diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 4 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/54987-0.txt | 10907 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/54987-0.zip | bin | 235844 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/54987-h.zip | bin | 337842 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/54987-h/54987-h.htm | 13055 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/54987-h/images/0007.jpg | bin | 44866 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/54987-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 44866 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/old/54987-h.htm.2018-08-20 | 13054 |
10 files changed, 17 insertions, 37016 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7c2936d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #54987 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54987) diff --git a/old/54987-0.txt b/old/54987-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2805677..0000000 --- a/old/54987-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10907 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Seth's Brother's Wife, by Harold Frederic - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Seth's Brother's Wife - A Study of Life in The Greater New York - -Author: Harold Frederic - -Release Date: June 26, 2017 [EBook #54987] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SETH'S BROTHER'S WIFE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - -SETH’S BROTHER’S WIFE - -A Study Of Life In The Greater New York - -By Harold Frederic - -New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons - -1887 - - - -TO - -MY MOTHER - - - - -SETH’S BROTHER’S WIFE. - - - - -CHAPTER I.--THE HIRED FOLK. - -Ef ther’ ain’t a flare-up in _this_ haouse ’fore long, I miss _my_ -guess,” said Alvira, as she kneaded the pie-crust, and pulled it out -between her floury fingers to measure its consistency. “Ole Sabriny’s -got her back up this time to stay.” - -“Well, let ’em flare, says I. ’Taint none o’ aour business, Alviry.” - -“I knaow, Milton; but still it seems to me she might wait at least till -th’ corpse was aout o’ th’ haouse.” - -“What’s thet got to dew with it?” - -The callousness of the question must have grated upon the hired-girl, -for she made no reply, and slapped the dough over on the board with an -impatient gesture. - -It was near the close of a fair day, late in May, and the reddened -sunlight from the West would have helped to glorify any human being -less hopelessly commonplace than Milton Squires as he sat in its full -radiance on the doorstep, peeling and quartering apples over a pan which -he held between his knees. This sunlight, to reach him, painted -with warm tints many objects near at hand which it could not make -picturesque. The three great barns, standing in the shadow to the south, -were ricketty and ancient without being comely, and the glare only made -their awkward outlines and patched, paintless surfaces the meaner; the -score of lean cows, standing idly fetlock-deep in the black mire of -the barnyard, or nipping the scant tufts of rank grass near the trough, -seemed all the dingier and scrawnier for the brilliancy of the light -which covered them; the broken gate, the bars eked out with a hop-pole, -the wheelbarrow turned shiftlessly against a break in the wall, the -mildewed wellcurb, with its antiquated reach--all seemed in this glow of -dying day to be conscious of exhibiting at its worse their squalid side. -The sunset could not well have illumined, during that hour at least, a -less inspiring scene than this which Alvira, looking out as she talked, -or the hired man, raising his head from over the apples, could see from -the kitchen door of Lemuel Fairchild’s farm-house. But any student of -his species would have agreed that, in all the uninviting view, Milton -was the least attractive object. - -As he rose to empty his pan within, and start afresh, he could be -seen more fully. He was clumsily cased from neck to ankles in brown -over-alls, threadbare, discolored, patched, with mud about the knees and -ragged edges lower down. He wore rubber boots, over the bulging legs -of which the trousers came reluctantly, and the huge feet of these -were slit down the instep. His hat had been soft and black once; now it -seemed stiffened with dirt, to which the afternoon milking had lent a -new contribution of short reddish hair, and was shapeless and colorless -from age. His back was narrow and bent, and his long arms terminated -in hands which it seemed sinful to have touch anything thereafter to be -eaten. Viewed from behind, Milton appeared to be at least fifty. But his -face showed a somewhat younger man, despite its sun-baked lines and the -frowzy beard which might be either the yellow of unkempt youth or the -gray of untidy age. In reality he was not yet thirty-six. - -He slouched out now with a fresh lot of apples, and, squatting on the -door-stone, resumed the conversation. - -“I s’pose naow Sissly’s gone, ther’ won’t be no livin’ under th’ same -roof with Sabriny fer any of us. Ther’ ain’t nobuddy lef’ fer her to -rassle with ’cep’ us. Ole Lemuel’s so broken-up, he won’t dare say his -soul’s his own; ’n John--well, Lize Wilkins says she heerd him say he -didn’t know’s he’d come to th’ funer’l ’t all, after th’ way him ’n’ -Sabriny hed it aout las’ time he was here.” - -“I wasn’t talkin’ o’ _them!_” said Alvira, slapping the flour from her -hands’ and beginning with the roller; “it’d be nothin’ new, her tryin’ -to boss _them_. But she’s got her dander up naow agin somebuddy that -beats them all holler. They won’t no Richardsons come puttin’ on airs -’raoun’ here, an’ takin’ th’ parlor bedroom ’thaout askin’, not ef -th’ ole lady knaows herself--’n’ I guess she does.” - -“What Richardsons?” asked Milton. “Thought Sissly was th’ last of -’em--thet they wa’n’t no more Richardsons.” - -“Why, man alive, ain’t Albert’s wife a Richardson, th’ daughter of -Sissly’s cousin--you remember, that pock-pitted man who kep’ th’ fast -hoss here one summer. Of course she’s a Richardson--full-blooded! When -she come up from th’ train here this mornin’, with Albert, I see by th’ -ole lady’s eye ’t she meant misch’f. I didn’t want to see no raow, -here with a corpse in th’ haouse, ’n’ so I tried to smooth matters -over, ’n’ kind o’ quiet Sabriny daown, tellin’ her thet they had to -come to th’ fu-ner’l, ’n’ they’d go ’way soon’s it was through with, -’n’ that Albert, bein’ the oldest son, hed a right to th’ comp’ny -bed-room.” - -“’N’ what’d she say?” - -“She didn’t say much, ’cep’ thet th’ Richardsons hed never brung -nothin’ but bad luck to this haouse, ’n’ they never would, nuther. -’N’ then she flaounced upstairs to her room, jis’s she allus does when -she’s riled, ’n’ she give Albert’s wife sech a look, I said to m’self, -‘Milady, I wouldn’t be in _your_ shoes fer all yer fine fixin’s.’” - -“Well, she’s a dum likely lookin’ woman, ef she _is_ a Richardson,” said -Milton, with something like enthusiasm. “Wonder ef she wears one o’ them -low-necked gaowns when she’s to hum, like th’ picters in th’ _Ledger_. -They say they all dew, in New York.” - -“Haow sh’d I knaow!” Alvira sharply responded. “I got enough things to -think of, ’thaout both’rin’ my head abaout city women’s dresses. ’N’ -you ought to hev, tew. Ef you’n’ Leander’d pay more heed to yer work, -’n’ dew yer chores up ship-shape, ’n’ spen’ less time porin’ over -them good-fer-nothin’ story-papers, th’ farm wouldn’t look so run-daown -’n’ slaouchy. Did yeh hear what Albert said this mornin’, when he -looked ’raoun’? ‘I swan! ’ he said, ‘I b’lieve this is th’ seediest -lookin’ place ’n all Northern New York.’ Nice thing fer him to hev to -say, wa’n’t it!” - -“What d’ I keer what _he_ says? He ain’t th’ boss here, by a jug-full!” - -“’N’ more’s th’ pity, tew. He’d make yeh toe th’ mark!” - -“Yes, ’n’ Sabriny’d make it lively fer his wife, tew. Th’ ole -fight ’baout th’ Fairchileses ’n’ th’ Richardsons wouldn’t be a -succumstance to thet. Sissly’d thank her stars thet she was dead ’n’ -buried aout o’ th’ way.” - -These two hired people, who discussed their employer and his family with -that easy familiarity of Christian names to be found only in Russia -and rural America, knew very well what portended to the house when the -Richardson subject came up. Alvira Roberts had spent more than twenty -years of her life in the thick of the gaseous strife between Fairchild -and Richardson. She was a mere slip of a girl, barely thirteen, when she -had first hired out at the homestead, and now, black-browed, sallow from -much tea-drinking, and with a sharp, deep wrinkle vertically dividing -her high forehead, she looked every year of her thirty-five. Compared -with her, Milton Squires was a new comer on the farm, but still there -were lean old cows over yonder in the barnyard, lazily waiting for the -night-march to the pastures, that had been ravenous calves in their -gruel-bucket stage when he came. - -What these two did not know about the Fairchild family was hardly worth -the knowing. Something of what they knew, the reader ought here to be -told. - - - - -CHAPTER II.--THE STORY OF LEMUEL. - -Lemuel Fairchild, the bowed, gray-haired, lumpish man who at this time -sat in the main living room within, feebly rocking himself by the huge -wood-stove, and trying vaguely as he had been for thirty-six hours -past, to realize that his wife lay in her final sleep in the adjoining -chamber, had forty-odd years before been as likely a young farmer as -Dearborn County knew. He was fine-looking and popular in those days, and -old Seth Fairchild, dying unexpectedly, had left to this elder son his -whole possessions--six hundred acres of dairy and hop land, free and -clear, a residence much above the average farm-house of these parts, and -a tidy sum of money in the bank. - -The contrast now was sweeping. The Fairchild’s house was still the -largest residential structure on the Burfield road, which led from -Thessaly across the hills to remote and barbarous latitudes, but respect -had long since ceased to accrue to it upon the score of its size. To -the local eye, it was the badge and synonym of “rack and ruin;” while -sometimes strangers of artistic tastes, chancing to travel by this -unfrequented road, would voice regrets that such a prospect as opened to -the vision just here, with the noble range of hills behind for the first -time looming in their true proportions, should be spoiled by such a -gaunt, unsightly edifice, with its tumble-down surroundings, its staring -windows cheaply curtained with green paper, and its cheerless, shabby -color--that indescribable gray with which rain and frost and Father Time -supplant unrenewed white. The garden, comprising a quarter-acre to the -east of the house, was a tangled confusion of flowers and weeds and -berry-bushes run wild, yet the effect somehow was mean rather than -picturesque. The very grass in the yard to the west did not grow -healthfully, but revealed patches of sandy barrenness, created by feet -too indifferent or unruly to keep the path to the barns. - -Yet the neighbors said, and Lemuel had come himself to feel, that the -blame of this sad falling off was not fairly his. There had been a fatal -defect in the legacy. - -The one needful thing which the Hon. Seth Fairchild did _not_ leave his -elder son was the brains by means of which he himself, in one way -or another, had gathered together a substantial competency, won two -elections to the State Senate, and established and held for himself the -position of leading citizen in his town--that most valued and intangible -of American local distinctions. But while Lemuel’s brown hair curled -so prettily, and his eyes shone with the modest light of wealthy and -well-behaved youth, nobody missed the brains. If there was any change in -the management of the farm, it passed unnoticed, for all attention was -centred on the great problem, interesting enough always when means seeks -a help-meet, but indescribably absorbing in rural communities, where -everybody knows everybody and casual gallants never come for those -luckless damsels neglected by native swains--Whom will he marry? - -It boots not now to recall the heart-burnings, the sad convictions that -life would henceforth be a blank, the angry repinings at fate, which -desolated the village of Thessaly and vicinity when Lemuel, returning -from a mid-winter visit to Albany, brought a bride in the person of a -bright eyed, handsome and clever young lady who had been Miss Cicely -Richardson. He had known her, so they learned, for some years--not only -during his school-days at the Academy there, but later, in what was -mysteriously known in Thessaly as “society,” in whose giddy mazes he had -mingled while on a visit to his legislative sire at the Capital City. -No, it is not worth while to dwell upon the village hopes rudely -destroyed by this shock--for they are dim memories of the far, far past. - -But to one the blow was a disappointment not to be forgotten, or to grow -dim in recollection. Miss Sabrina Fairchild was two years younger than -her brother in age--a score of years his senior in firmness and will. -She had only a small jointure in her father’s estate, because she had -great expectations from an aunt in Ohio, in perpetual memory of whose -anticipated bounty she bore her scriptural name, but she was a charge on -her brother in that she was to have a home with him until she chose -to leave it for one of her own. I doubt not that her sagacious father -foresaw, from his knowledge of his daughter, the improbability that this -second home would ever be offered her. - -Miss Sabrina, even at this tender age, was clearly not of the marrying -kind, and she grew less so with great steadiness. She was at this early -date, when she was twenty-four, a woman of markedly strong character, of -which perhaps the most distinct trait was family pride. - -There has been a considerable army of State Senators since New York -first took on the honors of a Commonwealth, and unto them a great troop -of daughters have been born, but surely no other of all these girls -ever exulted so fondly, nay, fiercely, in the paternal dignity as did -Sabrina. She knew nothing of politics, and little of the outside world; -her conceptions of social possibilities were of the most primitive sort; -one winter, when she went to Albany with her father, and was passed in -a bewildered way through sundry experiences said to be of a highly -fashionable nature, it had been temporarily apparent to her -own consciousness that she was an awkward, ignorant, red-armed -country-girl--but this only for one wretched hour or so. Every mile-post -passed on her homeward ride, as she looked through the stage window, -brought restored self-confidence, and long before the tedious journey -ended she was more the Senator’s daughter than ever. - -Through this very rebound from mortification she queened it over -the simpler souls of the village with renewed severity and pomp. The -itinerant singing master who thought to get her for the asking into his -class in the school-house Wednesday evenings, was frozen by the amazed -disdain of her refusal. When young Smith Thurber, the kiln-keeper’s son, -in the flippant spirit of fine buttons and a resplendent fob, asked her -to dance a measure with him at the Wallaces’ party, the iciness of her -stare fairly took away his breath. - -Something can be guessed of her emotions when the brother brought home -his bride. With a halfcowardly, half-kindly idea of postponing the -trouble certain to ensue, he had given Sabrina no warning of his -intention, and, through the slow mails of that date, only a day’s -advance notice of his return with Mrs. Lemuel. The storm did not burst -at once. Indeed it may be said never to have really burst. Sabrina -was not a bad woman, according to her lights, and she did nothing -consciously to make her sister-in-law unhappy. The young wife had a -light heart, a sensible mind and the faculty of being cheerful about -many things which might be expected to annoy. But she had some pride, -too, and although at the outset it was the very simple and praiseworthy -pride of a well-meaning individual, incessant vaunting of the Fairchilds -quite naturally gave a family twist to it, and she soon was able to -resent slights in the name of all the Richardsons. - -After all, was she not in the right? for while the grass was scarcely -green on the grave of the first Fairchild who had amounted to anything, -there were six generations of Richardsons in Albany chronicles alone who -had married into the best Dutch families of that ancient, aristocratic -town, to say nothing of the New England record antedating that -period. Thus the case appeared to her, and came gradually to have more -prominence in her mind than, in her maiden days, she could have thought -possible. - -So this great Forty Years’ War began, in which there was to be no single -grand, decisive engagement, but a thousand petty skirmishes and little -raids, infinitely more vexatious and exhausting, and was waged until the -weaker of the combatants, literally worn out in the fray, had laid down -her arms and her life together, and was at peace at last, under the -sheet in the darkened parlor. - -The other veteran party to the feud, her thin, iron-gray hair half -concealed under a black knit cap, her bold, sharp face red as with -stains of tears, sat at the window of her own upper room, reading her -Bible. If Milton and Alvira had known that she was reading in Judges, -they might have been even more confident of a coming “flare-up.” - - - - -CHAPTER III.--AUNT SABRINA. - -NEIGHBORING philosophers who cared, from curiosity or a loftier motive, -to study the Fairchild domestic problem, in all its social and historic -ramifications, generally emerged from the inquiry with some personal -bias against Miss Sabrina, tempered by the conclusion that, after all, -there was a good deal to be said on the old lady’s side. - -Certainly, as the grim old maid in the rusty bombazine gown and -cap, which gave a funereal air even to the red plaid shawl over her -shoulders, sat at her upper window, and tried through a pained and -resentful chaos of secular thoughts to follow the Scriptural lines, -there was an extremely vivid conviction uppermost in her mind that -justice had been meted out neither to her nor to the Fairchilds. She -would have repelled indignantly, and honestly enough too, the charge -that there was any bitterness in her heart toward the sister-in-law -whose burial was appointed for the morrow. She had liked poor Cicely, in -her iron-clad way, and had wept genuine tears more than once since her -death. Indeed, her thoughts--and they were persistent, self-asserting -thoughts which not even her favorite recital of Gideon’s sanguinary -triumph could keep back--ran more upon the living than upon the dead. - -And what gloomy, melancholy thoughts they were! They swept over two -score of years, the whole gamut of emotion, from the pride and hope of -youth to the anguish of disappointed, wrathful, hopeless old age, as -her hand might cover all there was of sound in music by a run down her -mother’s ancient spinet which stood, mute and forgotten, in the corner -of the room. Her brother, this brother whom satirical fate had made -a Lemuel instead of a Lucy or a Lucretia, a man instead of a woman as -befitted his weakness of mind and spirit--had begun life with a noble -heritage. Where was it now? He had been the heir to a leading position -among the men of his county. What was he now? The Fairchilds had been as -rich, as respected, as influential as any Dearborn family. Who did them -honor now? - -The mental answers to these questions blurred Miss Sabrina’s spectacles -with tears, and Gideon’s performance with the lamps seemed a tiresome -thing. She laid the Book aside, and went softly down stairs to her -brother, who sat, still rocking in his late wife’s high, cushioned -arm-chair, disconsolate by the stove. - -There were also in the room his oldest son and this son’s wife, sitting -dumbly, each at a window, making a seemly pretence of not being bored by -the meagre prospect without. They looked at their aunt in that far-off -impassive manner with which participants in a high pageant or solemn -observance always regard one another. There was no call for a greeting, -since they had already exchanged whispered salutations, earlier in the -day. Miss Sabrina glanced at the young wife for an instant--it was not a -kindly glance. Then her eyes turned to the husband, and while surveying -him seemed suddenly to light up with some new thought. She almost -smiled, and her tight pressed lips parted. Had they followed the -prompting of the brain and spoken, the words would have been: - -“Thank God, there is still Albert!” - -Albert Fairchild would have been known in any company, and in any guise, -I think, for a lawyer. The profession had its badge in every line and -aspect of his face, in every movement of his head, and, so it seemed, in -the way he held his hands, in the very tone of his voice. His face -was round, and would have been pleasant, so far as conformation and -expression went, had it not been for the eyes, which were unsympathetic, -almost cold. Often the rest of his countenance was wreathed in amiable -smiles; but the eyes smiled never. He had looked a middle-aged man for -a decade back, and casual acquaintances who met him from year to year -complimented him on not growing old, because they saw no change. In fact -he had been old from the beginning, and even now looked more than his -age, which lacked some few months of forty. He was growing bald above -the temples, and, like all the Fairchilds, was taking on flesh with -increasing years. Nothing could have better shown the extremity of poor -Sabrina’s woe than this clutching at the relief afforded by the sight of -Albert, for she was not on good terms with him. Albert had been born and -reared through boyhood at a time when the farm was still prosperous -and money plenty. He had been educated far beyond the traditions of his -sires, and was the first University man of his family, so far as was -known. He had been given his own bent in all things, before he settled -down to a choice of profession, and then, at considerable expense, had -been secured a place with one of the greatest legal firms in New York -City. For years the first fruits of the soil, the cream off all the -milk--so the Aunt’s mingled scriptural and dairy metaphors ran--had -been his. And what return had they had for it? He had become a sound, -successful lawyer, with a handsome income, and he had married wealth as -well. Yet year after year, as the fortunes of the Fairchild homestead -declined, he had never interfered to prevent the fresh mortgage being -placed--nay, had more than once explicitly declined to help save it. - -“Agriculture is out of date in this State,” she had heard him say once, -with her own ears, “Better let the old people live on their capital, as -they go along. It’s no use throwing good money after bad. Farm land here -in the East is bound to decrease in value, steadily.” - -This about the homestead--about the cradle of his ancestors! Poor old -lady, had the Fairchilds been sending baronial roots down through all -this soil for a thousand years, she couldn’t have been more pained or -mortified over Albert’s callous view of the farm which her grandfather, -a revolted cobbler from Rhode Island, had cleared and paid for at ten -cents an acre. - -Then there was his marriage, too. In all the years of armed neutrality -or tacit warfare which she and Cicely had passed together under one -roof, they had never before or since come so near an open and palpable -rupture as they did over a city-bred cousin of Cicely’s--a forward, -impertinent, ill-behaved girl from New York, who had come to the farm on -a visit some ten years before, and whose father was summoned at last -to take her away because otherwise she, Sabrina, threatened to herself -leave the house. There had been a desperate scene before this conclusion -was reached. Sabrina had stormed and threatened to shake the dust of the -homestead from off her outraged sandals. Cicely for the once had stood -her ground, and said she fancied even worse things than that might -happen without producing a universal cataclysm. Lemuel had almost wept -with despair over the tumult. The two older boys, particularly John, had -not concealed their exuberant hope that their maiden Aunt might be taken -at her word, and allowed to leave. And the girl herself, this impudent -huzzy of a Richardson, actually put her spoke in too, and said things -about old cats and false teeth, which it made Sabrina’s blood still boil -to recall. - -And it was this girl, of all others in the world, whom Albert must go -and marry! - -Yet Sabrina, in her present despondent mood, felt herself able to rise -above mere personal piques and dislikes, if there really was a hope for -the family’s revival. She was not very sanguine about even Albert, but -beyond him there was no chance at all. - -John, the second brother, had talent enough, she supposed. People said -he was smart, and he must be, else he could scarcely have come in his -twenty-eighth year to be owner and editor of the Thessaly _Banner of -Liberty_, and put in all those political pieces written in the first -person plural, as if he had the power of attorney for all Dearborn -county. But then he was mortally shiftless about money matters, and -they did say that since his wife’s death--a mere school-teacher she had -been--he had become quite dissipated and played billiards. Besides she -was at open feud with him, and never, never would speak to him again, -the longest day _he_ lived! So that settled John. - -As for Seth, the youngest of the brothers, it is to be doubted if she -would have thought of him at all, had he not come in at the moment. He -had been down to the village to get some black clothes which the tailor -had constructed on short notice for him, and he, too, passed through the -sitting room to the stairs with the serious look and the dead silence -which the awful presence imposes. - -Then she did think of him for a moment, as she stood warming her fingers -over the bald, flat top of the stove--for though bright and warm enough -outside, the air was still chilly in these great barns of rooms. - -Seth was indisputably the handsomest of all the Fairchilds, even -handsomer than she remembered his father to have been--a tall, straight, -broadshouldered youth, who held his head well up and looked everybody -in the face with honest hazel eyes. He had the Richardson complexion, a -dusky tint gained doubtless from all those Dutch intermarriages of which -poor Cicely used to make so much, but his brown hair curled much as -Lemuel’s used to curl, only not so effeminately, and his temper was as -even as his father’s had been, though not so submissive or weak. His -hands were rough and coarse from the farm work, and his walk showed -familiarity with ploughed ground, but still he had, in his way, a more -distinguished air than either Albert or John had ever had. - -Looking him over, a stranger would have been surprised that his aunt -should have left him out of her thoughts of the family’s future--or -that, once pausing to consider him, she should have dropped the idea -so swiftly. But so it was. Miss Sabrina felt cold and aggrieved toward -Albert, and she came as near hating John as a deeply devout woman safely -could. She simply took no account of Seth at all, as she would have -expressed it. To her he was a quiet, harmless sort of youngster, who -worked prettily steadily on the farm, and got on civilly with people. -She understood that he was very fond of reading, but that made no -special impression on her. - -If she had been asked, she would undoubtedly have said that Seth was -her favorite nephew--but she had never dreamed of regarding him as a -possible restorer of the family glories. - -“Is yer oven hot enough?” she asked Alvira in the kitchen, a minute -later. “If they’s anything I _dew_ hate, it’s a soggy undercrust.” - -“I guess I kin manage a batch o’ pies by this time,” returned the -hired-girl with a sniff. Through some unexplained process of reasoning, -Alvira was with the Fairchilds as against the Richardsons, but she was -first of all for herself, against the whole human race. - -“Milton gone aout with the caows?” asked the old lady, ignoring for the -once the domestic’s challenge. “When he comes back, he ’n’ Leander -better go over to Wilkinses, and get what chairs they kin spare. I -s’pose there’ll be a big craowd, ef only to git in and see if there’s -any holes in our body-Brussels yit, ’n’ haow that sofy-backed set in -the parlor’s holdin’ out. Poor Cicely! I think they better bring over -the chairs tonight, after dusk. What people don’t see they can’t talk -abaout.” - -“Heard Milton say he was goin’ to borrer some over at Warren’s,” - remarked Alvira, in a casual way, but looking around to see how the idea -affected Miss Sabrina. - -“Well he jis’ won’t!” came the answer, very promptly and spiritedly. -“If every mortal soul of ’em hes to stan’ up, he won’t! I guess Lemuel -Fairchild’s wife can be buried ’thaout asking any help from Matildy -Warren. I wouldn’t ask her if ’twas th’ las’ thing I ever did.” - -“But Annie sent word she was comin’ over fus’ thing in th’ mornin’, so’s -to help clear up th’ breakfast things. If she’s good enough fer that, I -don’t see why you need be afeered o’ borryin’ her chairs.” - -“They ain’t her chairs, and you knaow it, Alviry. I ain’t got a word to -say agin’ Annie Fairchild, but when it comes to her gran’ mother, I kin -ride a high horse as well’s she kin. After all the trouble she made my -family, the sight of a single stick of her furnitur’ here’d be enough to -bring the rafters of this haouse daown over my head, I do believe!” - -“Well, of course, ‘tain’t none o’ my business, but seems to me there’ll -be a plaguey slim fun’r’l when _your_ turn comes if you’re goin’ to keep -up all these old-woman’s fights with everybody ’raound abaout.” - -“Naow Alviry!” began Miss Sabrina, in her shrillest and angriest tone; -then with a visible effort, as if remembering something, she paused and -then went on in a subdued, almost submissive voice, “You knaow jis’ haow -Matildy Warren’s used us. From the very day my poor brother William ran -off with her Jenny--and goodness knaows whatever possessed him to dew -it--thet old woman’s never missed a chance to run us all daown--ez -ef she oughtn’t to been praoud o’ th’ day a Fairchild took up with a -Warren.” - -“Guess you ain’t had none the wu’st of it,” put in Alvira, with sarcasm. -“Guess your tongue’s ’baout as sharp as her’n ever was. B’sides she’s -bed-ridden naow, ’n’ everybody thought she wouldn’t get threw th’ -spring. ’N’ ef Seth’s goin’ to make up to Annie, you ought to begin to -smooth things over ’fore she dies. There’s no tellin’ but what she -mightn’t leave the farm away f’m th’ girl at th’ last minute, jis’ to -spite you.” - -“Yeh needn’t talk as if _I_ wanted her pesky farm!” - -“Oh, well now, you knaow what I mean’s well’s I dew. What’s th’ use -o’ harpin’ on what yer brother William did, or what ole Matildy said, -’fore I was born, when you knaow th’ tew farms jine, and yer heart’s -sot on havin’ ’em in one--Yes, ’fore I was born,” repeated the -domestic, as if pleased with the implication of juvenility. - -Miss Sabrina hesitated, and looked at Alvira meditatively through her -spectacles, in momentary doubt about the propriety of saying a sharp -thing under all the circumstances; but the temptation was not to be -resisted. “’N’ you ain’t percisely a chicken yourself, Alviry,” she -said and left the kitchen. - -Later, when Milton had returned from the pasture, and hung about the -kitchen, mending the harness that went with the democrat-wagon while -waiting for Leander to return from the cheese factory, Alvira remarked: - -“Seems ’if Sabriny’d lost all her sper’t this last day or tew. Never -see sech a change. She don’t answer up wuth a cent. I shouldn’t be -s’prised if she didn’t tackle Albert’s wife after all. Oh yes, ’n’ you -ain’t to go to Warren’s for them chairs. Sa-briny’s dead-set agin that.” - -“What’s up?” asked Milton, “Hez Seth broke off with Annie?” - -“Don’t knaow’s they ever was anything particular to break off. No, ’t -’aint that; it’s the same raow ‘tween the two ole women. Goodness -knaows, I’m sick ’n’ tired of hearin’ ’baout it.” - -“No, but ain’t Seth ’n’ Annie fixed it up?” persisted Milton; “Daown’t -th’ corners they say it’s all settled.” Then he mutteringly added, as -he slouched out to meet Leander, who drove up now with a great rattle of -empty milk-cans. “I wish’t _I_ was in Seth’s shoes.” - -“Oh, you _dew_, dew yeh!” said Alvira, thus left to herself. - - - - -CHAPTER IV.--THE TWO YOUNG WOMEN. - -The young girl whose future had been settled down at the corners, came -along the road next morning toward the Fairchild house, all unconscious -of her destiny. She lived in a small, old-fashioned farm-dwelling back -in the fields, alone with her grandmother, and although there was a -bitter feud between the heads of the two houses, it had not stopped her -from being a familiar and helpful figure in her uncle’s homestead. - -Annie Fairchild was a country girl in some senses of the term, -calm-faced, clear-eyed, self-reliant among her friends, but with a -curious disposition toward timidity in the presence of strangers. She -was held to be too serious and “school-ma’am-ish” for pleasant company -by most rural maidens of her acquaintance, and the few attempts of young -farmers of the country-side to establish friendly relations with her -had not been crowned with conspicuous success. It could scarcely be said -that she was haughty or cold; no one could demonstrate in detail that -her term of schooling in a far-off citified seminary had made her proud -or uncivil; but still she had no intimates. - -This was the more marked from the fact that she was a pretty girl--or if -not precisely pretty, very attractive and winning in face. No other -girl of the neighborhood had so fine and regular a profile, or such -expressive, dark eyes, or so serenely intelligent an expression. It had -been whispered at one time that Reuben Tracy, the school-master, was -likely to make a match of it with her, but this had faded away again as -a rootless rumor; by this time everybody on the Burfield road tacitly -understood that eventually she was to be the wife of her cousin Seth, -when it “came time for the two farms to join.” And she had grown -accustomed long since to the furtive, half-awed, half-covetous look -which men cast upon her, without suspecting the spirit of reluctant -renunciation underlying it. - -She met Milton Squires on the road, close in front of the Fairchild’s -house, this morning, and, nodding to him, passed on. She did not -particularly note the gaze he bent upon her as she went by, and which -followed her afterward, almost to the Fairchild gate. If she had done -so, and could have read all its meaning, she would not have gone on -with so unruffled a face, for it was a look to frighten an honest young -woman--an intent, hungry, almost wolfish look, unrelieved by so much as -a glimmer of the light of manliness. - -But she was alike unconscious of his thoughts and of the gossip he had -heard at the corners. Certainly no listener who followed her to the -gate, where she encountered Seth at work screwing on a new hinge, would -have gathered from the tone or words of the greeting on either side any -testimony to confirm the common supposition that they were destined for -each other. - -“Good morning, Seth,” she said, halting while he dragged the great gate -open for her, “you’re all through breakfast, I suppose?” - -“No, I think Albert and his wife are at the table still. We didn’t call -them when the rest got up, you know. They’re not used to country ways.” - -“Anybody else here?” - -“No, except John.” - -“Oh, I’m so glad he came. That Lize Wilkins has been telling everybody -he wouldn’t come on Sabrina’s account. And it would have looked _so_ -bad.” - -“Yes, Lize Wilkins talks too much. All John ever said was that he -wouldn’t stay here in the house any more than he could help. It’s too -bad he can’t get along better with Aunt; it would make things so much -pleasanter.” - -“How’s your father, Seth? He seemed at first to take it pretty hard.” - -“He appeared a little brighter yesterday, after Albert came, but he’s -very poorly this morning. Poor old man, it makes a sad difference with -him--more I suppose than with us boys, even with me, who never have been -away from her hardly for a day.” - -“Yes, Seth, a boy outgrows his mother, I suppose, but for an old couple -who have lived together forty years a separation like this must be -awful. I shall go up to the house now.” - -Seth followed her with his eyes as she walked up the road, past the -old-fashioned latticed front door with its heavy fold of crape hanging -on the knocker, and turned from sight at the corner of the house; -and the look in his face was soft and admiring, even if it was hardly -loverlike. In his trouble--and he felt the bereavement most keenly--it -seemed restful and good to have such a girl as Annie about, Indeed, a -vague thought that she had never before seemed so sweet and likeable -came to him, as he turned again to the hinge, and lightened his heart -perceptibly, for almost the last words his mother had spoken to him had -been of his future with Annie as his wife. - -“You will have the farm before long, Seth,” she said, smiling faintly -as he stroked her pale hair--somehow to the last it never grew grey--and -looked at her through boyish tears, “and Annie will bring you the Warren -farm. Her grandmother and I have talked it over many a time. Annie’s a -good girl, there’s no better, and she’ll make my boy a good, true wife.” - -For a year or two back Seth had understood in a nebulous way that his -parents had an idea of his eventually marrying Annie, but his mother’s -words still came to him in the form of a surprise. First, it had been -far from his thoughts that old Mrs. Warren, Annie’s invalid grandmother, -would listen to such a thing, much less plan it. There was a bitterness -of long standing between the two families, he knew. His father’s younger -brother--a halfbrother--named William Fairchild, had married Mrs. -Warren’s only daughter under circumstances which he had never heard -detailed, but which at least had enraged the mother. Both William and -his wife had died, out West he believed, years and years ago, leaving -only this girl, Annie Fairchild, who came an orphan to the grandmother -she had never seen before, and was reared by her. In this Mrs. Warren -and his aunt Sabrina had found sufficient occasion for a quarrel, -lasting ever since he could remember, and as he had always understood -from his aunt that her battle was in defense of the whole family, he -had taken it for granted that he not less than the other Fairchilds was -included in Mrs. Warren’s disfavor. He recalled, now, indeed, having -heard Annie say once or twice that her grandmother liked him; but this -he had taken in a negative way, as if the grandmother of the Capulets -had remarked that of all the loathed Montagus perhaps young Romeo was -personally the least offensive to her sight. - -And second, he was far from being in a Romeo’s condition of heart and -mind. He was not in love with Annie for herself--much less for the -Warren farm. To state plainly what Seth had not yet mustered courage to -say in entire frankness even to himself, he hated farming, and rebelled -against the idea of following in his father’s footsteps. And the -dreams of a career elsewhere which occupied the mutinous thoughts Seth -concealed under so passive an exterior had carried him far away from -the plan of an alliance with the nice sort of country cousin who would -eventually own the adjoining farm. So in this sense, too, his mothers -dying words were a surprise--converting into a definite and almost -sacred desire what he had supposed to be merely a shapeless fancy. - -Not all this crossed his mind, as he watched Annie till she disappeared, -and then turned back to his work. But the sight of her had been pleasant -to him, and her voice had sounded very gentle and yet full of the -substance of womanliness--and perhaps his poor, dear mother’s plan for -him, after all, was the best. - -The gate swinging properly at last, there was an end to Seth’s out-door -tasks, and he started toward the house. The thought that he would see -Annie within was distinct enough in his mind, almost, to constitute -a motive for his going. At the very door he encountered his brother -Albert’s wife, coming out, and stopped. - -Isabel Fairchild was far from deserving, at least as a woman, the -epithets with which Aunt Sabrina mentally coupled her girlhood. There -was nothing impertinent or ill-behaved about her appearance, certainly, -as she stood before Seth, and with a faint smile bade him good-morning. - -She was above the medium height, as woman’s stature goes, and almost -plump; her hair, much of which was shown in front by the pretty Parisian -form of straw hat she wore, was very light in color; her eyes were blue, -a light, noticeable blue. She wore some loose kind of black and gray -morning dress, with an extra fold falling in graceful lines from her -shoulders to her train, like a toga, and she carried a dainty parasol, -also of black and gray, like the ribbons on her dark hat. To Seth’s eyes -she had seemed yesterday, when he saw her for the first time, a very -embodiment of the luxury, beauty, refinement of city life--and how much -more so now, when her dingy traveling raiment had given place to this -most engaging garb, so subdued, yet so lovely. It seemed to him that his -sister-in-law was quite the most attractive woman he had ever seen. - -“I thought of going for a little stroll,” she said, again with -the faint, half-smile. “It is so charming outside, and so blue and -depressing in the house. Can I walk along there through the orchard -now?--I used to when I was here as a girl, I know--and won’t you come -with me? I’ve scarcely had a chance for a word with you since we came.” - -The invitation was pleasant enough to Seth, but he looked down -deprecatingly at his rough chore clothes, and wondered whether he ought -to accept it or not. - -“Why, Seth, the _idea_ of standing on ceremony with _me!_ As if we -hadn’t played together here as children--to say nothing of my being your -sister now!” - -They had started now toward the orchard, and she continued:-- - -“Do you know, it seems as if I didn’t know anybody here but you--and -even you almost make a stranger out of me. Poor Uncle Lemuel, he is so -broken-down that he scarcely remembers me, and of course your Aunt and -I couldn’t be expected to get very intimate--you remember our dispute? -Then John, he’s very pleasant, and all that, but he isn’t at all like -the John I used to look up to so, the summer I was here. But you--you -have hardly changed a bit. Of course,” she made haste to add, for Seth’s -face did not reflect unalloyed gratification at this, “you have grown -manly and big, and all that, but you haven’t changed in your expression -or manner. It’s almost ten years--and I should have known you anywhere. -But John _has_ changed--he’s more like a city man, or rather a villager, -a compromise between city and country.” - -“Yes, I’m a countryman through and through, I suppose,” said Seth, with -something very like a sigh. - -“John has seen a good deal of the world they tell me, and been on papers -in large cities. I wonder how he can content himself with that little -weekly in Thessaly after that.” - -“I don’t think John has much ambition,” answered Seth, meditatively. “He -doesn’t seem to care much how things go, if he only has the chance to -say what he wants to say in print. It doesn’t make any difference to -him, apparently, whether all New York State reads what he writes, or -only thirty or forty fellows in Dearborn County--he’s just as well -satisfied. And yet he’s a very bright man, too. He might have gone to -the Assembly last fall, if he could have bid against Elhanan Pratt. He -_will_ go sometime, probably.” - -“Why, do you have an auction here for the Assembly?” - -“Oh, no, but the man who’s willing to pay a big assessment into the -campaign fund can generally shut a poor candidate out John didn’t seem -to mind much about being frozen out though--not half so much as I did, -for him. Everybody in Thessaly knows him and likes him and calls him -‘John,’ and that seems to be the height of his ambition. I can’t imagine -a man of his abilities being satisfied with so limited a horizon.” - -“And, you, Seth, what is your horizon like?” asked Isabel. - -They had entered the orchard path, now, and the apple blossoms close -above them filled the May morning air with that sweet spring perfume -which seems to tell of growth, harvest, the fruition of hope. - -“Oh, I’m picked out to be a countryman all the days of my life I -suppose.” There was the sigh again, and a tinge of bitterness in his -tone, as well. - -“Oh, I hope not--that is, if you don’t want to be. Oh, it must be such a -dreary life! The very thought of it sets my teeth on edge. The dreadful -people you have to know: men without an idea beyond crops and calves -and the cheese-factory; women slaving their lives out doing bad cooking, -mending for a houseful of men, devoting their scarce opportunities for -intercourse with other women to the weakest and most wretched gossip; -coarse servants who eat at the table with their employers and call them -by their Christian names; boys whose only theory about education is -thrashing the school teacher, if it is a man, or breaking her heart -by their mean insolence if it is a woman; and girls brought up to be -awkward gawks, without a chance in life, since the brighter and nicer -they are the more they will suffer from marriage with men mentally -beneath them--that is, if they don’t become sour old maids. I don’t -wonder you hate it all, Seth.” - -“You talk like a book,” said Seth, in tones of unmistakable admiration. -“I didn’t suppose any woman could talk like that.” - -“I talk as I feel always, when I come into contact with country -life, and I get, angry with people who maunder about its romantic and -picturesque side. Where is it, I should, like to know?” - -“Oh, it isn’t all so bad as you paint it, perhaps, -Isabel. Of course----“--here he hesitated a little--“you don’t quife see -it at its best here, you know. Father hasn’t been a first-rate manager, -and things have kin all so bad as you paint it, perhaps, Isabel. Of -course----” here he hesitated a little--“you don’t quife see it at its -best here, you know. Father hasn’t been a first-rate manager, and things -have kind o’ run down.” - -“No, Seth, it isn’t that; the trail of the serpent is over it all--rich -and poor, big and little. The Nineteenth century is a century of cities; -they have given their own twist to the progress of the age--and the -farmer is almost as far out of it as if he lived in Alaska. Perhaps -there may have been a time when a man could live in what the poet calls -daily communion with Nature and not starve his mind and dwarf his soul, -but this isn’t the century.” - -“But Webster was a farm boy, and so was Lincoln and Garfield and -Jackson--almost all our great men. Hardly any of them are born in -cities, you will find.” - -“Oh, the country is just splendid to be born in, no doubt of that; but -after you are born, get out of it as soon as you can.” - -“I don’t know as I can leave Father very well,” said Seth slowly, and as -if in deep thought. - -They walked to the end of the pasture beyond the orchard, to within -view of the spot where all the Fairchilds for three generations had been -laid, and where, among the clustering sweet-briars and wild-strawberry -vines Milton had only yesterday dug a new grave. The sight recalled -to both another subject, and no more was said of country life as they -returned to the house. Indeed, little was said of any sort, for Seth had -a thinking mood on. Nothing was very clear in his mind perhaps, but more -distinctly than anything else he felt that existence on the farm had all -at once become intolerable. - - - - -CHAPTER V.