The colonel thrived, about this time, on that fallacious feeling, born
of hope eternal, that he was growing young. It is one of the
precautionary lies of nature, to keep us going, that, the instant we are
tinkered in any part, we ignore its merely being fitted up for shortened
use. Hope eternal tells us how much stronger it is than it was before.
If you rub unguent into your scanty hair you can feel it grow, as a poet
hears the grass. A nostrum on your toil-hardened hands brings back, to
keen anticipation, the skin of youth. All mankind is prepared to a
perfect degree of sensitiveness for response to the quack doctor's art.
We believe so fast that he need hardly do more than open his mouth to
cry his wares. The colonel, doing a good day's work and getting tired
enough to sleep at night, felt, on waking, as if life were to last the
measure of his extremest appetite. The household went on wings, so
clever and silent was Anne in administration and so efficient Mary
Nellen. Only Anne was troubled in her soul because Lydia would go
slipping away for these secret sessions with Madame Beattie. She even
proposed going with her once or twice, but Lydia said she had put it off
for that night; and next time she slipped away more cleverly. Once in
these calls Lydia met Esther at the head of the stairs, and they said
"How do you do?" in an uncomfortable way, Esther with reproving dignity
and Lydia in a bravado that looked like insolence. And then Esther sent
for Alston Choate, and in the evening he came.
Esther was a pathetic pale creature, as she met him in the dusk of the
candle-lighted room, little more than a child, he thought, as he noted
her round arms and neck within the film of her white dress. Esther did
not need to assume a pathos for the moment's needs. She was very sorry
for herself. They sat there by the windows, looking out under the shade
of the elms, and for a little neither spoke. Esther had some primitive
feminine impulses to put down. Alston had an extreme of pity that gave
him fervencies of his own. To Esther it was as natural as breathing to
ask a man to fight her battles for her, and to cling to him while she
told him what battles were to be fought. Alston had the chafed feeling
of one who cannot follow with an unmixed ardency the lines his heart
would lead him. He was always angry, chiefly because she had to suffer
so, after the hideousness of her undeserved destiny, and yet he saw no
way to help that might not make a greater hardship for her. At last she
spoke, using his name, and his heart leaped to it.
"Alston, what am I going to do?"
"Things going badly?" he asked her, in a voice moved enough to hearten
her. "What is it that's different?"
"Everything. Aunt Patricia has those horrible men come here and talk
with her--"
"It's ridiculous of her," said Alston, "but there's no harm in it.
They're not a bad lot, and she's an old lady, and she won't stay here
forever."
"Oh, yes, she will. She gets her food, at least, and I don't believe she
could pay for even that abroad. And this sort of thing amuses her. It's
like gipsies or circus people or something. It's horrible."
"What does your grandmother say?"
"Nothing."
"She must stand for it, in a way, or Madame Beattie couldn't do it."
"I don't believe grandmother understands fully. She's so old."
"She isn't tremendously old."
"Oh, but she looks so. When you see her in her nightcap--it's horrible,
the whole thing, grandmother and all, and here I am shut up with it."
"I'm sorry," said Alston, in a low tone. "I'm devilish sorry."
"And I want to go away," said Esther, her voice rising hysterically, so
that Alston nervously hoped she wouldn't cry. "But I can't do that. I
haven't enough to live on, away from here, and I'm afraid."
"Esther," said he, daring at last to bring out the doubt that assailed
him when he mused over her by himself, "just what do you mean by saying
you are afraid?"
"You know," said Esther, almost in a whisper. She had herself in hand
now.
"Yes. But tell me again. Tell me explicitly."
"I'm afraid," said Esther, "of him."
"Of your husband? If that's it, say it."
"I'm afraid of Jeff. He's been in here. I told you so. He took hold of
me. He dragged me by my wrists. Alston, how can you make me tell you!"
The appeal sickened him. He got up and walked away to the mantel where
the candles were, and stood there leaning against the shelf. He heard
her catch her breath, and knew she was near sobs. He came back to his
chair, and his voice had resumed so much of its judicial tone that her
breath grew stiller in accord.
"Esther," said he, "you'd better tell me everything."
