Part 16 (1/2)

”Now why should you want to turn him out of it?” she asked, really of Choate who had started the attack. ”Mr. Moore is a very able young man, of the highest ideals.”

Jeff laughed. It was a kindly laugh. Anne was again sure he loved Miss Amabel.

”I can't see Moore changing much after twenty-five,” he said to Choate, who confirmed him briefly:

”Same old Weedie.”

”Mr. Moore is not popular,” said Miss Amabel, with dignity, turning now to Farvie. ”He never has been, here in Addington. He comes of plain people.”

”That's not it, Miss Amabel,” said Choate gently. ”He might have been sp.a.w.ned out of the back meadows or he might have been--a Bracebridge.”

He bowed to her with a charming conciliation and Miss Amabel sat a little straighter. ”If we don't accept him, it's because he's Weedon Moore.”

”We were in school with him, you know: in college, too,” said Jeff, with that gentleness men always accorded her, men of perception who saw in her the motherhood destined to diffuse itself, often to no end: she was so n.o.ble and at the same time so helpless in the crystal prison of her hopes. ”We knew Weedie like a book.”

Miss Amabel took on an added dignity, proportioned to the discomfort of her task. Here she was defending Weedon Moore whom her outer sensibilities rejected the while his labelled virtues moved her soul.

Sometimes when she found herself with people like these to-night, manifestly her own kind, she was tired of being good.

”I don't know any one,” said she, ”who feels the prevailing unrest more keenly than Weedon Moore.”

At that instant, Mary Nellen, her eyes brightening as these social activities increased, appeared in the doorway, announcing doubtfully:

”Mr. Moore.”

Jeffrey, as if actually startled, looked round at Choate who was unaffectedly annoyed. Anne, rising to receive the problematic Moore, thought they had an air of wondering how they could repel unwarranted invasion. Miss Amabel, in a sort of protesting, delicate distress, was loyally striving to make the invader's path plain.

”I told him I was coming,” she said. ”It seems he had thought of dropping in.” Then Anne went out on the heels of Mary Nellen, hearing Miss Amabel conclude, as she left, with an apologetic note unfamiliar to her soft voice, ”He wants you to write something, Jeff, for the _Argosy_.”

Anne, even before seeing him, became conscious that Mary Nellen regarded the newcomer as undesirable; and when she came on him standing, hat in hand, she agreed that Weedon Moore was, in his outward integument, exceedingly unpleasant: a short, swarthy, tubby man, always, she was to note, dressed in smooth black, and invariably wearing or carrying, with the gravity of a funeral mourner, what Addington knew as a ”tall hat”.

When the weather gave him countenance, he wore a black coat with a cape.

One flas.h.i.+ng ring adorned his left hand, and he indulged a barbaric taste in flowing ties. Seeing Anne, he spoke at once, and if she had not been prepared for him she must have guessed him to be a man come on a message of importance. There was conscious emphasis in his voice, and there needed to be if it was to accomplish anything: a high voice, strident, and, like the rest of him, somehow suggesting insect life. He held out his hand and Anne most unwillingly took it.

”Miss French,” said he, with no hesitation before her name, ”how is Jeff?”

The mere inquiry set Anne vainly to hoping that he need not come in. But he gave no quarter.

”I said I'd run over to-night, paper or no paper. I'm frightfully busy, you know, cruelly, abominably busy. But I just wanted to see Jeff.”

”Won't you come in?” said Anne.

Even then he did not abandon his hat. He kept his hold on it, bearing it before him in a way that made Anne think absurdly of s.h.i.+elds and bucklers. When, in the library, she turned to present him, as if he were an unpleasant find she had got to vouch for somehow, the men were already on their feet and Jeff was setting forward a chair. She could not help thinking it was a clever stage business to release him from the necessity of shaking hands. But Moore did not abet him in that informality. His small hand was out, and he was saying in a sharp, strained voice, exactly as if he were making a point of some kind, an oratorical point:

”Jeff, my dear fellow! I'm tremendously glad to see you.”

Anne thought Jeff might not shake hands with him at all. But she saw him steal a shamefaced look at Miss Amabel and immediately, as if something radical had to be done when it came to the friend of a beloved old girl like her, strike his hand into Moore's, with an emphasis the more p.r.o.nounced for his haste to get it over. Moore seemed enraptured at the handshake and breathless over the occasion. Having begun shaking hands he kept on with enthusiasm: the colonel, Miss Amabel and Lydia had to respond to an almost fervid greeting.

Only Choate proved immune. He had vouchsafed a cool: ”How are you, Weedie?” when Moore began, and that seemed all Moore was likely to expect. Then they all sat down and there was, Lydia decided, as she glanced from one to another, no more pleasure in it. There was talk.

Moore chatted so exuberantly, his little hands upon his fattish knees, that he seemed to squeeze sociability out of himself in a rapture of generous willingness to share all he had. He asked the colonel how he liked Addington, and was not abashed at being reminded that the colonel had known Addington for a good many years.

”Still it's changed,” said Moore, regarding him almost archly.