--THE FUNERAL. - -The American farm-house funeral is surely, of all the observances with -which civilized man marks the ending of this earthly pilgrimage, the -most pathetic. The rural life itself is a sad and sterile enough thing, -with its unrelieved physical strain, its enervating and destructive -diet, its mental barrenness, its sternly narrowed groove of toil and -thought and companionship--but death on the farm brings a desolating -gloom, a cruel sense of the hopelessness of existence, which one -realizes nowhere else. The grim, fatalist habit of seizing upon the -grotesque side, which a century of farm life has crystallized into what -the world knows as American humor, is not wanting even in this hour; -and the comforting conviction of immortality, of the shining reward to -follow travail and sorrow, is nowhere more firmly insisted upon than -among our country people. But the bleak environment of the closed -life, the absence of real fellowship among the living, the melancholy -isolation and vanity of it all, oppress the soul here with an -intolerable weight which neither fund of sardonic spirits nor honest -faith can lighten. - -Something of this Isabel felt, as the mid-day meal was hurried through, -on Alvira’s sharp intimation that the room couldn’t be cleared any too -soon, for the crowd would begin coming now, right along. There were -three strangers at the table--though they seemed to be scarcely more -strangers than the members of her husband’s family--of whom two were -clergymen. - -One of these, who sat next to her, was the Episcopalian minister at -Thessaly, a middle-aged, soft sort of man, with short hair so smooth -and furry that she was conscious of an impulse to stroke it like a -seal-skin, and little side-whiskers which reminded her of a baby brush. -He impressed her as a stupid man, but in that she was mistaken. He was -nervous and ill at ease, first because he could not successfully or -gracefully use the narrow three-tined steel fork with a bone handle -that had been given him, and second, because he did not understand the -presence of the Rev. Stephen Bunce, who sat opposite him, offensively -smacking his lips, and devoting to loud discourse periods which it -seemed might better have been employed in mastication. - -If quiet Mr. Turner was ill at ease, the Rev. Stephen was certainly not. -He bestrode the situation like a modern Colossus. The shape of his fork -did not worry him, since he used it only as a humble and lowly adjunct -to his knife. The presence of Mr. Turner too, neither puzzled nor pained -him. In fact, he was rather pleased than otherwise to have him there, -where he could talk to him before sympathetic witnesses, and make -him realise how the man of the people who had a genuine call -towered innately superior to mere beneficed gentility. “Beneficed -gentility”--that was a good phrase, and he made a mental note of it for -future use; then--the temptation was too strong--he bundled it neck and -crop into the florid sentence with which he was addressing Albert--and -looked at the Episcopalian to watch its effect. - -Mr. Turner was occupied with his javelin-shaped fork, and did not seem -to hear it. - -Mr. Bunce suspected artifice in this, and watched the rector’s meek face -for a sign of secret confusion. After a moment he said, with his full, -pompous voice at its loudest and most artificial pitch:-- - -“Ah, Mr. Turner, this is a sad occasion!” - -The rector glanced up with some surprise, for he had not expected this -overture, and answered “Yes, truly it is; extremely sad.” - -“Yet it is consoling to feel that even so sad an occasion can be -converted into a means of grace, a season of spiritual solace as it -were.” - -Mr. Turner only nodded assent to this; he felt that the whole company -around the table, hired people and all, were eagerly watching him and -the burly, bold-faced preacher opposite, as if they were about to engage -in gladiatorial combat. - -But Mr. Bunce would not permit the challenge to be declined. He stroked -his ochre-hued chin whisker, looked complacently around the board, and -asked: - -“I s’pose you’ve brought your white and black riggins’ along, eh? Or -don’t you wear ’em except in Church?” - -There was a pained look in Mr. Turner’s face; he made a little gesture -toward the folding doors leading to the parlor, beyond which lay the -dead, and murmured: - -“It will be better, will it not, to speak of these matters together, -after dinner?” - -Again the Rev. Stephen glanced around the table, looking especially -toward Miss Sabrina for approval, and remarked loftily: - -“There is no need of concealment here, sir. It is all in the family -here. We all know that the Mother in Israel who has departed was -formerly of your communion, and if she wanted to have you here, sir, at -her funeral, why well and good. But the rest of this sorrowin’ family, -sir, this stricken household, air Baptists--” - -“I declare! there’s the Burrells drivin’ into the yard, a’ready!” said -Alvira, rising from her chair abruptly. “If you’re threw we better -hustle these things aout, naow; you women won’t more’n have time to -dress ’fore they’ll all be here.” - -The interruption seemed a welcome one to everybody, for there was a -general movement on both sides of Mr. Bunce, which he, with his sentence -unfinished, was constrained to join. - -The third stranger, a small, elderly man with a mobile countenance -and rusty black clothes, drew himself up, put on a modifiedly doleful -expression, and, speaking for the first time, assumed control of -everything: - -“Naow, Milton, you ’n’ Leander git the table aout, ’n’ bring in all -the extry chairs, ’n’ set ’em ’raound in rows. Squeeze ’em pooty -well together in back, but the front ones kind o’ spread aout. You, -Miss Sabriny, ’n’ the lady”--indicating Isabel with his thumb--“’n’ -Annie’d better go upstairs ’n’ git yer bonnets on, ’n’ things, ’n’ -go ’n’ set in the room at the head o’ the stairs. You men, tew, git -your gloves on, ’n’ naow be sure ’n’ have your hankch’fs in some -pocket where you can git at ’em with your gloves on--’n’ have your -hats in your hands, ‘n’ then go ’n’ set with the ladies. Miss Sabriny, -you’ll come daown arm-in-arm with yer brother, _when_ I call, ’n’ then -Albert ’n’ his wife, ’n’ John with Annie, ’n’ Seth with--pshaw, -there’s odd numbers. Well, Seth can come alone. And dew keep step comin’ -daown stairs!” - -“’N’ naow, gents,” turning to the Rev. Mr. Turner, “your gaown’s in -the fust room to the right on the landin’, and if you”--addressing Mr. -Bunce--“will go up with him, and arrange ’baout the services, so’s -to come daown together--it’ll look pootier than to straggle in by -yourselves,--’n’ you, Milton, ain’t you got somethin’ besides -overalls to put on?” - -Thus the autocrat cleared the living room. Then, going around through -the front hall, he entered the parlor to receive, with solemn dignity -and a fine eye to their relative social merit, the first comers. - -These were almost exclusively women, dressed in Sunday garb. As each -buggy or democrat wagon drove up inside the gate, and discharged its -burden, the men would lead the horses further on, to be hitched under or -near the shed, and then saunter around to the kitchen side of the house, -where cider was on tap, and other men were standing in the sunshine, -chewing tobacco and conversing in low tones, while the women from each -conveyance went straight to the front door, and got seats in the parlor -as close to the coffin as possible. The separation of the sexes could -hardly have been more rigorous in a synagogue. There were, indeed two or -three meek, well-brushed men among the women, sitting, uncomfortable but -resigned, in the geranium-scented gloom of the curtained parlor, but, -as the more virile brethren outside would have said, they were men who -didn’t count. - -The task of the undertaker was neither light nor altogether smooth. -There were some dozen chairs reserved, nearest the pall, for the -mourners, the clergymen and the mixed quartette expected from Thessaly. -Every woman on entering made for these chairs, and the more unimportant -and “low-down” she was in the rural scale of social values, the more -confidently she essayed to get one of them. With all of these more or -less argument was necessary--conducted in a buzzing whisper from which -some squeak or guttural exclamation would now and again emerge. With -some, the undertaker was compelled to be quite peremptory; while one -woman--Susan Jane Squires, a slatternly, weak-eyed creature who presumed -upon her position as sister-in-law of Milton, the hired man--had -actually to be pushed away by sheer force. - -Then there was the further labor of inducing all these disappointed ones -to take the seats furthest back, so that late comers might not have to -push by and over them, but efforts in this direction were only fitful at -the best, and soon were practically abandoned. - -“Fust come, fust sarved!” said old Mrs. Wimple. “I’m jes ez good ez them -that’ll come bimeby, ’n’ ef I don’ mind their climbin’ over me, -_you_ needn’t!” and against this the undertaker could urge nothing -satisfactory. - -In the intervals of that functionary’s activity, conversation was quite -general, carried on in whispers which, in the aggregate, sounded like -the rustle of a smart breeze through the dry leaves of a beach tree. -Many women were there who had never been in the house before--could -indeed, have had no other chance of getting in. These had some fleeting -interest in the funeral appointments, and the expense incident thereto, -but their chief concern was the furnishing of the house. They furtively -scraped the carpet with their feet to test its quality, they felt of the -furniture to see if it had been re-varnished, they estimated the value -of the curtains, speculated on the cost of the melodeon and its age, -wondered when the ceiling had last been whitewashed. Some, who knew the -family better, discussed the lamentable decline of the Fairchilds in -substance and standing within their recollection, and exchanged hints -about the endemic mortgage stretching its sinister hand even to the very -chairs they were sitting on. Others, still more intimate, rehearsed the -details of the last and fatal illness, commented on the character of -individuals in the family, and guessed how long old Lemuel would last, -now that Cicely was gone. - -In the centre of these circling waves of gossip lay the embodiment of -the eternal silence. Listening, one might fain envy such an end to that -living death of mental starvation which was the lot of all there, and -which forced them, out of their womanhood, to chatter in the presence of -death. - -The singers came. They were from the village, belonging to the -Congregational church there, and it was understood that they came out of -liking for John Fairchild. None of the gathering knew them personally, -but it was said that the contralto--the woman with the bird on her -bonnet, who took her seat at the melodeon--had had trouble with her -husband. A fresh buzz of whispering ran round. Some stray word must have -reached the contralto, for she colored and pretended to study the music -before her intently, and, later, when “Pleyel’s Hymn” was being sung, -she played so nervously that there was an utter collapse in the sharps -and flats of the third line, which nearly threw the singers out. - -The undertaker now stalked in, and stood on tiptoe to see if the back -room was also filled. He had been out with the men at the kitchen door, -fixing crape on the arms of six of the best dressed and most respectable -looking farmers in an almost jocular mood, and drilling them affably -in their duties; drinking cider, exchanging gossip with one or two -acquaintances, and conducting himself generally like an ordinary mortal. -He had now resumed his dictatorship. - -Most of the men had followed him around to the front of the house, and -clustered now in the hall, or in a group about the outer door, holding -their hats on a level with their shoulders. - -A rustle on the stairs told that the mourners were descending. Then -came the strains of the melodeon, and the singing, very low, solemn and -sweet. - -A little pause, and the full voice of the Baptist preacher was heard -in prayer--then in some eulogistic remarks. What he said was largely -nonsense, from any point of view, but the voice was that of the born -exhorter, deep, clear-toned, melodious; there seemed to be a stop -in it, as in an organ, which at pathetic parts gave forth a tremulous, -weeping sound, and when this came not a dry eye could be found. He was -over-fond of using this effect, as are most men possessing the trick, -but no one noticed it, not even Isabel, who from sitting sternly -intolerant of the whispering women around her, and indignant at Mr. -Bunce for his dinner performance, found herself sobbing with all the -rest when the tremulo stop was touched. - -There was more singing, this time fine, simple old “St. Denis” and then -the bearers were summoned in. - -The men asked one another in murmurs outside if the Episcopal clargyman -was to take no part in the services. Within, Mrs. Wimple went straighter -to the point. She plucked him by the sleeve of his robe and leaning over -with some difficulty, for she was a corpulent body, whispered to the -hearing of a score of her neighbours: - -“What air you here fer, mister, if you ain’t goin’ to say nor dew -nothin’?” - -“I officiate at the grave,” he had said, and then regretted all the -remainder of the day having answered her at all. - -***** - -On the return of the procession from the little knoll where the slate -and marble tomb-stones of long dead Fairchilds bent over the new brown -mound, Annie and Seth walked together. There was silence between them -for a time, which he broke suddenly. - -“It’s _all_ very hard, Annie, for you know how much mother and I loved -each other. But, truly, the hardest thing of all is to think of staying -here among these narrow dolts. While she was here I could stand it. But -I can’t any more.” - -Annie said nothing. She felt his arm trembling against hers, and his -voice was strained and excited. What _could_ she say? - -“They’re not like me,” he went on; “I have nothing in common with them. -I hate the sight of the whole of them. I never realised till to-day how -big a gulf there was between them and me. Didn’t _you_ see it--what a -mean, narrow-contracted lot they all were?” - -“Who do you mean, Seth?” - -“Why all of them. The Burrells, the Wimples, old Elhanan Pratt, old -Lyman Tenney, that fellow Bunce--the whole lot of them. And the women -too! Did you watch them--or, what’s worse, did you hear them? I wonder -you can bear them yourself, Annie, any more than I can.” - -“Sometimes it _is_ hard, Seth, I admit; when I first came back to -grandma from school it was awfully hard. But then I’ve got to live here, -and reconcile myself to what the place offers,--and, after all, Seth, -they are well-meaning people, and some of them are smart, too, in their -way.” - -“Oh, well-meaning--in their way,--yes! But I haven’t got to live here, -Annie, and I haven’t got to reconcile myself, and I _won’t_ That’s the -long and short of it. I can make my living elsewhere--perhaps more than -my living--and be among people who don’t make me angry every time I set -eyes on them. And I can find friends, too, who feel as I do, and look at -things as I do, instead of these country louts who only know abominable -stories, and these foolish girls--who--who--” - -“Nobody can blame you to-day, Seth, for feeling blue and sore, but -you ought not to talk so, even now. They’re not all like what you say. -Reuben Tracy, now, he’s been a good friend and a useful friend to you.” - -“Yes, Rube’s a grand, good fellow, of course. I know all that. But then -just take his case. He’s a poor schoolmaster now, just as he was five -years ago, and will be twenty years from now. What kind of a life is -that for a man?” - -“And maybe the girls _are_--foolish, as you started to say, but--” - -“Now, Annie, don’t think I m’eant anything by that, _please!_ I know -you’re the dearest girl and the best friend in the world. Truly, now, -you won’t think I meant anything, will you?” - -“No, Seth, I won’t” said Annie softly. It was her arm that trembled now. - - - - -CHAPTER VI.--IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY. - -MISS Sabrina sat by her accustomed window an hour after the return -from the grave, waiting for Albert. The mourning dress, borrowed for -the occasion from a neighbor, was cut in so modern a fashion, contrasted -with the venerable maiden’s habitual garments, that it gave her spare -figure almost a fantastic air. The bonnet, with its yard of dense, -coarse ribbed crape, lay on the table at her elbow, beside her -spectacles and the unnoticed Bible. Miss Sabrina was ostensibly looking -out of the window, but she really saw nothing. She was thinking very -steadily about the coming interview with her nephew, and what she would -say to him, and wondering, desponding, hoping about his answers. - -The door opened, and Albert entered. “You wanted to see me, Aunt, so -Annie said,” he remarked! gravely, in a subdued tone. - -She motioned him to a chair and answered, in a solemn voice curiously -like his own: “Yes, there’s some things I want to say to you, all by -yourself.” - -They sat for some moments in silence, the lawyer watching his aunt with -amiable forbearance, as if conscious that his time was being wasted, and -she, poor woman, groping in a novel mental fog for some suitable phrases -with which to present her views. Under Albert’s calm, uninspiring gaze -those views seemed to lose form, and diminish in intelligence as much -as in distinctness. It had all been so clear to her mind--and now she -suddenly found it fading off into a misty jumble of speculations, mere -castles in the air. She had expected to present an unanswerable -case lucidly and forcibly to her lawyer nephew; instead, it seemed -increasingly probable that he would scout the thing as ridiculous--and, -what was worse, be justified in so doing. So it was that she finally -made her beginning doubtingly, almost dolefully: - -“Of course I dunno haow you feel abaout it, Albert, but I can’t help -thinking something ought to be settled abaout th’ farm, while yer here.” - -“Settled? How settled?’’ asked Albert. There was a dry, dispassionate -fibre in his voice which further chilled her enthusiasm. - -“Why--well--you knaow--what I mean, Albert,” she said, almost -pathetically. It was so hard to know just how to say things to Albert. - -“On the contrary, I don’t in the least know what you mean. What do you -want settled about the farm? What is there to settle about it?” - -“Oh, nothin’, ef yeh don’t choose to understand” said Miss Sabrina. - -Another period of silence ensued. Albert made a movement as if to rise, -and said: - -“If there is’nt anything more, I think I’ll go down again.” - -There was an artificial nicety of enunciation about this speech, which -grated on the old lady’s nerves. She squared her shoulders and turned -upon her nephew. - -“Naow what’s the use of bein’ mean, Albert? Yeh dew knaow what I’m -thinking of, jis’ ez well ez I dew! Yeh unly want to make it ez hard fer -me to tell yeh as yeh possibly kin. I s’pose thet’s the lawyer of it!” - -Albert smiled with all his face but the eyes, and slightly lifting his -hands from his fat knees, turned them palms up, in mute deprecation of -his aunt’s unreasonableness. The gesture was as near the shoulder-shrug -as the self-contained lawyer ever permitted himself to go. It was a -trifle, but it angered the old maid enough to remove the last vestige of -hesitation from her tongue: - -“Well, ef yeh _don’t_ knaow what I mean, then I’ll tell yeh! I mean that -ef th’ Fairchilds are goin’ to be a Dearborn caounty fam’ly, ’n’ hole -their heads up amongst folks, ther’s got to be a change o’ some sort -right away. Your father’s let everything slide year after year, till -there’s pesky little lef’ naow to slide on. He’s behine hand agin in -money matters, even with th’ Pratt mortgage on top of t’others. What’s -wuss, it’s in everybody’s maouth. They’ve left him off th’ board at th’ -cheese-factory this year, even; of course they say, it’s cuz he -never ’tended th’ meetin’s--but I knaow better! It’s jis cuz Lemuel -Fairchild’s goin’ deown hill, ’n’ the farm’s goin’ to rack ’n’ -ruin, ’n’ ev’rybuddy knaows it. Jis’ think of it? Why, ’twas th’ -Fairchilds made that cheese-factory, ’n’ it’s allus gone by aour -name, ’n’ we used to sen’ th’ milk of a hundred ’n’ thirty caows -there--almost as much as all th’ rest of ’em put togither--’n’ ez -I said to Leander Crump, when he was squirmin’ raound tryin’ to make me -b’lieve they didn’t mean nothin’ by droppin’ Lemuel aout o’ th’ board, -says I--‘nobuddy ever ’spected a table spoonful o’ water in aour -milk!’--’n’ he colored up, _I_ tell yeh!” - -“No doubt” said Albert, impassively. - -Miss Sabrina paused to mentally retrace her argument, and see if this -remark had any special bearing. She could discover none, and grew a -little angrier. - -“Well, then, th’ question’s right here. My father, your grand father, -made a name fer hisself, and a place for his fam’ly, here in Dearborn -caounty, second to nobuddy. Fer years ’n’ years I kin remember thet -th’ one question people ast, when it was proposed to dew anything, was -‘what does Seth Fairchild think ’baout it?’ He went to th’ Senate -twice; he could ’a gone to Congress from this dees-trick time ’n’ -time agin, if he’d be’n a mine to. Ev’rybuddy looked up to him. When he -died, all of a suddent, he lef’ Lemuel th’ bes’ farm, th’ bes’ stock, -th’ bes’ farm haouse, fer miles raound. Well, thet’s forty year ago. -I’ve lived here threw it all. I’ve swallered my pride every day in th’ -week, all thet time. I’ve tried to learn myself a humble spirit--but -I’ve hed to see this place, and the fam’ly, going daown, daown, daown!” - -There were tears in the old maid’s eyes now, as she spoke, tears of -mortification and revolt against her helplessness, for she seemed to -read the failure of her appeal in the placid face of her nephew, with -its only decent pretence of interest. She went on, with a rising voice: - -“You knaow a little of haow things hev’ gone, though you’ve allus took -precious good pains to knaow ez little ez yeh could. You knaow that -when you were a boy you were a rich man’s son, with yer pony, ’n’ yer -dancin’ lessons, ’n’ yer college eddica-tion; ’n’ yer mother dressed -well, ’n’ had a kerridge, ’n’ visited with th’ bes’ people of -Albany, people who were _my_ friends tew when I used to go to Albany -with yer grandfather. ’N’ what hev we come to? Yer mother slaved her -life aout, lost all her ambition, lost all her pride, saw things goin’ -to th’ dogs and didn’t knaow haow to stop ’em--sakes forbid thet I -should say anything agin Sissly; she did all she could; p’raps ’twould -’ev gone different if she’d be’n a different kine o’ woman, p’raps -not; there’s no use talkin’ ’baout thet. ’N’ ef I’d hed _my_ say, -tew, maybe things’d be’n different; but its ez it is, ’n’ it’s no use -cryin’ over spilt milk. - -“Father never meant to be hard with me. When he lef’ me nothin’ but -a living aout o’ th’ farm, he expected, everybuddy expected, my Aunt -Sabrina’d leave me a clean sixty thaousand dollars when she died. She -was an ole woman, ’n’ a widow, ’n’ she hed no childern. She’d allus -promised my father thet if I was named after her--confaound her name!--I -shaould be her heir. ’N’ then, Iess’n a year after his death, what -does the old huzzy up ’n’ do but marry some fortune hunter young -enough to be her son, ’n’ give him every cent she hed in the world. He -led her a fine dance of it, tew, ’n’ serve her right! But there I was, -lef ’thaout a thing ’cep a roof over my head. - -“’N’ then Lemuel, nothin’ ud do but he must go to Californy when the -gold cry riz, ’n’ no sooner’d he git there than he was homesick ’n’ -hed to come back; ’n’ when he got back, ’n’ begun to hear what -fortunes them who’d gone aout with him were a making, than he must -start aout again. But where it’d be’n wilderness a few months b’fore, -he faound cities naow, ’n’ ev’ry chance took up; then he got robbed -o’ all his money, ’n’ hed to borrer, ’n’ then he took chills -’n’ fever off th’ isthmus, n’ hed to lay in quarantine fer weeks, on -’caount o’ th’ yellah fever; it’d be’n a poor year on the farm, ’n’ -when he got back, it took ev’ry cent of his ready-money to set himself -right. - -“From thet day to this, his Californy luck hez stuck to him like death -to a nigger, tell here, to-day, the Fitches don’t think it wuth while -to come to your poor mother’s fun’ral--I kin remember Lije Fitch when -he was glad enough to beg beans o’ my father fer seed--’n’ I’m wearing -borrered mournin’ of Sarah Andrewses, _a mile tew big for me!_” - -“It seems to me I’ve been told all this a good many times, Aunt -Sabrina,” said Albert, as his aunt stopped and glared at him trembling -with the excitement of her peroration. “There’s nothing very-pleasant in -it, for either of us, to listen to or talk about; but I don’t see that -there’s anything more than I’ve heard over and over again, except about -your having on another woman’s dress, and I don’t assume that I am -expected to interfere about _that!_” - -Poor Miss Sabrina was too deeply moved, and too much in earnest, to note -the sarcastic levity underlying the lawyer’s conclusion. She caught -only the general sense of a negative response, and looked at her nephew -steadily with a gaze half-indignant, half appealing. - -“Then you won’t dew anything, ay?” she asked at last. - -“Oh, I am very far from saying that. _That’s_ another thing. You send -for me, saying that you have an important communication to make to -me--at least, I assume that it is important, from the circumstances -surrounding the request. I come, and you first insist that I know as -well as you do what you mean, and then, when I demur, you rehearse all -the unfortunate details of my father’s failure in life. I suggest that -these are already tolerably familiar to me, and _this_ mild statement -you construe as a definite refusal on my part to do something--what, I -don’t know.” - -“I declare, Albert, you better send in a bill fer givin’ me this -consultation. _I_ never knew a son who could take his father’s ruin -’n’ his fam’ly’s disgrace so cool, before. I s’pose _that’s_ th’ -lawyer of it, tew!” - -“Perhaps it’s an advantage that some one of the family should keep cool, -Aunt, and look at things one by one, in their true relation. Now, if -you have any proposition to make to me, any plan to present for my -consideration, I should like to hear it--because really this other style -of conversation is profitless beyond description. In a word, what do you -want me to do?” - -“What do I want yeh to do?” The old maid leaned forward and put a -thin, mitted hand on Albert’s knee, looking eagerly into his face, and -speaking almost shrilly. “I want yeh to take this farm, to come here to -live, to make it a rich gentleman’s home agin! to put the Fairchilds up -once more where my father left ’em.” - -“Yes?” was the provokingly unenthusiastic response. - -Miss Sabrina felt that she had failed. She put her spectacles on, and -took the Bible into her lap, as if to say that she washed her hands of -all mundane matters. But it did not suit Albert to regard the interview -as closed. - -“There is one thing you don’t seem to see at all, Aunt,” he said. “That -is, that Dearborn County is relatively not altogether the most important -section of the Republic, and that it is quite possible for a man to -win public recognition or attain professional distinction in other -communities which might reconcile him to a loss of prestige here. It may -sound like heresy to you, but I am free to admit that the good -opinion of the business men of New York City, where I am regarded as a -successful sort of man, seems to me to outweigh all possible questions -as to how I am regarded by Elhanan Pratt and Le-ander Crump and--and -that Baptist gentleman, for instance, whom you had here to-day. The -world has grown so large, my dear aunt, since your day, that there are -thousands upon thousands of Americans now who go all their lives without -ever once thinking about Dearborn County’s opinion. Of course I can -understand how deeply you must feel what you regard as a social decline -in the eyes of your neighbours. But truly, it does not specially -affect me. They are not my neighbours; if I seem to them to be of less -importance than I was in my boyhood, when I had a pony, I can’t help it, -and I am sure I don’t want to. Frankly, to use my mother’s old phrase, I -don’t care a cotton hat for their opinion good, bad, or indifferent. It -is this, I think, which you leave out of your calculation.” - -Miss Sabrina had listened, with the Book opened only by a finger’s -width. The elaborate irony of her nephew’s words had escaped her, but -she saw a gleam of hope in his willingness to discuss the matter at all. - -“But then this is the home o’ the Fairchilds; the fam’ly belongs to -Dearborn Caounty; father was allus spoken of ez Seth Fairchild o’ -Dearborn, jis’ as much ez--ez Silas Wright o’ Dutchess.” - -“Of course that last is a powerful argument,” said Albert with a furtive -smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “But, after all, the county -family idea doesn’t seem to attract me much. Why, aunt, do you know that -your grandfather Roger was a journeyman shoemaker, who walked all the -way here from Providence. There was nothing incongruous in his son -becoming a Senator. Very well; if you have a state of society where -sudden elevations of this sort occur, there will inevitably be -corresponding descents--just as lean streaks alternate with fat in the -bacon of commerce. The Fairchilds went up--they, come down. They have -exhausted the soil. Do you see?” - -“Nao! I don’t see a bit! ’N’ I b’lieve at heart you’re jis’ ez praoud -ez I be!” - -“Proud? Yes! Proud of myself, proud of my practice, proud of my -position. But proud because three or four hundred dull countrymen, -seeing my cows sleek, my harness glossy, my farm well in order, and -knowing that my grandfather had been a State Senator, would consider me -a ‘likely ’ man--no, not at all.” - -Albert rose at this to go, and added, as he turned the door-knob: - -“As soon as he’s equal to it, Aunt Sabrina, I’ll get father to go over -his affairs with me, and I’ll try and straighten them out a trifle. I -dare say we can find some way out of the muddle.” - -“But yeh won’t take up the thing yerself? Yeh won’t dew what I wanted -yeh tew?” - -The lawyer smiled, and said: “What really? Come here and be a farmer?” - -Miss Sabrina had risen, too, and came toward her nephew. “No” she said, -“not a farmer. Be a country gentleman, ’n’--’n’--a Congressman!” - Albert smiled again, and left the room. He smiled to himself going down -the stairs, and narrowly escaped forgetting to change his expression of -countenance when he entered the living room, where were sitting people -who had not entirely forgotten the fact that it was a house of mourning. - -For Albert had a highly interesting idea in his mind, both interesting -and diverting. Curiously enough, he had begun developing it from the -moment when his aunt first disclosed her ambition for him. At the last -moment, in a blind way she had suggested the first political office that -entered her mind as an added bribe. She could not know that her astute -nephew had, from the first suggestion of her plan, been trying to -remember whether it was Jay and Adams Counties, or Jay and Morgan, that -were associated with Dearborn in the Congressional district; or -that, when she finally in despair said “Be a country gentleman and a -Congressman,” his brain had already turned over a dozen projects in as -many seconds, every one Congressional. - - - - -CHAPTER VII.--THE THREE BROTHERS. - -After the early supper of stale bread, saltless butter, dark dried -apple sauce, and chippy cake had been disposed of, Lemuel returned to -his rocking chair by the stove, Aunt Sabrina and Isabel took seats, each -at a window, and read by the fading light, and Albert put on his hat, -lighted a cigar, and went out. His brother John stood smoking a pipe -in the yard, leaning against the high well-curb, his hands deep in his -pantaloons pocket, and his feet planted far to the front and wide apart. -Seth was coming from the barns toward the well, with a bucket in his -hand. Albert walked across to the curb, and the three brothers were -alone together for the first time in years. - -“It does one good to be out of doors such an evening as this,” said -Albert. “It seems to me it would be better if father would get out in -the open air more, instead of sitting cooped up over that stove all the -while.” - -“When a man’s been out in the open air, rain or shine, snow or blow, -for fifty years, he ought to have earned the right to stay inside, if -he wants to. That’s about the only reward there is at the end of a -farmer’s life,” answered Seth, turning the calfbucket upside down beside -John, and sitting on it. Seth had his old clothes on once more, and -perhaps there was some consciousness of the contrast between his apparel -and that of his black-clad brethren in the truculent tone of his reply. - -John had nodded at Albert on his approach, and thrust his feet a trifle -further forward. He still stood silent, looking meditatively at the row -of poplars on the other side of the road through rings of pipe smoke. - -“So you don’t think much of farm work, eh?” said Albert. - -“Who does?” replied Seth, sententiously. - -A considerable period of silence ensued. Albert had never had a very -high idea of his younger brothers’ conversational qualities, and had -rarely known how to talk easily with them, but to-night it seemed a -greater task than ever. He offered them cigars, in a propitiatory way. -Seth accepted and lit one; John said “Thanks, I prefer a pipe,” and -silence reigned again. - -It was twilight now, and in the gathering dusk there was no sign of -motion about, nor any sound save the tinkle of a sheep-bell in the -pasture opposite. - -John’s pipe burned out, and Albert pressed a cigar upon him again. - -“I _want_ you to try them,” he said, almost pleadingly, “I’m sure you’ll -like them. They are a special brand the steward at the Union League gets -for me.” - -This time John consented, and he seemed to feel that the act involved a -responsibility to talk, for he said, with an effort at amiability as he -struck a match: - -“Your wife seems to be looking very well.” - -“Yes, Isabel’s health is perfect, and it always benefits her to get out -in the country. That’s a kind of Irishism isn’t it? I mean it makes her -good health more obvious.” - -“Good health is a great thing,” John answered. - -The conversation was running emptings again, almost at the start. Albert -made a heroic effort to strengthen it. - -“Well, this is a regular quakers’ meeting,” he said, briskly. “We see -each other so seldom, we are almost strangers when we do meet. I want to -be frank with you, come now, and you should be frank with me. You have -something on your minds, I can see. Isn’t it something I ought to know?” - -Seth spoke again: “Perhaps on the evening of one’s mother’s funeral it -isn’t to be expected that even brothers should feel chatty.” - -The village journalist felt the injustice of this comment from the -youngster. - -“No, Seth,” he said, “Don’t snap Albert up in that fashion. I dare say -he feels the thing, in his own way, as much as the rest of us. You are -right, Albert; there _is_ something, and I’ll tell you plainly what it -is. Do you see those poplars over there? In the morning their shadows -Come almost to our front door. Father planted them with his own hands. -When I was a boy, I used to play over there, and climb up on to the -bolls, and pretend I was to build houses there, like in Swiss Family -Robinson. Well, that land passed out of our hands so long ago--it’s been -an old story for years. Do you see the roof of the red school-house over -back of the hill?” turning toward the South. “Or no, the light is too -poor now, but you know where it is. When I used to cut ’cross lots to -school there, I went the whole way over father’s land. Now, if I wanted -to go there, how many people would I trespass on, Seth?” - -“Ferguson owns the clover meadow, and Pratt has the timothy meadow, and -what we used to call the berry patch belongs to Sile Thomas; he’s begun -to build a house on it.” - -“Precisely. Why even the fence close to where mother’s grave is, divides -ours from another man’s land now.” - -“Sabrina spoke to me about all this this afternoon,” said Albert -hesitatingly, “and I tried, as I often have before, to make her -understand that that must be the natural course of affairs, so long as -the East tries to compete with the West in farming.” - -“Well that may be all right, but Elhanan Pratt seems to manage to -compete with the West, as you call it, and so do the Fergusons and all -the rest of them. We are the only ones who appear to get left, every -time. Of course, it’s somebody’s fault. Father’s been a poor manager, -no use of denying that. But that doesn’t make it any the easier to bear. -Father hardly knows which way to turn for ours from another man’s now. -Money; he might have scraped through the year if hops had had a good -season, but at nine cents a pound it was hardly worth while to take them -to the depot. You can’t clear expenses at less than eleven cents. And -then if he does have a fairly decent year, his hop-pickers are always -the most drunken, idle gang of them all, who eat their heads off, and -steal more fruit and chickens than they pick boxes, and if anybody’s -hops are spoiled in the kiln, you can bet on their being Fairchild’s, -every time. And three years ago, it was the hop merchant who failed, -just at the opportune moment, and let Father in for a whole years’ -profit and labor. Of course, it’s all bad luck, mismanagement, whatever -you like to call it, and it can’t be helped, I suppose. But it makes a -man sour, and it broke poor mother’s heart. And then here’s Seth.” - -“Oh, never mind me, I can stand it, I guess, if the rest can. I’m not -complaining” came from the figure on the bucket--only dimly to be seen -now, in the shadow of the curb, and the increasing darkness. - -“Here’s Seth,” continued John, without noting the disclaimer. “You and -I had _some_ advantages--of course, mine were not to be compared with -yours, but still I was given a chance, such as it was and I don’t know -that I would trade what I learned at work during college years for a -college education--but this poor boy, who’s thought about him, who’s -given him a chance to show what’s in him? He’s been allowed to come up -as he could, almost like any farm laborer. His mother tried to do her -little, but what spirit did she have for it, and what time did the -drudgery here give him? Thank God! He’s had the stuff in him to work at -education himself, and he’s got the making of the best man of us three. -But it’s no thanks to you. And _that’s_ why we feel hard, Albert. Nobody -supposes you could make a good farmer and manager out of father; nobody -blames you for a bad hop season, or the dishonesty of Biggs. But I do -say that of us three brothers there’s one who frets and worries over -the thing, and though he’s a poor man, does all he can afford to do, and -more too, to help make it better; and there’s another, young, ambitious, -capable, whose nose is held down to the grindstone, and the best years -of whose life are being miserably spent in a hopeless wrestling with -debt and disaster; and there’s a third brother, the oldest brother, -rich, easy, enjoying all the luxuries of life, who don’t give a damn -about it all! _That’s_ what I say, and if you don’t like it, you -needn’t!” - -The silence which ensued was of the kind that can be felt. The two -cigars at the corners of the old curb glowed intermittently in the -darkness. John’s had gone out during his speech, and as he re-lighted -it, the glare of the match showed an excited, indignant face. There was -no room for doubt, after the momentary exhibit which the red light made, -that John was very much in earnest. - -Albert was thinking laboriously on his answer. Meantime, he said, to -fill the interval “Do you like the cigar?” - -“Yes; a fifteen center, isn’t it?” - -Albert had it in his mind to say truthfully that he paid $180 per -thousand, but the fear of invidious comparisons rose before him in time, -and he said “About that, I think.” - -He waited a moment, still meditating, and threw out another stop-gap: -“It’s curious how the rhetorical habit grows on a man who writes leading -articles. I noticed that you used three adjectives every time, the -regular cumulative thing, you know.” - -“Maybe so; it would be more to the purpose to hear what you think about -the spirit of my oration; the form doesn’t matter so much.” - -“Well, I will tell you, John,” said Albert, slowly, still feeling his -way, “to speak frankly, no doubt there’s a good deal in what you say. I -feel that there is. But you ought to consider that it isn’t easy for a -man living in a great city, immersed in business cares, and engrossed in -the labors of his profession, to realise all these things, and see them -as you, who are here on the ground, see them. It’s hardly fair to attack -me as heartless, when you present these facts to me for the first time.” - -“For the first time! You ought to have seen them for yourself without -presenting. And then you said Sabrina had often discussed the subject -with you.” - -“Oh, but her point of view is always family dignity, the keeping up of -the Fairchilds’ homestead in baronial state, and that sort of thing. You -should have heard her this afternoon, telling me how her fathers name -used to be coupled with Dearborn County, just as Silas Wright’s was with -Dutchess--either Dutchess or Delaware, I forget which she said--but it -was very funny.” - -“Sabrina and I haven’t spoken for I don’t know how long, and we’re not -likely to again in a hurry, but for all that I’m bound to say I wish -some others of the family had as much pride as she’s got,” said John. -“Whatever else she may be, she’s as loyal and as faithful to the family -idea, as jealous of the family’s name, as any old Spanish grandee. And -I confess the Silas Wright thing doesn’t seem funny to me at all--any -fellow with the right kind of a heart in him would feel that it was -deucedly pathetic--the poor old maid clinging through the shipwreck to -that one spar of support--the recollection of a time when her father was -bigger than his county. Such things oughtn’t to be laughed at.” - -Albert lost his patience. “Confound it, man, do you want to force me -into a quarrel--this night of all others! By George, was there ever such -a brace of brothers! I come out here to get you by yourselves, to talk -over with you some plans that have occurred to me for setting things -right here--and I haven’t had a civil answer yet from either of you. -First it’s the youngster who scowls and snarls at me, and then you read -me lofty lectures on my behavior, and then both together in concerted -condemnation. No wonder I come rarely to the farm! It’s enough to sicken -any man of family ties, to be bullyragged in this way. I’ve a good mind -to tell you you can all go to the devil, and be hanged to you!” - -The figure on the bucket rose to its feet with a spring, so -energetically that there seemed a menace in the action. The village -editor restrained this movement with a quiet hand, and a whispered “Keep -cool, Seth.” Then he said with exaggerated calmness of voice: - -“Personally, perhaps I shouldn’t mind much if you did. But there are -others to look after, and so, before you do, it might be worth while to -learn what the fine alternative was to have been. It would be a great -pity to not even to hear these noble plans with which you were primed, -you say, when you came out.” - -“But you must admit, John, that you and Seth tonight have been enough to -try the patience of a saint.” - -“Oh, yes, we admit that. Go on!” - -“Well, you’ve made it a little difficult for me to develop my -plans--they were scarcely formed in my mind. In a general way, I wanted -to consult you about freeing the farm, perhaps buying back some of the -original land that has gone, putting the house in shape again, improving -the stock, placing Father and Sabrina beyond the chance of ever being -embarrassed again--and--and--doing something for Seth.” - -“Nobody wants you--” began the impatient Seth. - -“Youngster, _you_ shut up!” said John, again using the quieting hand. -“Do you really mean all this, Albert?” - -“I should scarcely have spoken in detail as I have, otherwise,” answered -the lawyer loftily. - -“Well, this--” said John, “this takes a fellow’s breath away.” - -“If you hadn’t been in such haste to impute bad motives and convict me -without judge or jury, perhaps the effect of my plans might not have -been so overpowering.” - -“Yes, we did you an injustice, Albert, clearly we did. We were full of -the idea that all these troubles rolled off you like water off a duck’s -back. It seems that was our mistake. But--what’s your scheme?” - -“Definitely, I have none, except to do all I can, in the way we may -decide will be best all around. I have been thinking some of coming to -live here myself, say from May to November of each year, and taking the -farm into my own hands.” - -“H’m--m! That might have its advantages, perhaps--_but_----” - -“Oh, I know what you mean. If I do, everybody’s rights shall be -respected. We’ll fix that beyond question, to your satisfaction, before -a thing is done.” - -“I don’t care about myself, particularly; you know that: but then -there’s Seth, you know--we’ve always figured on the farm as his. It’s -true he don’t want to be a farmer, that he hates the whole thing, but -still that represents all his capital, so to speak, and--” - -“My dear John, that shall all be arranged. I am a childless -man--probably always shall be. As long as Father lives the farm shall -remain in his name. Either his will can be in my favor, or I can manage -the farm as a trustee for all three of us, after he’s gone. In either -case, you shall both be protected in turn by my will--absolutely -protected. Meantime, what do you want me to do for Seth? What does he -want to do?” - -“Nothing needs to be done for me,” began Seth, “I can--” - -“Now, youngster, _will_ you be quiet!” said John, in mock despair. “I’ll -tell you what you can do for Seth, and do easily. Get him a place on -some decent newspaper, in New York or one of the larger cities of the -State, and let him have money enough to eke out a small salary at first, -so that he can begin at editorial work instead of tramping up through -the reporter’s treadmill, as I had to. That’s all Seth’ll ask, and it -will be the making of him.” - -“Begin at editorial work--Seth? Nonsense!” - -“No nonsense about it. For two years back Seth has been doing some of -the best work on my paper--work that’s been copied all over the State.” - -“Bless my soul, what a literary family we are!” said the lawyer. “Does -Aunt Sabrina write, too? Perhaps those love poems you have on the last -page are hers.” - -John continued without noticing the interjection. “Do you remember -that long article on Civil Service Reform we had in the _Banner_ last -January?” - -“I don’t think I do, John. To be frank, although we enjoy having you -send us the _Banner_ immensely, occasionally it happens that the stress -of professional duties compels me to miss reading a number.” - -“Well that article was reprinted in all the big papers, from Boston to -Chicago. I never knew any other thing from a little village paper to -travel so far, or attract so much attention. I had lots of letters about -it, too. That article was Seth’s--all his own. I didn’t change a word in -it. And he’s hardly seen any thing of the world yet, either.” - -The lawyer was heard chuckling, when John’s voice died away in the -darkness. The cigars had long since burned out, and the men could with -difficulty see one another. The two younger brothers waited, the one -surprised, the other increasingly indignant, to learn the cause of -Albert’s hilarity. - -“Do you realise, John,” he said at last, with merriment still in his -voice, “what a delightful commentary on Civil Service Reform your words -make. The best article on that doctrine is written by a youngster who -has never left the farm, who doesn’t know the difference between a -Custom House and a letter-box on a lamp-post! Ho, ho, I must tell that -to Chauncey when I see him.” - -An hour later, John and Seth still leaned against the mossy curb, -smoking and talking over the words of their elder brother, who sometime -before had gone in to avoid the dew-fall. - -“I wonder if we _have_ misjudged him, after all,” said Seth. “I’m almost -ashamed to accept his favors, after the way I pitched into him.” - -“I wonder what his scheme really is,” mused the more experienced village -editor. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII.--ALBERT’S PLANS. - -It became generally known, before Sunday came again, that Albert was to -take the farm, and that Seth was to go to the city--known not only along -the rough, lonesome road leading over the Burfield hills, which had once -been a proud turnpike, with hospitable taverns at every league, and the -rumbling of great coaches and the horn of the Postboy as echoes of its -daily life of bustle and profit, and now was a solitary thoroughfare -to no place in particular, with three or four gaunt old farmhouses, -scowling in isolation, to the mile--not only on this road, and at the -four corners below, but even at Thessaly people learned of the coming -change as if by magic, and discussed it as a prime sensation. It need -not be added that the story grew greatly in telling--grew too ponderous -to remain an entity, and divided itself into several varying and, -ultimately, fiercely conflicting sections. - -The Misses Cheesborough had the best authority for saying that Albert -had acted in the most malignant and shameful manner, seizing the farm, -and turning poor Seth out of doors, and it was more than a suspicion in -their minds that the feeble old father would soon be railroaded off to -an asylum. - -On the other hand, Miss Tabitha Wilcox, who by superior vigor and -resource held her own very well against the combined Misses Cheesbrough, -knew, absolutely _knew_, that Albert had behaved most handsomely, paying -off all the mortgages, making a will in favor of John and Seth, and -agreeing to send Seth to College, and what was more, Miss Tabitha would -not be surprised, though some others might be, if the public-spirited -Albert erected a new library building in Thessaly as a donation to the -village. - -Between these two bold extremes there was room for many shades of -variation in the story, and many original bents of speculation. Down at -the cheese factory they even professed to have heard that a grand coal -deposit had been surreptitiously discovered on the Fairchild farm, and -that Albert was merely the agent of a syndicate of city speculators who -would presently begin buying all the land roundabout. Old Elhanan Pratt -did not credit this, but he did write to his son in Albany, a clerk in -one of the departments, to find out if a charter for a railroad near -Thessaly had been applied for. The worst of it was, neither John nor -Seth would talk, and as for Albert, he had gone back to New York, -leaving his wife behind. - -On the farm the fortnight following the funeral passed without event. In -the lull of field labor which precedes haying time, there was not much -for Seth to do. He went down to the river several times on solitary -fishing trips; it seemed to him now that he was saying farewell not only -to the one pastime which never failed him in interest or delight, but to -the valley itself, and the river. How fond he was of the stream, and all -its belongings! - -More like home than even the old farmhouse on the hill seemed some of -these haunts to which he now said good-bye--the shadowed pool under the -butternut tree, with its high steep bank of bare clay where, just under -the overhanging cornice of sod, the gypsy swallows had made holes for -their nests, and at the black base of which silly rock bass lay waiting -for worms and hooks; the place further up where the river grew sharply -narrow, and deep dark water sped swiftly under an ancient jam of rotting -logs, and where by creeping cautiously through the alders, and gaining -a foothold on the birch which was the key to the obstructing pile, there -were pike to be had for the throwing, and sometimes exciting struggles -with angry black bass, who made the pole bend like a whip, and had an -evil trick of cutting the line back under the logs; and then the broader -stretch of water below the ruined paper mill’s dam, where the wading -in the thigh-deep rifts was so pleasant, and where the white fish would -bite in the swift water almost as gamely as trout, if one had only the -knack of playing his line rightly in the eddies. - -A score of these spots Seth had known and loved from the boyhood of -twine and pin hooks; they seemed almost sacredly familiar now, as he -wandered up and down the stream, dividing his attention between the -lures and wiles of the angler’s art and musings on the vast change of -scene which was so close before him. Ah, how fair were the day dreams -he had idly, fondly built for himself here in these old haunts, with -kingfishers and water rats for sympathizers, and the ceaseless murmur -of the water, the buzz of the locusts in the sun, the croak of the frogs -among the reeds, for a soft inspiring chorus of accompaniment to his -thoughts! - -Now these dreams were really to come true; he was actually going to the -city, to wear decent clothes, to mingle as much as he chose with men of -wisdom and refinement, to attain that one aim and vision of his life, a -place on a great paper! - -It was only here by the river, rod in hand, that he seemed able to fully -realize the beatitude of the vista. So as often as he could he came, and -if there was a ground note of sorrow at leaving these nooks, this dear -old river, there was also a triumphant song of exaltation in the air, -the water, the sunshine, which he could not hear on the farm. - -Partly because these excursions generally led him from the house before -she made her appearance mornings, partly because he felt vaguely that -his own victory over fate involved disappointment for her, Seth did not -see much of Isabel during her husband’s absence. So far as he knew, she -had taken the news of Albert’s determination to move into the country -quietly enough. Neither by word or sign had she discovered to Seth -any distaste for the prospect. But none the less he had a half-guilty -conviction that she did not like it, and that she must blame him, or at -least have some feeling against him, for it. She had spoken so -earnestly to him about the curse of existence in the country; it was not -conceivable to him that she should suddenly accept for herself without -protests or repining, the very life she had thus commiserated with him -about. - -Yet it seemed after all that he was mistaken. It was the evening after -Albert’s return, and Annie had come over after supper, ostensibly -to borrow a wrapper-pattern from Isabel, but really, it need not be -doubted, to hear the news. - -What news there was to be given out the eldest brother dispensed to the -family circle, after Alvira had cleared away the “tea-things.” - -That domestic had a clear idea of making one in the circle, and, -hastening in from the kitchen without her apron, drew up a chair to sit -with the others, and enjoy the revelations which, from Albert’s manner -during supper, all felt to be impending. But the invasion of city -manners, which she and Milton had deplored and ridiculed for a fortnight -back, had an unsuspected bitterness in its train for her. The lawyer -looked at her coolly, as he struck a match on the under side of the -mantel-piece, and asked: “Hadn’t you better go out, Alvira, and see that -the chickens don’t get into the kitchen?”