"I can't," said she, "everything. You are--" the rest came in a
startling gush of words--"you are the last man I could tell."
It was a confession, a surrender, and he felt the tremendous weight of
it. Was he the last man she could tell? Was she then, poor child,
withholding herself from him as he, in decency, was aloof from her? He
pulled himself together.
"Perhaps I can't do anything for you," he said, "in my own person. But I
can see that other people do. I can see that you have counsel."
"Alston," said she, in what seemed to him a beautiful simplicity, "why
can't you do anything for me?"
This was so divinely childlike and direct that he had to tell her.
"Esther, don't you see? If you have grounds for action against your
husband, could I be the man to try your case? Could I? When you have
just said I am the last man you could tell? I can't get you a
divorce----" he stopped there. He couldn't possibly add, "and then marry
you afterward."
"I see," said Esther, yet raging against him inwardly. "You can't help
me."
"I can help you," said Alston. "But you must be frank with me. I must
know whether you have any case at all. Now answer me quite simply and
plainly. Does Jeff support you?"
"Oh, no," said Esther.
"He gives you no money whatever?"
"None."
"Then he's a bigger rascal than I've been able to think him."
"I believe----" said Esther, and stopped.
"What do you believe?"
"I think the money must come from his father. He sends it to me."
"Then there is money?"
"Why, yes," said Esther irritably, "there's some money, or how could I
live?"
"But you told me there was none."
"How do you think I could live here with grandmother and expect her to
dress me? Grandmother's very old. She doesn't see the need of things."
"It isn't a question of what you can live on," said Alston. "It's a
question of Jeff's allowing you money, or not allowing you money. Does
he, or does he not?"
"His father sends me some," said Esther, in a voice almost inaudible. It
sounded sulky.
"Regularly?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Don't you know?"
"Yes. He sends it regularly."
"How often?"
"Four times a year."
"Haven't you every reason to believe that money is from Jeff?"
"No," said Esther. "I haven't any reason to think so at all. His father
signs the cheques."
"Isn't it probable that his father would do that when Jeff was in
prison, and that he should continue doing it now?"
Esther did not answer. There was something in the silence of the room,
something in the peculiar feel of the atmosphere that made Alston
certain she had balked. He recognised that pause in the human animal
under inquisition, and for a wonder, since he had never been wound up to
breaking point himself, knew how it felt. The machinery in the brain had
suddenly stopped. He was not surprised that Esther could not go on. It
was not obstinacy that deterred her. It was panic. He had put her, he
knew, to too harsh a test. Now he had to soothe her affrighted mind and
bring it back to its clear uses; and since he could honestly do it, as
the lawyer exercising professional medicine, he gave himself gladly to
the task.
"Esther," he said, "it is infernal to ask you these personal questions.
But you will have to bring yourself to answer them if we are to decide
whether you have any case and whether I can send you to another man. But
if you do engage counsel, you'll have to talk to him freely. You'll have
to answer all sorts of questions. It's a pretty comprehensive thing to
admit the law into your private life, because you've got to give it
every right there. You'll be questioned. And you'll have to answer."
Esther sat looking at him steadily. As she looked, her pale cheek seemed
to fill and flush and a light ran into her eyes, until the glow spilled
over and dazzled him, like something wavering between him and her. He
had never seen that light in her eyes, nor indeed the eyes of any woman,
nor would he have said that he could bear to see it there unsummoned.
Yet had he not summoned it unconsciously, hard as he was trying to play
the honest game between an unattached woman and a man who sees her
fetters where she has ceased to see them, but can only feel them gall
her? Had not the inner spirit of him been speaking through all this
interview to the inner spirit of her, and was she not willing now to let
it cry out and say to him, "I am here "? Esther was willing to cry out.
In the bewilderment of it, he did not know whether it was superb of her,
though he would have felt it in another woman to be shameless. The
lustrous lights of her eyes dwelt upon him, unwavering. Then her lips
confirmed them.
"Well," said Esther, "isn't it worth it?"
