The Prisoner Part 45

"We can't get too homesick for old Addington while we have you to look at," said he.

She stopped working for one pod's s.p.a.ce and looked at him.

"Are you homesick for old Addington?" she asked. "Alston Choate says that. He says it's a homesick world."

"He's dead right," said Jeff.

"What do you want of old Addington?" said she. "What do we need we haven't got?"

Jeff thought of several words, but they wouldn't answer. Beauty? No, old Addington was oftener funny than not. There was no beauty in a pint-pot.

Even the echoes there rang thin. Peace? But he was the last man to go to sleep over the task of the day.

"I just want old Addington," he said. "Anyway I want to drop in to it as you'd drop into the movies. I want to hesitate on the brink of doing things that shock people. n.o.body's shocked at anything now. I want to see the blush of modesty. Amabel, it's all faded out."

She looked at him, distressed.

"Jeff," said she, "do you think our young people are not--what they were?"

He loved her beautiful indirection.

"I don't want 'em to be what they were," said he, "if they have to lie to do it. I don't know exactly what I do want. Only I'm homesick for old Addington. Amabel, what should you say to my going into kindergarten work?"

"You always did joke me," said she. "Get a rise out of me? Is that what you call it?"

"I'm as sober as an owl," said Jeff. "I want these pesky Poles and Syrians and all the rest of them to learn what they're up against when they come over here to run the government. I'm on the verge, Amabel, of hiring a hall and an interpreter, and teaching 'em something about American history, if there's anything to teach that isn't disgraceful."

"And yet," said she, "when Weedon Moore talks to those same men you go and break up the meeting."

"But bless you, dear old girl," said Jeff, "Weedon was teaching 'em the rules for wearing the red flag. And I'm going to give 'em a straight tip about Old Glory. When I've got through with 'em, you won't know 'em from New Englanders dyed in the wool."

She meditated.

"If only you and Weedon would talk it over," she ventured, "and combine your forces. You're both so clever, Jeff."

"Combine with Weedie? Not on your life. Why, I'm Weedie's antidote. He preaches riot and sedition, and I'm the dose taken as soon as you can get it down."

Then she looked at him, though affectionately, in sad doubt, and Jeff saw he had, in some way, been supplanted in her confidence though not in her affection. He wouldn't push it. Amabel was too precious to be lost for kindergarten work.

When they had talked a little more, but about topics less dangerous, the garden and the drought, he went away; but Amabel padded after him, bowl in hand.

"Jeff," said she, "you must let me say how glad I am you and Weedon are really seeing things from the same point of view."

"Don't make any mistake about that," said Jeff. "He's trying to bust Addington, and Tin trying to save it. And to do that I've got to bust Weedie himself."

He went home then and put his case to Lydia, and asked her why, if Miss Amabel was so willing to teach the alien boy to read and teach the alien girl to sew, she should be so cold to his pedagogical ambitions. Lydia was curiously irresponsive, but at dusk she slipped away to Madame Beattie's. To Lydia, what used to be Esther's house had now become simply Madame Beattie's. She had her own shy way of getting in, so that she need not come on Esther nor trouble the decorous maid. Perhaps Lydia was a little afraid of Sophy, who spoke so smoothly and looked such cool hostility. So she tapped at the kitchen door and a large cook of sound principles who loved neither Esther nor Sophy, let her in and pa.s.sed her up the back stairs. Esther had strangely never noted this adventurous way of entering. She was rather un.o.bservant about some things, and she would never have suspected a lady born of coming in by the kitchen for any reason whatever. Esther, too, had some of the Addington traditions ingrain.

Madame Beattie was in bed, where she usually was when not in mischief, the summer breeze touching her toupee as tenderly as it might a young girl's flossy crown. She always had a cool drink by her, and she was always reading. Sometimes she put out her little ringed hand and moved the gla.s.s to hear the clink of ice, and she did it now as Lydia came in.

Lydia liked the clink. It sounded festive to her. That was the word she had for all the irresponsible exuberance Madame Beattie presented her with, of boundless areas where you could be gay. Madame Beattie shut her book and motioned to the door. But Lydia was already closing it. That was the first thing when they had their gossips. Lydia came then and perched on the foot of the bed. Her promotion from chair to bed marked the progress of their intimacy.

"Madame Beattie," said she, "I wish you and I could go abroad together."

Madame Beattie grinned at her, with a perfect appreciation.

"You wouldn't like it," said she.

"I should like it," said Lydia. Yet she knew she did not want to go abroad. This was only an expression of her pleasure in sitting on a bed and chatting with a game old lady. What she wanted was to mull along here in Addington with occasional side dashes into the realms of discontent, and plan for Jeff's well-being. "He wants to give lectures,"

said she. "To them."

The foreign contingent was always known to her and Madame Beattie as They.

"The fool!" said Madame Beattie cheerfully. "What for?"

"To teach them to be good."

"What does he want to muddle with that for?"

"Why, Madame Beattie, you know yourself you're talking to them and telling them things."

"But that isn't dressing 'em in Governor Winthrop's knee breeches," said Madame Beattie, "and making Puritans of 'em. I'm just filling 'em up with Jeff Blake, so they'll follow him and make a ringleader of him whether he wants it or not. They'll push and push and not see they're pus.h.i.+ng, and before he knows it he'll be down stage, with all his war-paint on. You never saw Jeff catch fire."

"No," said Lydia, lying. The day he took her hands and told her what she still believed at moments--he had caught fire then.

"When he catches fire, he'll burn up whatever's at hand," said the old lady, with relish. "Get his blood started, throw him into politics, and in a minute we shall have him in business, and playing the old game."

"Do you want him to play the old game?" asked Lydia.

"I want him to make some money."

"To pay his creditors."

"Pay your grandmother! pay for my necklace. Lydia, I've scared her out of her boots."

"Esther?" Lydia whispered.

Madame Beattie whispered, too, now, and a cross-light played over her eyes.

"Yes. I've searched her room. And she knows it. She thinks I'm searching for the necklace."

"And aren't you?"

"Bless you, no. I shouldn't find it. She's got it safely hid. But when she finds her upper bureau drawer gone over--Esther's very methodical--and the next day her second drawer and the next day the shelves in her closet, why, then--"

"What then?" asked Lydia, breathless.

"Then, my dear, she'll get so nervous she'll put the necklace into a little bag and tell me she is called to New York. And she'll take the bag with her, if she's not prevented."

"What should prevent her? the police?"

"No, my dear, for after all I don't want the necklace so much as I want somebody to pay me solid money for it. But when the little bag appears, this is what I shall say to Esther, perhaps while she's on her way downstairs to the carriage. 'Esther,' I shall say, 'get back to your room and take that little bag with you. And make up to handsome Jeff and tell him he's got to stir himself and pay me something on account. And you can keep the diamonds, my dear, if you see Jeff pays me something.'"