Part 44 (1/2)
”Mustn't go there?” said Jeff almost foolishly, the thing seemed to him so queer. ”Mustn't see my wife, because she says she is afraid of me?”
”Because she _is_ afraid of you,” corrected Choate impulsively, in what he might have told himself was his liking for the right word. But he had a savage satisfaction in saying it. For the instant it made it seem as if he were defending Esther.
”I'd give a good deal,” said Jeff slowly, ”to hear just how Esther told you she was afraid of me. When was it, for example?”
”It was at no one time,” said Choate unwillingly. Yet it seemed to him Jeff did deserve candour at all their hands.
”You mean it's been a good many times?”
”I mean I've been, in a way, her adviser since--”
”Since I've been in jail. That's very good of you, Choate. But do you gather Esther has told other people she is afraid of me, or that she has told you only?”
”Why, man,” said Choate impatiently, ”I tell you I've been her adviser.
Our relations are those of client and counsel. Of course she's said it to n.o.body but me.”
”Not to Reardon,” Jeff's inner voice was commenting satirically. ”What would you think if you knew she had said it to Reardon, too? And how many more? She has spun her pretty web, and you're a prisoner. So is Reardon. You've each a special web. You are not allowed to meet.”
He laughed out, and Alston looked at him in a sudden offence. It seemed to Alston that he had been sacrificing all sorts of delicacies that Jeff might be justly used, and the laugh belittled them both. But Jeff at that instant saw, not Alston, but a new vision of life. It might have been that a tide had rushed in and wiped away even the prints of Esther's little feet. It might have been that a wind blew in at the windows of his mind and beat its great wings in the corners of it and winnowed out the chaff. As he saw life then his judgments softened and his irritations cooled. Nothing was left but the vision of life itself, the uncomprehended beneficence, the consoler, the illimitable beauty we look in the face and do not see. For an instant perhaps he had caught the true proportions of things and knew at last what was worth weeping over and what was matter for a healthy mirth. It was all mirth perhaps, this show of things Lord G.o.d had set us in. He had not meant us to take it dumbly. He had hoped we should see at every turn how queer it is, and yet how orderly, and get our comfort out of that. He had put laughter behind every door we open, to welcome us. Grief was there, too, but if we fully understood Lord G.o.d and His world, there would be no grief: only patience and a gay waiting on His time. And all this came out of seeing Alston Choate, who thought he was a free man, hobbled by Esther's web.
Jeffrey got up and Alston looked at him in some concern, he was so queer, flushed, laughing a little, and with a wandering eye. At the door he stopped.
”About Weedie,” he said. ”We shall have to do something to Weedie.
Something radical. He's not going to be mayor of Addington. And I rather think you'll have to get into politics. You'd be mayor yourself if you'd get busy.”
Jeffrey had no impulse to-day to go and ask Esther if she were afraid of him as he had when Reardon told him the same tale. He wasn't thinking of Esther now. He was hugging his idea to his breast and hurrying with it, either to entrust it to somebody or to wrap it up in the safety of pen and ink while it was so warm. And when he got home he came on Lydia, sitting on the front steps, singing to herself and cuddling a kitten in the curve of her arm. Lydia with no cares, either of the house or her dancing cla.s.s or Jeff's future, but given up to the idleness of a summer afternoon, was one of the most pleasing sights ever put into the hollow of a lovely world. Jeffrey saw her, as he was to see everything now, through the medium of his new knowledge. He saw to her heart and found how sweet it was, and how full of love for him. He saw Circe's island, and knew, since the international codes hold good, he must remember his allegiance to it. He still owned property there; he must pay his taxes.
But this Eden's garden which was Lydia was his chosen home. He was glad to see it so. He must, he knew, hereafter see things as they are. And they would not be tragic to him. They would be curious and funny and dear: for they all wore the mantle of life. He sat down on a lower step, and Lydia looked at him gravely, yet with pleasure, too.
”Lydia,” said he, ”do you know what they're calling me, these foreigners Madame Beattie's training with?”
She nodded.
”The Prisoner,” said Jeff. ”That's what I am--The Prisoner.”
She hastened to rea.s.sure him.
”They don't do it to be hateful. It's in love. That's what they mean it in--love.”
Jeff made a little gesture of the hand, as if he tossed off something so lightly won.
”Never mind how they mean it. That's not what I'm coming to. It's that they call me The Prisoner. Well, ten minutes ago it just occurred to me that we're all prisoners. I saw it as it might be a picture of life and all of us moving in it. Alston Choate's a prisoner to Esther. So's Reardon. Only it's not to Esther they're prisoners. It's to the big force behind her, the sorcery of nature, don't you see? Blind nature.”
She was looking at him with the terrified patience of one compelled to listen and yet afraid of hearing what threatens the safe crystal of her own bright dream: that apprehensive look of woman, patient in listening, but beseeching the speaker voicelessly not to kill warm personal certainties with the abstractions he thinks he has discovered. Jeffrey did not understand the look. He was enamoured of his abstraction.
”And all the mill hands have been slaves to Weedon Moore because he told them lies, and now they're prisoners to Madame Beattie because she's telling them another kind of lie, G.o.d knows what. And Addington is prisoner to catch-words.”
”But what are we prisoner to?” Lydia asked sharply, as if these things were terrifying. ”Is Farvie a prisoner?”