Chapter 40

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_ CHAPTER XL

It was strangely neutral, the hue of the moment when they discovered she had gone. They had not called her in the morning, but Anne had listened many times at the door, and Lydia had prepared a choice tray for her, and Mary Nellen tried to keep the coals at the right ardour for toasting. Jeff had stayed in the house, walking uneasily about, and at a little after ten he came out of his chair as if he suddenly recognised the folly of staying in it so apathetically.

"Go up," he said to Lydia. "Knock. Then try the door."

Lydia got no answer to her knock, and the door yielded to her. There was the bed untouched, on the hearth the cold ashes of last night's fire. She stood stupidly looking until Jeff, listening at the foot of the stairs, called to her and then himself ran up. He read the chill order of the room and his eyes came back to Lydia's face.

"Oh," said Lydia, "will he be good to her?"

"Yes," said Jeff, "he'll be good enough. That isn't it. What a fool I am! I ought to have watched her. But Esther wasn't daring. She never did anything by herself. I couldn't get to New York now--" He paused to calculate.

He ran downstairs, and without speaking to his father, on an irrational impulse, over to Madam Bell's. There he came unprepared upon the strangest sight he had ever seen in Addington. Sophy, her cynical, pert face actually tied up into alarm, red, creased and angry, was standing in the library, and Madam Bell, in a wadded wrapper and her nightcap, was counting out money into her trembling hand. To Sophy, it was as terrifying as receiving money from the dead. She had always looked upon Madam Bell as virtually dead, and here she was ordering her to quit the house and giving her a month's wages, with all the practicality of a shrewd accountant. Madam Bell was an amazing person to look at in her wadded gown and felt slippers, with the light of life once more flickering over her parchment face.

"Rhoda Knox is gone," she announced to Jeff, the moment he walked in. "I sent her yesterday. This girl is going as soon as she can pack."

Jeff gave Sophy a directing nod and she slipped out of the room. She was as afraid of him as of the masterful dead woman in the quilted wrapper. Anything might happen since the resurrection of Madam Bell.

"Where is she?" asked Jeff, when he had closed the door.

"Esther?" said Madam Bell. "Gone. She's taken every stitch she had that was worth anything. Martha told me she was going for good."

"Who's Martha? Oh, yes, yes--Madame Beattie."

The light faded for an instant from the parchment face.

"Don't tell me," she sharply bade him, "Esther's coming back?"

"No," said Jeff. "If she does, she shall come to me."

He went away without another word, and Madam Bell called after him:

"Tell Amabel to look round and get me some help. I won't have one of these creatures that have been ruling here--except the cook. Tell Amabel to come and see me."

Jeff did remember to do that, but not until he had telephoned New York, and got his meagre fact. One of the boats sailing that morning had, among its passengers, J. L. Reardon and Mrs. Reardon. He did not inquire further. All that day he stayed at home, foolishly, he knew, lest some message come for him, not speaking of his anxiety even to Lydia, and very much let alone. That Lydia must have given his father some palliating explanation he guessed, for when Jeff said to him:

"Father, Esther's gone abroad," the colonel answered soothingly:

"Yes, my son, I know. It is in every way best."

* * * * *

The next week came the election, and Jeff had not got into the last grip of contest. He had meant to do some persuasive speaking for Alston. He thought he could rake in all Madame Beattie's contingent, now that she was away, still leaving them so friendly. But he was dull and absent-minded. Esther's going had been a defeat another braver, cleverer man, he believed, need not have suffered. At Lydia he had hardly looked since the day of Esther's going. To them all he was a closed book, tight-lipped, a mask of brooding care. Lydia thought she understood. He was raging over what he might have done. Nothing was going to make Lydia rage, she determined. She had settled down into the even swing of her one task: to help him out, to watch him, above all, whatever the emergency, to be ready.

Once, when Jeff was trying to drag his flagging energies into election work again, he met Andrea, and stopped to say he would be down at Mill End that night. But Andrea seemed, while keeping his old fealty, betokened by shining eyes and the most open smiles, to care very little about him in a political capacity. He even soothingly suggested that he should not come. Better not, Andrea said. Too much work for nothing. They knew already what to do. They understood.

"Understand what?" Jeff asked him.

They had been told before the signora went, said Andrea. She had explained it all. They would vote, every man of them. They knew how.

"It's easy enough to learn how," said Jeff impatiently. "The thing is to vote for the right man. That's what I'm coming down for."

Andrea backed away, deferentially implying that Jeff would be most welcome always, but that it was a pity he should be put to so much pains. And he did go, and found only a few scattering listeners. The others, he learned afterward, were peaceably at a singing club of their own. They had not, Jeff thought, with mortification, considered him of enough importance to listen to.

