The Prisoner Part 69

"She had ceased singing," said Alston. "Money meant more to her than the jewels it would have been inexpedient to display. For by that time, she didn't want to offend any royal families whatever. So she was bought off, and she gave up the necklace."

"It is not true," said she. "If it was money I wanted, I could have sold it."

"Oh, no, I beg your pardon. There would have been difficulties in the way of selling historic stones; besides there were so many royal personages concerned in keeping them intact. It might have been very different when the certain Royal Personage was young enough and impetuous enough to swear he stood behind you. He'd got to the point where he might even have sworn he never gave them to you."

She uttered a little hoa.r.s.e exclamation, a curse, Alston could believe, in whatever tongue.

"Besides," he continued, "as I just said, Madame Beattie wasn't willing, on the whole, to offend her royal patrons, though she wasn't singing any longer. She had a good many favours to ask of the world, and she didn't want Europe made too hot to hold her."

He paused to rest a moment from his thankless task, and they looked at each other calmly, yet quite recognising they were at grips.

"You forget," said she, "that I have the necklace at this moment in my possession. You have seen it and handled it."

"No," said Alston, "I have never seen the necklace. n.o.body has seen it on this side the water. When you came here years ago and got Jeff into difficulties you brought another necklace, a spurious one, paste, stage jewels, I daresay, and none of us were clever enough to know the difference. You said it was the Beattie necklace, and Esther was hypnotised and--"

"And stole it," Madame Beattie put in, with a real enjoyment now.

"And Jeff was paralysed by loving Esther so much that he didn't look into it. And as soon as he was out of prison you came here and hypnotised us all over again. But it's not the necklace."

Madame Beattie put back her head and burst into hoa.r.s.e and perfectly spontaneous laughter.

"And it was for you to find it out," she said. "I didn't think you were so clever, Alston Choate. I didn't know you were clever at all. You refresh me. G.o.d bless us! to think not one of them had the sense, from first to last, to guess the thing was paste."

Alston enjoyed his brief triumph, a little surprised at it himself. He had no idea she would back down instantly, nor indeed, though it were hammered into her, that she would own the game was up. The same recoil struck her and she ludicrously c.o.c.ked an eye.

"I shall give you a lot of trouble yet though. The necklace may be a dead issue, but I'm a living dog, Alston Choate. Don't they say a living dog is better than a dead lion? Well, I'm living and I'm here."

He saw her here indefinitely, rolling about in hacks, in phaetons, in victorias, in motors, perpetually stirring two houses at least to nervous misery. There would be no running away from her. They would have her absurdly tied about their necks forever.

"Madame Beattie!" said he. This was Alston's great day, he reflected, with a grimace all to himself. He had never put so much impetuosity, so much daring to the square inch, into any day before. He lounged back a little in his chair, put his hands in his pockets and tried to feel swaggering and at ease. Madame Beattie, he knew, wouldn't object to swagger. And if it would help him dramatically, so much the better.

"Madame Beattie," he repeated, "I've a proposition to make to you. I thought of it within the last minute."

Her eyes gleamed out at him expectantly, avariciously, with some suspicion, too. She hoped it concerned money, but it seemed unlikely, so chill a habit of life had men of Addington.

"It is absolutely my own idea," said Alston. "n.o.body has suggested it, n.o.body has anything whatever to do with it. If I give myself time to think it over I sha'n't make it at all. What would you take to leave Addington, lock, stock and barrel, cut stick to Europe and sign a paper never to come back? There'd be other things in the paper. I should make it as tight as I knew how."

Madame Beattie set her lips and looked him over, from his well-bred face and his exceedingly correct clothes to his feet. She would never have suspected an Addington man of such impetus, no one except perhaps Jeff in the old days. What was the utmost an Addington man would do? She had been used to consider them a meagre set.

"Well?" said Alston.

Madame Beattie blinked a little, and her mind came back.

"Ten thousand," she tossed him at a venture, in a violence of haste.

Alston shook his head.

"Too much," said he.

Madame Beattie, who had not known a tear for twenty years at least, could have cried then, the money had seemed so unreasonably, so incredibly near.

"You've got oceans of money," said she, in a pa.s.sion of eagerness, "all you Addington bigwigs. You put it away and let it keep ticking on while you eat noon dinners and walk down town. What is two thousand pounds to you? In another year you wouldn't know it."

