Part 57 (1/2)

He looked at Choate so seriously that Choate had to take it with an equal gravity. He knew how ridiculous the situation could be made by a word or two. But Jeff was making it entirely sane and even epic.

”We know perfectly well,” said Jeff, ”that the law wouldn't have much to do if all offenders and all witnesses told the truth. They don't, because they're prisoners--prisoners to fear and prisoners to selfishness and hunger. But if we three told each other the truth--and ourselves, too--we could be free this instant. You, Esther, if you would tell Choate here how you've loved that necklace and what you've done for it, why, you'd free him.”

Esther cried out here, a little sharp cry of rage against him.

”I see,” said she, ”it's only an attack on me. That's where all your talk is leading.”

”No, no,” said Jeff earnestly. ”I a.s.sure you it isn't. But if you owned that, Esther, you'd be ashamed to want glittering things. And Choate would get over wanting you. And that's what he'd better do.”

The impudence of it, Choate knew, was only equalled by its coolness.

Jeff was at this moment believing so intently in himself that he could have made anybody--but an angry woman--believe also. Jeff was telling him that he mustn't love Esther, and virtually also that this was because Esther was not worthy to be loved. But if Choate's only armor was silence, Esther had gathered herself to s.n.a.t.c.h at something more effectual.

”You say we're all prisoners to something,” she said to Jeffrey. Her face was livid now with anger and her eyes glowed upon him. ”How about you? You came into this house and took the necklace. Was that being a prisoner to it? How about your being free?”

Choate turned his eyes away from her face as if it hurt him. The taunt hurt him, too, like unclean words from lips beloved. But he looked involuntarily at Jeff to see how he had taken them. Jeff stood in silence looking gravely at Esther, but yet as if he did not see her. He appeared to be thinking deeply. But presently he spoke, and as if still from deep reflection.

”It's true, Esther. I'm a prisoner, too. I'm trying to see how I can get out.”

Choate spoke here, adopting the terms of Jeff's own fancy.

”If you want us all to understand each other, you could tell Esther why you took the necklace. You could tell us both. We seem to be thrown together over this.”

”Yes,” said Jeff. ”I could. I must. And yet I can't.” He looked up at Alston with a smile so whimsical that involuntarily Alston met it with a glimmer of a smile. ”Choate, it looks as if I should have to be a prisoner a little longer--perhaps for life.”

He went toward the door like a man bound on an urgent errand, and involuntarily Alston turned to follow him. The sight hurt Esther like an indignity. They had forgotten her. Their man's country called them to settle man's deeds, and the accordance of their going lashed her brain to quick revolt. It had been working, that shrewd, small brain, through all their talk, ever since Madame Beattie had denied Jeff's having taken the necklace, and now it offered its result.

”You didn't take it at all,” she called after them. ”It was that girl that's had the entry to this house. It's Lydia French.”

x.x.x

At the words Alston turned to Jeff in an involuntary questioning. Jeff was inscrutable. His face, as Alston saw it, the lines of the mouth, the down-dropped gaze, was sad, tender even, as if he were merely sorry.

They walked along the street together and it was Choate who began awkwardly.

”Miss Lydia came to me, some weeks ago, about these jewels.”

Here Jeff stopped him, breaking in upon him indeed when he had got thus far.

”Alston, let's go down under the old willow and smoke a pipe.”

Alston was rather dashed at having the tentative introduction of Lydia at once cut off, and yet the proposition seemed to him natural. Indeed, as they turned into Mill Street it occurred to him that Jeff might be providing solitude and a fitting place to talk. As they went down the old street, unchanged even to the hollows worn under foot in the course of the years, something stole over them and softened imperceptibly the harsh moment. There was Ma'am Fowler's where they used to come to buy doughnuts. There was the house where the crippled boy lived, and sat at the window waving signals to the other boys as they went past. At the same window a man sat now. Jeff was pretty sure it was the boy grown up, and yet was too absorbed in his thought of Lydia to ask. He didn't really care. But it was soothing to find the atmosphere of the place enveloped him like a charm. It wasn't possible they were so old, or that they had been mightily excited a minute before over a foolish thing. Presently after leaving the houses they turned off the road and crossed the shelving sward to the old willow, and there on a bench hacked by their own jackknives they sat down to smoke. Jeff remembered it was he who had thought to give the bench a back. He had nailed the board from tree to tree. It was here now or its fellow--he liked to think it was his own board--and he leaned against it and lighted up. The day's perturbation had taken Choate in another way. He didn't want to smoke. But he rolled a cigarette with care and pretended to take much interest in it. He felt it was for Jeff to begin. Jeff sat silent a while, his eyes upon the field across the flats where the boys were playing ball. Yet in the end he did begin.

”That necklace, Choate,” said he, ”is a regular little devil of a necklace. Do you realise how much mischief it's already done?”

Between Esther's a.s.severations and Lydia's theories Choate's mind was in a good deal of a fog. He thought it best to give a perfunctory grunt and hope Jeff would go on.

”And after all,” said Jeff, ”as I said, the devilish thing isn't of the slightest real value in itself. It can, in an indirect way, send a fellow to prison. It can excite an amount of longing in a woman's mind colossal enough to make one of the biggest motives possible for any sort of crime. Because it glitters, simply because it glitters. It can cause another woman who has done caring for glitter, to depend on it for a living.”

”You mean Madame Beattie,” said Alston. ”If it's her necklace and she can sell it, why doesn't she do it? Royal personages don't account for that.”