x.x.xVIII

While the motor cars were whirling about Addington and observers were in an ecstasy over Madame Beattie's electioneering, Reardon was the more explicitly settling his affairs and changing his sailing from week to week as it intermittently seemed possible to stay. He was in an irritation of unrest when Esther did not summon him, and a panic of fear at the prospect of her doing it. He was beginning dimly to understand that Esther, even if the bills were to be paid, proposed to do nothing herself about getting decently free. Reardon thought he could interpret that, in a way that enhanced her divinity. She was too womanly, he determined. How could a creature like her give even the necessary evidence? If any one at that time believed sincerely in Esther's clarity of soul, it was Reardon who had not thought much about souls until he met her. Esther had been a wonderful influence in his life, trans.m.u.ting everyday motives until he actually stopped now to think a little over the high emotions he was not by nature accustomed even to imagine. There was something pathetic in his desire to better himself even in spiritual ways. No man in Addington had attained a higher proficiency in the practical arts of correct and comfortable living, and it was owing to the power of Esther's fastidious reserves that he had begun to think all women were not alike, after all. There must be something in cla.s.s, something real and uncomprehended, or such a creature as she could not be born with a difference. When she came nearer him, when she of her own act surrendered and he had drawn the exquisite sum of her into his arms, he still believed in her moral perfection to an extent that made her act most terribly moving to him. The act grew colossal, for it meant so matchless a creature must love him unquestioningly or she could not step outside her fine decorum. Every thought of her drew him toward her.

Every manly and also every ambitious impulse of his entire life--the ambition that bade him tread as near as possible to Addington's upper cla.s.s--forbade his seeking her until he had a right to. And if she would not free herself, the right would never be his.

One day, standing by his window at dusk moodily looking out while the invisible filaments that drew him to her tightened unbearably, he saw Jeff go past. At once Reardon knew Jeff was going to her, and he found it monstrous that the husband whose existence meant everything to him should be seeking her unhindered. He got his hat and coat and hurried out into the street in time to see Jeff turn in at her gate. He strode along that way, and then halted and walked back again. It seemed to him he must know at least when Jeff came out.

Jeff had been summoned, and Esther met him with no pretence at an artifice of coolness. She did not ask him to sit down. They stood there together in the library looking at each other like two people who have urgent things to say and limited time to say them in.

"Jeff," she began, "you're all I've got in the world. Aunt Patrica's going away."

Jeff clutched upon his reason and hoped it would serve him while something more merciful kept him kind.

"Good!" said he. "That's a relief for you."

"In a way," said Esther. "But it leaves me alone, with grandmother. It's like being with a dead woman. I'm afraid of her. Jeff, if you'd only thought of it yourself! but I have to say it. Won't you come here to live?"

"If he had only thought of it himself!" his heart ironically repeated.

Had he not in the first years of absence from her dreamed what it would be to come back to a hearth she was keeping warm?

"Esther," he said, "only a little while ago you said you were afraid of me."

Esther had no answer to make. Yet she could take refuge in a perfect humility, and this she did.

"I ask you, Jeff," she said. "I ask you to come back."

The world itself seemed to close about him, straiter than the walls of the room. Had he, in taking vows on him when he truly loved her, built a prison he must dwell in to the end of his life or hers? Did moral law demand it of him? did the decencies of Addington?

"I ask you to forgive me," said Esther. "Are you going to punish me for what I did?"

"No," said Jeff, in a dull disclaimer. "I don't want to punish you."

But he did not want to come back. This her heart told her, while it cautioned her not to own she knew.

"I shouldn't be a burden on you," she said. "I should be of use, social use, Jeff. You need all the pull you can get, and I could help you there, tremendously."

The same bribe Madame Beattie had held out to him, he remembered, with a sorry smile. Esther, Madame Beattie had cheerfully determined, was to help him placate the little G.o.ds. Now Esther herself was offering her own abetment in almost the same terms. He saw no way even vaguely to resolve upon what he felt able to do, except by indirection. They must consider it together.

"Esther," he said, "sit down. Let me, too, so we can get hold of ourselves, find out what we really think."

They sat, and she clasped her hands in a way prayerfully suggestive and looked at him as if she hung on the known value of his words. Jeff groped about in his mind for their common language. What had it been?--laughter, kisses, the feverish commendation of the pageant of life. He sat there frowning, and when his brow cleared it was because he decided the only way possible was to open the door of his own mind and let her in. If she found herself lonesome, afraid even in its furnishings as they inevitably were now, that would tell them something.

She need never come again.

"Esther," he said, "the only thing I've found out about myself is that I haven't found out anything. I don't know whether I'm a decent fellow, just because I want to be decent, or whether I'm stunted, calloused, all the things they say happen to criminals."

"Don't," said Esther sharply. "Don't talk of criminals."