"I sha'n't haggle," said Alston. "I'll tell you precisely what I'll put into your hand--with conditions--if you agree to make this your farewell appearance. I'll give you five thousand dollars. And as a thrifty Addingtonian--you know what we are--I advise you to take it. I might repent."

She leaned toward him and put a shaking hand on his knee.

"I'll take it," she said. "I'll sign whatever you say. Give me the money now. You wouldn't ask me to wait, Alston Choate. You wouldn't play a trick on me."

Alston drew himself up from his lounging ease, and as he lifted the trembling old hand from his knee, gave it a friendly pressure before he let it fall.

"I can't give it to you now," he said. "Not this minute. Would you mind coming to my office to-morrow, say at ten? We shall be less open to interruption."

"Of course I'll come," she said, almost pa.s.sionately.

He had never seen her so shaken or indeed actually moved from her cynical calm. She was making her way out of the room without waiting for his good-bye. At the door she turned upon him, her blurred old face a sad sight below the disordered wig. Esther, coming downstairs, met her in the hall and stopped an instant to stare at her, she looked so terrible. Then Esther came on to Alston Choate.

"What is it?" she began.

"I was going to ask for you," said Alston. "I want to tell you what I have just been telling Madame Beattie. Then I must see Jeff and his sisters." This sounded like an afterthought and yet he was conscious that Anne was in his mind like a radiance, a glow, a warm sweet wind.

"Everybody connected with Madame Beattie ought to understand clearly what she can do and what she can't. She seems to have such an extraordinary facility for getting people into mischief."

He placed a chair for her and when she sank into it, her eyes inquiringly on his face, he began, still standing, to tell her briefly the history of the necklace. Esther's face, as he went on, froze into dismay. He was telling her that the thing which alone had brought out pa.s.sionate emotion in her had never existed at all. Not until then had he realised how she loved the necklace, the glitter of it, the reputed value, the extraordinary story connected with it. Esther's life had been built on it. And when Alston had finished and found she could not speak, he was sorry for her and told her so.

"I'm sorry," he said simply.

Esther looked at him a moment dumbly. Then her face convulsed. She was crying.

"Don't," said Choate helplessly. "Don't do that. The thing isn't worth it. It isn't worth anything to speak of. And it's made you a lot of trouble, all of you, and now she's going back to Europe and she'll take it with her."

"Going back?" Esther echoed, through her tears. "Who says she's going back?"

"She says so," Alston rejoined weakly. He thought his hush money might fairly be considered his own secret. It was like a candle burned in grat.i.tude for having found out he had dared to say, "darling Anne".

"If she would go back!" said Esther. "But she won't. She'll stay here and talk to mill hands and drag dirty people up those stairs. And I shall live here forever with her and grandmother, and n.o.body will help me. n.o.body will ever help me, Alston Choate. Do you realise that?

n.o.body."

Her melting eyes were on his and she herself was out of her chair and tremulously near. But Esther made no mistake of a too prodigal largess a man like Reardon was bewitched by, even if he ran from it. She stood there in sorrowful dignity and let her eyes plead for her. And Alston, though he had accomplished something for her as well as for Anne, felt only a sense of shame and the misery of falling short. He had thought he loved her (he had got so far now as to say to himself he thought so) and he loved her no more. He wished only to escape, and his wish took every shred of the hero out of him.

"We'll all help you," he said with the cheerfulness exasperatingly ready to be pumped up when things are bad and there is no adequate remedy.

"I'd like to. And so will Jeff."

With that he put out his hand to her, and when she unseeingly accorded him hers gave it what he thought an awkward, cowardly pressure and left her. There are no graceful ways for leaving Circe's isle, Alston thought, as he hurried away, unless you have at least worn the hog's skin briefly and given her a showing of legitimate triumph. And that night, because he had a distaste for talking about it further, he wrote the story to Jeff, still omitting mention of his candle-burning honorarium. To Anne, he sent a little note, the first of a long series, wondering at himself as he wrote it, but sticking madly to his audacity, for that queerly seemed the way to win her.

"Darling Anne," the note said. "It's all right. I'll tell you sometime. Meanwhile you're not to worry.

"Your lover,

"ALSTON CHOATE."