--and she flounced out again, -with nose in air, and black eyes flashing. - -Albert lighted his cigar, put an arm chair down near the old rocker in -which his father sat and took his seat. Near the open door, overlooking -the farmyard and the barns, and full in the light from the west, sat -Miss Sabrina, knitting, and Isabel, with a paper. At the latter’s feet, -on a hassock, was Annie, and Seth sat on the doorstep. - -“Father,” said Albert, “things have been arranged in New York so that I -can speak, now, about the plans which I hinted of ten days ago.” - -The old man nodded his head, and said plaintively, “Whatever yew think -best, Albert, s’long as the boys git a fair shaow.” - -“You needn’t worry about that. My business is settled now, I think, so -that I can live here six or eight months in the year, say from March -till October, running down occasionally, perhaps, but making this my -residence. I will take up all the mortgages--perhaps buy back some of -the old farm, may be all of it. There are three or four ways in which -this can be equitably arranged--we’ll talk of those in detail later on, -some day when John can come up. I will have the carpenters here in a few -days, to look over the house, and figure on putting it in first-class -repair. The barns will have to be new throughout. There must be new -machinery, new fences, and a pretty thorough weeding out of the cattle. -We shall want a carriage house--but then its no use of enumerating, -there is so much to be done. We will put some money into horseflesh -down on Long Island, and see if something can’t be done in the way of a -stock-farm. I’m thinking of a trout pond, up beyond the orchard, in the -ravine there, too.” - -“Oh, Albert, this is what I’ve be’n prayin’ for this thirty year!” It -was Sabrina who spoke. There were tears of joy in her eyes. - -Lemuel Fairchild seemed rather dazed, not to say dismayed, at the -prospect thus bewilderingly unfolded. “It’ll cost a heap o’ money, -Albert,” he said at last, rather dubiously, “an’ I dunnao’ ’baout yer -gittin’ it back agin.” - -“That will be _my_ look out,” said the lawyer, confidently. “At any -rate, Isabel and I will make a good home for you and Aunt Sabrina, as -long as you both live. It will be a pleasant change for us both. As for -Seth--” - -There was a pause, and Annie nestled closer to Isabel, with a soft “Oh -yes, about Seth.” - -“As for Seth, it’s time he saw something of life besides grubbing here -like a farm-hand. We will try and get along without him here. I’ve -talked the matter over with a friend of mine, the proprietor of the -Tecumseh _Chronicle_ and he is willing to give him a start there, under -the most favorable conditions. The salary will be small at first, -of course, but I will supplement it with enough to give him a decent -living, if he is frugal. After that of course it all depends on -himself.” - -Seth stood up, as these last words were spoken, and replied, -stammeringly. “You needn’t be afraid of my not trying hard, Albert. I’m -sure I’m very grateful to you. It’s more than I dared expect you would -do for me.” He pushed his way past the women to shake hands with his -brother, and say again “It’s so good of you.” - -Albert received these expressions of gratitude benevolently, adding some -words of advice, and concluding with “You had better get ready to start -as early next week as you can. One of the _Chronicle_ men is going on a -vacation, and its Workman’s idea that you would be handy in his absence. -You could go, say, Wednesday, couldn’t you?” - -“So far as getting ready is concerned, I don’t know that there is -anything to do which couldn’t be done in a day. But--but--” - -“Of course you will need some things. I’ll talk with you about that in -the morning. We’ll drive down to Thessaly day after to-morrow together.” - Albert rose with this to go out and see Milton, and the family interview -was at an end. - -Miss Sabrina hurried out to the kitchen, impatient to begin discussing -with Alvira, as had been her wont for years, this new development in the -affairs of the household. - - - - -CHAPTER IX.--AT “M’TILDY’s” BEDSIDE. - -Lemuel Fairchild sat still, smoking his wooden pipe, and looking -absently, straight ahead, into the papered wall. This habit of gazing at -nothing was familiar to them all, and when, at Isabel’s suggestion, the -three young people started for a stroll through the orchard path, they -left him entirely without ceremony. This was growing to be the rule; no -one in the family now consulted him, or took the trouble to be polite -to him. He seemed to have become in his own house merely an article of -animated furniture, of not much more importance than the rough-furred -sickly old cat who dozed his life away back of the stove. - -He sat thus in solitude for some time, blankly studying the grotesque -patterns in the old-fashioned wall-paper, and drawing mechanically at -the pipe in his mouth, unconscious that no smoke came. Thus Miss Sabrina -found him when, after a more than ordinarily sharp passage at arms with -Alvira, she returned from the Kitchen. - -“I swaow! thet girl gits wuss tempered ’n’ more presumin’ ev’ry day o’ -her life,” she exclaimed. - -“Who--Annie?” asked her brother, rousing himself as if from a nap. - -“Annie! nao! who’s talkin’ abaout _her?_” - -“Oh nothin’, unly I was thinkin’ ’baout Annie--‘baout her ’n’ Seth, -yeh knaow,” answered Lemuel, apologetically. - -“Well, what abaout ’em?” The query was distinctly aggressive in tone. - -“Oh, nothin’ much. I was sort o’ thinkin’--well, _you_ knaow S’briny, -haow Sissly used to lot on their makin’ a match of it--’n’ I was kine -o’ wond’rin’ ef this here notion o’ Seth’s goin’ away wouldn’t knock it -all in th’ head.” - -“Well?” Miss Sabrina’s monosyllabic comment had so little of sympathy -or acquiescence in it, that Lemuel continued in an injured tone and with -more animation, not to say resolution: - -“Well, I’ve hed kine of an idea o’ goin’ over ’n’ talkin’ it over with -M’tildy. Mebbe that’ll be the best thing to dew.” - -“Oh _you_ think so, dew yeh? Thet’s all th’ pride _you’ve_ got lef’, is -it? I think I see _my_self goin’ hangin’ raound Matildy Warren, beggin’ -her to let her granddaughter marry a Fairchild! I’m ashamed of yeh, -Lemuel.” - -“I don’ see, much, what ther’ is to be ashamed on.” He added, with the -faintest shadow of a grin on his face. “’N’ b’twixt you ’n’ me, I -don’t see ’s there’s so blamed much fur me to be praoud abaout, nuther. -‘Tain’t’s if I was goin’ to ask a favor o’ M’tildy, at all. She ’n’ -Sissly used to talk ‘baout the thing’s if ’twas settled. ’N’ now’t -she’s gone, ’n’ Seth’s talkin’ o’ quittin’ th’ farm, seems to me it’d -be the sensible thing to kind o’ fine aout ef M’tildy wouldn’t offer th’ -young folks her farm, ef they’d stay.” - -“_Very_ well, sir. Hev’ yer own way,” answered Miss Sabrina, with stern -formality. “You allus _would_ hev yer own way--and yeh kin go muddle -things up to yer heart’s content, for all o’ me!” - -Lemuel watched his sister march to the stairs door and close it -decisively behind her. He was accustomed of old to this proof of her -wrath; as far back as he could remember it had been Sabrina’s habit -to figuratively wash her hands of unpleasant complications on the -ground-floor by slamming this self-same door, and going up to sulk in -her own room. She did it as a young girl, in the first months of her -disagreements with his young wife; it seemed to him a most natural -proceeding now, when they were both old, gray-headed people. - -Just now, it was a relief to him that she had gone, for if she had -stayed he might not have had the courage to put his thoughts into -actions. As it was he took his hat from its nail back of the kitchen -door, and started across-lots for the Warren homestead. - -***** - -There was no danger of not finding Mrs. Warren at home. For seven or -eight years she had scarcely stirred beyond her own door, and for the -past eighteen months she had been bed-ridden. The front door was -opened to Mr. Fairchild by a young slip of a girl, one of the brood of -daughters with which a neighboring poor family was weighted down, and -all of whom had been driven to seek work at any price among the farmers -of the vicinity. It seemed as if there was a Lawton girl in every other -farmhouse the whole length of the Burfield road. - -The girl ushered him into the gloomy hall, gloomier than ever now in the -gathering twilight, and unceremoniously left him there, while she went -to announce his presence. He heard through a door ajar at the end of the -hall a thin, querulous voice ask, “Which one of the Fairchilds is it?” - and the girl’s reply “The old man.” - -Then the servant returned to him and with a curt “Come ahead,” led him -to the mistress of the house, who lay in her bed-home, in a recess off -the living room. - -Mrs. Matilda Warren had never been what might be called a popular woman -in the neighborhood. She and her husband, the latter dead now for many -years, had come from Massachusetts. They were educated people in a -sense, and had not mingled easily with their rougher neighbors. -The widow Warren had, after her daughter’s escapade, carried this -exclusiveness to a point which the neighborhood found disagreeable. -Gradually she had grown into the recluse habit, and younger generations -on the hillside, eking out the gossip of their elders with fancies of -their own, born of stray glimpses of her tall, gaunt figure and pale -face, came to regard her with much that same awe which, two centuries -before, reputed witches had for children, young and old. - -Something of this feeling Lemuel himself was conscious of, as he stood -before her. The coverlet came up close under her arms. She wore a -wrapper-dress of red flannel. As he entered she raised herself, with an -evidently cruel effort, upon her elbow, dragging the pillow down to -aid in supporting her shoulder. She panted with this exertion as she -confronted him. Her scanty white hair was combed tightly back from her -forehead, and bound in place with a black-velvet band; a natural parting -on the side of the hair gave the withered face a suggestion of juvenile -jauntiness, in grotesque, jarring contrast with the pale blue eyes -which glittered from caverns of dark wrinkles, and the sunken, distorted -mouth. She had changed so vastly since their last meeting that Lemuel -stood bewildered and silent, staring at her. - -She spoke first. “I’m trying to think--it must be twenty year since -we’ve met, Lemuel Fairchild.” - -“Nigh onto that, M’tildy,” he replied, turning his hat in his hands. - -“I didn’t expect ever to lay eyes on you again, I couldn’t come to you, -and wouldn’t if I could, and I didn’t dream you would ever show your -face here.” The aged woman said this in a high, sharp voice, speaking -rapidly and with an ungracious tone. - -Lemuel fidgetted with his hat and moved his feet uneasily on the -dog-skin rug. “Yeh needn’t be afeered, M’tildy, I wouldn’t hev come naow -ef it hadn’t been somethin’ partikler ’baout Annie.” - -The invalid raised her shoulder from the pillow with a sudden movement, -and bent her head forward. “What’s happened to her? Is she hurt? Tell -me, quick!” - -“Oh nao, they ain’t nothin’ th’ matter with her. It’s unly ’baout her -’n’ Seth. I kine o’ thought we ought to talk it over ’n’ see haow -the land lay. That’s all.” - -“Oh that’s it, is it? _Samantha!_” - -Betrayed out of her shrewdness by the suddenness of the summons the -servant girl made her immediate appearance through the hall door. - -“Yes, I knew you were listening, you huzzy,” said Mrs. Warren grimly. -“You get along up stairs, go into Annie’s room, an’ make a noise of some -sort on the melodeon till I call you. Not too much noise, mind; jest -enough so I can know you’re up there.” As the girl left the room, the -invalid explained: “What she don’t hear, the rest of the Lawtons won’t -know. That family’s as good as a detective force for the whole county.” - Then, in a less amiable tone: “You might as well set down. What is it -about my girl an’ Seth?” - -As Lemuel awkwardly seated himself near the bedside and prepared to -answer, a wailing, discordant series of sounds came from the floor -above. The knowledge that the girl was creating this melancholy noise -to order, and on his account, confused his thought and he found himself -stating the case much more baldly than he had intended. “The fact is,” - he said, stroking his hat over his knee, “Seth’s thinkin’ o’ goin’ away -to Tecumsy--Albert’s got him a place there--’n’ so I s’pose it’ll be -all up b’twixt him ’n’ Annie.” - -The grandmother never took those light, searching eyes off her visitor’s -face. He felt himself turning uncomfortably red under their malevolent -gaze, I and wished she would speak. But she said nothing. At last he -explained, deferentially: - -“I thought it’d only be right to tell yeh. I know Sissly ’n’ you use -to talk abaout th’ thing. Th’ way she use to talk, speshly jis’ ’fore -she died, it ’peared ‘s if you tew hed it all settled. But Albert’s -goin’ to take th’ farm, it seems, ’n’ Seth, he’s fig’rin’ on goin’ -away to be a neditor, ’n’ it looks to me’s if th’ hull plan’d fell -threw.” - -Still no reply from the bed. He added, helplessly “Don’t it kind o’ seem -so to you, M’tildy?” - -The wretched discords from the chamber above mocked him. The witch-like -eyes from the shadows of the recess began to burn him. It was growing -into the dusk, but the eyes had a light of their own, a cold, steely, -fierce light. Would she never speak? How he regretted having come! - -“I’ll tell you what seems to me, Lemuel Fairchild,” she said at last, -not speaking so rapidly now, and putting a sharp, finishing edge on each -of her words. “It seems to me that there’s never been but one decent, -honorable, likely human bein’ in your whole family an’ she came into it -by the mistake of marrying you. I blame myself for not remembering the -blood that was in you all, an’ for thinking that this youngest son of -yours was different from the rest. I forgot that he was a Fairchild like -the others, an’ I forgot what I owed that family of men, so mean and -cowardly and selfish that they have to watch each other like so many -hyenas. An’ so you’ve come to tell me that Seth has turned out like his -father, like his uncle, like all of his name, eh? The more fool I, to -need to be told it!” - -Lemuel’s impulse was to rise from his chair, and bear himself with -offended dignity, but the glitter in the old woman’s eyes warned him -that the attempt would be a failure. He scowled, put his hat on the -other knee, crossed his legs, pretended to be interested in the antics -of a kitten which was working havoc with a ball of yarn at his feet. -Finally he said: - -“You ain’t fair to Seth. He’s a good boy. He ain’t said nothin’ nor done -nothin’ fer yeh to git mad at. Fer that matter, you never was fair to -any of us, ’cept Sissly.” - -“Fair! _Fair!_” came the answer promptly, and in a swifter measure. -“Hear the man! Why, Lemuel Fairchild, you know that you cheated your own -brother out of the share in that farm that was his by all rights as much -as yours. You _know_ that your father intended you both to share alike, -that he died too suddenly to make a new will and that you grabbed -everything under a will made when your brother William was thought to be -too sickly to ever raise. You _know_ that you let him grow up an idle, -worthless coot of a fellow, an’ then encouraged him--yes, don’t deny it, -encouraged him I say--to make a fool of my daughter, and run away with -her. - -“You knew I wouldn’t look at him as a suitor for Jenny; but you thought -I would be soft enough, once they were married, to give him my farm, an’ -you counted on getting it away from him afterwards, just as your father -got the Kennard farm before you. You egged him on into the trouble, -an’ you let him die in it, without help. Oh _I_ know you, Lemuel -Fairchild--I know your breed! - -“Your _wife_ was a good woman--a million times better than you deserved. -_She_ knew the wrongs that had been done me, an’ Annie, an’ her poor -ne’er-do-well of a father before her; _she_ was anxious to make them -good, not I. It was she who talked, year after year, when she ran over -here on the sly to visit me, of squaring everything by the young folk’s -marriage. For a long time I didn’t like it. I distrusted the family, -as, God knows, I had reason to. But all that I heard of Seth was in his -favor. He was hardworking, patient, even-tempered, so everyone said. -What little I saw of him I liked. An’ I felt sorry for him, too, knowing -how dear he was to his mother, and yet how helpless she was to give -him advantages, an’ make something besides a farm-drudge out of him. -So little by little, I gave in to the idea, an’ finally it became mine -almost as much as Cecily’s. - -“As for Annie, I don’t know how much she has grown to care for him; -I’m afraid she’s known about our talks, and lotted on ’em, though if -anything has passed between them she would have told me. For she’s a -good girl--a _good_ girl--and she’ll stand by me, never fear, and say -as I say now, that it’s good riddance! D’ye mind? Good riddance to bad -rubbish--to your whole miserable, conniving, underhanded family! There -ain’t an honest hair in your head, Lemuel Fairchild, and there never -was. And you can go back to them that sent you, to your old catamaran of -a sister and your young sneak of a son, and tell ’em what I think of -them, and you, and the whole caboodle of you, that ruined and killed my -Jane, and made me a broken old woman before my time, and now tries to -break my grand-daughter’s heart! And the longest day you Jive, don’t -ever let me lay eyes on you again. That’s all!” - -Lemuel groped his way out again through the dark hall, to the front -door. The groaning discords from upstairs rose to a triumphant babel of -sound as he knocked against the hat-rack, and fumbled for the latch, as -if to emphasize and gloat over his discomfiture. The cold evening air, -after the sweltering heat of the sick-room, was a physical relief, but -it brought no moral comfort. - -Old Lemuel was much pained, and even more confused, by the hard words to -which he had had to listen. They presented a portrait of himself which -he felt to be in no way a likeness, yet he could not say wherein a -single line should be altered. He knew that he was not a bad man; -he felt conscious of having done no special wrong, intentionally, to -anybody; he had always tried to be fair and square and easy-going with -everybody: yet the mischief of it was that all these evil things -which the witchlike M’tildy had piled at his door were of indubitable -substance, and he could not prove, even to himself, much less to her, -that they did not belong there. It was a part of the consistently vile -luck of his life that all these malignant happenings should be charged -up against him, and used to demonstrate his wickedness. He had not -enough mental skill or alertness to sift the unfair from the true in the -indictment she had drawn, or to put himself logically in her place, and -thus trace her mistakes. He only realized that all these events which -she enumerated had served to convince Mrs. Warren that he was a villain. -The idea was a new one to him, and it both surprised and troubled him to -find that, as he thought the matter over he could not see where she was -particularly wrong. Yet a villain he had certainly never intended to -be--never for a moment. Was this not cruelly hard luck? - -And then there was this business about Seth. He had meant it all in -the friendliest spirit, all with the best of motives. And how she had -snapped him up before he had a chance to explain, and called him a -scoundrel and his boy a sneak, and driven him from the house! Here was a -muddle for one--and Sabrina had said he would make a muddle of it, as -he had of everything else, all through his life. The lonely, puzzled, -discouraged old man felt wofully like shedding tears, as he approached -his own gate--or no, it was Albert’s gate now--and passed the young -people chatting there, and realized what a feeble old fool they all must -think him. - - - - -CHAPTER X.--THE FISHING PARTY. - -The young people were arranging, as Lemuel slunk past them in the -dark, a fishing party for the following day. The proposal had been -Isabel’s--she had a fertile mind for pleasure planning--and Annie and -Seth were delighted with it. They would take a basket of food, and make -the tea over a fire in the woods, and the two women could take turns in -playing at fishing with a little rod which Seth had made for himself as -a boy. It would be an ideal way of bidding good-bye to Seth, said -his pretty sister-in-law, and Annie, feeling more deeply both the -significance of saying good-bye and the charm of having a whole day to -herself along the river and in his company, had assented eagerly. - -As for Seth, this sudden accession of feminine interest in, and concern -for, him was extremely pleasant and grateful. The very suggestion of the -trip, in his honor, was like a sweet taken in advance from the honeyed -future which he was so soon to realize. Long that night, after he had -walked over to the Warren gate with Annie, and returned to the unlathed -attic where Milton lay already snoring, he thought fondly of the -morrow’s treat. - -The morning came, warm but overcast, with a soft tendency of air from -the west. “It couldn’t have been better if it had been made to order,” - Seth said enthusiastically, when Isabel made her appearance before -breakfast. “It will be good fishing and good walking, not too hot and -not wet.” - -Albert smiled a trifle satirically when the project was unfolded to -him--with that _conceited tolerance which people who don’t fish -always extend to those who do_. “You’ll probably get wet and have the -toothache” he said to his wife, but offered no objection. - -The lunch was packed, the poles were ready, the bait-can stood outside -the shed door, breakfast was a thing of the past, and Isabel sat with -her sunhat and parasol--but Annie did not come. Seth fidgeted and fumed -as a half-hour went by, then the hour itself. It was so unlike Annie to -be late. He made an errand to the hay-barn, to render the waiting less -tedious, and it was there that Milton found him, rummaging among some -old harness for a strap. - -“Annie’s come over,” said Milton, “I heerd her say somethin’ ’baout -not goin’ fishin’, after all. Looks ’sif she’d be’n cryin’ tew. I tole -’em I’d fetch yeh.” - -Seth came out into the light, slapping the dust off his hands. “What’s -that you say? Why isn’t she going?” - -“I dunnao nothin’ more ’n I’ve told yeh. Ask her yerself. I ’spose -she’s be’n cryin’ at the thought of yer goin’. That’ll be the eend o’ -ev’rythin’ atwixt you two, won’t it?” - -“Oh, do mind your own business, Milton!” Seth said, and hurried across -the barnyard to where the two young women stood, on the doorstep. -“Why aren’t you going, Annie? What’s the matter?” he called out as he -approached. - -Poor Annie looked the picture of despair. Her face bore the marks of -recent tears and she hung her head in silence. Isabel answered for her. - -“Going? Of course she is going. It would be ridiculous not to go, now -that everything’s arranged. Get the things together, Seth, and let us -make a start.” - -“But Milton said she wasn’t going,” persisted Seth. - -“Dear, dear, how downright you are! Don’t I tell you that she _is_ -going, that there is nothing the matter, that we are waiting for you?” - And there was nothing more to be said. - -The sun came out before the trio had gone far, but not before they had -begun to forget the cloud at the start. The grass in the pastures was -not quite dry yet, but wet feet were a part of the fun of the thing, -Isabel said gaily. The meadow larks careened in the air about them, -and the bobolinks, swinging on the thistle tops, burst into chorus from -every side as the sunlight spread over the hill-side. There were robins, -too, in the juniper trees beyond the white-flowering buckwheat patch, -Seth pointed out, too greedy to wait till the green berries ripened. A -flock of crows rose from the buckwheat as they passed and who could help -smiling at Isabel’s citified imitation of their strident hawing? They -came upon some strawberries, half-hidden in the tall grass beside the -rail-topped wall, and Isabel would gather them in her handkerchief, to -serve as dessert in their coming _al fresco_ dinner, and Annie helped -her, smiling in spite of herself at the city lady’s extravagant -raptures. - -When they stopped to rest, in the fresh-scented shadow of the woods, and -sat on a log along the path, two wee chipmunks came out from the brake -opposite and began a chirping altercation, so comical in its suggestions -of human wrangling that they all laughed outright. The sound scared -away the tiny rodents in a twinkling, and it banished as swiftly the -restraint under which the excursion had begun. - -From that moment it was all gayety, jesting, enjoyment. Isabel was the -life of the party; she said the drollest things;--passed the quaintest -comments,--revealed such an inexhaustable store of spirits that she -lifted her companions fairly out of their serious selves. Seth found -himself talking easily, freely, and even Annie now and again made little -jokes, at which they all laughed merrily. - -The fisherman’s judgment as to the day was honored in full measure. The -fish had never bitten more sharply, the eddies had never carried the -line better. It seemed so easy, to let the line wander back and forth -between the two currents, to tell when the bait was grabbed underneath, -and to haul out the plunging, flapping beauty, that Isabel was all -eagerness to try it, and Seth rigged the little pole for her, baited the -hook self-sacrificingly with his biggest worm, which he had thought of -in connection with a certain sapient father of all pike further up the -river, and showed her where and how to cast the line. - -Alas, it was not so simple, after all, this catching of fish. - -First she lost a hook on a root; then it seemed to her that ages -passed in which nothing whatever happened and this was followed by the -discovery that her hook had entirely been stripped of bait without her -suspecting it. At last there came a bite, a deep, determined tug, which -she answered with a hysterical pull, hurling through the air and into -the thistles far back of her a wretched little bull-head which they were -unable to find for a long time, and which miserably stung her thumb with -its fin when she finally did find it. - -After this exploit Annie must try, and she promptly twitched her line -into the tree overhead. And so the day went forward, with light-hearted -laughter and merriment, with the perfect happiness which the sunshine -and color and perfume of June can bring alone to the young. - -They grew a trifle more serious at dinner time. It was in the narrow -defile where the great jam of logs was, and where the river went down, -black and deep, under the rotting wood with a vicious gurgle. Just above -the jam there was a mound, velvety now with new grass, and comfortably -shaded--a notable spot for dinner and a long rest, and then the girls -could watch to much advantage Seth’s fishing from the logs, of which -great things were prophesied. Here then the cloth was spread on the -grass, the water put on over a fire lighted back of the mound, and the -contents of the basket laid in prandial array. It was in truth a meagre -dinner, but were appetites ever keener or less critical? - -Once during the forenoon, when allusion was made to Seth’s coming -departure, Isabel had commanded that nothing be said on that subject all -day long. “Let us not think of it at all,” she had said, “but just -enjoy the hours as if they would never end. That is the only secret of -happiness.” But now she herself traversed the forbidden line. - -“How strange it will all seem to you, Seth,” she mused, as she poured -out the tea. “As the time draws near, don’t you almost dread it?” - -“What I’ve been thinking most about to-day is your coming to the farm to -live. It can’t be that you are altogether pleased--after what I’ve heard -you say.” - -“Oh yes, why not?” said Isabel. “My case is very different from yours. I -shall be just as idle as I like. I shall have horses, you know and a big -conservatory, and a piano, and all that. We shall have lots of people -here all summer long--just think what fishing parties we can make -up!--and whenever it gets stupid we can run down to New York. Oh, I’ve -got quite beyond the reconciled stage now. I am almost enthusiastic over -it. When you come back in a year’s time, you won’t know the place. It -will have been transformed into a centre of fashion and social display. -I may get to have a veritable salon, you know, the envy and despair -of all Dearborn County. Fancy Elhanan Pratt and Sile Thomas in evening -dress, with patent leather pumps and black stockings, scowling at -Leander Crump, with a crushed hat under his arm, whom they suspect of -watering his milk! Oh, we shall be gay, I assure you.” - -Seth looked at her attentively, puzzled to know how much of this -was badinage, how much sincerity. She smiled archly at him--what a -remarkably winning smile she had!--and continued: - -“Then Annie will be company for me, too. I mean to bring her out, you -know, and make her a leader of society. In a year’s time when you -come back and I introduce you to her, you won’t be able to credit your -senses, her air will be so _distingué_, and her tastes so fastidious.” - -She ceased her gay chatter abruptly, for Annie had turned away and they -could see that her eyes were filling with tears. - -Seth bethought him of those earlier tears, the signs of which had been -so obvious when they started, and it was natural enough to connect the -two. - -“Something _has_ happened, Annie,” he said. “Can’t you tell us what it -is?” - -And then he bit his tongue at having made the speech, for Annie turned a -beseeching look at him, then at Isabel, and burst into sobs. - -“Isn’t it reason enough that you are going away?” said Isabel. “What -more could you ask?” - -“No, it isn’t that alone,” protested Annie through her tears. Her pride -would not brook the assumption. “There is something else; I can hardly -tell you--but--but--my grandmother has suddenly taken a great dislike to -Seth; if she knew where I was she would be very angry: I never deceived -her, even indirectly, before, but I couldn’t bear not to come after I -got to the house, and if I’ve done wrong--” - -“Now, now dear” cooed Isabel, leaning over to take Annie’s hands, “what -nonsense to talk of wrong; come now, dry your eyes, and smile at us, -like a good girl. You are nervous and tired out with the task of tending -your grandmother--that’s all--and this day in the woods will do you -a world of good. Don’t let us have even the least little bit of -unhappiness in it.” - -Seth watched his sister-in-law caress and coax away Annie’s passing fit -of gloom, with deep enjoyment. The tenderness and beauty of the process -were a revelation to him; it was an attribute of womanhood the existence -of which he had scarcely suspected heretofore, in his untutored, bucolic -state. Annie seemed to forget her grief quickly enough, and became -cheerful again; in quaint docility she smiled through her tears at -Isabel’s command, and the latter was well within the truth when she -cried: “There! You have never looked prettier in your life!” - -Seth nodded acquiescence, and returned the smile. But somehow this -grief of Annie’s had bored him, and he felt rather than thought that -his country-cousin, even in this radiant moment, was of slight interest -compared with the city sister-in-law, who not only knew enough not to -cry herself, but could so sweetly charm away tears from others. - -Seth tested all the joints of his pole, and changed the hook and baited -it with studious care, before he climbed out on the jam. Gingerly -feeling his way from log to log, he got at last upon the wet mossy -birch which projected like a ledge at the bottom of the pile. The women -watched his progress from the mound, and gave a little concerted shout -of triumph when, at the very first cast of his line into the froth of -the dark eddy, it was caught and dragged swiftly across the stream, and -a handsome pike a moment later paid the penalty. - -“That’s by far the biggest yet, isn’t it?” Annie asked. - -“Wait, there are bigger yet. Watch this!” - -The line, thrown in again, had been sharply jerked and was now being -drawn upstream under the logs. Seth moved down to the end of the birch, -stooping under the jutting heap of logs above, to be able to play the -pole sidewise, and save the fish. It was a difficult position to stand -in; he held the rod far forward with one hand, and grasped a bough above -for support as he leaned out over the stream. - -The thing snapped--exactly how it was no one knew--a log released from -its bondage shifted position, a dozen others rolled over it rumbling, -and the women held their breath affrighted as they saw, without moving, -the whole top of the jam tremble, lift a jagged end or two, and then -collapse with a hollow noise. As they found voice to scream, the water -was covered with floating debris, and the air filled with a musty -fungus-like smell. - -There was no sign of Seth. - -The roar of the falling timber had scarcely died away before Annie had -left the mound, had torn her way through the alders at the bottom, and -stood panting on the wet slimy rocks at the edge of the stream. -She hardly heard the frightened warning which Isabel, pale and -half-fainting, called out to her: - -“Keep away from the water, Annie! You’ll surely be drowned!” - -She was painfully intent upon another thing, upon the search for -some indication of her cousin. The logs were moving but slowly in the -current, and were heaped so irregularly that no clear survey of the -whole surface could be had. There seemed an eternity of suffering in -every second which she spent thus, scanning the scene. Could the crush -of logs have killed him? Even if he had escaped that, would he not be -drowned by this time? The grinding of the logs against each other, the -swash of the water at her feet, Isabel’s faint moaning on the mound -above, seemed to her dazed terror a sort of death dirge. - -Oh, joy! She caught sight of something in cloth between two great -tree-trunks, drenched, covered with the red grime of rotten wood, -motionless; but it was Seth. His face she could not see, nor whether it -was under water or not. She walked boldly into the stream--kneedeep at -the outset, and the slippery rocks shelving off swiftly into unknown -brown-black depths--but there was no hesitation. A halfdozen steps, and -she disappeared suddenly beneath the water. Isabel wrung her hands in -despair, too deep now to find a voice; but Annie had only slipped on the -treacherous slates, and found her footing again. The water came to her -shoulders now, and was growing deeper steadily. - -With a strength born of desperation she clambered up on the birch, which -floated nearest her, and pulled herself along its length, swaying as it -rolled in the current under her weight, but managing to keep on top. It -was nothing short of miraculous to Isabel’s eyes, the manner in which -she balanced herself, clambered from log to log, overcame all the -obstacles which lay between her and the inanimate form at the other -side. The distance was not great, and a swimmer would have made nothing -of the feat, but for a girl encumbered with heavy wet skirts, and in -deep water for the first time, it was a real achievement. - -At last she reached Seth--her progress had covered three minutes, and -seemed to her hours long--and, throwing herself across both logs, with a -final effort lifted his head upon her shoulder. - -“He is alive!” she said to Isabel, feebly now, but with a great sigh of -relief. - -The city woman ran down at this, all exultation. At Annie’s suggestion, -she tied their two shawls together, fastened one end to a pole, and -managed to fling the other over to the rescuer; it was easy work after -that to draw the logs to the bank, and then Annie, standing knee-deep -again in the water, made shift to get the heavy dead weight safe on -land. The two women tugged their burden through the alders, and up to -the place where the dinner dishes still lay, with scarcely a word. Then -exhausted, excited, overjoyed, Isabel threw herself in Annie’s arms and -they both found relief in tears. - -Seth had been struck on the head and stunned by the first falling log; -how much he had been in the water or how near he had been to drowning -could not be discovered. - -He presently opened his eyes, and a smile came almost instantaneously to -his face as he realised that his head was resting in Isabel’s lap, that -he was muffled up in her shawl, and that she was looking down upon him -anxiously, tenderly. A second sufficed to bring the whole thing to his -mind, or at least the facts that he had gone under with the logs and by -some agency had been landed here safe and comfortable, if not dry--and -to bring also the instinctive idea that it would be the intelligent part -to lie still, and be petted and sympathised with. - -Isabel scarcely returned his smile. She had not recovered from her -fright. - -“Oh, Seth,” she asked earnestly, “Are you hurt? Do you feel any pain?” - -“Not a bit” he replied--“only dizzy like. By George! How they did come -down though. I must have had a pretty narrow squeak of it. Funny--I -don’t remember coming out at all.” - -She smiled now. “I should think not. You lay perfectly senseless way out -there among the logs. We fished you out, and dragged you up here. I feel -like a heroine in a Crusader’s romance, really!” - -It entered Seth’s mind to say something nice in reply, that she looked -like one, or that they were not equal in those benighted ages to -producing such women, or something of that sort; but his tongue did not -seem to frame the words easily and as he looked up at her he grew shy -once again, and felt himself flushing under her smile, and only said -vacuously, “Mightly lucky I wasn’t alone, isn’t it?” Annie appeared -on the scene now, her clothes steaming from the heat of the fire, -over which she had endeavoured to dry them, and her teeth displaying a -spasmodic tendency to knock together between sentences. She too was full -of solicitude as to Seth’s condition, and to satisfy this he reluctantly -sat up, stretched his arms out, felt of the bump on his forehead, beat -his chest, and finally stood erect. - -“I’m all right, you see” he said--“only, bo-o-o, I’m cold,” and he made -for the fire, upon which Annie had heaped brushwood, which crackled and -snapped now, giving forth a furious heat. - -They stood about the fire for a considerable time. Isabel was opposite -Seth, rather ostentatiously drying sundry damp places in her dress which -had come in contact with the rescued man’s dripping hair and clothes. -He was so interested in watching her, and in thinking half-regret fully, -half-jubilantly, that she had been put to this discomfort in saving his -life, that he failed to notice how completely drenched his cousin had -been. The conversation turned entirely, of course, upon the recent great -event, but it was desultory and broken by long intervals of silence, and -somehow Seth did not get any clear idea of how he was saved, much less -of the parts the two women had respectively played in the rescue. - -It would be unfair to say that Isabel purposely misrepresented anything; -it is nearer the truth to describe her as confounding her own anxiety -with her companion’s action. At all events, the narrative to be gleaned -from her scattering descriptions and exclamations had the effect -of creating in Seth’s mind the impression that he could never be -sufficiently grateful to his sister-in-law. - -As for Annie, the whole momentous episode had come so swiftly, had been -so imperative, exhaustive in its demands of all her faculties, and then -had so suddenly dwindled to the unromantic conditions of drying wet -clothes at a brush fire, that her thoughts upon it were extremely -confused. She scarcely took part in the conversation. Perhaps she felt -vaguely that her own share in the thing was not made to stand forth with -all the prominence it deserved, but she took it for granted that, in his -first waking moments, while he was alone with Isabel, Seth had been told -the central fact of her going into the water for him, and, if he was -not effusively grateful, why--it was not Seth’s way to be demonstrative. -Besides she said to herself, she did not want to be thanked. - -Still, late that night, long hours after Seth had said good-night to her -at the Warren gate, and she had almost guiltily stolen up to her room -without braving her grandmother’s questions, Annie could not go to sleep -for thinking:-- - -“He might at least have _looked_ some thanks, even if he did not speak -them.” - -***** - -Three days later, Seth departed for the city. It was not a particularly -impressive ceremony, this leave-taking, not half so much as he had -imagined it would be. - -He had risen early, dressed himself in one of the two new, ready-made, -cheap suits Albert had bought for him at Thessaly and packed all his -possessions in the carpet satchel which had been in the family he knew -not how long--and still found, when he descended the stairs, that he was -the first down. It was a dark, rainy morning, and the living room looked -unspeakably desolate, and felt disagreeably cold. He sat for a long time -by a window pondering the last copy of John’s _Banner_, and trying to -thus prepare his mind for that immense ordeal of daily newspaper work, -that struggle of unknown, titanic proportions, now close before him. - -Alvira at last came in to lay the breakfast table. - -“Hello, you up already?” was all she said; but he felt she was eyeing -him furtively, as if even thus soon he was a stranger in the house of -his birth. - -Aunt Sabrina next appeared. “There! I knew it ’d rain,” she exclaimed. -“I told Alviry so last night. When th’ cords on th’ curtains git -limp, yeh can’t fool me ’baout it’s not rainin’. ’N’ Seth, I hope -you’ll go to Church regular whatever else you dew. ’N’ ef yeh could -take a class in th’ Sunday schewl, it’d go a long ways tow’rd keepin’ -yeh aout o’ temptation. Will yeh go to th’ Baptist Church, think? Th’ -Fairchilds ’v’ allus be’n Baptists.” - -The breakfast passed in constrained silence, save for Albert, who -delivered a monologue on the evils of city life, and the political and -ethical debauchery of the press, to which Seth tried dutifully to pay -attention--thinking all the while how to say goodbye to Isabel, how to -invest his words with a fervor the others would not suspect. - -When the time came, all this planning proved of no avail. He found -himself shaking hands as perfunctorily with her as with her husband, -and his father and aunt. Only the latter kissed him, and she did it with -awkward formality. - -Then he climbed into the buggy where Milton and the carpet bag were -already installed, and, answering in kind a chorus of “Good-byes” drove -out into the rain--and the World. - - - - -CHAPTER XI.--ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE WORLD. - -Seth’s first impressions of the World, gathered when he found himself -and his valise alone on the sidewalk of one of Tecumseh’s chief streets, -were distinctly gloomy. - -Other passengers who had left the train here, and in whose throng he -had been borne along thus far, started off briskly in various directions -once they reached the busy thoroughfare, elbowing their way through the -horde of clamorous hotel porters much as one might push through a clump -of obstructing bushes. He had firmly fixed in his mind the cardinal -rule of traveling countrymen, that these shouting runners were brigands -intent upon robbing him, and he was clear in his resolution to give -them no hold upon him, not even by so much as a civil expression of -countenance. He said “No, thank you!” sternly to at least a dozen -solicitations, so it seemed to him, and walked away steadily, fearful -that their practised eyes had detected in him an utter stranger, and -intent only upon proving to them that he knew where he was going. When -at last it seemed likely that they were no longer watching him, he -stopped, put his bag down in a door way, and looked about. - -It was half-past six of a summer afternoon (for a failure to make -connections had prolonged the sixty-mile journey over eight hours), and -the sun, still high, beat down the whole length of the street with an -oppressive glare and heat. The buildings on both sides, as far as -eye could reach, were of brick, flat-topped, irregular in height, and -covered with flaring signs. There was no tree, nor any green thing, in -sight. - -Past him in a ceaseless stream, and all in one direction, moved a swarm -of humanity--laborers and artisans with dinner-pails, sprucely dressed -narrow-chested clerks and book-keepers, and bold faced factory-girls in -dowdy clothes and boots run down at the heels--a bewildering, chattering -procession. No one of all this throng glanced at him, or paid the -slightest attention to him, until one merry girl, spying his forlorn -visage, grinned and called out with a humorous drawl “Hop-pick--ers!” - and then danced off with her laughing companions, one of whom said, “Aw, -come off! You’re rushin’ the season. Hop’s ain’t ripe yet.” - -Seth felt deeply humiliated at this. He had been vaguely musing upon the -general impudence of his coming to this strange city to teach its people -daily on all subjects, from government down, while he did not even know -how to gracefully get his bag off the street. This incident added -the element of wounded self-pride to his discomfort--for even casual -passers-by were evidently able to tell by his appearance that he was -a farmer. Strange! neither Albert nor John had told him anything -calculated to serve him in this dilemma. They had warned him plentifully -as to what not to do. Indeed his head was full of negative information, -of pit-falls to avoid, temptations to guard against. But on the -affirmative side it was all a blank. John had, it was true, advised -him to get board with some quiet family, but if there were any -representatives of such quiet families in the crowd surging past, how -was he to know them? - -While he tormented himself with this perplexing problem, two clerks -came out of the store next to which he stood, to pull up the awning -and prepare for night. A tall young man, with his hands deep in his -trouser’s pockets, and a flat straw hat much on one side of his head, -sauntered across the street to them, and was greeted familiarly. - -“Well, Tom,” shouted one of these clerks, “you just everlastingly gave -it to that snide show to-night. _Wasn’t_ it a scorcher, though?” - -The young man with the straw hat put on a satisfied smile: “That’s the -only way to do it,” he said lightly. “The sooner these fakirs understand -that they can’t play Tecumseh people for chumps, the better. If the -_Chronicle_ keeps on pounding ’em, they’ll begin to give us a wide -berth. Their advance agent thought he could fix me by opening a pint -bottle of champagne. That may work in Hornellsville, but when he gets -to-night’s _Chronicle_ I fancy he’ll twig that it doesn’t go down here.” - -“Oh, by the way, Tom,” said the other clerk, in a low tone of voice, “my -sister’s engaged to Billy Peters. I don’t know that she wants to have it -given away, that is, names, and everything, but you might kind o’ hint -at it. It would please the old folks, I think--you know father’s taken -the _Chronicle_ for the last twenty years.” - -“I know” said Tom, producing an old envelope from a side pocket and -making some dashes on it with a pencil--“the regulation gag: ‘It is -rumored that a rising young hat-dealer will shortly lead to the altar -one of the bright, particular social stars of Brewery street ’ eh? -Something like that?” - -“Yes, that’s it. You know how to fix it so that everybody’ll know who is -meant. Be around at Menzel’s to-night?” - -“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll look in. The beer’s been fearfully flat there, -though, this last carload. So long, boys!”