"I've got to. You let me wander on a minute. Maybe it'll get us somewhere." He debated whether he should tell her he wanted to save Addington. No, she wouldn't understand. Could he tell her that at that minute he loved Addington better than anything but Lydia? and Lydia he must still keep hidden in the back of his mind under the green leaves of secrecy. "Esther," said he, "Esther, poor child, I don't want you to be a prisoner to me. And I don't want to be a prisoner to you. It would be a shocking wrong to you to be condemned to live with me all your life just because an old woman has scared you. What a penalty to pay for being afraid of Madame Beattie--to live with a husband you had stopped thinking about at all."

Esther gave a patient sigh.

"I don't understand," she said, "what you are talking about. And this isn't the way, dear, for us to understand each other. If we love each other, oughtn't we to forgive?"

"We do," said Jeff. "I haven't a hostile thought toward you. I should be mighty sorry if you had for me. But, Esther, whatever we feel for each other, will the thing stand the test of the plain truth? If it's going to have any working basis, it's got to. Now, do you love me? No, you don't. We both know we've changed beyond--" he paused for a merciful simile--"beyond recognition. Now because we promised to live together until death parted us, are we going to? Was that a righteous promise in view of what might happen? The thing, you see, has happened. If we had children it might be righteous to hang together, for their sakes. Is it righteous now? I don't believe it."

Esther lifted her clasped hands and struck them down upon her knee. The rose of her cheek had paled, and all expression save a protesting incredulity had frozen out of her face.

"I have never," she said, "been so insulted in my life."

"That's it," said Jeff. "I tried to tell the truth and you can't stand it. You tell it to me now, and I'll see if I can stand your side of it."

She was out of her chair and on her feet.

"You must go," she said. "You must go at once."

"I'm sorry," said Jeff. He was looking at her with what Miss Annabel called his beautiful smile. "You can't possibly believe I want things to be right for you. But it's true. I mean to make them righter than they are, too. But I don't believe we can shackle ourselves together. I don't believe that's right."

He went away, leaving her trembling. There was nothing for it but to go.

On the sidewalk not far from her door he met Reardon with a casual nod, and Reardon blazed out at him, "d.a.m.n you!" At least that was what Jeff for the instant thought he said and turned to look at him. But Reardon was striding on and the back of his excellent great-coat looked so handsomely conventional that Jeff concluded he had been mistaken. He went on trying to sift his distastes and revulsions from what he wanted to do for Esther. Something must be done. Esther must no more be bound than he.

Reardon did not knock at her door. He opened it and went in and Esther even pa.s.sionately received him. They greeted each other like acknowledged lovers, and he stood holding her to him while she sobbed bitterly against his arm.

"What business had he?" he kept repeating. "What business had he?"

"I can't talk about it," said Esther. "But I can never go through it again. You must take me away."

"I'm going myself," said Reardon. "I'm booked for Liverpool."

Esther was spent with the weariness of the years that had brought her no compensating joys for her meagre life with grandmother upstairs and her most uneasy one since Madame Beattie came. How could she, even if Reardon furnished money for it, be sure to free herself from Jeff in time to taste some of the pleasures she craved while she was at her prime of beauty? After all, there were other lands to wander in; it wasn't necessary to sit down here and do what Addingtonians had done since they settled the wretched place on the date they seemed to find so sacred. So she told him, in a poor sad little whisper:

"I shall die if you leave me."

"I won't go," said Reardon, at once. "I'll stand by."

"You will go," said Esther fiercely, half in anger because he had to be cajoled and prompted, "and take me with you."

Reardon, standing there feeling her beating heart against his hand, thought that was how he had known it would be. He had always had a fear, the three-o'clock-waking-in-the-morning fear, that sometime his conventions would fall from him like a garment he had forgotten, and he should do some act that showed him to Addington as he was born. He had too, sometimes, a nightmare, pitifully casual, yet causing him an anguish of shame: murdering his grammar or smoking an old black pipe such as his father smoked and being caught with it, going to the club in overalls. But now he realised what the malicious envy of fortune had in store for him. He was to run off with his neighbour's wife. For an instant he weakly meant to recall her to herself, to remind her that she didn't want to do it. But it seemed shockingly indecorous to a.s.sume a higher standard than her own, and all he could do was to a.s.sure her, as he had been a.s.suring her while he was swept along that dark underground river of disconcerted thought: "I'll take care of you."

"What do you mean?" she returned, like a wild thing leaping at him. "Do you mean really take care of me? over there?"

"Yes," said Reardon, without a last clutch at his lost vision, "over there. We'll leave here Friday, for New York."

"I shall send my trunks in advance," said Esther. "By express. I shall say I am going for dressmaking and the theatre."

Reardon settled down to bare details. It would be unwise to be seen leaving on the same train, and he would precede her to New York. It would be better also to stay at different hotels. Once landed they would become--he said this in the threadbare pathetic old phrase--man and wife "in the sight of G.o.d". He was trying honestly to spare her exquisite sensibilities, and Esther understood that she was to be saved at all points while she reaped the full harvest of her desires. Reardon kissed her solemnly and went away, at the door meeting Madame Beattie, who gave him what he thought an alarming look, at the least a satirical one. Had she listened? had she seen their parting? But if she had, she made no comment. Madame Beattie had her own affairs to manage.