Addington, so Jeffrey Blake remembered when he came home to it, was a
survival. Naive constancies to custom, habits sprung out of old
conditions and logical no more, and even the cruder loyalties to the
past, lived in it unchanged. This was as his mind conceived it. His
roots had gone deeper here than he knew while he was still a part of it,
a free citizen. The first months of his married life had been spent
here, but as his prosperity burned the more brilliantly, he and Esther
had taken up city life in winter, and for the summer had bought a large
and perfectly equipped house in a colony at the shore. That, in the
crash of his fortunes, had gone with other wreckage, and now he never
thought of it with even a momentary regret. It belonged to that fevered
time when he was always going fast and faster, as if life were a
perpetual speeding in a lightning car. But of Addington he did think, in
the years that were so much drear space for reflection, and though he
felt no desire to go back, the memory of it was cool and still. The town
had distinct social strata, the happier, he felt, in that. There were
the descendants of old shipbuilders and merchants who drew their
sufficient dividends and lived on the traditions of times long past. All
these families knew and accepted one another. Their peculiarities were
no more to be questioned than the eccentric shapes of clouds. The
Daytons, who were phenomenally ugly in a bony way, were the Daytons.
Their long noses with the bulb at the base were Dayton noses. The
Madisons, in the line of male descent from distinguished blood, drank
to an appalling extent; but they were Madisons, and you didn't interdict
your daughters' marrying them. The Mastertons ate no meat, and didn't
believe in banks. They kept their money in queer corners, and there was
so much of it that they couldn't always remember where, and the
laundress had orders to turn all stockings before wetting, and did
indeed often find bills in the toe. But the laundress, being also of
Addington, though of another stratum, recognised this as a Masterton
habit, and faithfully sought their hoarded treasure for them, and
delivered it over with the accuracy of an accountant. She wouldn't have
seen how the Mastertons could help having money in their clothes unless
they should cease being Mastertons. Nor was it amazing to their peers,
meeting them in casual talk, to realise that they were walking
depositories of coin and bills. A bandit on a lonely road would, if he
were born in Addington, have forborne to rob them. These and other
personal eccentricities Jeffrey Blake remembered and knew he should find
them ticking on like faithful clocks. It was all restful to recall, but
horrible to meet. He knew perfectly what the attitude of Addington would
be to him. Because he was Addington born, it would stand by him, and
with a double loyalty for his father's sake. That loyalty, beautiful or
stupid as you might find it, he could not bear. He hoped, however, to
escape it by making his father the briefest visit possible and then
getting off to the West. Anne had reminded him that Alston Choate had
called, and he had commented briefly:
"Oh! he's a good old boy."
But she saw, with her keen eyes gifted to read the heart, that he was
glad he had not seen him. The first really embarrassing caller came the
forenoon after Madame Beattie had arrived at Esther's, Madame Beattie
herself in the village hack with Denny, uncontrollably curious, on the
box. Madame Beattie paid twenty-five cents extracted from the tinkling
chatelaine, and dismissed Denny, but he looked over his shoulder
regretfully until he had rounded the curve of the drive. Meantime she,
in her plumes and black velvet, was climbing the steps, and Jeffrey, who
was on the side veranda, heard her and took down his feet from the rail,
preparatory to flight. But she was aware of him, and stepped briskly
round the corner. Before he reached the door she was on him.
"Here, Jeff, here!" said she peremptorily and yet kindly, as you might
detain a dog, and Jeff, pausing, gazed at her in frank disconcertment
and remarked as frankly:
"The devil!"
Madame Beattie threw back her head on its stout muscular neck and
laughed, a husky laugh much like an old man's wheeze.
"No! no!" said she, approaching him and extending an ungloved hand, "not
so bad as that. How are you? Tell its auntie."
Jeffrey laughed. He took the hand for a brief grasp, and returned to the
group of chairs, where he found a comfortable rocker for her.
"How in the deuce," said he, "did you get here so quick?"
Madame Beattie rejected the rocker and took a straight chair that kept
her affluence of curves in better poise.
"Quick after what?" she inquired, with a perfect good-nature.
Jeffrey had seated himself on the rail, his hands, too, resting on it,
and he regarded her with a queer terrified amusement, as if, in
research, he had dug up a strange object he had no use for and might
find it difficult to place. Not to name: he could name her very
accurately.