--and Tom moved down the -street while the clerks re-entered the store. - -Seth followed him eagerly, and touched him on the shoulder, saying: - -“I beg your pardon, sir, but I heard you mention the _Chronicle_ just -now. I would be much obliged if you could tell me where the office is.” - -The young man turned, looked Seth over and said, affably enough: - -“Certainly. But you’ll find it shut up. The book-keeper’s gone home.” - Then he added, as by a happy afterthought: “If you want to pay a weekly -subscription, though, I can take it, just as well as not.” - -“No,” answered Seth, “I’ve come to work on the _Chronicle_.” - -“Oh--printer? I guess some of the fellows are there still, throwing in -their cases. If you like, I’ll show you.” - -Seth replied, with some embarrassment, “No, I’m not a printer. I’ve come -to be--to be--an editor.” - -Tom’s manner changed in a twinkling from civility to extreme cordiality. - -“Oh--ho! you’re the new man from Thessaly, eh? Jack Fairchild’s brother! -By Jove! How _are_ you, anyway? When did you get in? Where are you -stopping?” - -“I’m not stopping anywhere--unless it be this stairway here,” Seth -replied, pointing to his carpetbag with a smile, for his companion’s -cheerfulness was infectious. “I came in half an hour ago, and I scarcely -knew where to go, or what to do first. I gather that you are connected -with the _Chronicle_.” - -“Well, I should remark!” said Tom, taking the bag up as he spoke. “Come -along. We’ll have some supper down at Bismarck’s, and leave your grip -there for the evening. We can call for it on our way home. You’ll stop -with me to-night, you know. It ain’t a particularly fly place, but we’ll -manage all right, I guess. And how’s Jack?” - -In the delight of finding so genial a colleague, one, too, who had known -and worked with his brother, Seth’s heart rose, as they walked down the -street again. He had been more than a little dismayed at the prospect -of meeting these unknown writers whose genius radiated in the columns -of the _Chronicle_, and in whose company he was henceforth to labor. -Especially had he been nervous lest he should not speak with sufficient -correctness, and should shock their fastidious ears with idioms -insensibly acquired in the back-country. It was a great relief to -find that this gentleman was so easy in his conversation, not to say -colloquial. - -They stopped presently at a broad open door, flanked by wide windows, in -which were displayed a variety of bright-tinted play bills, and two huge -pictures of a goat confidently butting a small barrel. There was a steep -pile of these little, dark-colored barrels on the sidewalk at the -curb, from which came a curious smell of resin. As they entered, Seth -discovered that this odor belonged to the whole place. - -The interior was dark and, to the country youth’s eyes, unexpectedly -vast. The floor was sprinkled with gray sand. An infinitude of small, -circular oak tables, each surrounded with chairs, stretched out in every -direction into the distant gloom. Away at the farther end of the place, -somebody was banging furiously on a piano. In the middle distance, three -elderly men sat smoking long pipes and playing dominoes, silently, save -for the sharp clatter of the pieces. Nearer, three other men, seated -about a table, were all roaring in German at the top of their lungs, -pounding with their glasses on the resounding wood, and making the most -excited and menacing gestures. While Seth stared at them, expecting -momentarily to see the altercation develop into blows, he felt himself -clutched by the arm, and heard Tom say: - -“Bismarck, this is Mr. Fairchild, a new _Chronicle_ man. You must use -him as well as you do me.” - -Seth turned and found himself shaking hands with an old German monstrous -in girth, and at once fierce and comical in aspect, with short, upright -gray hair, a huge yellowish-white moustache, and little piggish blue -eyes nearly hidden from view by the wave of fat which rendered his great -purple face as featureless as the bottom of a platter. - -“Who effer vas Misder Vott’s frent, den you bed he owens dis whole -houwus,” this stout gentleman wheezed out, smiling warmly, and releasing -Seth’s hand to indicate, with a sweeping gesture of his pudgy paw, the -extent of Seth’s new and figurative possessions. - -On the invitation of the host they all took seats, and a lean, -wolfish-faced young man named “Ow-goost,” who shuffled along pushing -his big slippers on the floor, brought three tall foaming glasses -of dark-brown beer. Seth did not care for beer, and had always, in -a general way, avoided saloons and drink, but of course, under these -circumstances, it would be ridiculous not to do as the others did. The -beverage was bitter, but not unpleasant, and with an effort he drank it -half down at a time, as he saw his companions do. Then he looked about, -while they discussed the merits of this new “bock,” Tom speaking with an -air of great authority, and pronouncing it better than the last, but a -bit too cold. - -The piano was still jangling, and the dominoes were being rattled around -for a new game. The three noisy old men had grown, if possible, more -violent and boisterous than ever. One of them now sprang to his feet, -lifted his right hand dramatically toward the dusky ceiling, and -bellowed forth sonorously something which Seth thought must be at least -a challenge to immediate combat, while the others hammered their glasses -vehemently, and fairly shrieked dissent. - -“I’m afraid those men are going to fight,” he said. - -“Fight? Nonsense! They’re rather quieter than usual,” remarked Tom. -“What are they chewing on to-night, Bismarck--the Sigel racket?” - -“Yes,” said their host, listening indifferently. “Dot’s Sigel.” Then, -addressing Seth, he explained: “Somedimes it’s Sigel, unt somedimes the -reffolution uff forty-eighd, unt den somedimes der k-vestion of we haf -a vood bafement by Main streed. It all makes no differunce to dem, -vicheffer ding dey shdarts mit, dey git yust so much oxcited. Dot -rooster you see standing up mit der spegtacles, dot Henery Beckstein, -he’s a tailor; he sits mid his legs tvisted all day, den when night -comes he neets some exercises. Efery night for tweluf years he comes -here, unt has his liddle dalk, und de udders, dey alvays pitches into -him. He likes dot better as his dinner. De vurst is, dey all don’t know -vat dey talk aboud. I bleef, so help me Gott, no one of ’em ever laid -eyes by Sigel, unt dey all svear he vas deir dearest frent. Now--hear -dot! Dot Beckstein say uff he didn’t shleep mid him four years in his -dent, in de same bet! How was dot for lies, huh?” The host, pained -and mortified at this mendacity, left his seat and waddled over to -the disputants, shouting as he went, and joined the conversation so -earnestly that his little eyes seemed bursting from his beet-red face. - -“Great old man, that,” said Tom, pounding with his glass for the waiter; -“there’s no flies on _him!_ I named him Bismarck three or four years -ago--everybody calls him that now--and it tickled him so, there’s -nothing here too good for me. You like cheese, don’t you?” - -“Well, yes, I eat cheese sometimes.” - -Seth never _had_ eaten this kind of cheese which Owgoost presently -slapped down before them, along with a mustard cup, a long bulging roll -of black bread, and more beer. It was pale and hard and strong of -scent, was cut in thick slabs, and was to be eaten, he judged from Tom’s -procedure, under a heavy top-dressing of the brown mustard. He liked -it though, and was interested to find how well beer went with it, or it -went with beer. Then they had each a little pickled lambs-tongue, -pink and toothsome, to be eaten with plenty of salt, and it was quite -remarkable how ideally beer seemed to go with this, too. In all, three -large glasses went. - -Tom was a delightful companion. It was simply charming to hear him talk, -as he did almost continuously, describing the round of life in Tecumseh, -relating gay little anecdotes of personal experience, and commenting -trenchantly on various men as they came in. To some of these he -introduced Seth. They seemed extremely affable young people, and some -of them who took seats near by invited Tom and him with much fervor and -still greater frequency, to have their glasses filled up. The former -accepted these proffers very freely, but the beer did not taste as -good to Seth as it had during supper, and he kept to his one glass--the -fourth--sipping at it from time to time. Tom was so urgent about it, -though, that he did take a cigar, a dark, able-bodied cigar which -annoyed him by burning up on one side. - -The beer-hall presented a brilliant appearance now, with all the lights -flaming, with most of the chairs filled by merry young men, with three -or four white-jacketed waiters flitting about, bearing high in air -both hands full of foaming glasses--a fine contrast to the dingy, bare -interior of the twilight, with only the solitary Owgoost. Above the -ceaseless hum of conversation and laughter, rose, at intervals, the -strains of lively music from the far-off piano, reinforced now by a harp -and a flute. - -After a time cards were proposed, and Tom made one of a quartette who -ranged themselves at the table. Seth could not play, and so moved his -chair back, to watch the game. His cigar burned badly and he relighted -it. Then it tasted bitter, and, after some hesitation, he threw it -away. The game, called seven-up, was one he had never seen before; the -ten-spots were invested with a fictitious value which puzzled him. Tom, -over whose shoulder he watched had three of these tens, and silently -indicated to Seth that they were of especial interest. Seth fixed his -eyes upon them, to see how they were to be managed. They were very -curious ten-spots, being made of beer-glasses running over with -lambs-tongues, with lambs chasing them to rescue their lamented members, -and burly “Bismarck” striving in vain to secure order. General Sigel -came to help him, and Tom dealt him a terrific blow. Here _was_ a fight -at last, and John Fairchild stood by, rapidly taking notes. Then it came -bed-time, and--Seth was being shaken into sensibility by Tom, who said -between fits of chuckling: - -“Wake up, old boy! Wake up!” - -Another great change had taken place in the beer-hall--the lights -were out, the music had ceased, the crowd was gone. A solitary gas-jet -flickered from the chandelier over the table; the game was ended, and -the players were standing ready to depart, and laughing. Fat Bismarck -stood behind him, in the half-shadow, looking very sleepy, and he seemed -to be grinning too. - -Seth saw all this first. Then he discovered that he held his collar and -necktie in his hand, and that his coat and waistcoat were on the table. -He dimly began to understand that he had been asleep, and that, in -the operation of his dream, he had commenced undressing. Everybody was -laughing at him, his friend Tom, who now was helping him on with his -coat, most heartily of all. - -“I declare,” Seth said, “I must have fallen asleep. I had no idea--I -suppose I was dreaming of getting ready for bed.” - -“Oh, dots all right, dots all right,” said Bismarck heartily. “Ve don’d -mind it a bit. You vas only dired owut.” - -“Yes, that’s it,” said Tom, “he’d had a hard day of it, traveling all -the way from Thessaly. Are you ready? We’ll get the bag, and trot along -home. Good night, boys!” - -Seth responded to the chorus of answering “good nights,” and the twain -started out. Tom not only carried the bag, but took his companion’s -arm--much to Seth’s satisfaction, for he felt very tired, and it seemed -unusually difficult for him to shake off his sleepiness. Tom was more -talkative than ever, and he seemed to be saying extremely clever things, -but Seth somehow did not follow their meaning, and he could think of -nothing to say in reply. They were in a dark side street now. - -“Ah, I thought he’d be open!” said Tom, abruptly, stopping before a -place, through the closed shutters of which long horizontal threads of -light gleamed. “Let’s go in and have a night-cap. It’ll set you straight -in a minute.” - -The curious reluctance to speak, of which Seth had felt vaguely -conscious all along, now prompted acquiescence as the easiest course, -and he followed Tom into a small, low room, thick with cigar-smoke and -the odor of kerosene, where four or five men, with their hats tilted -over their eyes, were playing cards: there was a pile of money in the -centre of the table, to which each in turn seemed to be adding from a -smaller heap before him. They were so much engrossed in the game that -they only nodded at Tom, and Seth felt relieved at escaping the ordeal -of being introduced to them. At Tom’s suggestion he took a little glass -of brandy--“to do their duty by the National debt,”--what ever that -meant. It was burning, nauseous stuff, which brought the tears to his -eyes, but it made him feel better. - -It especially enabled him to talk, which he proceeded to do now with -a fluency that surprised him. Tom was evidently much impressed by his -remarks, saying little, it is true, but gripping his arm more closely. -Thus they walked to Tom’s lodgings--a tall, dark brick house opposite -a long line of coal sheds. The hall was so dark that Seth, in trying to -follow his guide, stumbled over an umbrella-rack, and fell to the floor. -Tom assisted him to rise, with a paternal “steady now, steady; that’s -it, lean on me,” and so helped him up the two flights of steep, narrow -stairs. In all the world, it seemed to Seth, he could not have met a -more amiable or congenial friend than Tom, and he told him so, as they -climbed the stairs, affectionately leaning upon his arm, and making his -phrases as ornate in diction and warm in tone as he could. - -“Here we are,” said Tom, opening a door, and lighting a lamp which -revealed a small, scantily furnished room, in extreme disorder. “Make -yourself at home, my boy. Smoke a pipe before you go to bed?” - -“Oh, mercy, no. I thinks--do you know, I feel a little dizzy.” - -“Oh, you’ll be all right in the morning. Just undress and pile into bed. -I’ll smoke a pipe first.” Half an hour after Seth’s first day in the -World had closed in heavy slumber, Tom looked at him before blowing out -the light, and smiled to himself: “He _is_ about as fresh as they make -’em.” - - - - -CHAPTER XII.--THE SANCTUM. - -The young men dressed next morning in almost complete silence. Tom was -still sleepy, and seemed much less jovial and attractive than he had -been the previous evening; Seth, accustomed to far earlier rising, -was acutely awake, but his head ached wearily and there was a dreadful -dryness in his mouth and throat. They went through the forms of -breakfast in the basement, too, without much conversation. Seth was -ashamed of the number of cups of coffee he drank, and carried away only -confused recollections of having been introduced to a middle-aged woman -in black who sat at the head of the table, and of having perfunctorily -answered sundry questions about business in Dearborn County, put by a -man who sat next to him. - -They were well on their way to the office before Tom’s silent mood wore -away. - -“You must brace up!” he said. “Don’t let Workman know that we were out -together last night. He’s a regular crank about beer--that is, when -anybody but himself drinks it. What’s the matter? You look as melancholy -as a man going to be hanged.” - -“I suppose I’m nervous about the thing. It’s all going to be so new and -strange at the start.” - -“Oh, that’ll be all right. You’ll get the hang of it fast enough. They -are rather decent fellows to work with upstairs, all but Samboye. He’ll -try to sit on you from the start, but if you hold your own with him -you’ll get along with the rest.” - -“Samboye--he’s the editor, isn’t he?” - -“Yes. You don’t know any of them, I suppose?” - -“Not even by name.” - -“Well, after Workman, who’s very rightly named, and who runs the thing, -there’s Samboye, who koo-toos to Workman and bullies all the rest. He -puts on more airs than a mowing machine agent at a state fair. He makes -_everybody_ tired. Next to him comes Tyler--Tony Tyler, you’ll like -him--that is, if he takes a fancy to you. He knows about eighteen -hundred times as much as Samboye does, only somehow he hasn’t the -faculty of putting it on paper. Too much whisky. Then there’s Dent--he’s -a Young Man Christian; plays duets on the piano with his sister, you -know, and all that sort of thing--but he’s away now on his vacation. And -then Billy Murtagh--he’s a rattling good fellow, if you don’t let him -borrow money of you. He does part of the telegraph and news. Those are -the only fellows upstairs.” - -“But where do you come in?” - -“Me? Oh, I’m the City Editor. I and my gang are downstairs. I made -a strike to have you down with me, and put you on police court, but -Workman wouldn’t have it. It’s all poppycock, for they’ve got more men -upstairs now than they know what to do with. However, if Workman thinks -the people want to read editorials on the condition of Macedonia more -than they do local news, he can go ahead. It’s none of my funeral.” - -“Do you know what special work I am to do?” - -“From all I hear, it would be easier to tell what you’re not to do. -Everyone of them has got a scheme for unloading something on you. First -you’re to do a lot of Dent’s work, like the proofs and Agricultural and -Religious; then Murtagh wants to put State News on you, and Tyler tells -me you’ve got to do the weekly as soon as you get your hand in, and -Art, Music and the Drama is a thing that must go up stairs, now that the -baseball season has begun, for I can’t attend to it. But if they play it -too low down on you, just you make a stout kick to Workman about it.” - -While Seth pondered this outlook and advice, they reached the -_Chronicle_ office, and presently, by a succession of dark and devious -stair-ways, he found himself in an ancient cockloft, curiously cut up by -low partitions into compartments like horse-stalls, each with a window -at the end, and was introduced as “the new man” to Mr. Anthony Tyler, -otherwise Tony. - -This gentleman bore no outward signs of the excess of spirituous liquor -to which Tom had alluded, and was very cordial and pleasant. He was -extremely dark in hair, beard and eyes, seemed to be not more than -thirty, and sat at a table piled high with books, clippings and the -like, and surrounded by great heaps of papers. Tom glanced over two -or three of these latter, and then went off humming a tune lightly and -calling out to Seth in imitation of a popular air, as he rattled down -stairs “I’ll meet you when the form goes down.” - -Among other polite questions Tyler asked Seth where he was stopping. - -“Nowhere permanently. I must find some place. I stopped last night with -Mr. Votts.” - -“With whom?” - -“With Mr. Votts, the gentleman who just left us.” - -“Oh, you mean Tom Watts. You’ve got his name wrong.” - -“Come to think of it, it was a German who called him that last evening, -and I was misled by his pronunciation.” - -Mr. Tyler’s face grew more serious. - -“You are a stranger here. Let me give you some advice. Don’t cultivate -Mr. Watts’ German friends. He’s not a bad chap of his sort, but he -drinks altogether too much beer. Who drinks beer, thinks beer, as -Johnson says. Perhaps I can be of use to you in the matter of a boarding -house. Oh, here’s Mur-tagh,” he continued introducing Seth to another -tall, slender young man who had come up the stairs with an arm-full -of papers; “he will take you now, and give you an idea of your work.” - Whereupon Mr. Tyler turned again to his papers and shears, and Seth -followed the new comer to the farthest stall in the row, which was -henceforth to be his own. - -***** - -There came a brief quarter of an hour in the afternoon when what seemed -to the novice a state of the wildest excitement reigned in the editorial -room. An inky boy in a huge leather apron dashed from stall to stall -shouting an interrogative “Thirty for you?” His master and patron, the -foreman, also aproned from chin to knees, with shirt-sleeves rolled -to the biceps, followed with the same mysterious question, put in -an injured and indignant tone. A loud, sharp discussion between this -magnate and Tyler, profanely dictatorial on the one side, profanely -satirical on the other, rose suddenly and filled the room with its -clamor. An elderly man, bald as a billiard ball, and dressed like a -clergyman, came bounding up the stairs, pulling out his watch as he -advanced, and demanding fiercely the reason for this delay. There was an -outburst of explanation, in which four or five voices joined, mingling -personal abuse freely with their analysis of the situation. Tom Watts -leaped up the stairs four steps at a time and hurled himself into the -controversy. Seth could distinguish in this babel of exclamations such -phrases as-- - -“You better get some india-rubber chases!” - -“If that fire’s cut down, you might as well not go to press at all!” - -“If somebody would get down here in the morning, we could get our matter -up in time.” - -“I’m sick and tired of getting out telegraph for these chuckle-headed -printers to throw on the floor!” “That Mayhew matter’s been standing on -the galleys so long already that it’s got grey-headed!” - -“By the Lord Harry, I’ll make a rule that the next time we miss the -Wyoming mail it shall be taken out of your wages!” - -Here the inky boy galloped through to Seth with a proof-sheet, shouting, -“You’ve got a minute and a half to read this in!” The bald, elderly -gentleman, who seemed to be Mr. Workman, came and stood over Seth, watch -in hand, scowling impatiently. Under this embarrassment the wet letters -danced before his eyes, and he could find no errors, though it turned -out later that he had passed “elephant” for “elopement” and ruined -Watts’ chief sensation. A few minutes later, the clang of the presses -in the basement shook the old building, and the inky boy bustled through -the room again, pitching a paper into each of the stalls. There was a -moment of silence, broken only by the soft rustling of the damp sheets. -Then simultaneously from the several tables rose a chorus of violent -objurgation. - -Seth heard the voice which he had learned was Samboye’s roar out, -“What dash-dashed idiot has made me say ‘our martyr President Abraham -Sinclair? ’ Stop the press!” There were other voices: “Here’s two -lines of markets upside down!” “Oh, I say, this is _too_ bad. _Moyen -age_ is ‘mayonaise ’ in my Shylock notice, and it’s Mrs. McCullough -instead of Mr. --------.” - -“I’m dashed if the paper looks as if it had been read at all. We can’t -have such proof-reading as this!” - -While these comments were still proceeding the noise of the -press suddenly ceased. The silence was terrible to Seth’s guilty -consciousness, for he had heard enough to know that it was his fault. -Mr. Workman entered the room again, and again Sam-boye’s deep voice was -heard, repeating the awful Sinclair-Lincoln error. Seth had looked at -his fresh copy of the _Chronicle_, with some vague hope that the Editor -was mistaken, but alas! it was too true. Mr. Workman came over to his -stall; he had put his watch back in his pocket, but his countenance was -stern and unbending. - -“You are Mr. Fairchild, I presume,” he said. - -Seth rose to his feet, blushing, and murmured, “Yes, sir.” - -“I understood from your brother that you were used to newspaper work.” - -“Well, I thought I was. I have been around the _Banner of Liberty_ -office a great deal, but it seems so different on a daily.” - -“H’m,--yes. Well, I dare say you’ll learn.” - -Luckily the press started up again here, and Mr. Workman, looking at his -watch once more, went down stairs. - -Seth felt most grievously depressed. Looking back, his first day had -been full of mortification and failure. The use of scissors and mucilage -brush was painfully unfamiliar to his clumsy fingers. The scope and -intention of the various news departments he had been told to take -charge of were unknown to him, and he had watched Murtagh go over the -matter he submitted, striking out page after page, saying curtly, “We’ve -had this,” “This is only worth a line or two,” or “this belongs in -county notes,” with a sinking heart. His duties were so mechanical and -commonplace, after what he had conceived an editor’s functions to be, -that his ineptitude was doubly humiliating. - -Then there was this dreadful proof-reading failure. Murtagh had given -him the sample proof-sheet in the back of the dictionary to copy his -marks from--and he had copied them with such scrupulous efforts after -exactness that the printers couldn’t understand them. These printers--he -could see them through the windows opposite, standing pensively over -their tall cases, and moving their right arms between the frames -and their sticks with the monotonous regularity of an engine’s -piston-rod--seemed a very sarcastic and disagreeable body of men, to -judge by the messages of criticism on his system of marking which the -inky boy had delivered for them with such fidelity and enjoyment during -the day. He had eaten nothing since the early breakfast, and felt faint -and tired. The rain outside, beating dismally on the window and the -tin roof beyond, added to his gloom, and the ceaseless drumming of the -presses below increased his headache. - -The other men seemed to have nothing to do now save to talk, but he -turned wearily to the great mound of exchanges from which Murtagh had -directed him to extract “Society Jottings” and “Art, Music and the -Drama” after the paper went to press. - -He spent a few despairing minutes on the threshold of the task--enough -to see clearly that it was beyond his strength. Society was Syriac -to him, and he had never seen a play acted, beyond an occasional -presentation of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or “The Octoroon” by strolling -tenth-rate mummers in the tiny hall at Thessaly. How could he -select matter for such departments? He wavered for a time, from a -disinclination to confront men who had just condemned his work so -unsparingly, but at last he got up from the table where he had been -pinned all day, and went over to the further end of the room. - -There was a sort of conclave about Tyler’s table. Both he and Samboye -reclined in tipped-back chairs, with their feet upon it; Watts sat on -the table swinging his legs, his straw hat still on the back of his -head, and Murtagh was perched in the window seat. Their conversation, -which had been flowing freely, stopped as Seth approached. He had -expected to be introduced to his Editor, Mr. Samboye, but no one -seemed to think of it, and that gentleman himself relieved him of the -embarrassment by nodding not uncourteously but with formality. - -“Mr. Fairchild,” he said, with impressive slowness, “in the pursuit of a -high career you will be powerfully aided by keeping in recollection the -fact that the sixteenth President of the United States was named Lincoln -and not Sinclair. We have a prejudice too, weak as it may seem, in favor -of spelling ‘interval’ with a ‘v’ rather than an ‘n’.” - -Seth did not find it so difficult to address this great man as he had -anticipated. He said simply that he was very sorry, but the work was -utterly new to him, it was his first day, he hoped to learn soon, etc. -Emboldened by the sound of his own voice, he added his doubts about -being able to satisfactorily preside over such exacting columns as -“Society Jottings” and “Art, Music and the Drama”--and gave reasons. - -“By George!” cried Watts, “I envy you! Just fancy a man who has never -seen anything but ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’--and not even that with real -Siberian bloodhounds. You shall begin going tonight. I’ll take you to -‘Muldoon’s Picnic.’” - -“Well, at any rate,” remarked Mr. Tyler, “you can do ‘Agricultural.’ You -must know that right down to the ground.” - -“Yes,” assented Seth, “I think I ought to manage that. The truth -is, most of the stuff the papers print for farmers is nonsense--pure -rubbish.” - -“I suppose it is. I know that Dent--he is a New York city boy, who -doesn’t know clover from cabbage--once put in a paragraph about the -importance of feeding chickens on rock salt, and an old farmer from -Boltus came in early one morning and whaled the bookkeeper out of his -boots because he had followed the advice and killed all his hens. -There must be some funny man out West somewhere who makes up these bad -agricultural paragraphs, and of course they get copied. How can fellows -like Dent, for instance, tell which are good and which are not? But they -can’t fool you, and that’ll be an advantage. Then there’s Religious. You -can do that easily enough. I should think.” - -“Yes,” interposed Murtagh, “all you have to do is to lay for the Obago -_Evening Mercury_. Every Saturday that has a column of religious. -Alec Watson, a fellow in that office, has fifty-two of these columns, -extracts from Thomas à Kempis, and Wesley and Spurgeon and that sort of -thing, which have been running in the _Mercury_ since before the war. -When New Year’s comes he starts ’em going again, round and round. -Nobody knows the difference. Well, their columns are longer than ours, -so each week you can run about half their paragraphs--the shortest -ones--and then fill in with some news notes, statistics, you know, about -how many churches the Moravians have now, and that sort of thing. You -can pick those up during the week, anywhere.” - -“Then there ought to be some originality about it too,” said Tom Watts. -“It is just as well to sling in some items of your own, I think, such -as ‘There is a growing desire among the Baptists to have Bishops, like -other people,’ or, ‘It is understood that at the coming Consistory -the Pope will create seven new American Cardinals.’ That last is a -particularly good point. Every once in a while, predict more Cardinals. -It doesn’t hurt anybody, and it makes you solid when the thing does -happen. There’s nothing like original news to show the influence of -journalism. One morning, after the cakes had been bad for a week, heavy, -sour or something else, I said to my landlady that I believed the fault -must be in the buckwheat. She said no, she didn’t think so, for the -flour looked very nice indeed. I put a line in ‘Local Glimpses’ that -day, saying that unfortunately the buckwheat this year was of inferior -quality, and the very next morning she apologised to me: said I was -right; the buckwheat _was_ bad; she had read so in the _Chronicle_. Can -you imagine a nobler illustration of the power of the press?” - -Seth looked attentively at the speaker, to see if he was joking, but -there was no more evidence of mirth in his thin face than in the serious -tone of his voice. None of the others laughed. - -Mr. Samboye said some of the most remarkable things, at once humorous -and highly original, and put in an elaborate frame of big unusual words. -He was a huge man in frame, with an enormous head, bushy eyebrows, heavy -whiskers, a ponderous manner, a tremendous voice--in fact seemed to Seth -precisely the kind of man from whom delicate wit, and soft shading of -phrases were not to be expected. He happened for the nonce to be in a -complaisant mood, and was relaxing himself in the company of “his -young men,” as he liked to call his colleagues. But ordinarily he was -overbearing and arbitrary, and this had rankled so deeply in their minds -that they listened with apathy, unresponsive, to his choicest sallies, -and Watts even combated him, with scant courtesy it seemed to Seth. - -To him this monologue of the Editor’s was a revelation. He had never -heard such brilliant talk, such a wonderful mastery of words, such -delicious humor. He drank it all in eagerly, and laughed aloud at its -broader points--the more heartily, perhaps, because no one else smiled. -This display of appreciation bore fruit after its kind. Before Mr. -Samboye went he spoke some decidedly gracious words to Seth, saying -among other things: - -“However harshly we may be tempted by momentary stress of emotion to -speak, always remember that we unitedly feel your fresh bucolic interest -in things, your virginal capacity for admiration, and your pristine -flush of enthusiasm for your work to be distinct acquisitions to the -paper,” which Seth felt to be somewhat nonsensical, but still was -grateful for. - -After Mr. Samboye had gone, Tom Watts took occasion to warn him in an -aside: - -“Be careful how you appear to curry favor with Samboye before the other -fellows. Oh, I know you didn’t think of it--but don’t laugh at his -jokes. They’ll think you’re trying to climb over them, and they’ll be -unpleasant to you, perhaps.” - - - - -CHAPTER XIII.--THIRTEEN MONTHS OF IT. - -GROWING familiarity with his work did not restore to Seth the lofty -conceptions of journalism’s duties and delights which he had nourished -on the hill-side farm, and which had been so ingloriously dimmed and -defaced by his first day’s experience. - -The tasks set before him, to which he gradually became accustomed, -seemed almost as unintellectual and mechanical as the ploughing and -planting he had forsaken. The rule of condensation, compression, -continually dinned into his ears by his mentors, robbed his labors of -all possible charm. To “boil down” columns of narrative into a few lines -of bald, cold statement; to chronicle day after day in the curtest -form, fires, failures, crimes, disasters, deaths, in a wearying chain of -uninteresting news notes; to throw remorselessly into the journalistic -crucible all the work of imagination, of genius, of deep fine thought -which came into his hands, together with the wordy dross spun out by -the swarm of superficial scribblers, and extract from good and bad alike -only the meaningless, miserable fact--this was a task against which, in -the first weeks of experience, his whole soul revolted. - -By the time he had become reconciled to it, and had mastered its tricks, -his dream of journalism as the most exalted of all departments of -activity seemed to him like some far-away fantasy of childhood. - -He not only had failed to draw inspiration from his work; it was already -ceasing to interest him. Under pleasanter conditions, he felt that -he would have at least liked the proof-reading portion of the daily -routine; but the printers were so truculent and hostile, and seemed -so pre-determined to treat him as their natural enemy, that this was -irksome, too. There was no relief to the distasteful monotony in -other branches of his work. Even the agricultural column, which he had -promised himself to so vastly improve, yielded no satisfaction. The -floating, valueless stuff from which his predecessors had selected their -store came so easily and naturally to the scissors that after a week or -two he abandoned the idea of preparing original matter: it saved time -and labor, and nobody seemed to know the difference. These words, in -fact, came to describe his mental attitude toward all his work. He -had no pride in it. If he escaped curses for badly-read proofs, and -criticism for missing obvious matters of news, it was enough. - -Seth did not arrive at this condition of mind without much inner -protest, or without sundry efforts to break through the crust of -perfunctory drudgery which was encasing him. At the start he bestowed -considerable thought and work upon an effort to brighten and improve, -by careful re-working of materials, one of the departments entrusted to -him, and, just when he expected praise, Tyler told him to stop it. Then -he tried to make his religious column a feature by discarding most -of the ancient matter which revolved so drolly in the Obago _Evening -Mercury_, and picking out eloquent bits from the sermons of great -contemporary preachers; but this elicited denominational protest from -certain pious subscribers, and Mr. Workman commanded a return to the old -rut. - -But _the_ cruel humiliation came when Seth took to Mr. Samboye an -editorial paragraph he had written with great care. It was a political -paragraph, and Seth felt confident that it was exactly in the -_Chronicle’s_ line, and good writing as well. The Editor took it, after -regarding the young writer with a stony, half-surprised stare, and read -it over slowly. He delivered judgment upon it, in his habitual pomposity -of phrases: “This is markedly comprehensive in scope and clarified in -expression, Mr. Fairchild.” Then, as Seth’s heart was warming with a -sense of commendation and success, the Editor calmly tore the manuscript -in strips, dropped them in his waste-basket, and turned reflectively to -his newspaper. - -Seth’s breath nearly left him: “Then you can’t use it;” he faltered. “I -thought it might do for an editorial paragraph.” - -There was the faintest suggestion of a patronising smile on Mr. -Samboye’s broad, ruddy face. - -“Oh, I am reminded, Mr. Fairchild,” he answered, with bland irrelevance; -“pray do not allow Porte to pass again with a small p, as you did -yesterday in the proof of my Turkish article. It should be capitalized -invariably.” - -The beginner went back to his stall both humiliated and angry. The cool -insolence with which he had been reminded that he was a proof-reader, -and warned away from thoughts of the editorial page, enraged and -depressed him. He passed a bitter hour at his table, looking savagely -through the window at the automatic motions of the printer directly -opposite, but thinking evil thoughts of Samboye, and cursing the fate -which had led him into newspaper work. So uncomfortable did he make -himself by these reflections that it required a real effort to throw off -their effects when Watts came upstairs, and the two left the office for -the day. It was impossible not to relate his grievance. - -Tom did not see its tragic side, and refused utterly to concede that -Seth ought to be cast down by it. - -“That’s only Samboye’s way,” he said, lightly. “He won’t let any of the -fellows get on to the page, simply because he’s afraid they’ll outwrite -him. He’d rather do it all himself--and he does grind out an immense -load of stuff--than encourage any rivals. Besides, he never loses a -chance to snub youngsters. Don’t let it worry you for a minute. If he -sees that it does, he’ll only pile it on the thicker. In this business -you’ve got to have a hide on you like the behemoth of Holy Writ, or -you’ll keep raw all the while.” - -Seth found some consolation in this view, and more still in Tom’s cheery -tone. The two young men spent the evening together--at Bismarck’s. - -This came gradually but naturally to be Seth’s habitual evening resort. -It represented to him, indeed, all that was friendly and inviting in -Tecumseh society. He was able to recall dimly some of the notions of -coming social distinction he indulged in the farm days--dreams of a -handsome young editor who was in great request in the most refined and -luxurious home circles, who said the most charming things to beautiful -young ladies at parties and balls, who wavered in his mind between -wedding his employer’s daughter and taking a share in the paper, or -choosing some lowlier but more intellectual maid to wife, and leading -with her a halcyon and exaltedly literary career in a cottage--but they -were as unreal, as indistinct now as the dreams of night before last. -All the social bars seemed drawn against him as a matter of course. - -This did not impress him as a hardship, because he was only vaguely -conscious of it, at first, and then grew into the habit of regarding it -as a thing to be grateful for. Tom Watts pointed out to him frequently -the advantage of being a Bohemian, of being free from all the fearsome, -undefined routine and responsibility of making calls, of dressing up -in the evening, and of dangling supine attendance upon girls and their -mammas. This “social racket,” the city editor said, might please some -people; Dent, for instance, seemed to like it. But for his part it -seemed quite the weakest thing a young man could go in for--entirely -incompatible with the robust and masculine character demanded in a -successful journalist. - -This presented itself to Seth as an extremely sound position, and he -made it his own so willingly that very soon he began to take credit -to himself in his own eyes for having turned a deaf ear to the social -siren, and having deliberately rejected the advances of fashionable -Tecumseh. He grew, really, to believe that it was by preference, by -a wise resolution to preserve his freedom and individuality, that he -remained outside the mysterious, impalpable regions which were labelled -in his mind as “Society.” - -On the other hand, there was no nonsense at Bismarck’s, or at the other -similar beer halls to which Tom introduced him. One dressed as one -chose, and did as one liked; seven-up or penochle provided just the -mental recreation a wearied literary brain demanded; and the fellows one -met there were cheerful, companionable young men, who likewise had no -nonsense about them, who put on no airs of superiority, and who glided -swiftly and jovially through the grades of acquaintanceship to intimacy. - -Seth was greatly strengthened in his liking for this refuge from -loneliness in a strange city by what he saw of Arthur Dent, whom -Watts had prepared him to regard as the embodiment of the other and -strait-laced side. - -This young man was not at all uncivil, but he was delicate, almost -effeminate in frame, wore eye-glasses, dressed with fastidious neatness, -never made any jokes or laughed heartily at those of others, and rarely -joined the daily lounge and smoke around Tyler’s table after the -paper had gone to press--and in all these things he grated upon Seth’s -sensitiveness. He was the one member of the staff whom Mr. Workman -seemed to like and whom Mr. Samboye never humiliated publicly by his -ponderous ridicule, and these were added grievances. He worked very -steadily and carefully, and was said to do a good deal of heavy reading -at home, evenings, in addition to the slavish routine of high social -duties in which Seth indefinitely understood him to be immersed. His -chief tasks were the book reviews, the editing of correspondence, and -the preparation of minor editorial paragraphs in a smaller type than -Mr. Samboye’s. Seth thought that his style, though correct and neat, was -thin and emasculated, and he came to associate this with his estimate of -the writer, and account for it by his habits and associations--which the -further confirmed him in his judgment as to the right way to live. - -But there was something more than this. The first few days after his -return from his vacation, Dent had tried to be courteous and helpful -to the newcomer from the country, in his shy, undemonstrative way, and -Seth, despite his preconceived prejudice, had gone a little way on -the road to friendship. Then one night, as he and Watts were returning -arm-in-arm to their joint lodgings from Bismarck’s, a trifle unsteadily -perhaps, they had encountered Dent walking with a young lady, and Tom -had pleasantly accosted them--at least it seemed pleasantly to Seth--but -Dent had not taken it in the right spirit at the time, and had been -decidedly cool to Seth ever since. This was so unreasonable that the -country boy resented it deeply, and the two barely spoke to each other. - -His relations with the others were less strained, but scarcely more -valuable in the way of companionship. Mr. Tyler did not seem to care -much for his company, and never asked him to go to the “Roast Beef”--a -sort of combination of club and saloon where he spent most of his -evenings, where poker was the chief amusement and whisky the principal -drink. From all Seth could learn, it was as well for him that he was not -invited there. As for Murtagh, all his associations outside the office -seemed to be with young men of his own race, who formed a coterie by -themselves, and frequented distinctively Irish resorts. Like most other -American cities Tecumseh had its large Irish and German elements, and -in nothing were ethnographic lines drawn so clearly as in the matter of -amusements. There were enough young Americans holding aloof from both -these foreign circles to constitute a small constituency for the “Roast -Beef,” but a far greater number had developed a liking for the German -places of resort, and drank beer and ate cheese and rye bread as if to -the manner born. Seth found himself in this class on his first step over -the threshold of city life; he enjoyed it, and he saw very little of the -others. - -The two most important men on the _Chronicle_, Mr. Workman and Mr. -Samboye, were far removed from the plane upon which all these Bohemian -divisions were traced. They belonged to the Club--the Tuscarora Club. -Seth knew where the club house was--but he felt that this was all he was -ever likely to know about it. The first few days in Tecumseh had taught -him the hopelessness of his dream of associating with his employer. -Socially they were leagues apart at the outset, and if the distance did -not increase as weeks grew into months, at least Seth’s perception of it -did, which amounted to the same thing. - -He did not so readily abandon the idea of being made a companion by -Samboye, but at last that vanished too. The Editor held himself very -high, and if he occasionally came down off his mountain top, his return -to those heights only served to emphasize their altitude. There were -conflicting stories about his salary. Among the lesser lights of the -editorial room it was commonly estimated at forty-five dollars a -week, but some of the printers had information that it was at least -fifty--which fatigued the imagination. Seth himself received nine -dollars, which his brother supplemented by five, and he found that he -was regarded as doing remarkably well for a beginner. But between this -condition and the state of Samboye with his great income, his fine house -on one of the best streets, his influential position in the city, and -his luxurious amusements at the Club, an impassable gulf yawned. - -There is no pleasure in following further the details of the country -boy’s new life. He lost sight of his disappointment in the consolations -of a phase of city existence which does not show to advantage in -polite-pages. He did not become vicious or depraved. - -The relentless treadmill of a daily paper forbade his becoming indolent. -By sheer force of contact his mind expanded, too, more than even he -suspected. But it was a formless, unprofitable expansion, which did not -help him to get out of the rut. He performed his work acceptably--at -least he rarely heard any criticisms upon it--lived a trifle ahead -of his small income, and ceased to even speculate on the chance of -promotion. - -When, thirteen months after his advent in Tecumseh, the news came to -him from the farm that his father was dying, he obtained leave to go -home. Mr. Workman remarked to Mr. Samboye that afternoon: - -“I shan’t mind much if Fairchild doesn’t come back.” - -“Is that so? He seems to get through his work decently and inoffensively -enough. He will never set the North River ablaze, of course, but he is -civil and all that.” - -“Yes, but I can’t see that there’s anything in him. Beside, I don’t -like his influence on Watts. I’m told you can find them together at -Bismarck’s every night in the week.” - -“Of course, that makes it bad,” said Mr. Samboye. - -Then the proprietor and the editor locked up their desks, went over to -the Club, and played pyramid pool till midnight. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV.--BACK ON THE FARM. - -The farm seemed very little like home to Seth, now that he was back -once more upon it. He could neither fit himself familiarly into such of -the old ways as remained nor altogether appetize the changes which he -felt rather than discerned about him. - -Of all these alterations his father’s disappearance was among the least -important. Everybody had grown out of the habit of considering Lemuel -as a factor in any question. Nobody missed him now that he was gone, or -felt that it was specially incumbent to pretend to do so--nobody save -Aunt Sabrina. Those who cared to look closely could see that the old -maid was shaken by her weak brother’s death, and that, though she said -little or nothing about it, an augmented sense of loneliness preyed upon -her mind. For the rest, the event imposed a day or two of solemnity, -some alterations of dress and demeanor, a sombre journey with a few -neighbors to the little burial plot beyond the orchard--and then things -resumed their wonted aspect. - -To the young journalist this aspect was strange and curious. The farm -had put on a new guise to his eyes. It was as if some mighty hand and -brush had painted it all over with bright colors. It was not only that -the house had been restored and refurnished, that new spacious buildings -replaced the ancient barns, that the fences had been rebuilt, the farm -yard cleaned up and sodded, the old well-curb and reach removed--the -very grass seemed greener, the bending of the boughs more graceful, the -charm of sky and foliage and verdure far more apparent. The cattle were -plumper and cleaner; there were carriage horses now, with bright harness -and sweeping tails, and a costly black mare for the saddle, fleet as the -wind: the food on the table was more uniformly toothsome, and there were -now the broad silver-plated forks to which Seth had somewhat laboriously -become accustomed in his Tecumseh boardinghouse. He admired all these -changes, in a way, but somehow he could not feel at home among them. -They were attractive, but they were alien to the memories which, in his -crowded, bricked-up city solitude, had grown dear to him. - -There were droll changes among the hired people. For one thing, they no -longer all ate at the table with the family. An exception was made in -favor of Milton Squires, who had burst through the overalls chrysalis -of hired-manhood, and had become a sort of superintendent. He had -not learned to eat with a fork, and he still talked loudly and with -boisterous familiarity at the table, reaching for whatever he wanted, -and calling the proprietor “Albert,” and his aunt “Sabriny.” He did not -bear his social and industrial promotion meekly. He bullied the inferior -hired men--Leander had a colleague now, a rough, tow-headed, burly young -fellow named Dana Pills-bury--and snubbed loftily the menials of -the kitchen. This former haunt scarcely knew him more, and his rare -conversations with Alvira were all distinctly framed in condescension. -This was only to be expected, for Milton wore a black suit of -store-clothes every day, with a gold-plated watch chain and a necktie, -and met the farmers round about on terms of practical equality. He was -reputed to be a careful and capable manager; his wrath was feared at -the cheese-factory; his judgment was respected at the corners’ store. -Naturally, such a man would feel himself above kitchen associations. - -Of course this defection evoked deep wrath in Alvira’s part of the -house, some overflowings of which came to Seth’s notice before he had -been a day at the farm. Alvira was not specially changed to the young -man’s eyes--indeed her sallow, bilious visage, dark snapping eyes and -furrowed forehead seemed the most familiar things about the homestead, -and her acidulous tones struck a truer note in his chords of memory than -did any other sound. - -Aunt Sabrina, wrapped as of old in her red plaid shoulder shawl, but -seemingly less erect and aggressive, spent most of her time in the -kitchen, ostentatiously pretending to pay her board by culinary labor. -Behind her back Alvira was wont to say to her assistant, a slatternly -young slip from the ever-spreading Lawton family tree, that the old -lady only hindered the work, and that her room would be better than -her company. But when Aunt Sabrina was present, Alvira was customarily -civil, sometimes quite friendly. The two were drawn together by -community of grievance. - -They both hated Isabel, with her citified notions, her forks and -napkins, and stuck-up airs generally. It had pleased Aunt Sabrina’s mood -to regard herself as included in the edict which ordained that servants -should eat in the kitchen, and only the sharpest words she had ever -heard Albert speak had prevented her acting upon this. She had come to -the family table, then, but always with an air of protest; and she had a -grim pleasure in leaving her napkin unfolded, month after month, and in -keeping everybody waiting while she paraded her inability to eat rapidly -or satisfactorily with the new fangled “split spoon.” - -She and Alvira had a never-failing topic of hostile talk in the new -mistress. To judge by their threats, their jibes and their angry -complaints, they were always on the point of leaving the house on her -account. So imminent did an outbreak seem to Seth, when he first heard -their joint budget of woes and bitter resolves, that he was frightened, -but the Lawton girl reassured him. They had talked just like that, she -said, every day since she had been there, which would be “a year come -August,” and she added scornfully: “They go away? You couldn’t chase -’em away with a clothes-pole!” - -The two elderly females had another bond of sympathy, of course, in -Milton’s affectation of superiority. - -They debated this continually, though as Sabrina had the most to say -about her niece-in-law, with Alvira as a sympathetic commentator, so the -hateful apotheosis of the whilom hired-man was recognized to be Alvira’s -special and personal grievance, in girding at which Sabrina bore only a -helping part. - -Seth accounted for this by calling up in recollection an old vague -understanding of his youth that Milton was some time going to marry -Alvira. He could remember having heard this union spoken of as taken -for granted in the family. Doubtless Alvira’s present attitude of ugly -criticism was due to the fear that Milton’s improved prospects would -lead him elsewhere. The Lawton girl indeed hinted rather broadly to him -that there were substantial grounds for Alvira’s rage. “I’d tear his -eyes out if I was her, and he wouldn’t come up to the scratch,” she -said, “after all that’s happened.” Seth understood her suggestion, but -he didn’t believe it. The Lawtons were a low-down race, anyway. He had -seen one of the girls at Tecumseh once, a girl who had gone utterly to -the bad, and this sister of hers seemed a bold, rude huzzy, with a mind -prone to mean suspicions. - -It was a relief to go back again to the living-room, where Isabel was, -and he both verbally and mentally justified her gentle hint that the -kitchen was not a good place for young men to spend their time. - -“You have no idea,” she said, letting her embroidery fall in her lap -for the moment, “how ruinous to discipline and to household management -generally this country plan of making companions of your servants is. I -had to put a complete stop to it, very soon after I came. There would be -no living with them otherwise. There’s not much comfort in living with -them as it is, for your Aunt sits out in the kitchen all day long, -pretending that she is abused and encouraging them to think that they -are ill-used too. She makes it very hard for me--harping all the time on -my being a Richardson, just as she did with your mother. - -“Then there’s Milton. I did not want to make any difference between him -and the other hired people, but your brother insisted on it--on having -him at the table with us, and treating him like an equal. He is as -coarse and rough and horrid as he can be, but it seems that he is very -necessary on the farm, and your brother leaves so much to him and relies -so much on him that I couldn’t help myself. He hasn’t got to calling me -‘Isabel’ yet, but I expect him to begin every day of my life. You can’t -imagine what an infliction it is to see him eat--or rather, to hear him, -for I try not to look.” - -Isabel took up her work again, and Seth looked at her more closely than -he had done before. She sat at the window, with the full summer light -on her bright hair and fair, pretty face. Her tone had been melancholy, -almost mournful; looking at her, Seth felt that she was not happy, and -more--for he had never supposed her to be particularly happy--that she -was bitterly disappointed with the result of the farm experiment. She -had not said so, however, and he was in doubt whether it would be wise -for him to assume it in his conversation. - -“Albert seems to thrive on country fare,” he said, perhaps unconsciously -suggesting in his remark what was turning in his mind--that she herself -seemed not have thrived. The rounded outlines of her chin and throat -were not so perfect as he remembered them. She looked thin and tired -now, in the strong light, and there was no color to speak of in her -face. - -“Oh, yes!” she said, with that falling inflection which is sister to the -sigh, and keeping her eyes bent upon her work, “_he_ grows fat. I -did not imagine that a man who had always been so active, who was -so accustomed to regular office work and intellectual professional -pursuits, could fall into idle ways so easily. But it is always a bore -to him now when he has to go down to New York at term time. Once or -twice he has had a coolness with his partners because he failed to go -at all. I shouldn’t be surprised if he gave New York up altogether. -He talks often of it--of practising at Tecumseh instead. Oh, and that -reminds me. You can tell. What relation does Tecumseh bear to this -place? I know they have some connection in his mind, because he spoke -once of the ‘pull’--whatever that may mean--being a Tecumseh lawyer -would give him here. I know they are not in the same county, for I -looked on the map. Whatever it is, that would be his purpose in going -there, I am curious to learn. You know,” she added, with a smile and -tone pathetic in their sarcasm, “a wife ought to be interested in -whatever concerns her husband.” - -“They are in the same Congressional district,” Seth replied. “There are -three counties in the district, Dearborn (where we are now), Jay, which -lies east of us, and then Adams, which is a long, narrow county, and -runs off South of Dearborn. Tecumseh is away at the extreme southern end -of Adams county. Perhaps that is what you have in mind.” - -“It is what _he_ has in mind,” she said. - -“But how does Albert fill his time here--what does he do?” - -“In about equal parts,” she made answer, lifting her eyes again, with -the light of a little smile in them now, “he reads novels here in the -house, and drives about the neighborhood. What time he is not in the -easy-chair upstairs, devouring fiction, he is in his buggy on the road. -He won’t let me have anybody up from New York, even of the few I know, -but he has developed a wonderful taste for striking up acquaintances -here. He must by this time know every farmer for twenty miles around. -First of all, in buying his stock when he took the farm, he spread his -purchases around in the queerest way--getting a cow from this man, -a colt from another, a pig here and a bull there. Milton and he went -together, and they must have driven two hundred miles, I should think, -collecting the various animals. - -“I didn’t understand it at first, but I begin to now. He wanted to -establish relations with as many men here as he could. And the farmers -he invites here to dinner--you should see them! Sometimes I think I -shall have to leave the table. It’s all I can do, often, to be decently -civil to them, rough, vulgar men, unwashed and untidy, whom he waylays -out on the road and brings in. He thinks I ought to exert myself to make -them feel at home, and chat with them about their wives and children, -and ugh! call on them and form friendships with them. But I draw the -line there. If he enjoys bringing them here, why I can’t help it; and if -he likes to drive about, and be hail-fellow-well-met with them, that is -his own affair. But----” - -She stopped, and Seth felt that the silence was eloquent. He began to -realize that his pretty sister-in-law was in need of sympathy, and to -rank himself, with indignant fervor, on her side. - -Annie Fairchild came in. Seth had seen and spoken with her several -times, during the period of his father’s death and funeral, but -hurriedly and in the presence of others. Her appearance now recalled -instantly the day of the fishing trip--a soft and pleasant memory, which -during his year’s exile had at times been truly delicious to him. - -The women thought of it too, now, and talked of it, at Seth rather than -to him, and with a playful spirit of badinage. As of old, Isabel did -most of the talking. Annie had become quite a woman, Seth said to -himself, as she took off her hat, tidied her hair before the glass, and -laughingly joined in the conversation. She talked very well, too, but -she seemed always to think over her words, and there appeared to be in -her manner toward him a certain something, intangible, indefinite, which -suggested constraint. He could feel, though he could not explain, it. - -During his stay in Tecumseh he had seen almost nothing of the other sex. -There were often some young women at the boarding-house, but he had not -got beyond a speaking acquaintance at the table with any of them, in the -few instances where his shyness had permitted even that. His year in -a city had improved him in many ways. He could wear good clothes now -without awkwardness; he spoke readily among men, and with excellent -choice of language; he knew how to joke without leading the laughter -himself. But he had had no chance to overcome by usage his diffidence -in female company, and he had not been quite at ease in his mind since -Annie came in. She seemed to make a stranger of him. - -He thought upon this, and felt piqued at it. He wondered, too if he -was not sitting clumsily in his chair--if it was not impolite in him -to cross his legs. Gradually, however, he grew out of his reserve. It -dawned upon him that Annie was timorous, nervous, about the impression -she was making on him, and that Isabel listened with real respect and -deference to what he had to say. He grew bold, and took the lead of the -conversation, and the two women followed meekly. It was a delightful -sensation. He said to himself: “It is the easiest thing in the world, -once you make the plunge. I could talk with women now in the finest -drawing room in the land.” He sat back in his chair, and told them some -anecdotes about Mr. Samboye, from which somehow they gathered the notion -that he was at the best coordinate in rank with Seth. They were more -than ever proud of their relative, who had so rapidly conquered a high -and commanding position for himself in that mystic, awesome sphere of -journalism. Seth expanded and basked in this admiration. - -He had heretofore found the evenings on the farm stupidly tedious. To -sit at the big table till bed time, reading by the light of a single -kerosene lamp, or exchanging dry monosyllables with Albert, offered a -dismal contrast to the cheerful street lamps, the bright store-windows, -the noise and gaiety and life of the places of evening resort in -Tecumseh. But this evening revealed a far more attractive side of -country life than he had known before. Annie stayed after tea, and the -three played dominoes. Albert seemed somewhat out of sorts, but they did -not mind his silence in the least. They chatted gaily over their games, -and time flew so merrily and swiftly, that Seth was surprised when Annie -said she must leave, and he discovered that it was a quarter to ten. - -“How pleasantly the evening has passed,” Isabel said, and smiled at him, -and Annie answered, “Hasn’t it! I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself -so much--” and she, too, smiled at him. - -The old walk over the fields, down the poplar lane, to see Annie -home--how like the old times it seemed! And yet how far away they were! -Sometimes in these bye-gone walks, as they came up now in Seth’s memory, -he and Annie had been almost like lovers--not indeed, in words, but in -that magnetic language which the moon inspires. It occurred to neither -of them to saunter slowly, now. They walked straight ahead, and there -were no “flashes of eloquent silence.” Their conversation was all of -Isabel. - -“Not as happy as she expected!” said Annie, repeating a question of -Seth’s; “you can’t guess how wretched she is! Sometimes it’s all she can -do to keep from breaking down. I am literally the only person she has -to talk to, that she cares about, week in and week out. Albert is away a -great deal. I don’t think he is much company when he _is_ home. She did -try, when she first came, to make some acquaintances round about, among -the well-to-do farmers’ wives. But she couldn’t bear them, and they said -she was stuck up, and so _that_ came to nothing. She doesn’t get on at -all with Aunt Sabrina, either. Poor girl! she is so blue at times that -my heart aches for her. Of course she wouldn’t let you see it. Besides -she has been ever so much more cheerful since you came. I _do_ hope you -will stay as long as you can--just for _her_ sake.” - -She added this explanation with what sounded to Seth’s ear like -gratuitous emphasis. The disposition rose swiftly within him to resent -this. - -“You are very careful,” he said, “to have me understand that it’s for -her sake you want me to stay.” Then he felt, even while the sound of his -voice was in the air, that he had made a fool of himself. - -His cousin did not accept the individual challenge. “No, of course we -are all glad to see you. You know we are. But _she_ specially needs -company; it’s a mercy to her to have somebody to brighten her up a -little. Really, I get anxious about her at times. I try to run over as -much as I can, but then I have grandmother to tend, you know.” - -“How is the old lady, by the way? And oh--tell me, Annie, what it was -that all at once set her against me so. You remember--the day before we -went fishing, and Isabel saved my life.” - -The answer did not come immediately. In the dim starlight Seth could see -that his cousin’s face was turned away, and he guessed rather than saw -that she was agitated. - -“I will tell you,” she said at last, nervously, “why grandmother--or, -no, I will _not_ tell you! You have no right to ask. Don’t come any -further, I am near enough to the house now. Good night.” - -She had hurried away from him. He watched her disappear in the darkness, -then turned and walked meditatively home. - -He was not so sure as he had been that it was easy to understand women. - - - - -CHAPTER XV.--MR. RICHARD ANSDELL. - -It was no light task to spend a vacation contentedly on the farm. There -were thousands of city people who did it, and seemed to enjoy it, but -Seth found it difficult to understand how they contrived to occupy -themselves. What work on a farm meant, he knew very well; but the trick -of idling in the country was beyond him. It was too hot, in these July -days, for driving much, and besides, Albert rarely invited him into the -buggy when the grays were brought around to the step. The two brothers -saw little of each other, in fact. It was not precisely a coolness, -but Albert seemed to have other things on his mind beside fraternal -entertainment. The old pastime of fishing, too, failed him. In -the renovation of the house his fine pole and tackle had somehow -disappeared, and he had no money wherewith to replace them. He had -entered upon his vacation unexpectedly, at a time when he happened to be -particularly short of cash--and there was something in Albert’s manner -and tone which rendered it impossible to apply to him, even if pride had -not forbidden it. - -There was, it is true, the increasing delight of being in Isabel’s -company, but alongside this delight grew a doubt--a doubt which the -young man shrank from recognizing and debating, but which forced its -presence upon his mind, none the less--a doubt whether it was the part -of wisdom to encourage too much of a friendship with his sister-in-law. -This friendship had already reached a stage where Aunt Sabrina sniffed -at its existence, and she hinted dimly to Seth of the perils which -lurked in the lures of a citified siren, with an expression of face -and a pointedness of emphasis which clearly had a domestic application. -There was nothing in this, of course, but the insensate meddlesomeness -of a disagreeable old maid, Seth said to himself, but still it annoyed -him. - -More serious, though, was his suspicion--lying dormant sometimes for -days, then suddenly awakened by a curt word or an intent glance--that -Albert disliked to see him so much with Isabel. Often this rendered him -extremely nervous, for Isabel had no discretion (so the young man put -it to himself) and displayed her pleasure in his society, her liking for -him, quite as freely in her husband’s presence as when they were alone. -There was nothing in this, either, only that it made him uneasy. Hence -it came about that, just when one set of inclinations most urgently -prompted him to stay about the house, another set often prevailed upon -him to absent himself. On these occasions he generally walked over to -Thessaly, and chatted with John. - -“John and I have so much to talk about, you know, being both newspaper -men,” he used to say, with a feeling that he owed an explanation of some -sort to Isabel. “And then I can see the daily papers there. That gets to -be a necessity with a journalist--as much so as his breakfast.” - -“I scarcely dare to read a paper now,” Isabel once replied. “It drives -me nearly mad with longing to get back among people again. I only read -heavy things, classic poetry and history--and then, thank Heaven, there -is this embroidery.” - -It was at John’s, or rather on the way there, that Seth met one day -a man of whom he was in after life accustomed to say, “He altered the -whole bent of my career.” Perhaps this was an exaggerated estimate -of the service Richard Ansdell really rendered Seth; but it is so -difficult, looking back, to truly define the influence upon our fortunes -or minds by any isolated event or acquaintance, and moreover, gratitude -is so wholesome and sweet a thing to contemplate, and the race devotes -so much energy to civilizing it out of young breasts, that I have not -the heart to insist upon any qualification of Seth’s judgment. - -Mr. Ansdell at this time was nearly forty years of age, and looked to be -under thirty. He was small, thin-faced, clean-shaven, dark of skin -and hair, with full, clear eyes, that by their calmness of expression -curiously modified the idea of nervousness which his actions and mode -of speech gave forth. He was spending his fortnight’s vacation in the -vicinity, and he was strolling with his friend the school-teacher, -Reuben Tracy, toward the village when Seth overtook them. Seth and -Reuben had been very intimate in the old farm days--and _here_ was -a young man to the latent influence of whose sobriety of mind and -cleanliness of tastes he never fully realized his obligation--but since -his return they had not met. After greetings had been exchanged, they -walked together to the village, and to the _Banner of Liberty_ office. - -It was the beginning of the week, and publication day was far enough off -to enable John to devote all his time to his visitors. There was an -hour or more of talk--on politics, county affairs, the news in the city -papers, the humors and trials of conducting a rural newspaper, and so -forth. When they rose to go, John put on his hat, and said he would -“walk a ways” with them. On the street he held Seth back with a -whispered “Let us keep behind a bit, I want to talk to you.” Then he -added, when the others were out of hearing: - -“I have got some personal things to say, later on. But--first of -all--has Albert said anything since to you about the farm?” - -“Not a word.” - -“Well, I have been thinking it all over, trying to see where the -crookedness comes in--for I feel it in my bones that there _is_ -something crooked. But I am not lawyer enough to get on to it. I’ve had -a notion of putting the whole case to Ansdell, who’s a mighty bright -lawyer, but then again, it seems to be a sort of family thing that we -ought to keep to ourselves. What do you think?--for after all, it is -mostly your affair.” - -“I can’t see that Albert isn’t playing fair. It must be pretty nearly as -he says--that he has put as much money in the farm as it was worth when -he took it. It’s true that father’s will leaves it to him outright--and -that wasn’t quite as Albert gave us to understand it should be--but -Albert pledges us that our rights in it shall be respected, and it seems -to me that that is better than an acknowledged interest in a bankrupt -farm would be, which we hadn’t the capital to work, and which was -worthless without it.” - -“Perhaps you are right.” John paused for a moment, then began again in -a graver tone: “There’s something else. How are you getting on on the -_Chronicle?_” - -“Oh, well enough; I get through my work without anybody’s finding fault. -I suppose that is the best test. A fellow can’t do any more.” - -“That is where you are wrong. ‘A fellow’ can do a great deal more. And -when you went there I, for one, expected you were going to do a deuced -sight more. You have been there now--let’s see--thirteen months. You are -doing what you did when you went there--sawing up miscellany, boiling -down news notes, grinding out a lot of departments which the office boy -might do, if his own work weren’t more important. In a word you’ve just -gone on to the threshold, and you’ve screwed yourself down to the floor -there--and from all I hear you are likely to stay there all your life, -while other fellows climb over your head to get into the real places.” - -“From all you _hear?_ What do you mean by that--who’s been telling you -about me?” - -“That you shan’t know, my boy. It is enough that I _have_ heard. You -haven’t fulfilled your promise. I thought you had the makings of a big -man in you; I believed that all you needed was the chance, and you would -rise. You were given the chance--put right in on the ground floor, and -there you are, just where you were put. You haven’t risen worth a cent.” - -“What do you expect a fellow to do? Get to be editor-in-chief in -thirteen months? What could I do that I haven’t done? There have been no -vacancies, so no one has climbed over my head. I’ve done the work I was -set to do--and done it well, too. What more can you ask?” - -Seth spoke in an aggrieved tone, for this attack seemed as unjust as it -had been unexpected. - -John replied, “Now keep cool, youngster! Nobody expected you to get to -be editor-in-chief in thirteen months, so don’t talk nonsense. And I -am not blaming you for not getting promotion, when there have been no -vacancies. What I do mean, if you want to know, is that you have failed -to make a good impression. You are not in the line of promotion. Workman -doesn’t say to himself when he thinks of you ‘There’s a smart, steady, -capable young man on whom we can count, who’s able to go as high as we -are able to put him.’ No! instead of that he says--but no, never mind. I -don’t want to hurt your feelings.” - -“Oh, you are mighty considerate, all at once,” retorted Seth, angrily. -“Go on! Say what you were going to say! What is it that Workman says, -since you’ve been spying on me behind my back?” - -“Now you are talking like a fool,” said the elder brother, keeping his -temper. “I haven’t been spying on you. I have only been commenting on -facts which have come to my knowledge without seeking and which were -brought to me by one who has your interests at heart. I have only been -talking to you as I ought to talk, with the sole idea of benefiting you, -helping you. If you don’t want to hear me, why I can shut up.” - -Seth did not reply for a minute or so; then he growled moodily: “Go -ahead! Let’s hear it all.” - -“The ‘all’ can be said in a few words. You have been wasting your time. -I grant that you have done your work well enough to escape blame--but -what credit is there in that? a million mechanics do that every day. -Instead of improving yourself, elevating and polishing yourself, by -good reading, by studying the art of writing, above all by choosing -your associates among men who are your superiors, and from whom you can -learn, you have settled down in a Dutch beer saloon, making associates -out of the commonest people in town, and having for your particular chum -that rattle-headed loafer Tom Watts. Do you suppose Mr. Workman doesn’t -know this? Do you suppose he likes it, or that it encourages him to hope -for your future?” - -Seth was silent longer than ever, this time. When he spoke it was to -utter something which he instantly regretted: “I haven’t been able to -gather from your old friends that you were altogether a bigot, yourself, -on the subject of beer, when you were my age.” - -Fortunately John did not get angry; Seth honestly admired and envied his -elder brother’s good temper as he heard the reply: - -“That’s neither here nor there. Perhaps I did a good many things that I -want you to avoid. Besides, there was nothing in me. I am good enough as -far as I go, but if I had worked on a daily paper till my teeth all -fell out, I should never have got any higher than I was. With you it is -different; you can go up to the head of the class if you are a mind to. -But the beer saloon isn’t the way--and Tom Watts isn’t the guide.” - -“He is the only friend I have got. What was I to do? It is easy enough -to talk, John, about my knowing good people and all that, but _how?_ -That is the question? It isn’t fair to blame me as you do. All the men -like Workman and Samboye--I suppose you mean them--hold themselves miles -above me. Do you suppose I’ve ever seen the inside of their houses or of -their club? Not I! You dump a young countryman in a strange city, new at -his work, without knowing a solitary soul--and then you complain because -he gets lonesome, and makes friends with the only people who show any -disposition to be friendly with him. Do you call that fair play?” - -“Well, there’s something in that,” John replied, meditatively. “Some -time I’m going to write a leader on the organized indifference of modern -city society to what becomes of young men who deserve its good offices -and drift into beer saloons because they are not forthcoming. It would -make the _Banner_ immensely solid with orthodox people.” - -“You wouldn’t have wanted me to go to the Young Men’s Christian -Association, I suppose?” - -“No-o, I don’t know that I would. I don’t know, after all, that you -could have done much differently. But you’ve done enough of it, do you -understand? You have served your time; you have taken your diploma. It -is time now to quit. And I can put you on to a man, now, who will help -you on the other tack. Do you see Ansdell, ahead there?” - -“Yes;--is he the man who told you about Workman and me?” - -John ignored the question. “Ansdell is one of the cleverest men going; -he’s head and shoulders over anybody else there is in Tecumseh, or in -this part of the State. For you to know him will be a college education -in itself. He is more than a big lawyer, he is a student and thinker; -more than that, he is a reformer; best of all, he is a man of the world, -who has sown more wild oats than would fill Albert’s new bins, and -there’s not an atom of nonsense about him. He knows about you. We’ve -talked you over together. He understands my idea of what you ought to -be, and he can help you more than any other man alive--and what is more -he will.” - -“It was he who told you about me, wasn’t it?” Seth persisted. - -“If you will know, it was and it wasn’t. All he said was that he had -heard Workman speak of you; that he had got the idea from his tone that -you were not making the most of your opportunities; that he thought this -was a great pity; and that if he could be of any use to you he would be -very glad. That is all--and not even your sulkiness can make anything -but kindness out of it.” - -This practically ended the dialogue, for the others had stopped to let -the brothers come up, and John shortly after left the party. - -The three men had a long stroll back to the hillside road, with a still -longer lounge on the grass under the elms by the bridge. Seth watched -and listened to this swarthy, boyish-looking mentor who had, so to -speak, thrust himself upon him, very closely, as was natural. Did he -like him? It was hard, he found, to determine. Mr. Ansdell was extremely -opinionated. He seemed to have convictions on almost every subject, -and he clung to them, defended them, expanded them, with almost tearful -earnestness. His voice was as strong and powerful as his figure was -diminutive; he talked now chiefly about the Tariff, which he denounced -with a vibrating intensity of feeling. Seth knew nothing about the -Tariff, or next to nothing, but he admired what Ansdell said, mainly -because it was said so well. But he grew quite enthusiastic in his -endorsement when he heard his Editor, Mr. Samboye, used as a typical -illustration of the dishonesty with which public men treated that -question. After that he felt that it would be easy to make friends with -Mr. Ansdell. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI.--DEAR ISABEL. - -It was the last day but one of Seth’s vacation on the farm. He was not -sorry, although the last week, by comparison, had been pleasant enough. -He had seen a good deal of Mr. Ansdell, who interested him extremely, -and who had come for him three or four times for long walks in the -fields. He sat now in the living room near Isabel, dividing his -attention between her and his book--one of Albert’s innumerable novels. -The desultory conversation mixed itself up with the unfolding work of -fiction so persistently that he presently gave over the attempt to read, -and drew his chair nearer to his sister-in-law. It was raining outside, -and wet weather always made her want to talk. She said: - -“Tell me, Seth, if you have noticed any change in Alvira.” - -“No, I can’t say that I have. In fact, she seems to me the one person -about the place who has _not_ altered a bit.” - -“See what eyes men have! Why, she has grown ages older. She goes about -now muttering to herself like an old, old woman. And the way she looks -at one, sometimes, it is enough to give one the chills. I tell Albert -often that I am almost afraid to have her in the house.” - -Seth chuckled audibly, in good-natured derision. “What a mountain out of -a mole hill! Why Alvira has glared at people that way, with her little -black-bead eyes, ever since I was a boy. She doesn’t mean anything by -it,--not the least in the world. The trouble is, Isabel, that you let -your imagination run away with you. You are desperately lonesome here, -and you amuse yourself by conjuring up all sorts of tragic things. You -will have Aunt Sabrina a professional witch next thing you know, and -Milton a mystic conspirator, and this plain old clap-boarded farm house -a castle of enchantment.” - -He had never before assumed even this jocose air of superiority over -his blond sister-in-law, and he closed his sentence in some little -trepidation lest she should resent it. But no, she received it with -meekness, and only protested mildly against the assumption underneath. - -“No, I am sure there is something in it. She is brooding about Milton. -Not in any sentimental way, you know, but it used to be understood, I -think, that they were to marry, and now he carries himself way above -her. Why, I can remember, as long ago as when I visited here that -summer, when we were all boys and girls and cousins together, I heard -your mother say they would make a match of it some time. But now he -avoids the kitchen and her. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, for me to -be speculating in this way about the love affairs of the servants. But -you are driven to it here. You have no idea how grateful one gets to be, -here in the country, for the smallest item of human gossip.” - -Seth was still considering whether it was possible for him, in careful -language, to suggest his own--or rather the Lawton girl’s--view of the -Milton-Alvira affair, when Isabel spoke again: - -“Speaking of gossip, there is something I have been tempted half a dozen -times to mention to you--something I heard almost every day during the -little time that the women round-about were calling on me. You will -guess what I mean--the talk about you and Annie.” - -Seth did not immediately answer, and she continued: - -“Of course, you know, Seth, that I wouldn’t speak of it if I thought it -would be distasteful to you. But I know it used to be the idea that you -two were marked for each other. I have heard ever so much about it -since we have lived here. And yet you don’t seem to me to be at all like -lovers--hardly even like affectionate cousins. I think she has rather -avoided the house since you have been here, although that, of course, -may be only imagination. She is such a dear, good girl, and I am _so_ -fond of her, but still I can hardly imagine her as your wife. You don’t -mind my speaking about it, do you?” - -Seth was still at a loss what to say, or, better, how to say it. While -she had been speaking the contrast between the two young women, which -had been slumbering in his mind for a year, had risen vividly before -him. The smile, half-deprecating, half-inviting, with which she looked -this last question at him, as she laid the everlasting embroidery down, -and leaned slightly forward for a reply, gave the final touch to his -vanishing doubts. - -“Mind _your_ speaking about it? No, no, Isabel.” He scarcely knew -his own voice, it was so full of cooing softness. “I am glad you -did--for--for who has a better right? No, there is nothing in the -gossip. Our people--my mother, her grandmother--had it in mind once, -I believe, but Annie and I have never so much as hinted at it between -ourselves. Ever since mother’s death old Mrs. Warren has, however, taken -a deep dislike to me--you remember how she forbade Annie to go with us -on that fishing trip--but even without that----” - -“Ah, I shan’t forget that fishing trip,” Isabel whispered, still with -the tender smile. - -“Nor I, you may be very sure.” The caressing tone of his voice sounded -natural to him now. “As I was saying, even if we two young people had -once thought of the thing, I fancy it would be different now, anyway. -_Then_, I was going to be a farmer. _Now_, of course, that is all -changed. My career is in the city, in circles where Annie would not be -at home. She is a dear, good girl, as you say: nobody knows that better -than I do. But you must admit she _is_--what shall I say?--rural. Now -that I have got my foot on the ladder, there is no telling how far I may -not climb. It would be simply suicide to marry a wife whom I perhaps -would have to carry up with me, a dead weight.” - -The youngster was not in the least conscious of the vicious nonsense -he was talking. In the magnetic penumbra of Isabel’s presence his words -seemed surcharged with wisdom and good feeling. And the young woman, -too, who was four years his senior, and who should have known better, -never suspected the ridiculous aspect of the sentiments to the -expression of which she listened with such sweet-faced sympathy. We -_are_ such fools upon occasion. - -“Besides, there is no reason why I should think of marriage at all, -for a long time to come--at least not until I have made my way up in -my profession a bit. When the time does come, it will be because I have -found my ideal--for I have an ideal, you know, a very exalted one.” - -He looked at her keenly, blushing as he did so, to discover if she had -caught the purport of his words; then he addressed himself, with an -absence of verbal awkwardness at which he was himself astonished, to -making it more clear. - -“I mean, Isabel, that my brother has won a prize which would make -anything less valuable seem altogether worthless in my eyes. If there -is not another woman in the world like my brother Albert’s wife, then I -shall never marry.” - -“Brother Albert’s wife” looked up at the speaker for an instant--a -glance which seemed to him to be made of smiles, sadness, delight, -reproach and many other unutterable things; then she bent over her work, -and he fancied that the pretty fingers trembled a little between the -stitches. There was a minute of silence, which seemed a half hour. At -last she spoke: - -“Does your brother impress you as being a particularly happy man? I -won’t ask a similar question about his wife.” - -Seth found it necessary to stand up, to do this subject justice. “No!” - he answered. “He doesn’t deserve such a wife. But because one man is -incapable of appreciating a treasure which he has won, it’s no reason -why another man shouldn’t--shouldn’t say to himself ‘I will either marry -that kind of woman or I’ll marry none.’ Now, _is_ it, Isabel?” - -“Perhaps this wife is not altogether the treasure you think she is,” the -young woman answered, with the indirection of her sex. - -Seth found words entirely inadequate to express his dissent. He could -only smile at her, as if the doubt were too preposterous to be even -suggested, and walk up and down in front of her. - -Still intent upon her work, and with her head inclined so that he saw -only a softened angle of face beneath the crown of glowing light-hued -hair, she made answer, speaking more slowly than was usual with her, and -with frequent pauses: - -“I don’t think you know all my story, though it is a part of your -family’s history on both sides. You remember my father--a sporting, -horse-racing man of the world, and you know that my mother died -when I was a baby. You knew me here, one summer, as a visiting cousin, -and we played and quarrelled as children do. Now you know me again as -your brother’s wife--but that is all. You know nothing of the rest--of -how my father, proud about me as he was common in other things, kept me -mewed up among governesses and housekeepers in one part of the house, -while his flash companions rioted in another part; of how my wretched, -chafing girlhood was spent among servants and tutors, with not so much -as a glimpse of the world outside, like any Turkish girl; of how, when -your brother, because he was a cousin, did become the one friend of my -father’s who might be invited into the drawing room, and be introduced -to me, and took a fancy that he would like to marry me, I welcomed even -such a chance for emancipation, and almost cried for joy; and of how -I woke up afterward--no, this is what you do not know.” There was a -considerable pause here. “And I do not know why I tell this to you now, -except that I want you to understand.” - -“I _do_ understand, Isabel.” - -As a matter of fact he did not understand at all, but he thought he did, -which, for present purposes, came to the same thing. - -“And you can realize,” she went on, “how I feel at the thought of -staying here the rest of my life--or, even if we go elsewhere--of -having my life mapped out for me without any regard to my wishes and -aspirations, while you are just pluming your wings for soaring, and can -fly as high as you like with no one to gainsay you. Oh, what it must be -to be a man!” She was looking up at him now, with enthusiasm supplanting -the repining in her eyes. “And you love your work, so, too! You are so -clever and capable! You can be anything you like in your profession--and -it is impossible that I should ever be anything that I want to be.” - -A month ago, when he first came to the farm, this calm assumption of his -ability to carve whatever part he desired out of the journalistic cake -would have fallen upon Seth like cruel and calculated sarcasm. As -it was, he winced a little under its exaggeration, but the substance -pleased him. He squared his shoulders unconsciously as he answered: - -“Well, I am only at the threshold as yet, but if there is any such -thing as doing it, I am going to push my way on. It doesn’t seem so easy -always, when you are right in the thick of the fight, but now, after my -rest here, I feel like an eagle refreshed. I am full of new ideas and -ambitions. I owe a good deal of it to Ansdell, I suppose. You never -saw such a fellow for making everybody believe as he does, and take -an exalted view of things, and long to be doing something great. John -prescribed him to me as a doctor would some medicine, and I took him -more or less under protest, but I feel immensely better already.” - -Isabel took only a languid interest in the inspiring qualities of this -prodigy, and reverted to her own grievance: - -“Yes, you will go and conquer your position. I will stay here and -count those miserable poplars across the road--did you ever see a more -monotonous row?--and work anti-macassars for no one to see, and mope my -heart out. Why, do you know, I haven’t one single correspondent!” - -The full enormity of the situation thus revealed was lost upon Seth, who -had never written more than half-a-dozen letters in his life, and did -not see why people who did not have to write letters should want to do -so. But he said “Indeed!” as compassionately as he could. - -“No, not one. I did think you might have taken pity on me, but for all -the year that you have been away, I have never heard a word from you.” - -“I wrote once or twice to Albert,” Seth answered, tentatively, to occupy -time until he could turn around in his mind the immense suggestion -involved in this complaint. - -“Yes, and I used to hear at the breakfast table--‘Oh, by the way, Aunt -Sabrina, Seth sends his love to you and Isabel--’ only this and nothing -more! What is the good of having a literary man in the family, if he -doesn’t write you long, nice letters?” The vista which had flashed -itself before Seth’s mental vision was filled with dazzling light. He -could not mask the exultation in his voice as he asked: - -“Do you really want me to write to you?” - -“You ought not to have waited to be asked,” she said, smiling again. -“Yes, you shall write me--and long letters too, mind--as often as you -like.” She added after a moment’s pause, in which both had been turning -over the same idea, “You needn’t be afraid of writing too often. The -bundle from the post office always comes to me in the morning, hours -before _he_ gets downstairs. Dana brings it up when he comes back from -the cheese-factory, and it never goes into any one’s hands but mine. -Beside, henceforth I shall watch for it all the more carefully.” - -***** - -Next morning Seth prepared once again to leave the homestead, but this -time with a light heart and a gay demeanor. A month’s absence had served -so to remodel his views of the _Chronicle_, that he already felt himself -to be a personage of importance, in its control. He had been constantly -spoken of in the village as “one of the editors” of that journal, and -found so much pleasure in the designation that he had come to use it in -thinking of himself. He felt himself fired, too, with new enthusiasm and -power by his talks with Ansdell, and he believed, not only that he -saw where his past errors had lain, but that he knew now the trick of -success. Above all, he was to write long letters to Isabel, and receive -answers equally long and nice from her, and--this gave him an especial -sense of delight--it was all to be a secret between them. - -The sun shone brightly, too, after the rain, as if to be in harmony with -his mood. Albert was more affable than he had been before, and after -breakfast, and while the carriage was being brought around, gave him -some cigars for the journey, and a $20 bill for pocket money. These were -pleasant preludes to a little brotherly conversation. - -“I wish you would hurry up and get to have a say on the _Chronicle_ as -soon as you can, Seth,” said the lawyer, holding him by the lappel in -fraternal fashion. “You can help me there, help me very materially. I -am going to be nominated for Congress in this district next year--don’t -whisper about it yet, but I’ve got it solid. I haven’t let any grass -grow under my feet since I moved here, and they can’t beat me in the -Convention. But the _Chronicle_ can do a good deal in the election, and -I look to you for that. I am not going to Washington without knowing my -business after I get there. There is a big thing on hand, big for -me, big for you too. Good-bye now, my boy; I must get upstairs to my -writing. You won’t forget!” - -No, Seth promised, very cordially and heartily, he would not forget. - -When his traps had been piled again into the carriage, and he said -good-bye to his Aunt and to Alvira, no Isabel was to be seen. She had -been at breakfast, but had subsequently disappeared. Seth went into -the living room--no one was there. He opened the door to the stairs and -called out her name--no answer. As he closed the door again, he heard -the faintest tinkle imaginable from a piano key. He had not thought -of the parlor, which was ordinarily unused, but he hastened to it -now. Isabel stood at the instrument, her head bowed; her finger still -pressing the key. She turned with a dear little exclamation, which might -be either of surprise or satisfied expectancy, and held out her hand. - -“So you _wouldn’t_ go, after all, without saying good-bye to me!” - -“Why, Isabel, you know better!” answered Seth, still very downright for -his years. He was actually pained at her having fancied him capable of -such a thing, and while he held her hand, he looked at her with mild -reproach in his eyes. - -“Oh, do I?” she answered, rather inconsequently. Then she sighed, and -bowed her fair head again. “Have you given it a thought at all--how -lonely it will be after you are gone for--for those who are left behind? -I can’t bear to think of it--I came in here because I couldn’t stand and -see the horses at the door, and the preparations for your going. It -is as if the tomb door were swinging back on me again. I am foolish, -I know--” here the words were much hampered in their flow by incipient -sobs--“but if you could realize my position--the awful desolation of it, -the--the--” She broke down altogether, and, with the disengaged hand, -put her handkerchief to her eyes. - -Seth had never seen a young and beautiful woman in tears before, off the -stage, but his racial instincts served him in the emergency. He gently -took her hand down again, holding them both, now, in his. He told her, -again surprising himself by the smoothness and felicity of his words, -how delightful she had made his visit, how deeply he prized her sympathy -and compassionated her lot, and how the pangs of regret at parting were -only solaced by the thought that she had permitted him to write. Then he -kissed her--and hurried out to the carriage. - -The handsome, high-bitted grays made short work of the drive to Thessaly -station, where John was waiting to have a parting word, so that Seth -scarcely had time to collect his thoughts and settle accounts with -himself, before the train started. Three hours later when he got off at -Tecumseh, he had progressed no further in his work of striking a moral -balance than: - -“After all, she is my cousin as well as my sister-in-law.” - - - - -CHAPTER XVII.--AN UPWARD LEAP. - -WHAT man of achievement cannot recall some one short period of his life -which seems to transcend in significance and value all the rest of his -career--when great things for which he had only unconsciously waited -came to him without the asking; when the high court of events rendered -its sudden, unexpected verdict of success, without costs to him who had -never made a plea; when the very stars in their courses seemed to -have privily conspired to fight for him? How swift, inexplicable, even -amazing it all was! And yet how simple too! And when the first flush of -astonishment--half delight, half diffidence--had passed, how natural it -all seemed; how mind and manners and methods all expanded to meet the -new requirements; how calmly and as a matter of course the dignity -was worn, the increment appropriated, the mental retina adapted to the -widened focus! How easily, too, he sloughed off his own conviction that -it was all pure luck, and accepted the world’s kind judgment of deserved -success! Who is it that accuses the world, and rails at its hardness of -heart? What man among us all, in the hour of honest introspection, does -not know that he is rated too high, that he is in debt to the credulity, -the generosity, the dear old human tendency to hero-worship, of his -fellows? - -This is an extract from a letter which the successful Seth Fairchild -wrote a few months ago. Chronologically, it is dated only a couple of -years after the occurrences with which we are now concerned--but to him -an interval of decades doubtless seemed to separate the periods. Perhaps -the modesty of it is a trifle self-conscious, and the rhetoric is of -a flamboyant kind which he will never, apparently, outgrow, but at all -events it shows a disposition to be fair as between himself and history. -The period of great fortune, to which he alludes, is to be glanced at in -this present chapter--to be limned, though only in outline, more clearly -no doubt than he himself could be trusted to do it. For, though a -man have never so fine a talent for self-analysis, you are safe to be -swamped if you follow him a step beyond your own depth. In cold fact, -Seth could no more tell how it was that, within one short year, he rose -from the very humblest post to become Editor of the _Chronicle_, than -Master Tom here can explain why he has outgrown his last summer’s -knickerbockers while his twin brother hasn’t. - -He had been back at his work in Tecumseh only a month when word came to -the office one morning that Mr. Tyler could not come--that he had been -seriously injured in the havoc wrought by a runaway horse. It was too -early for either editor or proprietor to be on the scene, and Arthur -Dent at that hour was the visible head of the staff. He and Seth -had scarcely spoken to each other for months--in fact since that -disagreeable evening encounter--but he walked over now to our young -man’s desk and said: - -“Mr. Fairchild, you would better take the News to-day. Tyler has been -badly hurt.” - -Marvelling much at the favoritism of the selection, for Dent had not -only passed Murtagh over but had waived his own claims of precedence, -Seth, changed desks. He got through the work well enough, it appeared, -but he mistrusted deeply his ability to hold the place. Mr. Samboye -did not seem to approve his promotion, though he said nothing, and -the manner in which Mr. Workman looked at him in his new chair seemed -distinctly critical. - -After the paper had gone to press, and some little routine work against -the next morning’s start was out of the way, he wavered between idling -the remaining two hours away among the exchanges, or attempting an -editorial article for the morrow, such as Mr. Tyler occasionally -contributed. His former experience with Mr. Samboye dismayed him a bit, -but he concluded to try the editorial experiment again. Some things -which Ansdell had said one day on the Silver question remained in -his mind, and he made them the basis of a half-column article. He was -finishing this when the office-boy told him Mr. Workman wished to see -him below. He took his Silver article with him, vaguely hoping, hardly -expecting, to be congratulated on his day’s work, and told to keep the -desk. - -Seth’s impressions of his employer were that he was a hard, peremptory -man, and he searched his face now for some sign of softness in vain. Mr. -Workman motioned him to a seat, and said abruptly: - -“You were on the News desk to-day. Did you take it yourself, or were you -sent there?” - -“Mr. Dent told me to take it, sir.” - -“Why didn’t he take it himself, or put Murtagh on?” - -Seth had it in mind to explain that Murtagh did not come down early -enough, but he remembered how strenuous the rules were in the matter of -matutinal punctuality, and concluded to say simply that he didn’t know. -Mr. Workman looked at him for a moment, made some arabesque figures with -his pencil on the edge of the blotter, looked at him again, and then -said, in a milder tone than Seth had supposed his voice capable of: - -“I may as well be candid with you. I have been very much disappointed -in you so far. You haven’t panned out at all as your brother led me to -expect you would.” - -This was a knock-down blow. Poor Seth could only turn his copy about in -his hands and stammer: “I am very sorry. In what way have I failed?” - -“It would be hard to tell exactly in what way. I should say it was in a -general failure to be the sort of young man I thought you were going to -be. You have shown no inclination, for example, to write anything--and -yet your brother praised you up to the skies as a writer.” - -“But what was the good? I did write a long paragraph when I first came -here, and handed it in to Mr. Samboye, and he tore it up before my eyes! -That would be enough to discourage anybody!” - -“Oh, he did that with you too, did he?” Mr. Workman made more arabesques -on his blotter, shading them with great neatness. - -Seth thought this was a favorable opportunity to get in his Silver -article, and handed it to the proprietor with a word of explanation. Mr. -Workman read it over carefully and laid it aside without a syllable of -comment. There was nothing in his face to show whether he liked it or -not. He surrounded all his penciled figures with a wavy border, and said -again: - -“Then there are your associations. Before ever you came I was -discouraged at the amount of money and time and health my young men were -squandering in saloons. It had become a scandal to the town. I get a -young man in from the country, whose habits are vouched for as perfect, -with an idea that he will influence the rest, and lo and behold! he -becomes the boss guzzler of the lot!” - -“There is a good deal of justice in that, Mr. Workman--or there was. But -since I’ve been back this time it has been changed. I have moved into -another boarding house where I have a room to myself, and I have read at -home almost every evening when I was not with Mr. Ansdell. I think I see -the folly of that old way, as clearly as any one can.” - -“Ansdell and I had a long talk about you the other day. It was he who -gave me my first idea that there was anything in you. He is something of -a crank on certain subjects, but he knows men like a book. I have been -saying to myself that if he liked you there must be more in you than I -had discovered. If I am right in this, now is your time to show it. It -is a toss up, the doctors say this afternoon, whether poor Tyler lives -or dies. In any case he won’t be about in months. You can keep on at the -desk for a while. We’ll see how you make it go.” - -The next afternoon, when the inky boy brought up the damp first copies -from the clanging, roaring region of the press, Seth was transfixed -with bewilderment at seeing his article in the position of honor on the -editorial page. While he still stared at it, amazed and troubled, Mr. -Samboye with an angry snort swung around in his chair to face him: - -“Is this Silver thing yours?” - -“Yes.” - -“And it is your conception of