advertise him as a prisoner. Jeff concluded the man was a decent fellow. He swaggered a little over the letter and told the family he had to, it was such luck.

They were immensely proud and excited at once. The colonel called him "son" with emphasis, and Lydia got up and danced a little by herself. She invited Anne to join her, but Anne sat, soft-eyed and still, and was glad that way. Jeff thought it an excellent moment to tell them he was going to teach in the evening school, upon which Lydia stopped dancing.

"But I want to," he said to her, with a smile for her alone. "Won't you let me if I want to?"

"I want you to write," said Lydia obstinately.

"I shall. I shall write. And talk. It's a talking age. Everybody's chattering, except the ones that are shrieking. I'm going to see if I can't down some of the rest." _

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