"So quick after I got here," he replied, with candour. "I tell you
plainly, Madame Beattie, there isn't a cent to be got out of me. I'm
done, broke, down and out."
Madame Beattie regarded him with an unimpaired good-humour.
"Bless you, Jeff," said she, "I know that. What are you going to do, now
you're out?"
The question came as hard as a stroke after the cushioned assurance
preceding it. Jeff met it as he might have met such a query from a man
to whom he owed no veilings of hard facts.
"I don't know," said he. "If I did know I shouldn't tell you."
Madame Beattie seemed not to suspect the possibility of rebuff.
"Esther hasn't changed a particle," said she.
Jeff scowled, not at her, but absently at the side of the house, and
made no answer.
"Aren't you coming down there?" asked Madame Beattie peremptorily, with
the air of drumming him up to some task that would have to be reckoned
with in the end. "Come, Jeff, why don't you answer? Aren't you coming
down?"
Jeffrey had ceased scowling. He had smoothed his brows out with his
hand, indeed, as if their tenseness hurt him.
"Look here," said he, "you ask a lot of questions."
She laughed again, a different sort of old laugh, a fat and throaty one.
"Did I ever tell you," said she, "what the Russian grand duke said when
I asked him why he didn't marry?"
"No," said Jeff, quite peaceably now. She was safer in the company of
remembered royalties.
Madame Beattie sought among the jingling decorations of her person for
a cigarette, found it and offered him another.
"Quite good," she told him. "An Italian count keeps me supplied. I don't
know where the creature gets them."
Then, after they had lighted up, she returned to her grand duke, and
Jeff found the story sufficiently funny and laughed at it, and she
pulled another out of her well-stored memory, and he laughed at that.
Madame Beattie told her stories excellently. She knew how little weight
they carry smothered in feminine graces and coy obliquities from the
point. Graces had long ceased to interest her as among the assets of a
life where man and woman have to work to feed themselves. Now she sat
down with her brother man and emulated him in ready give and take.
Jeffrey forsook the rail which had subtly marked his distance from her;
he took a chair, and put his feet up on the rail. Madame Beattie's
neatly shod and very small feet went up on a chair, and she tipped the
one she was sitting in at a dangerous angle while she exhaled
luxuriously, and so Lydia, coming round the corner in a simple curiosity
to know who was there, found them, laughing uproariously and dim with
smoke. Lydia had her opinions about smoking. She had seen women indulge
in it at some of the functions where she and Anne danced, but she had
never found a woman of this stamp doing it with precisely this air.
Indeed, Lydia had never seen a woman of Madame Beattie's stamp in her
whole life. She stopped short, and the two could not at once get hold of
themselves in their peal of accordant mirth. But Lydia had time to see
one thing for a certainty. Jeff's face had cleared of its brooding and
its intermittent scowl. He was enjoying himself. This, she thought, in a
sudden rage of scorn, was the kind of thing he enjoyed: not Farvie, not
Anne's gentle ministrations, but the hooting of a horrible old woman.
Madame Beattie saw her and straightened some of the laughing wrinkles
round her eyes.
"Well, well!" said she. "Who's this?"
Then Jeffrey, becoming suddenly grave, as if, Lydia thought, he ought to
be ashamed of laughing in such company, sprang to his feet, and threw
away his cigarette.
"Madame Beattie," said he, "this is Miss Lydia French."
Madame Beattie did not rise, as who, indeed, so plumed and
black-velveted should for a slip of a creature trembling with futile
rage over a brother proved wanting in ideals? She extended one hand,
while the other removed the cigarette from her lips and held it at a
becoming distance.
"And who's Miss Lydia French?" said she. Then, as Lydia, pink with
embarrassment and disapproval, made no sign, she added peremptorily,
"Come here, my dear."
Lydia came. It was true that Madame Beattie had attained to privilege
through courts and high estate. When she herself had ruled by the
prerogative of a perfect throat and a mind attuned to it, she had
imbibed a sense of power which was still dividend-paying even now,
though the throat was dead to melody. When she really asked you to do
anything, you did it, that was all. She seldom asked now, because her
attitude was all careless tolerance, keen to the main chance but lax in
exacting smaller tribute, as one having had such greater toll. But
Lydia's wilful hesitation awakened her to some slight curiosity, and she
bade her the more commandingly. Lydia was standing before her, red,
unwillingly civil, and Madame Beattie reached forward and took one of
her little plump work-roughened hands, held it for a moment, as if in
guarantee of kindliness, and then dropped it.