the ethics of journalism, is it, to sneak -leaders into the composing, room without authority?” - -“I sneaked nothing in! I gave the copy to Mr. Workman last night. I am -as much surprised to see it the leader as you are.” - -Mr. Samboye rose abruptly, and strode through the room to the stairs. -They were ricketty at best and they trembled, the whole floor trembled, -under his wrathful and ponderous tread. - -The fat-armed foreman, who was in on his eternal quest for copy, had -heard this dialogue. He grinned as the Editor slammed the door below, -and chuckled out “He’ll get his comb cut now. The boss ordered your -thing to be the leader himself.” - -Mr. Samboye presently returned with his broad face glowing crimson, -and seated himself at his work again in gloomy silence. He made more -erasures than usual, and soon gave it up altogether, taking his hat and -stick with an impatient gesture, and stamping his way out. - -Time went on. The luckless Mr. Tyler died, and Seth became confirmed in -his place. He had developed more strongly, perhaps, than any other -one trait, the capacity for system, and he was able to so remodel and -expedite the routine work of the News desk that he had a good deal of -time for editorial writing. His matter was never again given the place -of honor, but it came to be and important and regular feature of the -page. - -He worked hard on the paper--and almost equally hard, by spells, at home -evenings. He did drop in at Bismarck’s or some like place, for a few -moments now and then, but he was careful to avoid games, or any further -intimacy with habitués. Had it not been for Ansdell and Dent, this -part of his new regimen would have been well nigh impossible, for the -gregarious instinct was strong in him--as it is in any young man worth -his salt--and associations of some sort were as necessary as food -to him. He had discovered, long before this, that Dent was an old -acquaintance of Ansdell’s, and that he, in fact, had told the latter -about Seth and his profitless courses, and interested the lawyer in his -case. - -He had learned, too, that this pale “Young Man Christian” as Watts had -called him derisively, had from the first been well-disposed toward -him, and, when the emergency of Tyler’s absence came up, had waived -alike his own claims to preferment and his justifiable personal pique, -and thrust Seth forward into the place because he felt that he needed -some such incentive to make a man of himself. This was very high -conduct, and Seth tried hard to like Dent a great deal in return. He -never quite succeeded. They were too dissimilar in temperament to ever -become close friends. Seth explained it to himself by saying that Dent -was too cold and non-emotional. But Dent himself never seemed conscious -of anything lacking in their relations, and they were certainly cordial -and companionable enough when they met, generally two evenings a week, -at Mr. Ansdell’s chambers. - -Nothing less like the bachelor’s den dear to tradition can be imagined. -There were no pipes, for the lawyer smoked cigars and nothing else; -there was no litter of papers, opened books, pamphlets, scraps and -the like, for he was the soul of order; no tumbled clothes, odd boots, -overflowing trunks, etc., for he was the pink of neatness. He used -to like to describe himself in the words with which Evelyn paints his -father, as “of a thriving, neat, silent, methodical genius,” but it was -always with a twinkling eye, for surely no man was ever less silent. He -was a born talker--nervous, eager, fluent, with a delicate sense of the -sound and shading of words, a keen appreciation of all picturesque -and salient points, a rare delight in real humor, and, above all, with -tremendous capabilities of earnestness. Conceive such a man, if you -can--for there will never be another like him--and then endow him in -your mind with a marvelous accumulation of knowledge, with convictions -upon every conceivable subject, and with nothing short of a passion for -enforcing these upon those of whom he was fond--and some idea of the -perfect ascendancy he gained over Seth will have been obtained. - -Mr. Ansdell was neither impeccable nor omniscient. There was much in -both his theories and his practice which would not commend itself to the -moral statutes of the age; he attempted no defense, being incredulous -as to the right of criticism upon personal predilections. But he had a -flaming wrath, a consuming, intolerant contempt, for men who were unable -to distinguish between private tastes and public duty. On this subject -of public duty he was so strenuous, so deeply earnest, that often there -seemed but a microscopic line between his attitude and fanaticism. But -this zeal had its magnificent uses. Often it swayed despite themselves -the politicians of his party who had least in common with him, and who -disliked him and vaunted their conventional superiority to him even -while they were being swept along toward nobler purposes than their own -small souls could ever have conceived, in the current of feeling which -his devotion had created. - -He took complete possession of Seth’s mind, and he worked wonders -upon it. There is neither room here, nor power, to analyze these -achievements. The young man, heretofore through circumstances slow and -mechanical, revealed under the inspiration of this contact his true -temperament. He became as receptive as a sensitized plate in the camera. -He seemed to take in facts, theories, emotions, prejudices, beliefs, -through the very pores of his skin. He found himself hating one line of -public action, and all its votaries, vividly; he found himself thrilling -with violent enthusiasm for another line, and its exponents--such an -enthusiasm as exiled men tremble under when they hear the national air -of their native land. - -He was not always right. Very often indeed he did injustice, in his -mind, and in the types as well, to really well-meaning men who after -their lights were just as patriotic as he was. He condemned with undue -ferocity where he could not unreservedly praise, and, like most men of -three-and-twenty who sit on the tripod of judgment upon their fellow -mortals, he made many mistakes. But his mental and moral advance, -despite these limitations, was tremendously swift, and, in the main, -substantial. No man ever made the world budge an inch ahead who had not -well developed the capacity for indignation at weak and wrong things. -This indignant faculty grew and swelled in Seth’s nature like a strong -vine, spreading upon the tree of his admiration for his ideals. - -He had a fair income now--twenty dollars a week--and he lived very well, -having a room in a good house, and taking his meals down town. This -was a condition of life which had always commended itself to his -imagination, and he revelled now in realising it. Of course he saved -no money. Through Ansdell and others he had made the acquaintance of a -number of Tecumseh men of position, and he had been asked a little to -their houses, but he had not gone more than once. This single experience -did not dismay or humiliate him; he flattered himself that he came out -of it with credit. But it did not interest him; it was wofully difficult -to talk to the women he met--to know what to say to them. It was the -easier to come back from this one excursion to his old Bohemian bachelor -notions, and justify them to himself. - -The correspondence with Isabel had not been altogether so attractive as -he had anticipated. It had its extremely pleasant side, of course, but -there were drawbacks. She wrote well, but then most of her writing was -about herself, which grew wearisome after a time. It was difficult too, -to find time to answer her letters always when the philandering mood was -upon him, and in this matter he found himself curiously the creature of -his moods. The routine of daily newspaper toil had rendered him largely -independent of them in his ordinary work. He wrote about as well one day -as another. But there were seasons when he could not write to Isabel -at all. Then he would say to himself that the need of doing so was -a nuisance, and in this frame of mind he would generally end by -reproaching himself for even entertaining the idea of a mild flirtation -with his brother’s wife. Not that there was anything wrong in it, of -course; he was quite clear on this point; but it was so useless, such a -gratuitous outlay of time and talent! - -But then next day, perhaps, a good dinner, or a chance glimpse of fresh -romance in the exchanges, or some affecting play at the theatre of an -evening, would bring back all the glamour of her pretty, tender face, -the magic of her eyes, the perfume of her tawny hair. And then he could -write, and did write, often with a force of sweet rhetoric, a moving -quality of caressing ardor, which it is difficult to distinguish from -love making. - -To him these letters did not mean that at all; they were really abstract -reflections of the sentimental side of his nature, which might have been -evoked by almost any likable, intelligent woman. - -But to the wife on the farm they seemed deeply, deliciously, personal. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII.--BOLTING THE TICKET. - - -It was the year of a great political revival--coming none too soon. - -It is a part of the history of human progress that grand moral -movements, once they have fulfilled their immediate purpose, swing -backward to the establishment of some new abuse. The net gain is, -no doubt, century by century, continuous. But to those who look for -episodic interest rather than epochal meaning the march of the race must -often seem crab like--as when a Henry VIII utilizes a reforming -revolt to crush and plunder a vast system of benefaction, and create -a hard-fisted, commercial plutocracy with one hand, while calling into -existence with the other a permanent class of starving poor; or when a -Bonaparte makes the waning impetus of a democratic uprising serve his -imperial ambition, and converts the legions of the Republic into the -guards of a Caesar. - -So, in our own time, in our own country, craft and greed had climbed to -the control of a great organization, baptized in the name of Freedom -and excited still with the thoughts of its tremendous achievements, and -diverted its forces to the service of base ends. - -This ignoble mastery had not gone unchallenged. More than one revolt -against it had given promise, for a little, of success. But each in its -failure had but repeated the familiar experience of yeomanry against -trained troops, of sporadic, scattering popular impulses against the -cool, consecutive plans of organized power. But it is the fate of -despotisms, whether of a man or of a machine, to by excesses sap their -own foundations. There came a time when the political usurpers who, -through the listlessness of some citizens, the ancient prejudices of -others, the mean lust for profit and place of still a third class, had -attained power, went just a step too far. - -As this is a romance, and not a political history, it is permitted to -avoid both dates and any details which might seem to fix a particular -occurrence, and ask the reader to conceive that the crisis grew out of -the manner in which these politicians obtained control of an imaginary -but important Convention--that they bribed delegates, that they -forged telegrams to secure a majority for themselves on the organizing -committee, and that they made drunk the poor tool they had selected for -Chairman and locked him in his hotel room that he might not escape them. -It strains credulity to assume all this, I know, but its acceptance is -essential to the story. Fortunately it is less difficult to credit the -corollary--that the decent people of the State, led by an honest press, -rose _en masse_ and pulverized this machine at the following election. - -It was at the outset of this crisis that Seth became Editor of the -Tecumseh _Chronicle_. The young man had been, it need scarcely be said, -deeply interested in the events which led up to it, and when the first -of the party papers came out frankly, the morning after the Convention, -refusing to support its nominations, he was in a tremor of delight. He -scarcely dared hope that the _Chronicle_ would follow their lead, but -still he did hope. Mr. Samboye remained downstairs in consultation -with Mr. Workman longer than usual on that eventful forenoon. They were -settling the policy of the paper, of course, and the young news editor, -perfunctorily weeding out copy for the “first side,” was conscious all -the while of being eagerly anxious to know what this policy was to be. - -Mr. Samboye presently came up, took his seat without the ordinary -prelude of conversation, and began writing. He finished his article, -still without a word to any one, and took it down to Mr. Workman. He was -absent but a few moments. On his return Seth asked him: - -“Do we bolt the ticket?” - -Before he could answer, a telegraph boy came running up the stairs (this -one actually did run) with a dispatch for Mr. Samboye. The editor opened -and read it in a puzzled way at first, then more carefully and with -a light of comprehension on his broad face. He folded the telegram up -carefully, put it into his inner vest pocket and said to Seth: - -“No, we occupy a picturesque position on the top rail of the fence.” - -The editor did not seem quite himself that day. He stayed about the -editorial room instead of going out to lunch, until the leader proof was -ready, and then he asked to read it himself, instead of letting it go in -the ordinary course to the proof-reader. He made a good many corrections -on it, which was unusual for him. Finally, about half-an-hour before the -paper went to press, he took his departure, saying briefly to Seth that -he would not return that day. - -Two hours later the office boy summoned Seth to the counting-room below. -Mr. Workman sat alone at his desk, with the day’s _Chronicle_ spread out -before him, and with the original proof-sheet of the leader in his hand. -He motioned Seth to close the doors, and to take a seat close beside -him. - -“You have read this leader?” he asked, after a moment’s silence. - -“Yes.” - -“What do you think of it?” - -“I shouldn’t like to say all that I think of it.” - -“Neither should I,” replied Mr. Workman with an iron-clad smile. He -was very pale, and Seth scented a storm in the manner in which the grim -smile faded from his face after an instant of hovering, as a gleam of -wintry sunshine passes off the snow. “There’s a story--a very curious -story--back of this leader. I only know part of it; perhaps you can help -me to get at the rest.” - -Not knowing what to say, Seth remained silent. The proprietor continued: -“When this leader left my hands this morning, it bolted the ticket, out -and out. There was no mistake about it. It was squarefooted. As it is -now, it’s neither fish, flesh nor fowl. It condemns the Convention and -the frauds, but it practically says that the result must be accepted. -The worst of it is I didn’t see the paper until the edition had been -worked off. The alterations in the proof here, which make all the -difference between white and black, are in Samboye’s hand. Did he say -anything to you about it? Was anybody up in the editorial room to see -him?” - -“No one came up to see him; he said nothing to me except that we were on -the fence. That disgusted me so much that I asked nothing further.” - -“Did he say that when he came up from here--or later, after he had gone -over the proof?” - -“He said it when--or no, hold on--he received a dispatch just before;” - and Seth recounted the episode of the telegram. - -Mr. Workman was much impressed with this. He covered his blotter thick -with scrolls and geometrical figures while he pondered it. At last he -spoke. - -“You don’t know where the telegram came from?--no, of course not. I -think I know about where, and I think I can guess about what it said. It -said that, in this matter of bolting tickets, one day’s delay might make -an immense amount of difference, and that it would be worth his while -to keep the _Chronicle_ non-committal in its first issue by hook or -by crook. Take my word for it, that is what it said in substance. The -fellows who sent it were scared about the _Chronicle_. They knew what an -effect its course would have on the weeklies, most of which go to press -to-morrow. They couldn’t spend money better than in having us accept -the ticket, and not only commit ourselves but the country editors--and -_they’ve bought Samboye!_” - -There was a long silence. The two men looked at each other. Finally -Workman said: - -“The worst feature of it is, there is no way of getting at the thing--of -proving it. I suppose I could get an order compelling the Company to -produce the telegram, but I am not sure, and then it would be a big -scandal and a big expense.” He lapsed into pencil work again and sighed. - -“But is Samboye that kind of man?” asked Seth. “Oh yes, I have no -illusions on that score. I very nearly caught him in a thing of this -sort--on a smaller scale, of course--three years ago.” - -“But why then----” - -“Why have I kept him? You were going to ask. Well, he is a good man in -his way. He is an immensely clever writer, if you don’t care much for -solid argument, and do care for decorative stuff, with a good deal of -fun, and epigram, and big words. People used to talk about his articles. -I suppose hundreds of people buy the _Chronicle_ just to read them. -Well, we will have to lose those people, and all the others who will -quarrel with us for bolting the ticket. For she’s going to be bolted! -So you better go to bed early to-night, and eat raw meat for breakfast, -for we want a leader to-morrow that will make their hair curl.” - -“Do you mean----” began Seth in a flutter of strange excitement. - -“Yes, you will have to take hold. Samboye shall never show his face in -that room again. That’s settled! I may get somebody else, later--we’ll -see. But you can carry it along for a time, can’t you?” - -“I’ll try--but I am afraid----” - -“You needn’t be afraid. In a campaign you simply want straightforward, -red-hot, to-the-point writing. It is the rest of the year, when one must -write general matter, that pulls on a man. Besides, Ansdell will help -you out, if you need him. Oh, yes, and that reminds me--your brother -Albert didn’t show to very good advantage in that Convention. He might -easily have made a better beginning in politics than that. From all -accounts he had the Dearborn County delegates in his pocket, and, -although these other scandals have diverted attention from it, I think -the way they ratted over was about the worst thing in the whole affair.” - -“It wasn’t nice, for a fact,” said Seth. - -“I haven’t had it mentioned in the paper, mostly on your account. But I -am not so clear about keeping silent next week, when the Congressional -Convention comes up. Your brother, I suppose, has Dearborn County solid -for his own candidacy. But here in Adams County the delegates are for -Ansdell--and of course he is our sort of man. I don’t think much of a -party paper interfering before the nomination is made, but this may be -a case where it will be necessary--especially if Abe Beekman, up in Jay -County, tries any of his funny work. However, it will be time enough -to cross that bridge when we get to it. Meanwhile, say not a word to -anybody, in the office or out of it, about what has happened. Just go -ahead with the work, and pay attention to no one.” - -There was no scandal. Mr. Samboye took his punishment quietly, and left -Tecumseh shortly afterward, ostensibly on a long vacation. There was -some little gossip, but no whisper of the actual facts in the case. - -Seth surprised himself by the excellence and evenness of his work in the -new position. Probably he will never do better or stronger writing than -he did in this his first campaign. For one thing, it is doubtful if any -political contest can ever again appeal to his enthusiasm, and stir all -his emotions to the glowing point of ardency, as this one did. In one -sense his new position was embarrassing, for a number of the old time -readers of the _Chronicle_ refused to support it now against their -party, and some of them said very disagreeable things about the -youngster rattling about in Samboye’s shoes. But there was another -class, a larger class it seemed to him, who shared his enthusiasm, and, -in their excited admiration for the course of the paper, heaped praises -upon him even beyond his deserts. So he worked on, writing almost the -entire page daily, coming down early in the morning and staying long -after the paper was out, and giving scarcely a thought to the outside -world. - -He had barely seen Ansdell since his promotion. He felt an even -greater sense of loss in this than he would have done under ordinary -circumstances, for the tremendous mental outpouring to which he was -daily subjected made him almost famished, at times, for food in the form -of conversation with this man who, of all others, most sympathized with -him. - -But there was a difficulty in the way--of which Seth’s sensitiveness -made, no doubt, a great deal too much. The fight for the Congressional -nomination in the district was attracting attention all over the State, -and, as evil luck would have it, Seth’s brother was pitted against -Seth’s dearest friend. It was no ordinary contest, in which a man could -with ease maintain a friendly neutrality. Everywhere the struggle in the -Thirty-sixth District was regarded as a sample conflict, as embodying in -itself all the features of the larger issue between the machine and the -people. Albert Fairchild had identified himself so thoroughly with the -party organization, and had played so prominent a part in the scandals -which provoked the revolt, that his cause was distinctly that of the -politicians; while Ansdell was just as distinctively the representative -of the independent and rebellious element. In no other district of the -State were the lines so clearly drawn. - -It was a fortnight or so after Seth’s assumption of the editorship that -the District Convention was held--at the little village of Tyre, some -dozen miles from Thessaly, up in Jay County. The _Chronicle_ had taken -no part in the contest. No one doubted that its sympathies were with -Ansdell, but still it had not said so. The night before the Convention -Mr. Workman advised Seth to write to his brother, warning him that if he -were nominated the _Chronicle_ could not support him. - -“So long as we are in the bolting business, we might as well be hanged -for a sheep as a lamb,” said the proprietor. - -It was not a pleasant task, but Seth performed it as graciously as he -could. - -There was no news from Tyre next day save that Mr. Beekman of Jay was -also a candidate, and that the Convention was in a deadlock. The -second day, along with the news announcement that the Convention, after -seventy-odd fruitless ballots, had adjourned for a week, came a despatch -from Albert begging Seth to visit the farm for a couple of days, -and talk the thing over, before the _Chronicle_ took action. Upon -consultation with Mr. Workman Seth replied that this was impossible, -owing to the necessities of his work. - -Then there came a letter from Albert, brief, but very much to the point. - -“_DEAR Brother: I am sorry if your work must suffer by your coming to -me, but I think I have a claim upon you superior to even that of the -_Chronicle_. If I have not, I ought to have. I decline to believe that, -if you represent the matter to him as really imperative, my former -friend, Mr. Workman, will place any obstacles in your way. But if he -does I still insist that your choice between him and me must be a final -one. I do not write a word to you about gratitude. I simply say, be here -at the farm on Sunday--or never again._ - -“_Albert_.” - -After this there was nothing to do but for Seth to telegraph that he -would come. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX.--THE WELCOME. - -When Seth walked over from the Thessaly station, Sunday forenoon, to -the farm, he was not, it may be imagined, in a placid frame of mind. -There lay before him an interview with his brother which could not, -in the nature of things, be pleasant, and which might very easily be -distinctly unpleasant. It was his duty to say sundry things to Albert -which were not in themselves nice, and if Albert was still in the mood -shown forth by his peremptory letter, these remarks would very likely -produce a scene. Seth was in no sense afraid of his brother, nor had the -thrifty thought that this brother was a rich, childless man, to offend -whom would be a gratuitous economic blunder, ever entered his head. The -youngster had no faculty whatever for financial prudence. But he was -grateful--almost ridiculously grateful--by nature. The trait is not a -rare one, even in these days when a new civilization has substituted for -individual patronage and beneficence the thanks-to-nobody trade-unionism -of universal conceit and rivalry, but it was abnormally developed in the -youngest of the Fairchilds. - -He said to himself, as he crossed the fields toward the white and red -land-mark of house and barns on the side hill, that he owed everything -in the world to this brother. Whatever there might be in his public -attitude to condemn, however pernicious his politics might be, still it -was his fraternal feeling and generosity which had created the vast -gulf between Seth the plow-yokel and Seth the editor. These reflections -brought no comfort to the young man. - -Some perverse agency whispered to him, as he strode along over the -stubble, that after all he had never really liked Albert; and this -liberality of his, too, might it not be a mere cheap mess of pottage, -thrown to Seth to console him for the loss of his rights in the farm? -John had always been incredulous as to Albert’s true goodness in this -matter; might there not be something in these suspicions? Seth tried -manfully to combat these ungenerous doubts, but they forced themselves -upon his mind. - -Then there was Albert’s treatment of his wife! Seth had never been clear -as to the exact nature of Isabel’s grievance against her husband. No -specific allegation of cruelty or neglect, much less of infidelity, had -ever been laid by her at Albert’s door in his brother’s hearing. Indeed, -so far as Seth’s observation went, Albert had always appeared to be a -decent enough sort of husband, complaisant even if somewhat indifferent, -and acquiescent to the verge of weakness, in her whims. He seemed to -refuse her nothing, in the matter of having her own way, and if he most -often broke the ruling conjugal dumbness by satirical comments on her -actions and opinions, he at least never seriously attempted to fetter -either. This sounded like the description of a tolerable husband, -as husbands go. But up against it was to be set Isabel’s plaintive, -pitiful, persistent assertion of unhappiness with him. And clearly -she ought to know what her husband was like a good deal better than an -outsider could. - -So the arguments did battle in Seth’s mind, as he climbed the last -fence, and felt his feet on ancestral soil. He had now only to cross a -short stretch of pasture land to be at his journey’s end. - -Perfect silence rested on the farm. The fat cows lay lazily about him, -comfortably chewing the cud of sweet aftermath; the cluster of bright, -neat buildings fell into picturesque lines of composition before him, in -the soft, hazy sunshine of Indian summer. The background of scarlet and -ochre and deep purple-browns in the woods beyond, of warm mauve hills -and pale, fluffy clouds above; the shaggy old horse, standing in -tranquil bliss, with his head over the fence; the aged shepherd-dog -stretched asleep on the kitchen door-stone in the sunny distance--all -brought to him a sense of content and beauty which warmed his heart and -calmed his thoughts. The spell of the peaceful, restful scene soothed -him. Then, as by magic, the whole picture seemed to take on the charm of -Isabel’s presence. “I am to see her!” he said aloud, almost exultantly. - -There had been no special pleasure in this prospect, a few hours before. -Indeed, it had been months since he had been conscious of a genuine -desire to meet his sister-in-law. At times of late it had even seemed -to him that a meeting would be a source of embarrassment, just as the -necessity of keeping up the clandestine correspondence presented itself -often to him in the light of a bore. - -But now--yes! she was walking forth swiftly to meet him--coming over -the grass with a gliding haste which had a wealth of welcome in every -motion. The very genius of the mellow, warm-hearted season she seemed -to his eyes as she advanced, clad in some soft, indefinite stuff, -loose-flowing, and that in tint under the red noon sun could be the -shadow on golden grain, or the light on dark puce grapes, or the dim, -violet haze over the distant valley. She was near him now, beaming with -unaffected delight, reaching out her hands in greeting--and his heart -went to meet her. - -“Oh, Seth! How good of you to come!” - -She had almost thrown herself into his arms, and had stood upon tiptoe -to be kissed. He held himself back from the embrace, but he did kiss -her, and he swung her hands now in his, looking into her glowing eyes -with tender, responsive intentness, and smiling his joy. This reception -did make him very happy, but he had also a great uneasiness lest some of -the folks should be observing them from the windows of the house. - -She divined his thoughts, and said, gayly: “They are all at church!” - -“What? Albert too?” Seth knew that his brother was not of a religious -turn; but he swiftly bethought himself, and added “Oh, I forgot that -election is coming on.” - -“No,” she chirruped, springing along by his side, her arm tight in his, -her walk reflecting exultantly her emotion, “he is in New York. He will -be back to-morrow. He has telegraphed me to have you wait.” She dropped -into a mock-serious tone: “That is, of course, if you would _like_ to -wait?” She looked up archly: “Do you much mind waiting?” - -“Do I _mind!_” He could only look his delight. His voice trembled. - -She made a tiny skip, and lifted her face to him again, radiant with -happiness. “Do you know,” she said, “I could run and jump like any -little child, I am so wild with joy! It seems such an age since we were -together last! Only letters--but they were very nice, though. You dear -boy, who taught you to write such pretty letters--?” - -He pressed her arm closer in his. “Who taught me everything that is -sweet?” he whispered. It was all very delicious, but still it troubled -him. - -They entered the house, and he excused himself while he took his -hand-bag up to his old room, and made his toilet after the long hot -walk. As he occupied himself thus, and brushed his novel beard, his -thoughts were much perturbed. It was very far from his ideas to make -love to his brother’s wife. This bald statement of the situation which -framed itself now in his mind, almost for the first time, repelled and -alarmed him. Yet it seemed to sum up the state of affairs fairly. If -there was not lovemaking in every feature of that meeting out on the -lawn, then his conceptions of the tender passion were all at fault. - -“By Jove, it mustn’t come to that!” he said to himself. “A fellow ought -to be able to be fond of his sister-in-law, and be pleasant to her, and -sympathize with her and all that, without going beyond the bounds, and -making a scoundrel of himself.” - -And it was with a deep resolution to be careful, and watch all his -words, that he descended the stairs. He had taken out of his valise two -front pages of a Sunday newspaper, containing “Jeff Brigg’s Love Story,” - which he had saved a while before for Isabel, and he gave them now to -her. - -“Here is something I cut out for you, Isabel; it is a very pretty story, -and I know you will like it.” - -“Oh, how sweet of you! How well you know just what will please me most -of all! And you shall read it to me! The other stories you have sent -me were only moderately nice, because I had to read them by myself, but -this--oh! this will be enchanting!” - -She arranged an easy chair--a low, capacious chair with light blue the -dominant color in its covering--close beside the window in the parlor -which overlooked the poplars, and seated herself in it. Seth brought a -hassock for her feet, and then put his own chair along side, where he -could see her, and still get a good light on the print. It was not easy -for him to begin the reading, so great was the fascination of looking -at his companion. The sunlight flared upon the white curtains above her, -and its reflections glowed back again from her crown of golden braids, -luminous against the azure of the chair, and tipped with soft radiance -her rounded profile, in cameo-relief against the deep olive of the -poplars. Isabel was an artist. - -He made a beginning at last, and read until the democrat-wagon drove up -in the yard, with its load of church-goers. She made a little mouth at -the interruption. - -“I suppose Sabrina will come in now, and dinner will be ready soon. But -afterwards we can be quiet again, for she always reads the Bible in her -own room Sunday afternoons.” - -All through the cold dinner, despite the necessity of answering Aunt -Sabrina’s and Milton’s remarks, Seth found his mental vision fixed on -that beautiful profile against the leafy background; especially sweet -was the portrait when the eyes were closed, and the lovely fullness -above the lids, as in the face of a Madonna, was revealed in the -wavering light. - -The story was not to be finished that afternoon, for Elhanan Pratt -and his daughter dropped in almost before the meal was finished, and a -little later Annie Fairchild came. There was not even much consolation -in the pretty grimaces expressive of discontent which Isabel from time -to time, when the visitors were not looking, confided to Seth. It was a -very dull afternoon. - -The venerable Mr. Pratt, a weazen, verbose little “gentleman-farmer,” - who wore a huge black satin stock over his high flaring collar opening -behind, and remained clean-shaven, in pious memory of Henry Clay and the -coon campaign, sat on the edge of his chair and droned commonplaces by -the hour. He evidently had an axe to grind by his visit, and he was much -disappointed by Albert’s absence. But if he could not see “the coming -Congressman,” as he called him once or twice, and sound that new -political magnate as to his own renomination for the Assembly, he could -at least enjoy the monopoly of a long conversation with the Editor of -the Tecumseh _Chronicle_, and impress that young man with the breadth -and value of his views. So Seth was forced to spend three dreary hours, -answering as briefly as might be, listening wearily, and stealing stray -glances at the three young women, who made a brighter group on the other -side of the parlor stove. Once or twice he tried tentatively to engraft -himself upon their conversation, and choke old Elhanan off, but the -solemn little bore relentlessly brought him back to the dry bones of -politics. Thus it happened that he had barely had an opportunity of -exchanging a word with his cousin Annie, when she stood up and said, “I -must be going.” - -He walked over to her now, and put his hand in a brotherly way on her -shoulder, as he helped her on with her cloak. - -“I’ve scarcely had a word with you, Annie,” he said, smiling. “How -is your grandmother? I needn’t ask how _you_ are. You grow prettier -everyday. And how do you get on with your school?”--for the girl was now -teaching in the district school house over the hill. - -She answered, “Oh, grandmother is about the same; perhaps a little -weaker, but as bright mentally as ever. You are looking well, Seth, and -quite the man now. Your beard becomes you--doesn’t it, Isabel? We are so -sorry you can’t come to-morrow night. We see so little of you since you -have become a city man.” - -“Sorry that I can’t come!” repeated Seth after her. - -“Come where?” Isabel interposed with a ready explanation. “There is to -be a husking over at Crump’s to-morrow evening--the first of the season. -There will be a big party of young people, and Crump sent over by -Annie an invitation for us. But I have explained that you are here on -business, which may very likely occupy you to-morrow evening, and that -in any case you would have to write your leaders for the next day’s -paper. We are ever so sorry, Annie,” she added, turning to the -school-teacher now, “but you know this is a terribly busy time with -Seth, and we mustn’t think of letting our little country sociables -interfere with his work. Some time, soon, he will come for a real -vacation, instead of a flying business trip, and then we can monopolize -him--and we will, too, won’t we, Annie?” - -Annie smiled, a little faintly, as if her heart were not altogether in -it, and replied, “Yes, to be sure we will.” She added, to Seth, “I won’t -say goodbye. I suppose I shall see you again.” - -He assented, and went to the door with her, and stood on the steps -watching her as she walked away in the autumn dusk. Decidedly she _was_ -a pretty girl! - -The Pratts, father and daughter, consented upon the shadowiest -suggestion of an invitation to stay and partake of the picked-up Sunday -tea, and that involved their spending the evening. Aunt Sabrina came in, -and the talk was dreary and general. So “Jeff Briggs” and his amatory -affairs went over to the morrow. - -In the morning Seth walked over to Thessaly and saw John. The interview -depressed him. John had had some idea of following the _Chronicle’s_ -lead, and bolting the State ticket, but the county politicians had -bullied him out of the thing by threatening the destruction of the -job-printing business connected with the _Banner of Liberty_, and the -boycotting of the paper itself. All his inclinations, too, were toward -Ansdell in the Congressional race; but Albert had loaned him some money, -and, beside, he couldn’t see his way clear to disregarding, openly at -least, the fraternal tie. He was consequently in a savage mood. - -“I’m thinking of taking out the head-line of the paper this week,” - he growled, with a sardonic humor, “and putting in instead a cut of a -runaway slave, with a bundle over his shoulder, which is in the job-room -here, left over from the days when there was slavery in New York State, -and masters used to advertise in the old paper for fugitives. ‘_Banner -of Liberty_ ’ indeed! By heaven, it ought to be ‘_Banner of Bondage!_” - -There was no comfort or profit in discussing the situation, either -general or local, with John. He neither knew nor cared, he swore, what -Albert’s chances were to dissolve the deadlock on the morrow. He might -or he mightn’t; it was all one to him, and apparently to the party, who -were the----! - -Seth left John to his bad temper and language, and returned to the farm -in the afternoon. A telegram from Albert awaited him. - -_“New York, Oct. 19.--If possible conclude business, home to-night, at -latest to-morrow morning. Wait for me at all hazards.--Albert.”_ - -To provide against a possible delay over Tuesday, Seth devoted the -afternoon, and the earlier part of the evening, to writing matter for -his paper, which Dana was to convey to Thessaly for the early morning -train, when he went to the cheese-factory. If Albert was coming at all -that night, he would arrive about eight. - -Nine o’clock came. Aunt Sabrina, after sitting in stem silence by the -living-room stove for an hour or two, looking at the wall-paper as her -brother Lemuel had been won’t to do, went up to bed with a frigid “good -night.” The farm people had all retired with the chickens, long before. - -Scarcely raising his eyes from his writing, Seth remarked: - -“How Aunt Sabrina has failed since I left the farm! She grows ever so -much like father. Poor old woman, she was so eager to have Albert come -here, so elated with the idea that the family was to be restored to -social and political dignity again--and now the apples seem to be all -dead-sea fruit to her. I can’t see that she takes the slightest interest -in Albert’s campaign. Odd, isn’t it?” - -Isabel was sitting near the stove, around the corner of the table from -him. The reddish radiance reflected down from the shaded lamp fell upon -her rounded chin and her smooth white neck, dainty in tint as the ruffle -in which it lost itself. Above this lace at the back, as she bent over -her embroidery, some stray curling wisps of hair gleamed like gold in -the light. She replied: - -“It isn’t that at all. She’s interested enough in the Congress idea, or -would be if she hadn’t something else on her mind. The prying old piece -found out, by quizzing Dana, about our writing to each other. She -has got it into her ridiculous old head, I feel sure, that there is -something between us. Didn’t you notice the way she eyed us at the -dinner table yesterday?” - -Seth did not answer. His article was unfinished, but he suddenly found -himself in doubt whether it was not already long enough. He reflected, -or tried to reflect, for a moment, while the soft tones of her voice -murmured in his ears, then added a sentence which might serve as a -conclusion, and scrawled a dash underneath. - -“There! I’m through!” he said, and looked up. - -Her eyes were fixed upon his face. They were in the shadow of the tinted -lamp-shade, but they had a light of their own--a languorous, alluring -glow. He had never looked into such eyes before; they fascinated him, -and he knew, in a delicious trembling, that his own were answering them -in kind. - -“You can read to me now,” she said, the rapt, wistful gaze melting into -a smile. “He will not come to-night.” - -Seth took the story, as she gave it to him from her workbox, and -glanced over it to pick up the thread of the narrative where it had been -dropped. As he was still thus engaged, he felt her hand laid upon his, -and, as their eyes met again, heard her low, soft voice murmur: - -“Do you know why I declined our invitation for the husking?” - -There was a silence, which the young man felt that his face made full of -acquiescent meaning. - -She answered her own question: “I wanted you here, all for myself.” - -Seth lost himself in an uplifting, floating sensation of ethereal -beatitude. Her hand was in his now, warm and palpitating, and he raised -it to his lips. It was difficult to breathe, but the oppression in his -breast was all delight. He rose to his feet, his arms outstretched, -his heart beating in exultant tumult. He heard her whisper--he could -scarcely see her for the magnetic waving before his eyes--the refrain of -the story: “So strong and yet so gentle!” His lips were formed for the -passionate utterance--already framed in his heart--“My darling!” when -there came the sound of footsteps on the path without, and of a hand -upon the latch. - -Seth mechanically took up the manuscript of his article, and turned -toward the door. Beneath an impassive mien, far more composed than -he dared to hope, there was the sensation of being hurled down, down, -through the air, to unwelcome earth. - -It was Albert. He looked at the two cursorily but closely, and only -said, as he tossed his bag into a chair: - -“Train was late. You go to bed at once, Isabel. I have particular -business with Seth.” - - - - -CHAPTER XX.--THE NIGHT: THE BROTHERS. - -Albert seemed in an amiable mood as, divesting himself of his outer -garments, he drew up a chair by the fire, offered Seth a cigar from his -case and lighted one himself. He examined Seth’s face by the flame of -the match, as the latter lighted his cigar, and appeared to be satisfied -with the inspection. - -“Sit down here,” he said pleasantly. “I want a good long talk with you. -It was too bad to keep you waiting so long, but there was no help for -it. I couldn’t see the people in New York that I wanted to see until -to-day, and it was only by good fortune that I caught the train as it -was. Then we were delayed on the road, of course. If an engineer on this -one-horse line should ever get a train through on time I believe he’d -have a fit, just from the shock of the thing. And then I had to wake -up the man at the livery stable in Thessaly--fancy his being asleep at -eight o’clock!--and he would only bring me as far as the foot of the -hill, because he had been up to a dance all the previous night. But of -course, in my position now, running for office, I couldn’t complain. -Beside, I ought to be used to all these little delights of rural -existence by this time.” - -Albert stretched his feet out comfortably on the rail of the stove, and -leaned back in his chair with an air of enjoyment. He had been growing -very stout this past year, Seth noticed, and the bald spot on his crown -had visibly spread. He seemed unwontedly good-natured too--a natural and -proper accompaniment to increasing obesity. - -“But all this has nothing to do with my asking you to come here, has it? -Did Workman raise any objections to your coming?” - -“No, of course not, after he read your letter.” - -The lawyer smiled complacently: “I thought that letter would fetch him. -Of course, my boy, the harshness of the letter was for effect on him, -not on you. It simply gave you a chance to say you had _got_ to come.” - -Seth did not find himself wholly clear on this point, but he nodded -assent. Albert looked at him, and seemed a trifle annoyed at having -the conversation all to himself, but he went on after a moment’s pause, -speaking now with good humored gravity: - -“First of all, I ought to tell you how proud I have been of your fine -progress on the _Chronicle_. I doubt if there is another young man of -your age in the State who has done so much climbing in so short a time. -I take a real satisfaction in thinking that you are my brother. I can’t -tell you how often I say to myself: ‘Albert Fairchild, the best thing -you ever did in your life, or ever will do, was to give that boy a -chance.’” - -This was gall and wormwood to the young man. He had almost succeeded -in regaining the composure so abruptly scattered by Albert’s unexpected -arrival. The fluttering agitation came back now, and brought with it a -painful sense of shame and self-reproach as Albert’s words recalled the -scene which his entrance had interrupted. Seth did not look his brother -in the face, but murmured some commonplace of gratitude. He was glad -that there was a red shade on the lamp; it might conceal his flush of -humiliation. - -Albert went on: “But you were not invited here so peremptorily just -to hear this. Brotherly pride and affection are things that don’t need -words--that can be taken for granted--are they not?” - -Seth tried to smile, and said, “Yes, of course they are.” - -“Well, youngster, I am taking them for granted in your case. Mind, as I -said in my letter, I am not saying a word about gratitude. I don’t want -the thing to be put on that footing at all. Brothers ought to be able -to help each other, and all that, without lugging in the question of -gratitude. I am talking to you as one man should to another who bears -the same name, and was of the same mother. By George! poetry, isn’t it? -Well, the point is this. The time has come when you can help me, help -me immensely. I am not in this fight for myself alone. Personally I -care very little about going to Congress. But I have got the family to -consider, and I am in a position now where I can make a ten-strike for -it. A good deal of it I have created myself. These countrymen up here in -Dearborn County fancy they are shrewd politicians, but it has taken -me, almost a novice in politics, less than two years to get the whole -machinery right under my thumb. It’s in the blood, I tell you! There -wasn’t another manager in this whole section that could hold a candle to -the old Senator, in his day,--and if he could keep track of things now I -imagine he’d admit that his grandson was no slouch.” - -Albert chuckled quietly at the slang word, the expressiveness of which -pleased him, and at the vision of the satisfaction of the departed -ancestor which it suggested. He proceeded: - -“I can’t tell you all my plans, but I am in a big combination. I have -made use of my large connections as a lawyer in New York to arrange some -things which would open your eyes if you knew them. It is all settled -that I am going on to a Committee which will be worth while, I can tell -you. And then, once started in the thing, with my grandfather’s name -back of me, there is no telling where I may not climb. A name that has -figured in the blue book as ours has is a tremendous power. The Republic -derides heredity, but the public believes in it. It is human nature, -my boy. And in this rehabilitation of the family name you have as much -concern as I have--in fact more than I have--for you will enjoy even -more than I shall the fame and wealth I am going to get out of this -thing, for the family.” - -“Where does the wealth come in, Albert? There is no money honestly to be -made in politics.” Seth had forgotten his earlier embarrassment now, and -the spirit of dispute was rising within him. - -“My dear fellow,” said the elder brother, comfortably contemplating -the rings of cigar smoke he was making, “to the wise there is money -everywhere. The word ‘honesty’ in politics is a purely relative term, -just as it is in your line, or in law, or in medicine. If we lawyers -strictly graded our charges by the net value of our services to our -clients, if doctors refused to make all calls upon patients that were -not altogether necessary, and based their bills rigidly upon the -actual good they had done--by George! the poor-houses would have to be -enlarged. Take your own business, for instance, or I ought to call it -a profession, too, I suppose. Are editors invariably candid with their -readers, do you think? Do they always tell the disagreeable truth about -people they make their money from? And don’t they have an open hand -behind the back about the same as other folks do? Occasionally, I admit, -an ass like our brother John does drift into the profession, and retains -his childhood belief that the moon is made of green cheese. But I have -noticed that such fellows as he, who run their papers on an exalted -moral plane, generally come around to borrow money from the ungodly, -toward the close of the year, to make their accounts balance. I am -sorry to see that John and Ansdell have filled your head with all this -nonsense. A newspaper man tearing his shirt in defense of financial -fastidiousness in politics presents rather a comical spectacle, if you -only knew it.” - -“You have no right at all to say that!” Seth answered hotly. “I believe -firmly that the newspaper men of this country, considering their -influence and the great temptation to make money out of it, are as -honest a body of men as you can find in America. This conventional talk -about their venality is the cruellest kind of libel, and if you knew -them as I do you wouldn’t lend yourself to circulating it.” - -“Oh, I am not entirely without acquaintance in this white-winged -profession of yours,” replied the lawyer, smilingly. “I know Mr. -Mortimer Samboye, for example. I could tell you too, you confiding -youngster, just his figure, and where the cheque, made payable to his -wife, was cashed.” - -“If you do know about Samboye, you know what I believe to be the one -exception to the rule in the State. I don’t for a moment believe that -there is another editor whom your people could have bought. It is -an odious exception, to be sure, but exceptions prove the rule. If -journalists and journals were in the market, as you and your machine -friends seem to imagine, there would be no such widespread bolt against -your machine ticket to-day.” - -“Oh, you think so, do you?” - -The lawyer was getting vexed. He stood up, thrust his hands deep into -his trowsers pockets, and spoke with more sharpness than before. - -“You think so! Why, man alive, this same d----d _Chronicle_ of yours -has been in the market since before you were born. I bet you to-day that -Workman would rather plank out five thousand dollars from his own pocket -than let me cross-examine him in the witness box on his recollections of -the _Chronicle’s_ record. Why, that is the very last paper in the State -that has a title to throw stones! Do you want to know when this new -reforming zeal of Workman’s was born? I can tell you. It was the day -that another man (Dick Folts, if you wish names), was appointed to the -Territorial Governorship that Workman wanted for his brother. So you -thought it was only high morality and noble patriotic sentiments that -ailed the _Chronicle_, did you? You never suspected that it was simply -a bad case of brother--that it all happened because Samuel M. Workman of -Toboggan was compelled to continue to adorn a private station? You think -the world is run on kid-gloved, scriptural ethics? It reminds me of -a novel I read here awhile ago. It set out to describe An American -Politician--and in almost every scene in the book where he appeared, he -was drinking tea in some lady’s drawing room, declaiming to the fair sex -on how he was going to reform politics. He thought he was a deuce of a -fellow, and so did the women and the author too. This politician was -a good sample of all your reformers. I tell you, the men who go to -afternoon teas in America, exert no more influence on American politics -than--than a hen who was too refined to scratch in the barn-yard for -worms would exert on the question of female suffrage. Now _don’t_ make -a fool of yourself, Seth. Your predecessor, Samboye, was in no way your -equal--some fellow at the club once, I remember, just hit him off in -a phrase which he had hunted up in the dictionary to sling at him: ‘a -nugipolyloquous numbskull ’--but he knew enough to feather his own -nest, and to take men as they are, and not as the Prophet Jeremiah might -think they ought to be. _Don’t_ make me angry with this pharisaical -nonsense! You are very young yet. You will see things differently when -you have rubbed up against the world a while longer.” - -Seth also stood up now, with his hands deep in his pockets--a trick of -all the Fairchilds when they were excited. - -“I have no desire to make you angry,” he answered, beginning with an -effort at calmness, but soon raising his voice, “and I shouldn’t have -dreamed of inflicting my juvenile views on you if you hadn’t insisted, -even to the point of a threat, on my coming here. I would rather not -argue the thing at all. We regard politics from totally different -standpoints. I believe that your methods and aims--by ‘your’ I mean your -wing of the party--are scandalous, corrupting and ruinous. I believe -that if some check is not put upon the rule of the machine, if the -drift of public acquiescence in debased processes of government is -not stopped, it will soon be too late to save even the form of our -institutions from the dry rot of venality.” - -“Seems to me I’ve read all this. Don’t work your old leaders off on me. -Talk sense!” said Albert. - -Seth dropped rhetoric: “All this is very real, very big, to me. To you -it is impracticable and meaningless. You don’t at all believe in the -dangers which are so apparent to me. Perhaps if you did you wouldn’t -care. That is all right. I have no desire to convert you, or to debate -the question with you. I simply want to explain that there is no -community of premises, even, between us on this subject. As for your -explanation of the motives underlying the _Chronicle’s_ attitude, I -shan’t contradict you. So far as I am concerned, the matter is not in -argument. It is enough for me that we bolt the State ticket, and occupy -the ground we do. It is no concern of mine by what path we got there.” - -Albert had heard his brother through with contemptuous impatience. He -said now, with one foot on the stove hearth, and in a voice which, -by its very coldness of calm, ought to have warned Seth of the temper -underlying it: - -“You may bolt the State ticket as much as you d----d please. I don’t -like your doing it, and it will injure you more than any efforts of mine -can make good, but I can’t help it, and it wasn’t for that that I wanted -to see you. But if you bolt _me_, Mr. Seth, or put so much as a straw in -my path, by God! I’ll grind you, and your paper, and everybody -responsible for it, finer than tooth-powder! However--we will exhaust -the other side of the subject first. I’ve had it in mind for a long -while, in fact ever since I first procured you a place there, to buy you -a share in the _Chronicle_. Workman would be glad of the ready money--he -itches for it as much as any living man--and it would be a good thing -for you. Would you like that?” - -“You haven’t told me yet what you dragged me up here, away from my work, -for,” said Seth. “You presumably had an object of some sort.” - -“Ah, you want to get down to business, do you? You shall have it, in a -nutshell. I want you to see Ansdell, and get him to promise that if I -beat him in the Convention he will support me squarely at the polls; I -want you to get a pledge from Workman that the _Chronicle_ will come out -for me, solid, the day after I am nominated. _That’s_ what I want, and -it is mighty little for _me_ to ask of _you!