Part 75 (1/2)
”But why the deuce,” said Jeff, ”Andrea and his gang look so mournful I can't see.”
”Why,” said Lydia, ”don't you know? They voted for you, and their votes were thrown out.”
”For me?”
”Yes, Madame Beattie told them to. She'd planned it before she went away, but somehow it fell through. They were to put stickers on the ballot, but at the last the stickers scared them, and they just wrote in your name.”
”Lydia,” said Jeff, ”you're making this up.”
”Oh, no, I'm not,” said Lydia. ”Mr. Choate told me. I knew it was going to happen, but he's just told me how it was. They wrote 'Prisoner Blake'
in all kinds of scrawls and skriggles. They didn't know they'd got to write your real name. I call it a joke on Madame Beattie.”
To Lydia it looked like a joke on herself also, though a sorry one. She thought it very benevolent of Madame Beattie to have prepared such a dramatic surprise, and that it was definite ill-fortune for Jeff to have missed the full effect of it. But the earth to Lydia was a flare of dazzling roads all leading from Jeff; he might take any one of them.
To Amabel the confusion of voting was a matter of no interest, and Jeff said nothing. Lydia was not sure whether he had even really heard. Then Amabel said if there were going to be speeches she hardly thought she cared for them, and they walked home with her and left her at the door, though not before she had put a kind hand on Jeff's shoulder and told him in that way how grateful she was to him. After she had gone in Jeff, so curious he had to say it before they started to walk away, turned upon Lydia.
”How do you know so much about her?” he began.
”Madame Beattie? We used to talk together,” said Lydia demurely.
”You knew her confounded plans?”
”Some of them.”
”And never told?”
”They were secrets,” said Lydia. ”Come, let's walk along.”
”No, no. I want you where I can look at you, so you won't do any romancing about that old enchantress. If you know so much, tell me one thing more. She's gone. She can't hurt you.”
”What is it?” asked Lydia.
”What did she tell those fellows about me?”
”Andrea?”
”Andrea and his gang. To make them treat me like a Hindoo G.o.d. No, I'll tell you how they treated me. As savages treat the first white man they've ever seen till they find he's a rotten trader.”
”Oh,” said Lydia, ”it can't do any harm to tell you that.”
”Any harm? I ought to have known it from the first. Out with it.”
”Well, she told them you had been in prison, and you were sent there by Weedon Moore and his party--”
”His party? What was that?”
”Oh, I don't know. Anybody can have a party. Something like Tammany, maybe. You'd been sent to prison because it was you that had got them their decent wages, and had the nice little houses built down at Mill End. And there was a conspiracy against you, and she heard of it and came over to tell them how it was. But you were in prison because you stood up for labour.”
”My word!” said Jeff. ”And they believed her.”