Alston got up and rather blindly went out of the room. In the street,
after the summer breeze had been touching his forehead and yet not
cooling it, he realised he was carrying his hat in his hand, and put it
on hastily. He was Addington to the backbone, when he was not roaming
the fields of fiction, and one of the rules of Addington was against
looking queer. He walked to his office and let himself in. The windows
were closed and the room had the crude odour of public life: dust, stale
tobacco and books. He threw up the windows and hesitated an instant by
the gas jet. It was his habit, when the outer world pressed him too
heavily, to plunge instantly into a book. But books were no anodyne for
the turmoil of this night. Nor was the light upon these familiar
furnishings. He sat down by the window, laid his arms on the sill and
looked out over the meadows, unseen now but throwing their damp
exhalations up to him through the dark. His heart beat hard, and in the
physical vigour of its revolt he felt a fierce pleasure; but he was
shamed all through in some way he felt he could not meet. Had he seen a
new Esther to-night, an Esther that had not seemed to exist under the
soft lashes of the woman he thought he knew so well? He had a stiffly
drawn picture of what a woman ought to be. She really conformed to
Addington ideals. He believed firmly that the austere and noble dwelt
within woman as Addington had framed her. It would have given him no
pleasure to find a savage hidden under pretty wiles. But Alston believed
so sincerely in the control of man over the forces of life, of which
woman was one, that, if Esther had stepped backward from her bright
estate into a barbarous challenge, it was his fault, he owned, not hers.
He should have guided her so that she stayed within hallowed precincts.
He should have upheld her so that she did not stumble over these
pitfalls of the earth. It is a pity those ideals of old Addington that
made Alston Choate believe in women as little lower than the angels
and, if they proved themselves lower, not really culpable because they
are children and not rightly guided--it is a pity that garden cannot
keep on blooming even out of the midden of the earth. But he had kept
the garden blooming. Addington had a tremendous grip on him. It was not
that he had never seen other customs, other manners. He had travelled a
reasonable amount for an Addington man, but always he had been able to
believe that Eden is what it was when there was but one man in it and
one woman. There was, of course, too, the serpent. But Alston was
fastidious, and he kept his mind as far away from the serpent as
possible. He thought of his mother and sister, and instantly ceased
thinking of them, because to them Esther was probably a sweet person,
and he knew they would not have recognised the Esther he saw to-night.
Perhaps, though he did not know this, his mother might.
Mrs. Choate was a large, almost masculine looking woman, very plain
indeed, Addington owned, but with beautiful manners. She was not like
Alston, not like his sister, who had a highbred charm, something in the
way of Alston's own. Mother was different. She was of the Griswolds who
had land in Cuba and other islands, and were said to have kept slaves
there while the Choates were pouring blood into the abolitionist cause.
There was a something about mother quite different from anybody in
Addington. She conformed beautifully, but you would have felt she
understood your not conforming. She never came to grief over the
neutralities of the place, and you realised it was because she expressed
so few opinions. You might have said she had taken Addington for what it
was and exhausted it long ago. Her gaze was an absent, yet, of late
years, a placid one. She might have been dwelling upon far-off islands
which excited in her no desire to be there. She was too cognisant of
the infinite riches of time that may be supposed to make up eternity. If
she was becalmed here in Addington, some far-off day a wind would fill
her sails and she might seek the farther seas. And, like her son, she
read novels.
Alston, going home at midnight, saw the pale glimmer in her room and
knew she was at it there. He went directly upstairs and stopped at her
door, open into the hall. He was not conscious of having anything to
say. Only he did feel a curious hesitation for the moment. Here in
Addington was an Esther whom he had just met for the first time. Here
was another woman who had not one of Esther's graces, but whom he adored
because she was the most beautiful of mothers. Would she be horrified at
the little strange animal that had looked at him out of Esther's eyes?
He had never seen his mother shocked at anything. But that, he told
himself, was because she was so calm. The Woman's Club of Addington
could have told him it was because she had poise. She looked up, as he
stood in the doorway, and laid her book face downward on the bed.
Usually when he came in like this she moved the reading candle round, so
that the hood should shield his eyes. But to-night she gently turned it
toward him, and Alston did not realise that was because his fagged face
and disordered hair had made her anxious to understand the quicker what
had happened to him.