The Prisoner Part 35

Lydia turned reproachful eyes upon her.

"You think so, too," she said.

"Why, yes, dear imp, I know it. Jeff's case is ancient history.

We can't do anything practical about it, so what we want is to agitate--agitate--until he leaves his absurd plaything--carrots, is it, or summer squash?--and gets into business in a civilised way. The man's a genius, if only his mind wakes up. Let him think we're going to spread the necklace story far and wide, let him see Esther about to be hauled before public opinion--"

"He doesn't love Esther," said Lydia, and then savagely bit her lip.

"Don't you believe it," said Madame Beattie sagely. "She's only to crook her finger. Agitate. Why, I'll do it myself. There's that dirty little man that wants an interview for his paper. I'll give him one."

"Weedon Moore?" asked Lydia. "Anne won't let me know him."

"Well, you do know him, don't you?"

"I saw him once. But when I threaten to take Jeff's case to him, if Mr.

Choate won't stir himself, Anne says I sha'n't even speak to him. He isn't nice, she thinks. I don't know who told her."

"Choate, my dear," said Madame Beattie. "He's afraid Moore will get hold of you. He's blocking your game, that's all."

Madame Beattie, the next day, did go to Weedon Moore's office. He was unprepared for her and so the more agonisingly impressed. Here was a rough-spoken lady who, he understood, was something like a princess in other countries, and she was offering him an interview.

Madame Beattie showed she had the formula, and could manage quite well alone.

"The point is the necklace," said she, sitting straight and fanning herself, regarding him with so direct a gaze that he pressed his knees in nervous spasms. "You don't need to ask me how old I am nor whether I like this country. The facts are that I was given a very valuable necklace--by a Royal Personage. Bless you, man! aren't you going to take it down?"

"Yes, yes," stammered Moore. "I beg your pardon."

He got block and pencil, and though the att.i.tude of writing relieved him from the necessity of looking at her, he felt the sweat break out on his forehead and knew how it was dampening his flat hair.

"The necklace," said Madame Beattie, "became famous. I wore it just enough to give everybody a chance to wonder whether I was to wear it or not. The papers would say, 'Madame Beattie wore the famous necklace.'"

"Am I permitted to say--" Weedon began, and then wondered how he could proceed.

"You can say anything I do," said Madame Beattie promptly. "No more. Of course not anything else. What is it you want to say?"

Weedon dropped the pencil, and under the table began to squeeze inspiration from his knees.

"Am I permitted," he continued, aghast at the liberty he was taking, "to know the name of the giver?"

"Certainly not," said Madame Beattie, but without offence. "I told you a Royal Personage. Besides, everybody knows. If your people here don't, it's because the're provincial and it doesn't matter whether they know it or not. I will continue. The necklace, I told you, became almost as famous as I. Then there was trouble."

"When?" ventured Weedon.

"Oh, a long time after, a very long time. The Royal Personage was going to be married and her Royal Highness--"

"Her Royal Highness?"

"Of course. Do you suppose he would have been allowed to marry a commoner? That was always the point. She made a row, very properly. The necklace was famous and some of the gems in it are historic. She was a thrifty person. I don't blame her for it. She wasn't going to see historic jewels drift back to the rue de la Paix. So they made me a proposition."

Moore was forgetting to be shy. He licked his lips, the story promised so enticingly.

"As I say," Madame Beattie pursued, "they made me a proposition." She stopped and Moore, pencil poised, looked at her inquiringly. She closed her fan, with a decisive snap, and rose. "There," said she, "you can elaborate that. Make it as long as you please, and it'll do for one issue."

Weedon felt as if somehow he had been done.

"But you haven't told me anything," he implored. "Everybody knows as much as that."

"I reminded you of that," said Madame Beattie. "But I know several things everybody doesn't know. Now you do as I tell you. Head it: 'The True Story of Patricia Beattie's Necklace. First Instalment.' And you'll sell a paper to every man, woman and baby in this ridiculous town. And when the next day's paper doesn't have the second instalment, they'll buy the next and the next to see if it's there."

"But I must have the whole in hand," pleaded Weedon.

"Well, you can't. Because I sha'n't give it to you. Not till I'm ready.

You can publish a paragraph from time to time: 'Madame Beattie under the strain of recollection unable to continue her reminiscences. Madame Beattie overcome by her return to the past.' I'm a better journalist than you are."

"I'm not a journalist," Weedon ventured. "I practise law."

"Well, you run the paper, don't you? I'm going now. Good-bye."

And so imbued was he with the una.s.sailable character of her right to dictate, that he did publish the fragment, and Addington bought it breathlessly and looked its amused horror over the values of the foreign visitor.

"Of course, my dear," said the older ladies--they called each other "my dear" a great deal, not as a term of affection, but in moments of conviction and the desire to impress it--"of course her standards are not ours. n.o.body would expect that. But this is certainly going too far.

Esther must be very much mortified."

Esther was not only that: she was tearful with anger and even penetrated to her grandmother's room to rehea.r.s.e the circ.u.mstance, and beg Madam Bell to send Aunt Patricia away. Madam Bell was lying with her face turned to the wall, but the bedclothes briefly shook, as if she chuckled.

"You must tell her to go," said Esther again. "It's your house, and it's a scandal to have such a woman living in it. I don't care for myself, but I do care for the dignity of the family." Esther, Madam Bell knew, never cared for herself. She did things from the highest motives and the most remote. "Will you," Esther insisted, "will you tell her to leave?"

"No," said grandmother, from under the bedclothes. "Go away and call Rhoda Knox."

Esther went, angry but not disconcerted. The result of her invasion was perhaps no more bitter than she had expected. She had sometimes talked to grandmother for ten minutes, meltingly, adjuringly, only to be asked, at a pause, to call Rhoda Knox. To-day Rhoda, with a letter in her hand, was just outside the door.

"Would you mind, Mrs. Blake," she said, "asking Sophy to mail this?"

Esther did mind, but she hardly ventured to say so. With bitterness in her heart, she took the letter and went downstairs. Everybody, this swelling heart told her, was against her. She still did not dare withstand Rhoda, for the woman took care of grandmother perfectly, and if she left it would be turmoil thrice confounded. She hated Rhoda the more, having once heard Madame Beattie's reception of a request to carry a message when she was going downstairs.

"Certainly not," said Madame Beattie. "That's what you are here for, my good woman. Run along and take down my cloak and put it in the carriage."

Rhoda went quite meekly, and Esther having seen, exulted and thought she also should dare revolt. But she never did.

And now, having gone to grandmother in her mortification and trouble, she knew she ought to go to Madame Beattie with her anger. But she had not the courage. She could hear the little satiric chuckle Madame Beattie would have ready for her. And yet, she knew, it had to be done.

But first she sent for Weedon Moore. The interview had but just been published, and Weedon, coming at dusk, was admitted by Sophy to the dining-room, where Madame Beattie seldom went. Esther received him with a cool dignity. She was pale. Grandmother would no doubt have said she made herself pale in the interest of pathos; but Esther was truly suffering. Moore, fussy, flattered, ill at ease, stood before her, holding his hat. She did not ask him to sit down. There was an unspoken tradition in Addington, observed by everybody but Miss Amabel, that Moore was not, save in cases of unavoidable delay, to be asked to sit.

He pa.s.sed his life, socially, in an upright posture. But Esther began at once, fixing her mournful eyes on his.

"Mr. Moore, I am distressed about the interview in your paper."

Moore, standing, could not squeeze inspiration out of his knees, and missed it sorely.

"Mrs. Blake," said he, "I wouldn't have distressed you for the world."