Weedon Moore, in these last days, seemed to be scoring; at least circumstance gave him his own head and he was much in evidence. He spoke a great deal, flamboyantly, on the wrongs suffered by labour, and his own consecration to the holy joy of righting them. He spoke in English wholly, because Andrea, with picturesque misery, had regretted his own inability to interpret. Andrea's throat hurt him now, he said. He had been forbidden to interpret any more. Weedie mourned the defection of Andrea. It had, he felt, made a difference, not only in the size but the responsiveness of his audiences. Sometimes he even felt they came to be amused, or to lull his possible suspicion of having lost their old allegiance. But they came.

That year every man capable of moving on two legs or of being supported into a carriage, turned out to vote. Something had been done by infection. Jeff had done it through his fervour, and Madame Beattie a thousand times more by pure dramatic eccentricity. People were at least amusedly anxious to see how it was going, and old Addingtonians felt it a cheerful duty to stand by Alston Choate. The Mill Enders voted late, all of them, so late that Weedon Moore, who kept track of their activities, wondered if they meant to vote at all. But they did vote, they also to the last man, and a rumour crept about that some irregularity was connected with the ballot. But whatever they did, it was by concerted action, after a definite design. Weedon Moore, an agitated figure, meeting Jeff, was so worried and excited by it that he had to cackle his anxiety.

"What are they doing?" he said, stopping before Jeff on the pavement. "They've got up some damned thing or other. It's illegal, Blake. I give you my word it's illegal."

"What is it?" Jeff inquired, looking down on Weedie with something of the feeling once popularly supposed to be the desert of toads before that warty personality had been advertised as beneficent to gardens.

"I don't know what it is," said Moore, almost weeping. "But it's some damned trick, and I'll be even with them."

"If they elect you--" Jeff began coldly.

"They won't elect me," said Moore, from his general overthrow. "Six months ago every man Jack of 'em was promised to me. Somebody's tampered with 'em. I don't know whether it's you or Madame Beattie. She led me on, a couple of weeks ago, into telling her what I knew about trickery at the polls--"

"All you knew?" Jeff could not resist saying. "All you know about trickery, Weedie?"

"As a lawyer," said Weedie, "I told her about writing in names. I told her about stickers--"

"What did she want to know for?" Jeff asked. He, too, was roused to sudden startled interest.

"You know as much as I do. She was interested in my election, said she was speaking for me, wanted to know how we managed to crowd in an extra name not on the ballot. Had heard of that. It worried her, she said. Blake, that old woman is as clever as the devil."

Jeff made his way past the fuming candidate and walked on, speculating. Madame Beattie had assuredly done something. She had left the inheritance of her unleashed energy, in some form, behind her.

He did not go home that late afternoon and in the early evening strolled about the streets, once meeting Choate and passing on Weedie's agonised forecast. Alston was mildly interested. He thought she couldn't have done anything effective. Her line seemed to be the wildly dramatic. Stage tricks wouldn't tip the scales, when it came to balloting. Whatever she had done, Alston, in his heart, hoped it would defeat him, and leave him to the rich enjoyment of his play-day office and his books. His mother could realise then that he had done his best, and leave him to a serene progress toward middle age. But when he got as far as that he remembered that his defeat would magnify Weedon Moore and miserably concluded he ought rather to suffer the martyrdom of office. Would Anne like him if he were defeated? He, too, was wandering about the town, and the bravado of his suit to her came back to him. It was easy to seek her out, it seemed so natural to be with her, so strange to live without her. Laughing a little, though nervously, at himself, he walked up the winding pathway to her house and asked for her. No, he would not come in, if she would be so good as to come to him. Anne came, the warmth of the firelight on her cheeks and hands. She had been sitting by the hearth reading to the colonel. Alston took her hands and drew her out to him.

"It's not very cold," he said. "One minute, Anne. Won't you love me if I am not a mayor?"

Anne didn't answer. She stood there, her hands in his, and Alston thought she was the stillest thing he had ever seen.

"You might be a snow maiden," he said. "Or an ice maiden. Or marble. Anne, I've got to melt you if you're snow and ice. Are you?" Then all he could think of was the old foolishness, "Darling Anne."

When he kissed her, immediately upon this, it was in quite a commonplace way, as if they were parting for an hour or so and had the habit of easy kissing.

"Why don't you speak," said Alston, in a rage of delight in her, "you little dumb person, you?"

Anne did better. She got her hands out of his and lifted them to draw his face again to hers.