"Now," said she, "who are you?"
Jeffrey, seeing Lydia so put about, answered for her again, but this
time in terms of a warmth which astonished him as it did Lydia.
"She is my sister Lydia."
Madame Beattie looked at him in a frank perplexity.
"Now," said she, "what do you mean by that? No, no, my dear, don't go."
Lydia had turned by the slightest movement. "You haven't any sisters,
Jeff. Oh, I remember. It was that romantic marriage." Lydia turned back
now and looked straight at her, as if to imply if there were any
qualifying of the marriage she had a word to say. "Wasn't there another
child?" Madame Beattie continued, still to Jeff.
"Anne is in the house," said he.
He had placed a chair for Lydia, with a kindly solicitude, seeing how
uncomfortable she was; but Lydia took no notice. Now she straightened
slightly, and put her pretty head up. She looked again as she did when
the music was about to begin, and her little feet, though they kept
their decorous calm, were really beating time.
"Well, you're a pretty girl," said Madame Beattie, dropping her lorgnon.
She had lifted it for a stare and taken in the whole rebellious figure.
"Esther didn't tell me you were pretty. You know Esther, don't you?"
"No," said Lydia, in a wilful stubbornness; "I don't know her."
"You've seen her, haven't you?"
"Yes, I've seen her."
"You don't like her then?" said Madame astutely. "What's the matter with
her?"
Something gave way in Lydia. The pressure of feeling was too great and
candour seethed over the top.
"She's a horrid woman."
Or was it because some inner watchman on the tower told her Jeff himself
had better hear again what one person thought of Esther? Madame Beattie
threw back her plumed head and laughed, the same laugh she had used to
annotate the stories. Lydia immediately hated herself for having
challenged it. Jeffrey, she knew, was faintly smiling, though she could
not guess his inner commentary:
"What a little devil!"
Madame Beattie now turned to him.
"Same old story, isn't it?" she stated. "Every woman of woman born is
bound to hate her."
"Yes," said Jeff.
Lydia walked away, expecting, as she went, to be called back and
resolving that no inherent power in the voice of aged hatefulness should
force her. But Madame Beattie, having placed her, had forgotten all
about her. She rose, and brushed the ashes from her velvet curves.
"Come," she was saying to Jeffrey, "walk along with me."
He obediently picked up his hat.
"I sha'n't go home with you," said he, "if that's what you mean."
She took his arm and convoyed him down the steps, leaning wearily. She
had long ago ceased to exercise happy control over useful muscles. They
even creaked in her ears and did strange things when she made requests
of them.
"You understand," said Jeffrey, when they were pursuing a slow way along
the street, he with a chafed sense of ridiculous captivity. "I sha'n't
go into the house. I won't even go to the door."
"Stuff!" said the lady. "You needn't tell me you don't want to see
Esther."
Jeff didn't tell her that. He didn't tell her anything. He stolidly
guided her along.
"There isn't a man born that wouldn't want to see Esther if he'd seen
her once," said Madame Beattie.
But this he neither combated nor confirmed, and at the corner nearest
Esther's house he stopped, lifted the hand from his arm and placed it in
a stiff rigour at her waist. He then took off his hat, prepared to stand
while she went on. And Madame Beattie laughed.
"You're a brute," said she pleasantly, "a dear, sweet brute. Well,
you'll come to it. I shall tell Esther you love her so much you hate
her, and she'll send out spies after you. Good-bye. If you don't come,
I'll come again."
Jeffrey made no answer. He watched her retreating figure until it turned
in at the gate, and then he wheeled abruptly and went back. An instinct
of flight was on him. Here in the open street he longed for walls, only
perhaps because he knew how well everybody wished him and their kindness
he could not meet.
Madame Beattie found Esther at the door, waiting. She was an excited
Esther, bright-eyed, short of breath.
"Where have you been?" she demanded.
Madame Beattie took off her hat and stabbed the pin through it. Her
toupee, deranged by the act, perceptibly slid, but though she knew it by
the feel, that eccentricity did not, in the company of a mere niece,
trouble her at all. She sank into a chair and laid her hat on the
neighbouring stand.
"Where have you been?" repeated Esther, a pulse of something like anger
beating through the words.