Jeffrey himself had not seen the interview. He had only a mild interest
in Addington newspapers, and Anne had carefully secreted the family copy
lest the colonel should come on it. But on the afternoon when Esther was
receiving subtly sympathetic townswomen, Jeffrey, between the rows of
springing corn, heard steps and looked up from his hoeing. It was Lydia,
the _Argosy_ in hand. She was flushed not only with triumph because
something had begun at last, but before this difficulty of entering on
the tale with Jeff. Pretty child! his heart quickened at sight of her in
her blue dress, sweet arms and neck bare because Lydia so loved freedom.
But, in that his heart did respond to her, he spoke the more brusquely,
showing he had no right to find her fair.
"What is it?"
Lydia, in a hurry, the only way she knew of doing it, extended the
paper, previously folded to expose the headline of Madame Beattie's
name. Jeff, his hoe at rest in one hand, took the paper and looked at it
frowningly, incredulously. Then he read. A word or two escaped him near
the end. Lydia did not quite hear what the word was, but she thought he
was appropriately swearing. Her eyes glistened. She had begun to
agitate. Jeff had finished and crushed the paper violently together,
with no regard to folds.
"Oh, don't," said Lydia. "You can't get any more. They couldn't print
them fast enough."
Jeff passed it to her with a curt gesture of relinquishing any last
interest in it.
"That's Moore," he said. "It's like him."
Lydia was at once relieved. She had been afraid he wasn't going to
discuss it at all.
"You don't blame her, do you?" she prompted.
"Madame Beattie?" He was thinking hard and scowling. "No."
"Anne blames her. She says no lady would have done it."
"Oh, you can't call names. That's Madame Beattie," said Jeff absently.
"She's neither principles nor morals nor the kind of shame other women
feel. You can't judge Madame Beattie."
"So I say," returned Lydia, inwardly delighted and resolving to lose no
time in telling Anne. "I like her. She's nice. She's clever. She knows
how to manage people. O Jeff, I wish you'd talk with her."
"About this?" He was still speaking absently. "It wouldn't do any good.
If it amuses her or satisfies her devilish feeling toward Esther to go
on talking and that slob will get it into print--and he will--you can't
stop her."
"What do you mean by her feeling toward Esther?" Lydia's heart beat so
that she drew a long breath to get it into swing again.
"We can't go into that," said Jeff. "It runs back a long way. Only
everything she can do to worry Esther or frighten her--why, she'd do it,
that's all. That's Madame Beattie."
Lydia knew this was the path that led to the necklace. Why couldn't she
tell him she knew the story and enlist him on Madame Beattie's side and
hers, the side that was fighting for him and nothing else? But she did
not dare. All she could do was to say, her hands cold against each other
and her voice choked:
"O Jeff, I wish you'd give this up."
"What?"
He was recalled now from memories the printed paper had wakened in him,
and looking at her kindly. At least Lydia was sure he was, because his
voice sounded so dear. She could not know his eyes were full of an
adoring gentleness over her who seemed to him half child, half maiden,
and tumultuously compassionate. She made a little timid gesture of the
hand over the small area about them.
"This," she said. "You mustn't stay here and hoe corn. You must get into
business and show people--"
Her voice choked. It refused absurdly to go on.
"Why, Lydia," said he, "I thought you knew. This is the only way for a
man to keep alive. When I've got a hoe in my hand--" He could not quite
explain it. He had always had a flow of words on paper, but since he had
believed his life was finished his tongue had been more and more
lethargic. It would not obey his brain because, after all, what could
the brain report of his distrustful heart? Lydia had a moment of bitter
mortification because she had not seemed to understand. Anne understood,
she knew, and had tried, with infinite patience, to help on this queer
experiment, both for Jeff's sake and Farvie's. Tears rushed to her eyes.
"I can't help it," she said. "I want you to be doing something real."
"Lydia!" said Jeff. His kind, persuasive voice was recalling her to some
ground of conviction where she could share his certainty that things
were going as well as they could. "This is almost the only real thing in
the world--the ground. About everything else is a game. This isn't a
game. It's making something grow that won't hurt anybody when it's
grown. I can't harm anybody by planting corn. And I can sell the corn,"
said Jeff, with a lighter shade of voice. Lydia knew he was smiling to
please her. "Denny's going to peddle it out for me at backdoors. I'd do
it myself, only I'm afraid they'd buy to help on 'poor Jeffrey Blake'."
When he spoke of the ground Lydia gave the loose dirt a little scornful
kick and got the powdered dust into her neat stockings. She, too, loved
the ground and all the sweet usages of homely life; but not if they kept
him from a spectacular triumph. She was desperate enough to venture her
one big plea.
"Jeff, you know you've got a lot of money to earn--to pay back--"
And there she stopped. He was regarding her gravely, but the moment he
spoke she knew it was not in any offence.