"How silly we are," said Anne. "And the door is swinging open, and it'll let all the cold in on Farvie's feet."

Alston said a few more things of his own, wild things he was surprised at and forgot immediately and that she was always to remember, and they really parted now with the ceremonial of easy kissing. But both of them had forgotten about mayors.

Jeff, with the returns to take her, that night before going home ran in to Amabel. He believed he ought to be the first to tell her. She would be disappointed, for after all Weedon Moore was her candidate. As he got to the top of the steps Moore came scuttling out at the front door and Jeff stood aside to let him pass. He walked in, calling to her as he went. She did not answer, but he found her in the library, standing, a figure of quivering dignity, of majesty hurt and humbled. When she saw him Amabel's composure broke, and she gave a sob or two, and then twice said his name.

"What is it?" said Jeff.

He went to her and she faced him, the colour running over her face.

"That man--" she said, and stopped.

"Moore?"

"Yes. He has insulted me."

"Moore?" he repeated.

"He has asked me--Jeff, I am a woman of sixty and over--he has asked me to marry him."

"Wait a minute," said Jeff. "I've forgotten something."

He wheeled away from her and ran out and down the path after Weedie Moore. Weedie's legs, being short, had not covered ground very fast. Jeff had no trouble in overtaking him.

In less than ten minutes, he walked into Miss Amabel's library again, a little breathless, with eyes shining somewhat and his nostrils big, it might be thought, from haste. She had composed herself, and he knew her confidence was neither to be repeated nor enlarged upon. There she sat awaiting him, dignity embodied, a little more tense than usual and her head held high. All her ancestors might have been assembled about her, invisible but exacting, and she accounting to them for the indignity that had befallen her, and assuring them it was to her, as it would have been to them, incredible. She was even a little stiff with Jeff at first, because she had told him what she would naturally have hidden, like a disgraceful secret. Jeff understood her perfectly. She had met Weedon Moore on philanthropic grounds, an equal so long as they were both avowed philanthropists. But when the little man aspired unduly and ventured to pull at the hem of her maiden gown, Christian tolerance went by the board and she was Addington and he was Weedon Moore. She would never be able to summon Christian virtues to the point of a community of interests with him again. Jeff understood Moore, too, Moore who was probably on his way home at the moment getting himself together after a disconcerting bodily shock such as he had not encountered since their old school days when he had done "everything--and told of it ". He had counted on her sympathy over his defeat, and chosen that moment to make his incredible plea.

"Did you do what you had forgotten?" Amabel asked.

"Yes," said Jeff glibly. "I did it quite easily. I've come to tell you the news. Perhaps you know it already. Alston Choate's elected."

"Yes," said Miss Amabel, in a stately manner. "I had just heard it."

"I'm going round there," said Jeff, "to congratulate his mother. It's her campaign, you know. He never'd have run if it hadn't been for her."

"I didn't know Mrs. Choate had any such interest in local affairs," said Amabel.

She was aware Jeff was smoothing her down, ruffled feather after feather, and she was pathetically grateful. If she hadn't kept a strong grip on herself, her lip would have been quivering still.

"In a way she's not. She doesn't care about Addington as we do, but she hates to see old traditions go to the dogs. I've an idea she'll stand behind Alston and really run the show. Put on your bonnet and come with me. It's a shame to stay in the house a night like this."

She still knew his purpose and acquiesced in it. He hated to leave her to solitary thoughts of the indignity Moore had offered her, and also she hated to be left. She put on her thick cloak and her bonnet--there were no assumptions with Miss Amabel that she wasn't over sixty--and they went forth. But Mrs. Choate was not at home, nor was Mary. The maid thought they had gone down town for the return. Jeff told her Mr. Choate was to be mayor--no one in Addington seemed to pay much attention to the rest of the ticket that year--and she returned quite prosaically, "God save us!"

"Save us from Alston?" asked Jeff, as they went away, and Miss Amabel forgot Moore and laughed.

They went on down town with the purpose of seeing life, as Jeff said, and got into a surge of shiny-eyed Mill Enders who looked to Jeff as if they were commiserating him although it was his candidate that won. Andrea, indeed, in the moment of their meeting and parting almost wept over him. And face to face they met Lydia.

"I've lost Farvie," she said, "and Anne. Can't I come with you?"

So they went on together, Lydia much excited and Miss Amabel puzzled, in her wistful way, at finding social Addington and working Addington shoulder to shoulder in their extraordinary interest in the election though never in the common roads of life.

"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 god. 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 passed 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.

[THE END]
Alice Brown's Novel: Prisoner

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