Part 18 (1/2)

”You want other people to understand,” said Lydia, bright-eyed, now she was following him. ”For--a warning.”

His frown was heavy. Now he was trying to follow her.

”No,” he said, ”you're off there. I don't take things that way. But I did see it so plain I wanted everybody to see it, too. Maybe that was why I did want to write it down. Maybe I wanted to write it for myself, so I should see it plainer. It fascinated me.”

Lydia felt a helpless yearning, because things were being so hard for him. She wished for Anne who always knew, and with a word could help you out when your elucidation failed.

”You see,” Jeff was going on, ”there's this kind of a brute born into the world now, the kind that knows how to make money, and as soon as he's discovered his knack, he's got the mania to make more. It's an obligation, an obsession. Maybe it's only the game. He's in it, just as much as if he'd got a thousand men behind him, all looting territory. It might be for a woman. But it's the game. And it's a queer game. It cuts him off. He's outside.”

And here Lydia had a simple and very childlike thought, so inevitable to her that she spoke without consideration.

”You were outside, too.”

Jeff gave a little shake of the head, as if that didn't matter now he was here and explaining to her.

”And the devil of it is, after they're once outside they don't know they are.”

”Do you mean, when they've done something and been found guilty and--”

”I mean all along the line. When they've begun to think they'll make good, when they've begun to play the game.”

”For money?”

”Yes, for money, for pretty gold and dirty bills and silver. That's what it amounts to, when you get down to it, behind all the bank balances and equities. There's a film that grows over your eyes, you look at nothing else. You don't think about--” his voice dropped and he glanced out at the walled orchard as if it were even a sacred place--”you don't think about gra.s.s, and dirt, and things. You're thinking about the game.”

”Well,” said Lydia joyously, seeing a green pathway out, ”now you've found it's so, you don't need to think about it any more.”

”That's precisely it,” said he heavily. ”I've got to think about it all the time. I've got to make good.”

”In the same way?” said Lydia, looking up at him childishly. ”With money?”

”Yes,” said he, ”with money. It's all I know. And without capital, too.

And I'm going to keep my head, and do it within the law. Yes, by G.o.d!

within the law. But I hate to do it. I hate it like the devil.”

He looked so hard with resolution that she took the resolution for pride, though she could not know whether it was a fine pride or a heaven-defying one.

”You won't do just what you did before?” a.s.serted Lydia, out of her faith in him.

”Oh, yes, I shall.”

She opened terrified eyes upon him.

”Be a promoter?”

”I don't know what I shall be. But I know the money game, and I shall have to play it and make good.”

She ventured a question touching on the fancies that were in her mind, part of the bewildering drama that might attend on his return. She faltered it out. It seemed too splendid really to a.s.sault fortune like that. And yet perhaps not too splendid for him. This was the question.

”And pay back--” There she hesitated, and he finished for her.