"Lydia, I give you my word I couldn't do the kind of thing you want me
to. I've found that out at last. You'd like me to cut into the market
and make a lot of money and throw it back at the people I owe. I
couldn't do it. My brain wouldn't let me. It's stopped--stopped short. A
man knows when he's done for. I'm absolutely and entirely done. All I
hope for is to keep father from finding it out. He seems to be getting
his nerve back, and if he really does that I may be able to go away and
do something besides dig. But it won't be anything spectacular, Lydia.
It isn't in me."
Lydia turned away from him, and he could fancy the bright tears dropping
as she walked. "Oh, dear!" he heard her say. "Oh, dear!"
"Lydia!" he called, in an impatience of tenderness and misery. "Come
back here. Don't you know I'd do anything on earth I could for you? But
there's nothing I can do. You wouldn't ask a lame man to dance. There!
that shows you. When it comes to dancing you can understand. I'm a
cripple, Lydia. Don't you see?"
She had turned obediently, and now she smeared the tears away with one
small hand.
"You don't understand," she said. "You don't understand a thing. We've
thought of it all this time, Anne and I, how you'd come out and be
proved not guilty--"
"But, Lydia," he said gravely, "I was guilty. And besides being guilty
of things the courts condemned me for, I was guilty of things I had to
condemn myself for afterward. I wasn't a criminal merely. I was a waster
and a fool."
"Yes," said Lydia, looking at him boldly, "and if you were guilty who
made you so? Who pushed you on?"
She had never entirely abandoned her theory of Reardon. He and Esther,
in her suspicion, stood side by side. Looking at him, she rejoiced in
what she thought his confirmation. The red had run into his face and he
looked at her with brightened eyes.
"You don't know anything about it," he said harshly. "I did what I did.
And I got my medicine. And if there's a decent impulse left in me
to-day, it was because I got it."
Lydia walked away through the soft dirt and felt as if she were dancing.
He had looked guilty when she had asked him who pushed him on. He and
she both knew it was Esther, and a little more likelihood of Madame
Beattie's blackguarding Esther in print must rouse him to command the
situation.
Jeffrey finished his row, and then hurried into the house. It was the
late afternoon, and he went to his room and dressed, in time for supper.
Lydia, glancing at him as he left the table, thought exultantly: "I've
stirred him up, at least. Now what is he going to do?"
Jeffrey went strolling down the drive, and quickened his steps when the
shrubbery had him well hidden from the windows. Something assured him it
was likely Weedon Moore lived still in the little sharp-gabled house on
a side street where he had years ago. His mother had been with him then,
and Jeff remembered Miss Amabel had scrupulously asked for her when
Moore came to call. The little house was unchanged, brightly painted,
gay in diamond trellis-work and picked out with scarlet tubs of
hydrangea in the yard. A car stood at the gate, and Weedon, buttoning
his coat, was stepping in. The car ran past, and Jeff saw that the man
beside Moore was the interpreter of that night at the old circus-ground.
"So," he thought, "more ginger for the labouring man."
He turned about and walking thoughtfully, balked of his design,
reflected with distaste that grew into indignation on Moore's incredible
leadership. It seemed monstrous. Here was ignorance fallen into the
hands of the demagogue. It was an outrage on the decencies. And then
Madame Beattie waved to him from Denny's hack, and he stepped into the
road to speak to her.
"I was going to see you," she said. "Get in here."
Jeff got in and disposed his length as best he might in the cramped
interior, redolent now of varied scents, all delicate but mingled to a
suffocating potency.
"Tell him to drive along outside the town," she bade. "Were you going to
see me?"
"No," said Jeffrey, after executing her order. "I've told you I can't go
to see you."
"Because Esther made that row? absurd! It's Susan's house."
"I'm not likely to go into it," said Jeff drily, "unless I am
summoned."
"She's a fool."
"But I don't mind telling you where I was going," said Jeff. "I was
going to lick Weedon Moore--or the equivalent."
"Not on account of my interview?" said Madame Beattie, laughing very far
down in her anatomy. Her deep laugh, Jeff always felt, could only have
been attained by adequate support in the diaphragm. "Bless you, dear
boy, you needn't blame him. I went to him. Went to his office. Blame
me."
"Oh, I blame you all right," said Jeff, "but you're not a responsible
person. A chap that owns a paper is."
"I wish you'd met him," she said, in great enjoyment. "Where'd he go,
Jeffrey? Can't we find him now?"
"I suspect he went to the old circus-ground. I caught him there talking
to Poles and Finns and Italians and Greeks, telling them the country was
no good and they owned it."
"Why, the fellow can't speak to them." Madame Beattie, being a fluent
linguist, had natural scorn of a tubby little New Englander who said
"ma'am ".
"Oh, he had an interpreter."
"We'll drive along there," said Madame Beattie. "You tell Denny. I
should dearly like to see them. Poles, do you say? I didn't know there
were such people in town."
Jeffrey, rather curious himself, told Denny, and they bowled cumbrously
along. He felt in a way obliged to proffer a word or two about the
interview.
"What the devil made you do it anyway?" he asked her; but Madame Beattie
chuckled and would not answer.