_ And you may tell Workman -for me that if he and his paper give me the smallest ground for -complaint, and waver in the least in backing me up, I’ll start a paper -in Tecumseh before Christmas that will crush the _Chronicle_ out of -sight. The paper is no good, anyway. I know hundreds of good citizens -who would rejoice to have a decent substitute for it.” The pride of the -editor was wounded. “You seem to worry a good deal about this worthless -paper, at all events,” he said, bitterly. - -“Don’t bandy words with me, youngster!” cried Albert, scowling -and pacing the floor. “I want your answer, or the answer of your -employer--yes or no! I’ll have none of your impudence!” - -Seth held his temper down. He could not help feeling that his brother, -from the fraternal standpoint at least, had some pretty strong arguments -on his side. He made answer: - -“I should have no influence with Ansdell, one way or the other, even if -I talked with him. He knows his own business best, and if he has made up -his mind to a certain course, nothing that I could say would move him. -As for the _Chronicle_ we’ve kept our hands off, thus far, on your -account, and we’ve said nothing at all about your leading the Dearborn -County delegates into the machine camp at the State Convention, although -the whole rest of the State is ringing with it. But I am charged to say -that that is as much as we can do. If you are nominated, we can’t and -won’t support you. It is not a nice thing for me to have to say to you, -but there’s no good mincing matters. Besides, you know--there may be a -way out of it; you may not be nominated to-morrow.” - -“All hell can’t prevent it!” The words came forth in an explosion of -wrath. Albert stamped his foot and clenched his fists as Seth had -never seen him do before. He tapped his breast three or four times, -significantly, as if there were something in the pocket to which he was -referring--Seth remembered the gesture long afterward--and repeated that -his nomination was assured. He seemed to dislike his passion, and -strive to restrain it, but the choleric vein between his brows grew more -swollen, and his black, keen eyes flashed more angrily than ever, as he -strode up and down before the stove. - -“Yes, and I’ll be elected too! All the white-livered hounds in Adams -County, from my own brother up, shall not stop me! I’ll stump the -district every night and day till election. I’ll speak in Tecumseh--yes, -in Tecumseh, at the biggest meeting money and organisation can get -together--and I’ll handle this whole bolting business so’s to warm the -hearts of honest men all over the State. By God! I’ll shake Workman as a -terrier shakes a rat, in view and hearing of his whole community! Won’t -he squirm though! And won’t the crowd enjoy having him shown up! -And _you_”--there followed some savage personal abuse, profane in -form--“after to-morrow morning, never let me lay eyes on you again!” - -“It is not for the pleasure of seeing you that I come here, ever,” Seth -retorted, the words coming quick and fierce. “Be sure I’d never trouble -you again, if you were the only one in this house!” - -The lawyer’s eyes sparkled with a sardonic meaning, and Seth, as he -saw it, bit his tongue with impatience at the thoughtless form of his -speech; for he read in this cold, glancing light that nothing had been -lost upon his brother’s perception when he entered the room. - -There was a full minute’s silence, in which the two men faced each -other. Albert was busy thinking how to put most effectively the things -he was now moved to say. At last he spoke, coolly, incisively once more, -while Seth, flushed and anxious, pretended to regulate the flame of the -lamp. - -“Yes, I have no illusions about the motive of your visits to the farm. -I am not blind; even if I were, others about the house are not. I am not -going to say what you are doubtless expecting. I might point out to you -that a young man who comes to a brother’s house--I will say nothing of -the debt of gratitude he owes him--and steals chances to make love to -that brother’s wife, is a pitiful cur. Stop!”--for Seth had straightened -himself angrily at this epithet, despite his consciousness of -self-reproach. - -“I repeat that I _might_ say this--but I will not. I prefer to view it -in another light. I don’t think you are a knave. To be that requires -intelligence. You are a fool,--a conceited, presumptuous, offensive -fool. You set yourself up to judge _me_; you arrogate to yourself airs -of moral superiority, and assume to regulate affairs of State by -the light of your virtue and wisdom--and you have not brains enough -meanwhile to take care of yourself against the cheapest wiles of a silly -woman, who amuses herself with young simpletons just to kill time. You -take upon yourself to lay down the law to a great National party--and -you don’t know enough to see through even so transparent a game as this. -Get out of my sight! I have wasted too much time with you. It annoys me -to think that such an idiot belongs to the family.” - -Albert had rightly calculated that he could thus most deeply and surely -wound Seth, but he was mistaken in his estimate of the nature of the -response. If Seth’s vanity was scalded by his brother’s words, he at -least didn’t show it. But he did advance upon Albert with clenched -fists, and gleaming eyes, and shout fiercely at him: - -“A man who will speak that way of his wife is a coward and a scoundrel! -And if it is my cousin Isabel he means, he is a liar to boot! If you -were not my brother----” - -“If I were not, what then?” - -Albert waited a moment for the answer, which the conflict between Seth’s -rage and his half-guilty consciousness choked in the utterance, and then -calmly turned on his heel and left the room, by the same outside door at -which he had entered. - -As Seth went upstairs, he heard Isabel’s door close softly. “I wonder -how much of it she heard?” he said to himself. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI.--THE NIGHT: MASTER AND MAN. - -ALBERT walked across the yard toward the larger of the new stable -buildings. It was a dry, warm, luminous night, radiant overhead with -the glory of a whole studded heaven of stars. The moon, the full, -shining-faced moon of October, would rise in an hour or so, and then -would come pale mists along the valley bottom-lands, and perhaps clouds -in the eastern sky. But one could walk bareheaded in this soft starlight -now, without a fear of cold. - -The lawyer paid no sort of attention to the night, but strode across the -grass, swung himself over the stile, and pulled back the great stable -door, creaking shrilly on its rollers, with angry energy. He stopped -upon the threshold of the darkness, through which the shapes of -carriages covered with white sheets vaguely loomed, and called out: - -“Milton!” - -There was the answering sound of footsteps overhead. A door at the top -of the stairs was opened, and a flood of light illumined the staircase. - -“Oh, you’ve got back, ay?” said a voice from the top. - -It had been Milton’s idea, when the new buildings were erected, -to achieve complete domestic autonomy by arranging for himself a -residential room above the carriage place. The chamber was high -and commodious. It had been lathed and plastered, and, in lieu of -wall-paper, the sides were decorated with coarsely-colored circus bills, -or pictures from sporting weeklies, all depicting women in tights. There -was a good corded bed in one corner. Two chairs, a stained pine table on -which, beside the lamp, were some newspapers, a little wood stove, and a -mantel-shelf covered with tin-types and cheap photographs, completed the -scene. Milton enjoyed living here greatly. It comported with his -budding ideas of his own personal dignity, and it freed him from the -disagreeable supervision which the elder Miss Fairchild was so prone to -exercise over all who lived in the house. Only the Lawton girl, Melissa, -came across the yard each forenoon, to tidy up the room, and chuckle -over the pictures and the tastes which these, and the few books Milton -from time to time brought home from a sporting-library at Thessaly, -indicated. - -“It’s lucky you hadn’t gone to bed,” said the lawyer, curtly, pulling -his hat over his eyes to shade them from the flaring light, and sitting -down. “I was going to wake you up. What’s your news?” - -“I’ve been over to Tyre twice to see Beekman, ’n’ no use. Once he -wouldn’t talk at all--jis’ kep his ole lantern-jaws tight shet, ’n’ -said ’Ef Albert Fairchild wants to see me, he knaows where I kin be -faound.’ Th’ other time he was more talkative--tried his best to fine -aout what I was drivin’ at, but I couldn’t git no satisfaction aout o’ -him. He wouldn’t bine himself to nothin’. He jis’ stood off et arm’s -lenth, ’n’ sized up what I was a sayin’ in that dum sly way o’ his. I -couldn’t make head nor tail of him. He wouldn’t say he would take money, -’n’ he wouldn’t say he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t say yes or nao to th’ -post office scheme, or anythin’ else. He jis’ kep’ his big eyes on me, -as much as to say, ‘You ketch a weasel asleep!’ ’n’ listened. Naow yeh -knaow th’ hull of it. If yeh want anythin’ more done, yeh better do it -yerself.” - -The lawyer looked attentively at his hired man, and drummed with his -fingers on the-table. “So that’s all, is it? You are no further -ahead with Beek-man than when the Convention adjourned? You’ve got no -proposition from him--no statement as to how he takes my proposals?” - -“That’s it, Albert--jest it!” - -Something in Milton’s tone seemed to annoy Albert even more than his -confession of failure had done. He rose to his feet abruptly. “Don’t -‘Albert’ me!” he said, raising his voice out of its accustomed calm; “I -don’t like it! You take too much upon yourself. But--I am to blame for -it myself. I’ve let you run things with too free a hand, and trusted -affairs to you that I ought to have kept to myself. It is always my -way,” he went on, in petulant selfcriticism. “I never did trust anybody -who was worth the powder to blow him up. I ought to be used to it by -this time. But to encounter two such fools in one evening--and this -evening of all others, too--by George! it’s enough to make a man strike -his mother!” - -“I ain’t no fool, Mister Fairchild”--the hired man was standing up -too, and his harsh tones gave the title an elaborate, almost ridiculous -emphasis--“’n’ I’ll thank yeh to keep yer tongue civil, tew! Ef yeh -don’t like my style, yeh kin git sum’un else to do yer dirty work for -yeh. I’ve no hankerin’ fer it. I’m hired to manage this farm, I am. -Nothin’ was said ’baout my hevin’ to run a Congresshn’l campaign into -th’ bargain. I ain’t sayin’ but what I kin do it’s well’s some other -folks. I ain’t sayin’ that it’s beyon’ me. P’raps I’ve got my pull ’n’ -this caounty, ’s well ’s some other people. P’raps ’f I was amine to, -I could knock somebuddy’s game skyhigh, jis’ by liftin’ my little finger -tomorrer. I ain’t sayin’ I’m goin’ to dew it. I ain’t findin’ no fault -with yeh. All I say is I ain’t goin’ to take one ioty o’ slack from you, -or anybody else, about this thing. You hear _me!_” - -The hired man had spoken aggressively and loudly, with his thumbs in the -arm-holes of his vest, and his shaggy head well up in the air. He knew -his employer pretty well, and had estimated with some precision the -amount of impudence he would bear. This full measure he was not disposed -to abate one atom. He had failed to buy the Jay County boss, or even to -satisfactorily gauge his intentions, it was true, but that was no reason -why he should submit to being called a fool by Albert Fairchild, who -couldn’t run his farm, let alone his Congressional campaign, without -him. So the mean-figured, slouching countryman, with his cheap, -ill-fitting clothes, frowzy beard, and rough, red hands truculently -spread palm outward on his breast, stood his ground before the city -lawyer and grinned defiance at him. - -The lawyer did not immediately reply. He was not ordinarily at a loss -for words or decisions in his dealings with men, but this rude, uncouth -rustic, with his confident air and his fund of primordial cunning, -puzzled him. There was some uneasiness in the feeling, too, for he could -not remember the exact limits of his confidences with Milton. Moreover -he could not afford, at any price, to quarrel with him now on the eve -of the Convention. “After the election we’ll clip your wings, my fine -fellow,” he thought to himself, but he gave the words upon which he -finally decided a kindlier turn. - -“Yes, I hear you. Almost anybody on the side-hill could, the way you -are talking. There is no reason why you should lose your temper. If you -couldn’t fix Beekman, why that’s all there is to it. We must go at it -in a different way. I can see through him. He’s standing out for a cash -payment. The old fox wants money down.” - -“Well, you’ve got it fur him, hain’t yeh? Go ’n’ give it to him, -straight aout!” - -“But that’s it--I wanted you to bring back an idea of his figure.” - -“His figger. How much hev yeh got?” - -“Never mind that--it’s a d----d sight more than the office is worth; -but when a man gets into a fight of this sort, he’s got to force his way -through, cost or no cost.” - -“Air yeh sure it can’t be traced? Wuz yeh careful to raise it so nobuddy -cud spot yeh, and give aout that yeh got so much money together for -purposes o’ bribery?” - -“Yes, it is perfectly safe. There is no record.” - -“’N’ nobuddy on airth knaows yeh’ve got th’ money?” - -“Not a living soul!” - -The two men communed together as to the importance of immediate action. -The Convention was to reassemble at Tyre, fifteen miles away, at eleven -the following forenoon. The political master of Jay County, Abe Beekman, -who held in his hands the deciding power, lived near Tyre, but in the -valley some miles further on. The first train from Thessaly in the -morning would be too late, for Beekman would have already arrived on the -ground at Tyre, coming from the opposite direction, and would have begun -work on his own hook. He must be seen at his home, early in the morning. -The question was--how to encompass this. - -“You might drive across to-night,” Albert suggested; “it can’t be more -than twenty miles. It’s a bad, up-hill road, but four or five -hours ought to do it, easily enough. By George--I believe I’ll go -myself--start at once, see Beekman about daybreak, and then come back to -Tyre by breakfast time; as if I had just driven over from here. No one -will suspect a thing.” - -“Yes, thet’s a fust-rate idee,” assented Milton; “only be keerful ’n’ -put yer money in a safe place.” - -The lawyer again slapped his breast with a confident “Never fear about -that,” and went to the house to get some wraps for the night ride, -leaving Milton to harness the grays, and drag out the sidebar buggy -with the pole. The hired-man hummed to himself as he moved quietly, -dextrously in the semi-darkness in the performance of this task. - -Albert returned, just as the hame straps were being buckled. - -“Everybody seems to be asleep in the house,” he said. “If they ask any -questions in the morning, mind you know nothing whatever. That brother -of mine is no friend. Be careful what you say to him. Let him walk to -the depot in the morning. It’ll do him good. Oh yes, by the way, better -let me have one of those revolvers of yours--you have ’em upstairs, -haven’t you--give me the one that strikes fire every time.” - -Milton came down and out presently, saying that he just remembered -having lent the weapon. “’Tother’s no good,” he added; “yeh don’t need -no pistol anyway. Th’ moon’ll be up direc’ly.” - -Albert gathered up the lines, and drove out slowly toward the road. - -“Yeh better save th’ beasts till after yeh git over Tallman’s hill, -’n’ rest ’em there by th’ gulf!” Milton called after him, as a last -injunction. - -The hired man stood at the stable door, and watched the buggy pass the -darkened, silent house, turn out on the high-road, and disappear beneath -the poplars. The moon was just coming up, beyond this line of trees, and -it made the gloom of their shadow deeper. His eyes, from following the -vehicle ranged back to the house, which reared itself black against the -whitening sky. There was there no sound, nor any sign of life. He took a -revolver out of his pocket, and examined it in the starlight, cocking it -again and again to make sure that there had been no mistake. Satisfied -with the inspection, he put it back in his side coat-pocket. He went -upstairs, changed his hat, took a drink out of a flat brown bottle in -his cupboard, and spent a minute or two looking at one of the tin-type -portraits on the mantel-shelf. He held the picture to the light, and -grinned as he gazed--then put it in his breast pocket, blew out the -lamp, and felt his way softly down stairs. - -A few minutes later he came out from the stable, leading the swift black -mare. She was saddled and bridled, and seemed to understand, as he led -her over the grass, that he wanted no noise made. The man and beast, -throwing long, grotesque shadows on the lawn, in the light of the low -moon, stole past the house, and out upon the road. Milton here climbed -into the saddle, and with an exultant little cluck, started in the -direction his master had gone, still keeping the black mare on the -grass. They, too, disappeared under the poplars. - -The moon mounted into the heavens, pushing aside the aspiring clouds -which sought to dispute her passage, then clothing them in her own -livery of light, and drawing them upward after her, in a glittering -train of attendance. All over the hill-side the calm radiance rested. -The gay hues with which autumn’s day brush painted the woods, the hedge -rows, the long stretches of orchard, stubble, and field, sought now -to only hint at their beauty, as they yielded new outlines, mystic -suggestions of form and color, in the soft gray picture of mezzotint. -Thin films of vapor rose to enwrap the feet of the dark firs, nearer to -the sky, and in the valley below the silver of the moonlight lost itself -on the frost-like whiteness of the gathering mist. It was a night for -the young to walk together, and read love’s purest, happiest thoughts in -each other’s eyes--for the old to drink in with thankful confession the -faith that the world was still gracious and good. - -Milton was walking the mare now, still on the grass. He could hear the -sound of wheels, just ahead. - - - - -CHAPTER XXII.--THE NIGHT: THE LOVERS. - -Seth had gone up to his room in a state of wretchedness which, seeming -insupportable at the outset, had grown steadily worse upon reflection. -He said to himself that he had never before in his whole life been so -humiliated and unhappy, and then smiled with pitying contempt for the -inadequacy of such a statement of the case. One’s career must have been -titanic in its tragic experiences to warrant such a comparison. “I have -never known before what suffering was,” he thought, as he paced up -and down his little room, scourging himself with the lash of bitter -reflections. - -To try to sleep did not enter his head. He sat for a long time on the -side of the bed, seeking to evolve something like order from the chaos -of his wits, but he could not think. Had he tried to write, to discuss -the thing in a letter, the simple familiar operation of the pen might -have led him out of the _cul de sac_. As it was, whichever turn his mind -sought to take, there rose an impassable barrier of shame, or rage or -self-recrimination. In whatever light he tried to view the situation, it -was all pain. He had been curtly, cruelly thrown off by his brother--the -man to whom he owed everything--and he had had to listen to the most -cutting, insulting language from this brother before they parted. -Then, as he clenched his fists and fumed with impotent anger at the -recollection of this language, there would come to divert this wrath, -and turn it back upon himself, the facts that he had interposed his own -boyish vanity and conceit to balk this brother’s purposes, and had been -caught trembling on the very brink of making love to this brother’s -wife. Did he not richly merit Albert’s scorn? He could remember--should -he ever forget?--the exact words of Albert’s contemptuous -characterization: “A conceited, presumptuous, offensive fool.” Did he -not deserve them all? He owed this brother everything: the honest boy -insisted upon saying this to himself over and over again, as the basis -of all argument on the subject; the opportunity came for him to repay -something of this debt. How had he improved it? By setting himself up -to oppose this brother in the chief object of his life, and, as if this -were not enough, by yielding weakly to the temptation to rob him of his -domestic honor as well! “I must be a villain as well as a fool, must I!” - the youngster growled between his set teeth, as he threw himself from -the bed, and began the gloomy pacing up and down again. - -He had not lighted his lamp. The soft half-darkness of the starlight, -sufficing barely to render objects visible in the room, suited his mood. -He heard the sound of wheels now on the gravel below. Looking out, -he could see that the grays were being driven out; as they turned the -corner of the house, the full moonlight fell upon them and the carriage, -and Seth saw distinctly that it was his brother who was driving, and -that he was wrapped as for an all-night ride. - -“He won’t even stay under the same roof with me!” he said half-aloud, -with a fresh bitterness of self-accusation--and then the torment of -reproaching voices began in his breast again. - -As he turned from the window he heard a low rapping at his door; a -minute later, he heard Isabel’s voice, almost a whisper: - -“Seth! Don’t open the door, but tell me, who was it that went out -with the carriage just now? I heard it, but from my window I could see -nothing. Was it _he?_” - -Seth answered, as calmly as he could: “Yes, I am sure of it. I -recognized him.” He stood close to the door, and the thought that only -the thin pine panels divided him from her was uppermost in his mind. - -There was a little pause. Once his hand involuntarily moved toward the -latch, but he drew it back. Then she spoke again: - -“You had a terrible quarrel, didn’t you, and all for me! I heard your -answer, Seth, way up here. How nobly you spoke! It went straight to my -heart, to hear his brutality rebuked in that manly way. I shan’t forget -it.” - -There was a moment’s silence; then she whispered with a lingering -softness, “Good night!” and he heard the faint rustling of her garments -down the hall. - -Brief as the interruption was, it had changed the whole spirit of his -thoughts. The vindictive accusing demons had vanished, and left no -more than a numbing sense of past torture in his breast. The anguish of -self-condemnation, the crushing burden of self-humiliation, had passed -away. The moonlight, as it spread over the slope toward Thessaly -village, seemed to bring healing in its peaceful radiance. His own -provocation grew mountain high; his brother’s justification for his -insults and barbarity diminished. “I was doing only my duty in opposing -him,” he said confidently, and there was no voice of dissent now. “Still -more was I right in defending poor Isabel from his unmanly imputations. -If a man is incapable of appreciating such a wife----.” - -He did not follow out his thought, but surrendered himself instead -to calling up, and enjoying in detail, the sweet scene which Albert’s -coming had so rudely broken into. How delicious it all was, as fancy now -limned its outlines--yet not all the dainty graces of imagination and -memory could reproduce in its full charm the original. He could think, -and think, until the whole room seemed instinct with her presence, but -how poor a counterfeit it all was, lacking the perfume of her hair and -laces, the deep, languorous glow of her eyes, the thrilling melody of -her low voice. The tender, caressing prolongation of syllables in that -whispered “good night” made soft soul-music still in his ears. The -insane thought--he did not dare ask himself if it were also a hope--that -she might come again, took possession of him, and he stood for a long -time close by the door, listening, waiting. - -It was while Seth stood thus, seeing only with the eyes of the mind, -that Milton stole past on the grass below, with the black mare, on his -mission of murder. Had the young man been at the window instead, much -that followed might have been different. - -Seth stood at the door for what seemed to him a long time, until -gradually the futility of the action became apparent to him. “Of course -she would not come!” he said, and resumed his pacing once more. - -The Faust-like vision began to dance before his eyes again, but with -a witchery now which was uncanny. The calm of waiting had brought him -enough strength of control to feel the presence of the cloven hoof in -it all. The temptation was more urgent, strenuous than ever, but he was -conscious of a deeper, more dogged spirit of resistance within him -than ever, as well. There was no renewal of the savage, chaotic war -of emotions under which he had suffered at the outset, groaning in -the self-infliction of purposeless pain. This was a definite, almost -scientific, struggle between two distinct forces, and though they -fought their battle with all manner of sophistical weapons, and employed -feints, pretended retreats and false advances in highest strategical -form, he was never deceived for a moment as to which was the bad and -which the good. - -The issue forced itself upon him, finally, with a demand for decision -which was imperative. He could stay no longer in his room. There was -neither sleep nor rest of any kind there for him. - -He went to the door, and opened it. Through the blackness he could see -a faint vertical line of light at the front end of the low hall, as of a -lamp burning, and a door left ajar. The yellow ray gleamed as he looked -at it, and seemed to wave itself in fascinating motions of enticement. -He stood for a moment undecided, all his impulses strongly swaying -towards the temptation, all his resisting reasons growing weaker in -their obstruction, and some even turning coward, and whispering, as they -laid down their arms, “After all, youth has its rights.” Then he squared -his shoulders, with the old gesture of resolution, and walked steadily -away from the line of light, down the stairs, and out of the door, -bareheaded under the stars. - -He had walked for a long, long time, before he became conscious that he -had left his hat behind. The night air was exceptionally mild for the -season, but it grew cool enough to bring this fact to his notice. As he -put his hand to his head, and stopped short at the discovery, his whole -mind seemed to clarify itself. He had been walking aimlessly, almost -unconsciously--it must have been for much more than an hour. In a vague -way, he knew where his steps had led him. He had walked through the -orchard to his mother’s grave, and stood for some time by the brier-clad -wall and fence which surrounded it, thinking of his boyhood, and of -her. Then he had struck across through Sir Thomas’s pasture, to the main -road; thence by the way of the school-house, and skirting the hill, to -the Burfield road, at the farthermost end of the line of poplars. - -As he stopped here now collecting his thoughts, awakening himself as -it were, the sound of chorussinging reached him, faint at first, then -growing more distinct. A wagon-load of young people were returning from -Leander Crump’s husking, enjoying themselves in the fair moonlight. -From the sounds, they must have been about in front of the Fairchild -homestead, and they were coming rapidly toward Seth. If he remained in -the road, they must pass and recognize him. - -There was a division line of thorn hedge, long since grown into tall -young trees, coming to the road here, and a path beside it leading to -a rude stile in the turnpike fence. This path went straight to Mrs. -Warren’s house, as Seth had known from boyhood, but he gave this no -thought as he stepped over the stile, and moved along in the shadow of -the thorns. He walked a score of yards or so, and then stepped closer -into the obscurity of the hedge, to wait till the hay-wagon and its -caroling crew had passed by on the road outside. He was feeling very -cold now, and tired to boot, and said to himself that as soon as the -road was clear he would go home and go to bed. - -To his surprise the singing came to an abrupt halt, just as the wagon -approached the end of the hedge. - -There was a chorus of merry “whoas!” as the horses drew up, and through -the clear air Seth could hear a confused babel of voices, all jovially -discussing something. One male voice, louder than the rest, called out: - -“You’d better let me come along with you!” - -There was some giggling audible, out of which rose a clear, fresh -girlish voice which Seth knew: - -“No, thanks! I can cut across by this path in less than no time. I’m -not afraid. The tramps are all abed and asleep by this time, like other -honest people.” - -With more laughter, and a salvo of “good nights!” the wagon started off -again, and Annie Fairchild, singing lightly to herself the refrain of -the chorus, and holding her face up to catch the full radiance of the -moonlight, came walking briskly down the path. - -Despite her valiant confidence the young woman gave a visible start of -alarm as Seth stepped out from the shadows to speak to her. She threw -herself forward as if to run, then looked again, stopped, and then gave -a little tremulous laugh, and cried: - -“Why, Seth! is that you. Mercy! How you frightened me!” - -He could think of nothing better than a feeble parody of her words: -“Yes, it is time all honest people were abed and asleep.” - -He said this with a half-smile, but the girl’s face grew more serious -still as she looked at her cousin. She spoke eagerly:-- - -“Why, what’s the matter with you to-night? Where is your hat? You look -as white as a ghost! Oh--have you come from our house? Is it something -about grandmother?” - -“No, it’s nothing about her. I haven’t been nearer your place than this. -I only stepped in here so as to avoid the wagon. I didn’t want them to -see me like this.” - -“But why should you _be_ like this? Now, Seth, I know something _has_ -happened. What is it? Am I wanted? Can I do anything?” - -“Let me walk with you to your house,” he said, and they turned together -down the path. “Something _has_ happened. I don’t know that I can tell -you what it is, but only to be with you like this rests and comforts -me.” - -He was walking in the shadow; the strong light, which only tipped his -shoulder occasionally, enveloped her. He watched her furtively as they -moved along, and, just in proportion as he found relief and solace -in the contemplation of her clear, frank, serene face, he shrank from -confiding his own weak woes to her. But, as he said, it was a comfort to -be with her. - -They had walked almost to within sight of the Warren farmhouse before -he broke the silence. She had scarcely looked at him since they started, -but kept her gray eyes straight ahead, as if viewing some fixed, distant -object. Her lips were tightly pressed together--the only sign of emotion -on her face--and this proof that she was hard at work thinking tended -further to embarrass him. - -“I truly don’t know how to tell you, Annie,” he said at last. “But -Albert and I have--have had words together; in fact--we’ve quarrelled.” - -Her lips quivered a little. She did not turn her face toward him, but -said, nervously: “I have been expecting that.” - -Seth did not ask himself the cause of his cousin’s anticipatory -confidence, but went on gloomily: “Well, it has come. We had it out, -this evening, to the very last word. And then, as if that were not -enough, the devil himself got hold of me afterward, and tugged and tore -at me to--but I can’t tell you _that_. I can scarcely realize myself -what I’ve been through this night. Why, I’ve been wandering about here -on the hill-side for hours, not knowing where I was going, or even -what I was thinking of, like a mad man. You can see how my hands -are scratched, and my clothes torn; that is from the berry-bushes, I -suppose, up by mother’s grave. I remember being there. I didn’t even -know that my head was bare, until just before the wagon came up.” Before -this remarkable recital of insane things, Annie was properly silent. - -Seth added, after a pause, “But it is all over now. And I can’t tell -you, you can’t begin to guess, how it brings me to my senses, and -soothes and restores me to have met you like this.” - -As he paused suddenly, they both turned to listen and look. From the -knoll to the east, where the turnpike ran through a cutting, there came -a curiously muffled sound, like yet unlike the first measured drumming -of a partridge. It swelled a second later into something more definite, -as they saw a dark horse, the rider crouching low over its neck, -galloping like the wind along the high-road toward Thessaly. The pace -was something prodigious--the horse had vanished like an apparition -before they could look twice. But there had been nothing like a -commensurate volume of sound. - -“The horse was running on the grass beside the road,” Seth remarked. - -“Probably going for a doctor,” was her comment. “I wonder who is ill!” - -“It looked to me more like the headless horseman than a sick-messenger.” - -As he said this, and they turned to walk again, his face lighted up -once more. The thought seemed to please him, and he smiled on her as he -added: - -“Let me be superstitious enough to fancy that the thing which just -flashed by, in a rumble of low thunder, was the demon that has been -torturing me all this while. We will say that he has been defeated, -baffled, and has fled in despair, and that”--he looked still more -smilingly at her--“the fiend has been beaten and driven away by you. Do -you know, Annie, that here in this lovely light you are the very picture -of a good angel? Perhaps angels don’t wear seal-skin cloaks, or have -such red cheeks, but if they knew how becoming they were, they would.” - -Annie’s face, which had been immobile in thought, softened a little. She -was accustomed to her cousin’s hyperbole. - -“I am delighted if you feel better,” she laughed back. “But it is no -credit specially to me. Contact with any other rational human being -would probably have had the same effect upon you. If I had helped you -in any way, or advised you, perhaps I might own the angelic impeachment. -But I don’t even know the first thing about your trouble, except that -you’ve quarrelled with Albert, and--and had a temptation.” - -She had begun gayly enough, but she uttered the last words soberly, -almost gravely. Instinct and observation alike told her that Seth’s -experiences had been of a deeply serious nature. - -He sighed heavily, and looked on the ground. How much could he tell -her?--in what words should he put it? Even as he sought in his mind -for safe and suitable phrases, an Idea--a great, luminous, magnificent -Idea--unfolded itself before his mental vision. It was not new to -him--years ago he had often entertained and even nourished it--yet it -had been hidden, dormant so long, and it burst forth now so grandly -transformed and altered, that for an instant he stopped abruptly, and -put his hand to his breast as if to catch his breath. Then he walked -on again, still with his eyes on the ground. He fancied that he was -meditating; instead, he was marvelling at the apotheosized aptness of -the Providence which had sent this Idea at just this time, and swearing -grateful fealty to it with all the earnestness of his being. - -He looked up at last, and drew her arm through his. They were near the -house now. “I am going to make a clean breast of it, Annie,” he said. -“If I have not finished when we get to the bars, shall we turn back? I -want you to hear it all.” - -“It is pretty late, Seth,” she said, but neither in tone, nor in the -manner in which she allowed her arm to be taken, was there the kind of -refusal which dismays. - -There was no need now to seek words. They came fast, keeping pace with -the surge of his thoughts. - -“Annie,” he began, “I have been as near the gates of hell to-night as -it is given to a man to go, and bring back his soul. I have fancied -all this while that I was strong because I was successful; that I was -courageous because I happened to be clever. I found myself put to the -test to-night, and I was weak as water. I am afraid of myself. More, -I have been making a fool of myself. I know now the measure of my -weakness. I have the brains, perhaps, but I have no balance-wheel. I fly -off; I do insensate things; I throw myself away. I need a strong, sweet, -wise nature to lean upon, to draw inspiration from. Oh if you could -realize the peace, the happiness your simple presence brought me this -evening! I haven’t said it yet, Annie, but you have guessed it--I want -to pledge myself to you, to swear that you are to be my wife.” - -The girl had drawn her arm from his before the last sentence was -finished, and stood facing him. They were within call of the house, but -she did not offer to renew the walk. She answered him with no trace of -excitement, looking him candidly in the face: - -“I am not sure just how to answer you, Seth. Hardly any girl would know, -I think, how to treat such a declaration as that. Wait a moment--let me -finish! In the first place, I am in doubt whether I ought to treat it -seriously at all. You are disturbed, excited, to-night; when we first -met you looked and acted like a madman. And then again--understand, I -am trying to talk to you as a friend of all your life, instead of a -mere girl acquaintance--I would not marry any man who I did not firmly -believe loved me. You have not even pretended that you love me. You -have simply complimented me on my disposition, and pledged yourself to a -partnership in which I was to be a balance-wheel.” - -“You are laughing at me!” - -“No, Seth, my dear cousin, not at all. I am only showing you the exact -situation. You are too excited, or too unpractical, to see it for -yourself. You talk now about being at the gates of hell and expressions -like that--wild words which signify only that you have had trouble -during the evening. I fancy that all men are apt to exaggerate such -things--I _know_ you are. Why, do you even know what trouble is? Have -_I_ had no trouble? Have I not lived a whole life of trial here with a -bed-ridden invalid? And there are other things that--that I might speak -of, if I chose to complain. For instance”--her face brightened as she -spoke, now, and a suggestion of archness twinkled in her eyes--“was it -not a terrible thing that I should have waded into the water, that day -of the fishing party, and got you out all by myself, and then heard the -credit coolly given to another--person, who never got so much as the -soles of her shoes wet?” - -Annie had begun seriously enough, but the softness of her real mood -toward her cousin, together with the woman’s natural desire to have -justice done her in affairs of the heart, had led her into a halfplayful -revelation of pique. Seth would have answered here, but she held up her -hand, and went on: “Wait till I am through. You didn’t know the truth -in that matter of the log-jam. I understand that. There are a good many -other things the truth of which you don’t know. You don’t, for -instance, know the real facts about your own mind. You have had trouble -to-night--for all your talk about making a clean breast of it you -haven’t told me yet what it was--and your imagination makes a mountain -out of what was probably a molehill, and you straightway rush off -bareheaded to wander about like a ghost, and frighten people out of -their wits; and then, happening to meet a girl who, by the deceptive -light of the moon, looks as if she had some sense about her, you take -without consideration the most important step a man can take in his -whole life. Isn’t that a fair statement of the case? And, thinking -it all over, don’t you agree with me that you would better tie my -handkerchief about your head and go home and go to bed?” - -Seth laughed--a reluctant, in-spite-of-himself laugh. “You always would -make fun of me when I tried to be serious. But if I ever _was_ serious -in my life, it is now. Listen to me, Annie! It is not my fault if I see -you now, truly as you are, for the first time. I have been a fool. -I know it I said so at the start. But a man is the creature of -circumstances, you know. Things have happened tonight which have opened -my eyes. I realize now that you have been closest to my heart all the -while, that I have loved you all----” - -Annie stopped him, with her hand upon his arm. - -“I don’t want you to finish that to-night. Please don’t, Seth. It would -not be fair to me--or to yourself. Perhaps some other time when you have -thought it over calmly--we will talk about it--that is, if you are of -the same mind. If you are not, why, everything shall be just as it was -before. And more than that, Seth, you--you mustn’t feel in the least -bound by what has been said to-night. You know that I am older than -you--two whole months! That isn’t as much as four years”--the meekest of -her sex could scarcely have foregone that shaft--“but it gives me some -sort of authority over you. And I am going to use it for your good. If -it becomes necessary, I shall treat you like a perverse little boy, who -doesn’t in the least know what is good for him.” - -There was no discouragement to Seth in the tones of her speech, however -non-committal its text might be. He put his arm about her and murmured: - -“To think that I never _knew_ until now! Ah, you make me very happy, -Annie. And shall you be happy, too, do you think, happier than if we -hadn’t met?” - -She smiled as she disengaged herself, and gave him both hands to say -that they must separate: “Happier at least than on the night of the -fishing party. I cried myself to sleep that night.” - -Seth found the house wholly dark, upon his return. He had no difficulty -in getting to sleep, and his heavy slumber lasted until long after the -breakfast hour the following forenoon. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII.--THE CONVENTION: THE BOSS. - -Tyre had seen better days. In the noble old time of stage coaches it -had been a thriving, almost bustling place, with mills turning out -wares celebrated through all the section, with a starch factory which -literally gave the name of the town to its product as a standard of -excellence, and with taverns which were rarely left with a vacant room -more than a day at a time. In those days it had been a power in politics -too. The old court-house which frowned now upon the village green, -elbowing the more modern brick jail out of public sight, was supposed to -have echoed in its time about the tallest eloquence that any court-house -in the State had heard. From Tyre had come to Albany, and Washington as -well, a whole cluster of strong, shrewd, stalwart-tongued politicians, -who forced their way to speakerships, and judgeships, and even -senatorships, like veritable sons of Anak. It was a Tyre man who had -beaten Aaron Burr in such and such a memorable contest. It was another -Tyre man who, by assuming lead of the distracted Bucktails at a certain -crucial period, had defeated sundry machinations of the Clintonians, -and sounded the death-knell of their hopes. There was a Tyre man in -the Regency, of course, and he is popularly believed, at least in Jay -County, to have held that storied syndicate up by the tail, so to -speak, years after it would otherwise have collapsed. At every State -Convention, in this fine old time, inferior politicians from other -sections dissembled their appetites until Tyre had been fed to satiety. -And in the sowing season of politics, when far-seeing candidates began -arranging for a share in the autumn harvest of offices, no aspirant felt -that his seed had a chance of sprouting until he had paid a pilgrimage -to Tyre, and invoked the mercy, if he could not have the smiles, of the -magnates there. - -It was due doubtless to the traditions of these visits, when Judge -Gould, the hero of the great Biggs murder case, would be at the Nedahma -House, and Senator Yates, who unravelled and dragged to the pitiless -light the masonic plot to blow up Mount Vernon, was to be found at the -turnpike tavern, and both would keep pretty well in-doors toward evening -because Colonel De Lancey, who had shot four men before Hamilton’s death -discredited duelling, was in town on private business--it was no doubt -due to these memories that Tyre kept up its political tastes and, in a -faded way, its political prestige, long after its material importance -and interest had vanished. The mills were remembered now only by the -widened reaches in the stream where their dams had once been; the starch -factory was a dismantled ruin, from which what woodwork the lightning -had spared had long since been abstracted for fuel; one of the -taverns was now a private dwelling, and the other two neither profited -themselves nor pleased the wives of the village by their dependence upon -local custom. But the men of Tyre were still intense politicians. Indeed -their known virulence had given to their county sobriquet of Jayhawker -an almost national fame. Nowhere else in the State, proportionately, -were so many weekly partisan papers taken--not tame, dispassionate -prints, but the fire-eaters of both party presses, with incessant -harrowing accounts of peaceful and confiding negroes being massacred -in the South, on the one side, answered regularly on the other by long -imposing tables of the money stolen by notorious criminals in the public -service. This was the meat Tyre fed on, and contending editors could not -serve it out too rank or highly peppered for its taste. - -The one excitement of Tyre too--far transcending the county fair, which -had only interested them casually, and which they had seen moved over -to Sidon, on the line of the newly-extended railroad, without a -protest--was a political convention. There would be such a crowd about -the Court House then as scarcely the spectacle of its being consumed -by flames could draw at another time. The freeholders of Tyre paid much -more than their fair share of county taxes; they knew it, and did not -grumble at the injustice. In fact it rather pleased them than otherwise -to see their town rated on the Supervisor’s assessment-rolls according -to its ancient wealth; the amercement was a testimonial to their -dignity. Upstart towns like Sidon might wrangle over a few hundred -dollars, and cheapen their valuation in the public eye by unworthy -tricks; Tyre would have none of such small doings; it would preserve -a genteel exterior, even if it had to eat pork grease on its buckwheat -cakes in domestic seclusion. But if there had been so much as a hint -about holding a county convention anywhere else than in the Tyre Court -House--then, to use Abe Beekman’s homely expression, you would have seen -the fur fly! Other towns might indulge their modern and mercenary tastes -in county fairs, railroads, gas, reservoirs and the like, to their -hearts’ content, but they must keep their hands off political -conventions. He would be a brazen Jayhawker indeed who should question -Tyre’s monopoly of these! - -So new generations of county politicians followed precedent without -thought of murmuring, and accepted the discomforts of jolting in crowded -democrat-wagons over the stony, bleak hills to Tyre, of eating cold, -bad dinners in the smoke-dried, draughty barracks which had once been -hotels, of drinking limed well-water with the unspeakable whiskey--as -natural consequences of being interested in the public affairs of the -nation. This resignation of other Jay County towns to the convention -claims of Tyre swelled into a spirit of truculent defence every two -years, when the question of a joint Congressional gathering for all -three counties of the district came up. Precisely what would have -happened if the bigger shires of Dearborn and Adams had combined in -a refusal to come to Tyre, I am not bold enough to guess. The general -feeling would probably have been that a crisis had arisen in which Jay -County could do no less than dissolve her relations with the Federal -Union. - -Fortunately no such menace of secession and civil war was ever suffered -to rise glowering on the horizon. Abe Beekman, the boss of Jay County, -always managed to have Tyre designated by the District Committee, -and the politicians from Dearborn and Adams amiably agreed to console -themselves for the nuisances of the trip by getting as much fun out of -it as was possible--which, reduced to details, meant bringing their own -whiskey, sternly avoiding the dangerous local well-water, and throwing -at each other during the dinner scramble such elements of the repast -as failed to attract their metropolitan tastes. This procedure was -not altogether to the liking of the Tyre landlords, who, however, -compensated themselves for the diminution of the bar traffic and the -havoc wrought in the dining room, by quadrupling their accustomed -prices; and the invasion of boisterous aliens had its seamy side for the -women of the place, who found it to the advantage of their dignity to -stop indoors during the day which their husbands and fathers consecrated -to the service of the Republic. But Tyre as a whole was proud and -gratified. - -On the morning when the adjourned District Convention was to reassemble, -political interest throbbed with feverish quickness in all the pulses of -Tyre. - -The town could remember many a desperate and stirring combat on its -well-worn battle-field, but never such a resolute, prolonged, and -altogether delightful contest as this. The fight had its historic side, -too. Every voter in Tyre could remember, or had been taught in all its -details about, the famous struggle of the wet fall of ’34, when Hiram -Chesney, the Warwick of Jay County then, locked horns with the elder -Seth Fairchild of Dearborn, and, to pursue the local phraseology, they -pawed up more earth in their fierce encounter than would dam the Nedahma -creek. Poor Hiram had finally been worsted, falling ignobly on his -native stamping ground, before the eyes of his own people. He had long -since passed away, as Warwicks should when their king-making sinews have -lost their strength. But another boss, perhaps in some ways a greater -boss, had arisen in Jay County, in the person of Abram K. Beekman, -and now, nearly half a century later, he was to try conclusions with a -second Fairchild of Dearborn--a grandson of the hero of ’34. They had -grappled once, a fortnight before, and had had to separate again, after -an all-day tug, with a fall credited to neither. Now, in a few hours, -they were to confront each other once more. What wonder that Tyre was -excited! - -The two gladiators had been the observed of all observers during the -preliminary skirmish. Tyre was almost disposed to fancy the Dearborn -man. In his portly, black-clad figure, his round, close-shaven, aquiline -face, and his professional capacity for oratory, he had recalled -pleasantly the days when the Jay County bar was famous. The local -magnate, Beekman, was not a lawyer; he could not make a speech; he -didn’t even look as if he could make a speech. He had none of the -affable, taking ways which Albert Fairchild used to such purpose, -but was brusque, self-contained, prone to be dogmatic when he was not -taciturn. Thus the balance turned enough in Fairchild’s favor to about -offset Beckman’s claims to local sympathy as a Jayhawker, and put Tyre -people in excellent mental trim to enjoy all the points of the duel. - -For in the minds of these practical politicians, it _was_ a duel. There -was a third candidate, named Ansdell, it was true, supported by nearly -all the Adams delegation, but then he was a reformer, and had not even -come to the Convention, and Tyre had no use for him. A county boss who -had got a machine, and purposed doing certain definite things with -it, either to build up himself or crush somebody else, was natural and -comprehensible; but a man who set himself up as a candidate, without -the backing of any recognized political forces, who came supported by -delegates elected in a public and lawless manner without reference -to the wishes of leaders, and who pretended that his sole mission in -politics was to help purify it--who _could_ make head or tail out of -that? - -Thus Tyreans talked with one another, as the village began to take on -an air of liveliness after breakfast, and groups slowly formed on -the sidewalks in front of the two hotels. There were many shades of -diverging opinion as to the merits and the prospects of the approaching -contest, but on one matter of belief there was a consensus of agreement. -The fight lay between Beekman and Fairchild, and the third man--it was -interesting to note that ignorance of his name was fashionable--wasn’t -in the race. Steve Chesney, whose right to speak oracularly on politics -was his sole inheritance from the departed Warwick, his father, summed -up the situation very clearly from the standpoint of Tyre when he said, -leaning comfortably against the post office hitching post, and pointing -his arguments in the right places with accurate tobacco juice shots at a -crack in the curb: - -“The hull p’int’s this: Dearborn’s got seventeen votes, ain’t -she?--solid for Fairchild. Then he’s got two ’n’ Adams, ain’t -he?--makin’ nineteen ’n’ all. Th’ dude, he’s got what’s left of Adams, -fifteen ’n’ all. Jay County’s only got ten votes, ain’t she? Very -well, they’re solid for Abe. _Now!_ Twenty-three’s a majority of the -convention. Git twenty-three ’n’ that settles it. Th’ reformer, he -needs eight votes. Kin he git ’em? Whair frum? Frum Dearborn? Not -much! Frum Jay? Well, not _this_ evening! Count him out then. Of th’ -other two, Fairchild wants four votes, Abe needs thirteen. Thet looks -kind o’ sickly for Abe, mebbe yeh think. But bear in mine thet th’ Adams -men air pledged agin’ Fairchild by th’ same resolution which bines -’em to th’ other chap. Abe wasn’t a candidate then ’n’ he didn’t git -barred out. But they made a dead set agin Fairchild all through Adams, -on ’count of his funny work at th’ State Convention. _So_, Adams kin -go to Abe, ’n’ she can’t go to Fairchild. I tell yeh, Jay can’t be -beat, ef she’s only a mine to think so--thet is, of course, ef Dearborn -fights fair. Ef she don’t, p’raps she may win to-day, but I tell yeh, -in thet case ther won’t be enough left of her candidate come ’lection -night to wad a hoss-pistol with.” - -The Jay County delegates had begun to straggle into town, and percolate -aimlessly through the throngs in and about the bar-rooms, listening -to the discussions, and exchanging compliments and small talk with -acquaintances. Pending the appearance of their leader there was nothing -else for them to do. There was a rumor that Abe Beekman was in town, -sending for men as he wanted to see them, one by one, but nobody -professed to be in the secret of his hiding place, and nobody dreamed of -attempting to find out what Abe wished to keep dark. - -The Adams County men, delegates and others, came over the hill from the -Spartacus station in a carryall, with four horses, and created a genuine -sensation as they drew up with a great clatter and splashing of mud in -front of the Nedahma House, and descended jauntily from the rear step to -the curb-stone. The natives eyed them all with deep interest, for upon -their action depended the issue of the day, but there was a special -excitement in watching the nine delegates with stove-pipe hats and -gloves, and tight rolled umbrellas, who came from Tecumseh itself. -Tecumseh was the only city in the district, or the whole section, for -that matter, and Jay County people timidly, wistfully dreamed of its -gilded temptations, its wild revels of sumptuous gayety, its dazzling -luxuriance of life, as shepherd boys on the plain of Dura might have -dreamed of the mysteries and marvels of Babylon. It was something, at -least, to touch elbows with men whose daily life was passed in Tecumseh. - -Such of the younger Tyreans as had been introduced to these exalted -creatures on their previous visit crowded around them now, to -deferentially renew the acquaintance, and shine before their neighbors -in its reflected light. - -Then the news filtered through the groups round about that Ansdell -himself had come up this time, and was the short, wiry little man with -the drab overcoat and the sharp black eyes. This aroused a fleeting -interest, and there was some standing on tip-toe to get a good view of -him, but it could not last long, for Ansdell as a politician was not a -tangible thing on which the tendrils of Tyre’s imagination could get a -real grip. - -It was of more importance to learn whether the views of the Adams -delegates had undergone any change--whether a new light had dawned upon -them in the interim. They submitted graciously to the preliminary test -of drinks at the bar, and pretended with easy affability to remember -distinctly the various Tyre men who came up and recalled their -acquaintance of a fortnight ago, but they had nothing to say that was -to the purpose. They were waiting; they would see what turned up; they -would certainly vote for Ansdell on the first ballot; further than that -they couldn’t say, but they saw no reason now why they shouldn’t keep on -voting for him; still, perhaps something might happen--this and nothing -more. - -Meanwhile there was an uneasy whisper going the rounds to the effect -that the two Adams men who had previously voted for Fairchild were now -for Ansdell, having succumbed to local pressure during the fortnight. -The story could not be verified, for the two gentlemen in question had -secreted themselves upon their arrival, and the other Adams men only -grinned bland mystery when interrogated on the subject. This worried the -Tyre men a good deal more than they would have liked to admit, but there -was a certain element of pleasure in it, too, for it added piquancy to -the coming fight. - -The wooden minute hand of the old clock on the court house cupola had -laboriously twitched along to the zenith of the dial once more, marking -ten o’clock; only half an hour remained now before the time for the -Convention to reassemble, and the Dearborn delegates were still absent. -People began to stroll toward the court house, and casually attach -themselves to the outskirts of the cluster of saturnine, clean-shaven, -thin-featured old villagers, in high black stocks and broad-brimmed -soft hats, who stood on the steps, behind the fluted columns of the -building’s ambitious Grecian front, and chewed tobacco voraciously while -they set up the rival claims of Martin Van Buren and Francis Granger, -or mumblingly wrangled over the life and works of De Witt Clinton. These -old men, by reason of the antiquity and single-heartedness of their -devotion to their country, had two inalienable and confirmed rights: -to sit on the platform close by the speakers when the Declaration of -Independence was read each Fourth of July and to have the first chance -for seats when the doors were opened at a political Convention. - -At last the eyes of those who had lingered about the Turnpike Tavern -were gladdened by the sight of the Dearborn crowd, driving furiously up -in three or four vehicles. Milton Squires was in the foremost wagon, and -he was the first to alight. - -He trembled and turned around swiftly as a man laid a hand on his -shoulder. - -“What d’yeh want?” he demanded, with nervous alertness. - -The man whispered in his ear: “Abe Beekman is over in the back settin’ -room at Blodgett’s, ’n’ he wants to see your man Fairchile right off.” - -Milton had regained his composure. “So do I want to see him. Whair -abaouts is he? I was to meet him here.” - -“There ain’t been no sign of him here, this mornin’. Nobuddy ’n Tyre’s -laid eyes on him, so far’s I kin fine aout.” - -“Thet’s cur’ous,” said Milton reflectively. “He started to drive over -early enough. We cum by train, expectin’ to fine him here. P’raps he’s -seen Beekman by this time, on th’ quiet.” - -“No, he ain’t!” The messenger’s tone was highly positive. - -“Then mebbe I’d better go ’n’ see Beekman myself. Whair is -Blodgett’s?” - -The man led the way off the main street, to a big, clap-boarded, dingy -white house, fronting nowhere in particular, and stopped at the gate. - -“Ain’t you comin’ in?” Milton asked him. - -“I dasen’t.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV.--THE CONVENTION: THE NEWS. - -There were two strange men in the low-ceilinged, grimly-furnished -“settin’ room,” as Milton was ushered into the presence of the Boss, but -at a gesture from this magnate they went out; the Boss surveyed the new -comer without a word of greeting or comment. - -Mr. Beekman was a tall, angular man, past the prime of life, as was -shown by the gray in his thick hair, curling at the ends, and in the -stiff, projecting ruff of beard under his chin. His face was thin, -hungry, with a plaintive effect of deep lines, and his great blue-black -eyes were often tearful, like a young robin’s, in their intent -watchfulness. He was almost wholly Dutch in parentage--of that silent, -persistent, quietly-masterful race which, despite all the odds, has -still held more than its own in Stuyvesant’s State--and the descent -showed itself in the dusky hue of his skin. He had never been a wealthy -man, though he came of a family decently supplied with substance, and -of long settlement in the county. He had climbed to his present eminence -after a long career in local politics, by that process of exhaustion -which we call the survival of the fittest. Having attained it, his rule -was that of a just despot, rewarding and binding still more closely -to him the faithful, remorselessly crushing all signs of rivalry, and -putting the recalcitrant without pity to fire and sword. He had an -almost supernatural faculty of organizing information, and getting at -the motives of men. He sniffed treachery as a deer in the breeze sniffs -the dog, and he had an oriental way of striking with cruel swiftness, -before anybody but the guilty victim suspected offence. Withal, he was -a kindly man to those who deserved well of him, an upright citizen -according to his lights, and a profound believer in his party. - -He sat now chewing an unlighted cigar, with his feet on the hearth -of the stove, and contemplated Milton at his leisure. He did not like -Milton at all, and one of his chief reasons for doubting the real -ability of Albert Fairchild was his choice of such an agent and -confidant. At last he said, curtly: - -“It’s you, is it? I’ve got no business with you! Where’s Fairchild?” - -There was something in Beekman’s eager, searching way of looking at a -man with those big bright eyes of his which, coupled with the question, -embarrassed Milton, and he fumbled with his hat as he repeated the -explanation he had given to the messenger. He was annoyed with himself -for being thus disturbed. - -The Boss looked his visitor out of countenance once more. Then he said: -“Sit daown! Well, what is it to be?” - -‘Milton grinned, and leaned forward familiarly in his chair. - -“I sh’d ruther think that was fur you to say.” - -“Oh, you think so, do yeh? You imagine you’ve got me on the hip, ay?” - -“Well, p’raps we’re no jedge, but it sorts o’ looks that way, now, don’t -it?” Milton tipped back his chair, satisfiedly, and put one of his big -feet up on the hearth, to dispute possession with the Boss. - -Beekman reflected for a minute: then he began, after glancing at the -clock: - -“There’s no time to waste. I might as well talk up ’n’ daown with yeh. -Your man Fairchild makes me tired. Ef he’d set his heart on goin’ to -Congress, why on airth didn’t he come to me in the first place, ’n’ -say so? It could ’a’ been arranged, easy’s slidin’ off a log. But no, -instid of that, he must go ’n’ work up th’ thing his own way, ’n’ -then come ’n’ buck agin me in my own caounty, ’n’ obleege me to -fight back. D’yeh call that sense? He’s smart enough in his way, I -grant yeh. He’s fixed up a putty fair sort o’ organisation in Dearborn, -although it can’t last long, simply because it’s all built up on money, -’n’ I don’t go a cent on that kind of organising. Still it’s good -enough in its way. _But_, he made his mistake in lettin’ the idea run -away with him that he could skeer me into a conniption fit with his -musharoon organisation. He didn’t knaow me. He never took the trouble -to find aout abaout me. He jest took it fur granted that I’d crawl daown -aout o’ my tree, like Davy Crockett’s coon, as soon’s he pinted his gun -at me. Well, I didn’t come worth a cent. Then, when he faound aout -that he’d struck a snag, ’n’ that Dearborn County wasn’t the hull -deestrick, he turns raoun’ ’n’ aouts with his wallet, ’n’ tries to -hire me to come daown. Fur that’s what you was here for last week, ’n’ -you knaow it’s well’s I do.” - -Milton tried to get in some words here, of dissent or explanation, but -the Boss would not hear them. - -“Lem me go on; ’s no use your lyin’. That was Fairchild’s second -mistake. He thought politics was all money. Ef I was poorer than Job’s -turkey, he couldn’t buy me to so much as wink an eye fur him. I’m not -in politics fur what I kin make aout of it. I’m in because I like it; -because it’s meat ’n’ drink to me; because I git solid, substantial -comfort aout of it. Ther’s satisfaction in carryin’ yer eend; there’s -pretty nigh as much in daownin’ them that’s agin yeh. Jest naow I’m -a thinkin’ a good deal what fun it ’d be to let the floor aout from -under your man altogether, ’n’ nominate this feller from Tecumsy.” - -“But,” broke in Milton, “you’re a candidate yer-self, ’n’----” - -“Wait till I’m threw, will yeh? I _said_, I’m leanin’ a good deal jest -naow to’rd this man from Tecumsy. I c’d beat him easy ’nough at the -polls, ef he turned cranky, but I daoubt ef it ’d be wuth while. I -ain’t seen him yet, but I’m told he’s here, ’n’ ef I like his looks -durn me ef I ain’t a mine to nominate him. He can’t do no harm, even ef -he tries. These reform spurts don’t winter well. They never last till -spring. The boys lose their breath for a few months. But then they git -daown to work agin, and baounce the reformers to the back seats where -they belong. But it ’d be one thing to elect a high-toned, kid-gloved, -butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-maouth kind o’ man like what’s-his-name, -’n’ a hoss o’ quite another color to ’lect Fairchild. _He’d_ make me -trouble from the word ‘go!’ Understan’, I ain’t afraid of his meddlin’ -with me here in Jay caounty; not a bit of it. But he’d use his position -to cripple me in the deestrick. The present Congressman tried that on-- -’n’ you ain’t so much as heerd his name mentioned fur a re-nomination. -But it was bother ’nough to squelch him. I ain’t goin’ to hev it to do -all over agin.” - -“Right you air, tew!” Milton responded. - -The Boss held up his hand to forbid further interruption, while he -looked curiously at his visitor, as if puzzled by his acquiescence. He -went on: - -“Ef you was a man of any readin’ you’d hev heerd of a custom among -Europe-ian kentries, when one whips another, of makin’ the under dog in -the fight pull aout his front teeth, like. The beaten kentry has to tear -daown its forts, ’n’ blow up its men-o’-war, ’n’ so on, jest as a -guarantee not to make any more trouble. Well, ef I’d concluded to hev -any dealin’s at all with Fairchild, that’s what I’d hev done with him. -I’d ’a’ made him turn over the appintment of all Dearborn’s men on the -deestrick Committee; ’n’ I’d ’a had a written agreement that half -the Postmasters in Adams ’n’ Dearborn, as well as all in Jay, should -be o’ my namin’. My wife’s brother should hev hed the Thessaly post -office, tew, right under Fairchild’s nose, so’s to keep an eye on him. -It’s the duty of every man to purvide for his own fam’ly.” - -“Nothin’ small about _you!_ You only wanted the hull airth!” chuckled -Milton, ingratiatingly. - -“No, it was Fairchild who wanted the airth ’n’ thought he’d got it, -’n’ while he was deliberatin’ whether he’d have it braowned on both -sides or not, lo ’n’ behold I went in ’n’ took it away from him -slick ’n’ clean.” - -The Boss rose as he was speaking, reached for his overcoat and put it -on. “Time’s up!” he said, sententiously. - -Milton had risen too, and placed himself between Beekman and the door. -“There’s seven minutes yit,” he said eagerly, “I’ve got something yeh -can’t afford to miss. Don’t you want th’ nomination yer-self?” - -“No. What good’d Washington be to me? New York State’s big enough for -me. If yeh don’t understand that I put my name before the Convention -jest to hold my caounty together, ’n’ block Dearborn, yer a dummed -sight bigger fool than even I took yeh to be.” - -“But s’pose Dearborn’s votes cud be thrown to you! They’d nominate yeh! -What’d thet be wuth to yeh?” - -“What ’d it be wuth?” mused the Boss, looking intently at Milton. - -“Yes! in ready money, here! naow!” - -The Boss took up his hat, meditatively, and gazed at his companion -again. “Did you knaow th’ man that brought yeh here?” he asked. - -“Yes--’twas Jim Bunner, wa’nt it?” - -“That man ’d wade threw fire ’n’ water fer me. Yeh couldn’t tempt -him with a hundred thaousan’ dollars to so much as say an evil word -abaout me, let alone injure me. Yit he’s desprit poor, ’n’ th’ unly -thing I ever did fer him in my life, excep’ givin’ him a day’s work naow -’n’ then, was to help him bury his child decently, ten years ago. But -_I_ know my _men!_ Here Fairchild has took you off a dunghill, where all -yer hull humly, sore-eyed, misrubble fam’ly belong, ’n’ made a man of -yeh, trusted his affairs to yeh, clothed yeh, fed yeh, yes, ’n’ -let yeh fatten yerself on the profits of his farm--and naow yeh turn -’raound ’n’ offer to sell him aout. By gum! I was right. Fairchild -hain’t got no sense! ’N’ you, yeh skunk, git aout! Don’t yeh walk on -the same side of the street with me, or I’ll swat the hull top of yer -head off!” - -“We’ll nominate Ansdell ’fore you git a chance!” snarled Milton. - -***** - -The Convention met, depressed by the evident feeling of disappointment -among the spectators, who swarmed on all the high, pewlike seats back -of the bar railing, while the delegates sat in rows of chairs inside the -space reserved in term time for the lawyers. There was ground enough for -this disappointment. Fairchild had not come, and the prospects of a good -speech, or even a bitter personal contest, were fading away. No one had -an explanation for his absence. The Dearborn delegates were more in the -dark than outsiders even, for they had been told to meet him in Tyre, -before the Convention, and that he would breakfast at the Turnpike -Tavern. Milton reassured them for a time by enlarging upon the bad -condition of the roads, but even he ended as they took their seats, -by professing some fear of an accident. “However, I’ll cast th’ solid -vaote, th’ same as before, I suppose?” he said, and the bondsmen nodded -assent. - -The proceedings opened tamely. The Chairman was a professor from the -Tecumseh Academy; the other counties each had a secretary. Two written -announcements were handed up to be read, one that Milton Squires was -authorized to cast seventeen votes for Dearborn County, the other naming -a man to perform a similar function for the ten votes of Jay. There -was to be no break yet awhile, apparently, in the two machine counties. -But--what would Adams do? - -As this question flashed through the minds of the assemblage, one of the -Adams delegates rose, walked to the bench, gave a paper to the presiding -officer, and then joined the little throng of spectators to one -side. Did this mean that he left the Convention? What _did_ it mean? -Experienced observers began to feel that something startling was coming. - -The paper being read, turned out to be an announcement that Abram K. -Beekman had been substituted in the Adams County delegation for the -delegate who had just vacated his seat, and as the words died away the -Boss himself pushed his way down the aisle, threw his long leg over -the bar-rail, and took his seat. The master of Jay County getting -substituted for Adams County--here _was_ a mystery! Did it portend -that Adams had been won for Beekman’s candidature? Yes, it must mean -that--and Tyre’s heart leapt for joy. Or no--it couldn’t mean that. The -Boss would hardly thrust himself forward in that brash way if he were -sure of winning--and Tyre’s heart sank again, sadly. - -The Chairman announced that balloting would be resumed; that the -counties would be called in alphabetical order, and that, in the case -of Adams County, which did not signify a desire to vote as a unit, the -names of the delegates would also be called in that order. Before -the words were fairly out of his mouth a hundred shrewd brains had -discovered that this meant Beekman’s being the first name called. But -what was his game? - -So perplexed were the men of Tyre with this problem that they almost -forgot to cheer when their man rose to his feet, in response to -his name. It was rarely that one saw Abe Beekman in Conventions; he -preferred to run them from the outside; and no one in the hall had ever -heard him make a speech. Imagine how they listened now! - -He spoke with an almost boyish nervousness, resting his hands on -the table before him, and clinging, as it were, with his eyes to the -Chairman for support. What he said was brief, to the point, and worth -repeating here: - -“I got substituted, ez p’raps some of yeh hev guessed, because I wanted -a word at the very start. I hev my reasons. I ain’t a’ goin’ to mention -no names--” he darted a swift, significant glance over toward the -Dearborn County men, singling out Milton for a second, then reverting -his troubled gaze to the Chairman--“but I kin feel it in my bones that -things ain’t on the square here. Ther’s a nigger in the fence. Mebbe -it’s no business of mine to yank him aout, but it’s only fair to my -caounty that we shouldn’t let anybody git ahead of us in doin’ what -we want to dew. It’s trew that D. comes ahead o’ J. in the alph’bet, -but”--and there was a momentary relaxation of his eager, sombre face as -he enunciated this undoubted fact--“its jest as trew that A. comes in -front o’ D. Ef any set o’ men--mind, I mention no names, but--ef any set -o’ delegates come here with the idee o’ sellin’ their man aout, or o’ -makin’ a combination which’ll put them solid with the next Congressman, -and leave Jay aout in the cold, perhaps ’fore I’m threw they’ll see -thet they bit off more’n their jaws could wag. - -“Mr. Cheerman, I don’t want to go to Congress. I never ’v’ hed the -least hankerin’ after it. This State of aours is good enough for me. I -wouldn’t feel like myself ef I had to stan’ ’raoun’ ’n’ see chaps -from Rhode Island or Floridy puttin’ on airs, and pretendin’ to cut as -big a swath as New York did. I’m too much of a State man fer thet. -I’d be itchin’ to jump on ’em all the while. So I want to say that I -withdraw my name----” - -The Hon. Elhanan Pratt rose here, his weazen little figure coming up -with a spring like a jack-in-the-box, and squeaked out sharply: “I rise -to a point of order. The Abram K. Beekman whose name is before this -Convention is a Jay County man, nominated by Jay County, and voted -for alone by Jay County. No Adams County man”--there was an elaborate -sarcasm in the tone--“has any right to withdraw that name.” - -“The point of order is well taken,” said the Chair. - -“Well, in thet case I won’t ask to withdraw my name,” responded Beekman. -“But I don’t think it’ll make much differ’nce. A wink is as good as a -nod to a bline man. P’raps you kin git an idee by this time haow the Jay -caounty cat’s goin’ to jump; p’raps you can’t. I’m-goin’ to vaote fer -Mr. Richard Ansdell, ’n’ I wan’ to say----” - -He was interrupted here by a stout, sharp burst of hand-clapping from -the Adams delegates, and the few Adams men in the audience. The Tyre -crowd were taken aback for an instant, and sat bewildered; then the fact -that their man had played his game, and was acting as if he had won, -inspired them to join tumultuously in the applause, though they were in -total darkness as to the nature of the stakes played for. - -The Boss went on: “I wan’ to say that I’ve never laid eyes on him but -once, ’n’ never spoke a word with him in my life. But I ain’t lived -all this while ’thaout learnin’ to read somethin’ of a man’s natur’ -in his face. I believe he’s honest and straight-aout; I don’t believe -there’s a crookid hair in his head. P’raps he’s got some naotions that -we’d look on as finnickin’ up here in Jay, but I ain’t afeard o’ them. -It’s better to hev a man standin’ so upright thet he bends back’rd, then -to hev---- to hev---- the fact is, Mr. Cheerman, _I_ think I’ve said -’baout enough. Th’ other candidate hain’t showed up today! P’raps it’s -jest as well fur him that he hain’t. I guess he’ll consider that he’s -got abaout threw with deestrick politics--but I don’t want to appear to -be rubbin’ it in. The lawyers hev a Latin sayin’ abaout speakin’ nothin’ -but good o’ the dead----” - -Beekman stopped short. The Chairman had risen to his feet. Half the -delegates had followed his example, and were gazing intently at one of -the tall, small-paned windows on the right side of the room. The three -reporters who were sitting in the clerk’s desk had begun climbing over -the rails and weaving their way between the chairs toward this same -window. A hum of rising murmurs was running through the audience. -Beekman, finding suddenly that he had no auditors, and disconcerted at -the interruption, looked about the room for a moment, in search of an -explanation. Then he followed the direction of the faces, and saw his -retainer, Jim Bunner, clambering in under the lifted sash, and making -strenuous, almost frantic, efforts meanwhile to attract his attention. - -The man was breathless with excitement. He had climbed to the window -from the roof of a low adjoining shed, and he could be heard now, as he -found a footing on the back of a bench, in panting explanation of his -conduct: “I _hed_ to come this way! It’d ’a taken me tew long to’ve -got threw the crowd at th’ door. I’ve got news for th’ Boss that won’t -keep a second!” - -He had pushed his way roughly through the throng now, brushing the -reporters aside with especial impatience, and stood whispering, gasping -his tidings in Beekman’s ear. The assemblage, silent now as the midnight -watch, read in the deepening shadows and shocked severity of the Boss’s -face that something far out of the ordinary had happened. Beekman -appeared to be asking some questions, and pondering the whispered -answers with increasing emotion. - -The waiting hundreds, all on their feet now, watched him in a tremor of -expectation. - -At last he spoke, in a low, changed, yet extremely distinct voice: - -“Mr. Cheerman, when I spoke abaout sayin’ nothin’ but good o’ th’ dead, -I spoke unbeknaown to myself like a prophet. My friend here brings some -awful news. Mr. Fairchild o’ Dearborn has jest been faound, stark -’n’ cold, crunched under his hosses ’n’ carriage, at the bottom of -Tallman’s ravine!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXV.--“YOU THOUGHT I DID IT!” - -WHEN Seth awoke next morning, the position of the shadow cast by the -thick green-paper curtain which covered the upper half of his window, -told his practised faculties that it was very late, and impelled him to -get out of bed, before he began at all to remember the several momentous -events of the previous evening. As he dressed he strove to get these -arranged in their proper order in his mind. Curiously enough there -were certain inchoate recollections of feminine screams, of bursts of -hysterical sobbing, of low but rough and strange male voices, doleful -and haunting, which confusedly struggled for place in his sleepy -thoughts, and seemed now to be a part of the evening’s occurrences, now -to belong to this present morning, and to have come to him while he was -nearing the end of his sleep. - -As he passed his Aunt Sabrina’s door on his way to the stairs, he heard -from within this same sound of suppressed weeping. This much at least -of the unlocated recollections must have belonged to the first stages of -his waking. “Another quarrel with Isabel!” he thought, as he descended -the stairs. “Why is it that women must always be rowing it with each -other!” Then his own dispute with Albert came fresh and overpowering -in distinctness of impression across his mind, and the grounds of his -grievance against the temper of the other sex faded away. - -The living-room was vacant--the breakfast table still standing in the -disorder of a meal just finished, and the shades down as though the day -had not yet begun, although the clock showed it to be past ten. One of -the folding doors of the parlor was open and he heard Isabel’s voice--it -struck him as being strangely altered toward harshness of fibre--calling -him to enter. - -She stood, as he remembered her once before, in front of the piano. In -the dusk of the drawn curtains--how gloomy and distrait everything about -the house was this morning!--her figure was not very clearly visible, -but her face was so pale that it seemed to be independent of any light. -Her eyes had the effect of slight distention, and, in the shadow, were -singularly dark of tint. They were gazing at him with a strange, intent, -troubled look, and the expression of the pallid face went with this to -disturb him vaguely. He said to himself, in the moment of waiting for -her to speak, that he must keep his troth with Annie resolutely in mind, -and, if needs be, not shrink from avowing and standing by it. - -Isabel did not offer him her hand, or tender him any greeting whatever; -only looked him through and through with that searching, unaccustomed -gaze. - -“I wouldn’t let them call you,” she said at last, speaking slowly, as -if with an effort to both form these words, and repress others. “I knew -that you needed the sleep.” - -“I am sorry if I put anybody out by my laziness. But it is such a relief -to be able to sleep like that once in a while, instead of having to get -down to the office by eight.” - -“I heard you go out last night. I heard you come in this morning. But -not another soul in the house suspects that you were out; not one!” - -The tone was unmistakably solemn, and weighted with deep feeling of some -sort. Seth uneasily felt that a scene was impending, though he could not -foresee its form. He felt, too, that the part he must play in it would -of necessity be an awkward one. - -“Yes,” he answered, “the night seemed too fine to stay in doors. -Besides, I was nervous, and it did me good to walk it off. You -can’t imagine how light-hearted I was when I returned, or--for that -matter--how heavy-hearted when I went out.” - -“Seth!” - -The word came forth like the red flash from clouds which can no longer -retain their pent-up, warring, swelling forces--an interjection of -passion, of dread, of infinite troubling, of doubt wreathed in struggle -with pain. She swayed slightly toward him, her hands clasped and -stretched down and forward with a gesture of excessive perturbation, her -great eyes lustrous with the excitement of this battle of emotions. Seth -fancied that the dominant meaning of the look was reproach. He could not -in the least see his way through the dilemma, or even understand it. He -could only say to himself that the enchantment was ended, and that, come -what might, he would not forget Annie. - -The woman glided a step nearer to him. She put one hand to her brow with -a sudden movement, and rested the other upon the piano, as if all -at once conscious of needing support. With a painful little laugh, -hysterically incongruous, she said: - -“I am almost beside myself, am I not? I can not speak to you, it seems! -And yet there is so much to say--or no! isn’t silence better still?” Her -voice trembled as she went on: “For what _could_ we say? How meaningless -all our words would be in the face of---- of-----.” - -She swept both hands to her eyes, with an impetuous gesture. Her form -seemed to totter for a moment, so that Seth instinctively moved toward -her. Then with a wild outburst of sobs she threw herself upon his -breast, convulsed with incessant paroxysms of passionate weeping. - -They stood thus together for some minutes. The young man, moved to -great tenderness by her evident suffering, the cause of which he vaguely -referred to the previous evening’s events, put his arm about her, -whispered gently to her to be comforted, and stroked her hair with a -soft, caressing touch. His hand touched her cheek, and she shuddered at -the contact; then swiftly took the hand in hers, and raised it to her -lips, murmuring between the sobs: - -“Ungrateful! was it not done for me? Ah, dear, I shall not shudder -again.” - -She kissed the hand repeatedly, and pressed it to her bosom, as she -spoke. She was still trembling like a leaf in his arms. - -What could it all mean? he asked himself--and found no answer. - -“We must be brave, dear,” she whispered now. “We must be on our guard -every instant! Oh--h! they shall tear my heart out before they learn -anything--so much as a syllable! We must keep our nerves.” She looked -up into his astonished face, with almost a smile in her effort to -strengthen his courage. “We _will_ be brave, won’t we, mine? The test -will come soon now. Perhaps in an hour they will bring--_it!_” - -The trembling seized her frame, and shook it with cruel force. She -buried her face in his breast with along, low cry of anguish, and sobbed -there piteously, clinging to his hand still. Once she bent as if to -kiss it again, but stopped, then turned her head aside, groaning “Oh how -terrible! how terrible!” - -The mystification now demanded light of some sort. - -“What is it that is so terrible, my poor girl?” he asked. “What are they -going to bring in an hour? Tell me, Isabel--my sweet sister--what does -it all mean?” - -She looked up into his face, with flickering suggestions of a mechanical -smile at the comers of her pale lips, and with soft reproach in her -eyes: - -“Are you going to pretend to _me_, too, dear one? As if it were not all -here in my heart--all, all! Ah, they shan’t get it! They shan’t get the -shadow of a hint. You were home here all the while! You were asleep, -sound asleep! If it be necessary, I could swear that I _knew_ you were -asleep, that--but no, there might be suspicion then. That we mustn’t -have! Don’t fear for me, dear one! I shall be so discreet, so -circumspect, watching, weighing every word! But oh--h--shall we dream of -_it?_ What if we should, and should cry out in our sleep--Oh-h, my God! -my God!” - -She sank again, convulsively clutching his hand, and quivering with -feverish sobs upon his breast. - -“Upon my soul, I don’t in the least know what you are talking about, -Isabel! Do try and be calm, and tell me what it is!” - -“_He_ asks _me!_” she cried, with the same jarring, painful half-laugh -he had heard before. - -He held her from him, so that he might look into her face. - -“Come, come! You are acting like a tragedy-queen on the stage. Do be -sensible, and tell me what the matter is. You make me out of patience -with you!” - -He spoke in the vexed tone of a man needlessly perplexed with foolish -mysteries. To her strained senses the simple expression of impatience -was cruel mockery. She drew herself still further back from him, and -dropped his hand. She was able to speak collectedly now: - -“It is _you_ who are the actor. You persist in playing the part--to -_me!_” - -“Still in riddles! _What_ part, Isabel?” - -“You _will_ have me tell you? You want to hear the thing--in words?” - -“Yes, by all means.” - -She had never once taken her frightened, fascinated gaze from his face. -“You insist on hearing from my lips that while you were out last night -your brother was murdered----” - -“What!” - -“Murdered not four miles from here, as he was driving on the road, and -his body thrown down into a ravine. Some boys found it. Fortunately, -everybody thinks it was an accident. The men who brought the news -thought so.” - -She had spoken the words coldly, as if they were commonplaces and had -been learnt by rote; but all the passion of her being was flaming in her -eyes, which transfixed him with their stare. - -“Mur-dered!” the young man stammered, feeling his senses reeling. -“Albert murdered! Oh-h this must be nonsense! It is too terrible to -think of even! You are out of your mind, Isabel!” - -Her lips quivered: “It would be no wonder if I were, after _this!_” - -The darkened rooms, the sobbing of his Aunt upstairs, the sounds of -anguish that he knew now had partially awakened him, the crazed demeanor -of Isabel--all these rose around him, like a black fog, to choke and -confound his mind. Her fixed gaze burned him. - -“Tell me what you know!” he cried, wildly. - -“Wouldn’t it be easier to tell me what _you_ know?” The chilling tone -of the words startled him, as might a sudden contact of warm flesh with -ice, before his bewildered brain had grasped their meaning. Then, like -the crimson, all-pervading outburst of a conflagration, the thing dawned -upon him, and his thoughts seemed blood-red in its hideous light. He -pushed her from him fiercely, returning her piteous look of fright with -a glare, and biting his tongue for words that should be great enough to -fairly overwhelm her. As she cowered, he strode toward her: “You thought -I did it!” he shouted at her. - -Her only answer was to bury her face in her hands, and sink weakly at -his knees. - -He stood relentlessly glowering down upon her. The bitter, brutal words -that might be heaped upon her, nay, that ought to be, crowded upon his -tongue. It was too great a task to restrain them, to keep silence. - -“_You_ thought _I_ did it,” he repeated. “And you didn’t object--you -didn’t shrink from me! Why, I remember--my God!--you kissed my hand! You -said: ‘it was done for me! ’ Oh-h!” - -The woman at his feet, her face hidden, had been sobbing violently. She -lifted her eyes now, and strove appealingly to conquer him with their -power. She rose, unaided, to her feet, and confronted him. Terror and -tenderness visibly struggled for the mastery of her facial expression, -as for the mood behind it. - -“Don’t, Seth, don’t! Can’t you see how I am suffering? Have you no pity? -How _can_ you have the heart to speak to me like this?” - -“_You_ talk about pity--about hearts!” - -“How long ago was it that they were on your tongue--that you had your -arms stretched open for me?” - -“Don’t recall it!” - -“If I were to die this day, this hour, it would be the one thing I -should want to remember, the one thing of my life that I should hug -to my heart. What is changed since then? A man dead?--a man dies every -minute of the day somewhere in the world! Suppose I was wrong! Suppose -it _was_ an accident--yes, we’ll say it was! _Don’t_ you see--how little -that is, how unimportant, compared with--with----” - -She finished the sentence by a faltering step toward him, her arms -outstretched, her lips parted, her form offering itself for his embrace -with a sinuous seduction of moving outlines. - -The old witchery flamed up for a second in his pulses; then it was -emberless ashes. - -Without a word he turned and left her. - -***** - -Aunt Sabrina opened the door of her room in response to his strenuous -rapping, and wiped her tear-stained face with the end of her -shoulder-shawl as her nephew entered. At his behest, she told all the -tidings that had come to the farm. Its master had been found at the -bottom of Tallman’s ravine, by some boys who had climbed down to see -if the beech-nuts were turning. The whole equipage had pitched off the -narrow road which crossed the gulf at this point, high above. The buggy -was smashed. One of the horses was dead; the other had two of its legs -broken. Half hidden under the carriage and one of the beasts was Albert, -quite lifeless and cold. The men who brought the news believed every -bone in his body must have been broken. - -As she concluded the bare recital of facts, the poor old maid began her -sobbing afresh. - -“I might uv knaowd it’d ’a’ come to this,” she groaned; “‘pride goeth -before a fall,’ ez Solomon says. I hed my heart tew much sot on his -goin’ to Congress; I was exaltin’ my horn tew high. I was settin’ by -the window, that very minute, watchin’ Sarah Andrews go by perked up in -their democrat wagon, with her injy shawl ’n all her fine feathers on, -’n’ never so much’s turnin’ her head this way, ’n’ I was sayin’ to -myself, ‘M’ lady, you’ll come daown a peg ’r two off ’n your high -hoss when Albert goes to Congress’--’n’ there the men was comin’ in -the gate, thet identical minute, with the news. I tell you!” she roused -herself into indignant declamation here, “men like Zeke Tallman ought to -be hung, who ’re tew shiftless or penurious to fix up their fences on -pieces o’ raoad like thet, sao’s to keep folks from drivin’ off in the -dark, ’n’ killin’ themselves! That’s what they ought!” - -“But it wasn’t dark, Aunt Sabrina,” said Seth; “the moon was so bright -all last night, you could have seen to read by it.” - -The old lady was too occupied with her own thoughts to even think of -inquiring as to her nephew’s source of information. She only rocked to -and fro, desolately, and said, as if talking to herself: - -“Sao much the wuss, Seth. It _was_ to be! Nothin’ could a’ stopped it. -Thet old witch, M’tildy Warren, is right. There’s a cuss on aour fam’ly. -Here, almost inside tew years, Sissly’s gone, ’n’ Lemuel’s gone, ’n’ -naow its poor Albert! ’N’ he was gittin’ so like his grandfather, -the Senator, tew, gittin’ to look like him, ’n’ ack like him; I kin -remember my father----” - -Seth had left the room, with soft footsteps. He would go at once to the -scene of his brother’s death. - -At the outside door, as he opened it, he stood face to face with Annie. -She gave him her hand silently. Her face was paler than he had ever seen -it before, and she looked on the ground, after the first little start of -surprise at the meeting, instead of into his face. - -“You have heard?” he whispered. - -“Yes. Isn’t it awful?” - -“Will you go upstairs and see Aunt Sabrina? She is in her room. I think -the sight of you would do her good.” - -“Yes. What a terrible shock it must be to her. And----?” - -“The widow? You’ll find her in the parlor. Strange enough, she was -weeping her eyes out when I last saw her.” He could not keep the -bitterness out of his tone. - -“Poor woman!” was all that Annie could find it in her heart to murmur, -as Seth passed her on his gloomy errand, and she entered the house of -mourning. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI.--THE CORONER. - -THERE was a short cut by which, using a rough back road across the -hill, and then a dimly-marked bridle path down the bed of the creek, one -could get to Tallman’s ravine in less than an hour on foot. Seth saddled -the black mare, and brought her up on the meadow plateau overlooking the -gulf, panting and white on breast and barrel with foam, inside fifteen -minutes. He had galloped furiously, unable to think save in impatient -flashes, and reckless alike of his own neck and the beast’s wind and -limbs. He reined up the plunging mare at the very edge of the ravine, -where some score of farmers and boys were standing clustered under the -trees, watching his excited approach. - -As he threw himself from the saddle among them, and looked swiftly from -face to face for the right one to speak to first, the attention of the -elder bystanders concentrated itself upon the mare. They would have -given their foremost thoughts to her anyway, for they were owners of -livestock even before they were neighbors, and her splashed and heated -condition appealed in protest to their deepest feeling--reverential -care for good horseflesh. But there was something more: the mare was -strangely, visibly agitated at the sight of the glen before her, and -reared back with outstretched trembling forelegs, lifted ears, and -distended, frightened eyes. - -“By Cracky!” cried Zeke Tallman himself, “don’t it beat natur’! This -’ere mare knaows what’s happened! Look at her! She senses what’s -layin’ down there at the bottom!” - -“’N’ it they say dawgs has got more instinck than a hoss!” said a -younger yokel. He kicked a mongrel pup which was lounging around among -the men’s legs, with a fierce “Git aout! yeh whelp, yeh! What d’_you_ -knaow abaout it!” to illustrate his contempt for this canine theory. - -A third farmer, more practically considerate, took the shivering, -affrighted beast by the bridle, and led it away from the gulf’s edge, -patting its wet neck compassionately as they went. - -Meanwhile Seth had found his way through the group to his brother John, -who stood with his back against a beech tree, springing from the very -brink of the gulf, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the trampled -grass at his feet. A half circle of boys, with one or two girls of the -school age, stretched about him at some distance, like the outer line -of an open fan, mutely eyeing him as the second most important figure in -the tragedy. They separated for Seth to make his way, and made signs to -each other that the interest was doubled by his arrival. The brothers -shook hands silently and scarcely looked at each other. - -There came the sound of a pistol shot from the glen below; somebody -said: “There! they’ve killed th’ off-hoss. Ther’ goes th’ best matched -team o’ grays in Dearborn Caounty!” - -“Have you been down yet, John?” Seth asked softly, as the low buzz of -conversation began about them once more. - -“No, not yet. I suppose I could if I had insisted on it, but when I got -here, twenty minutes or so ago, they told me here that Timms had got his -jury together down there, and forbidden anybody coming down till they -were through. So I’ve stayed here. Not that I care about Timms, but--I -can wait.” - -“Let’s go down!” As he spoke, Seth swung himself around the beech, -and began the descent, letting himself swiftly down the steep, mossy -declivity by saplings and roots. His brother followed. One or two -boys started also, but were roughly restrained by their elders, with a -whispered “Stay back, can’t yeh! H’ain’t yeh got no sense. Them’s the -brothers!” - -The scene at the bottom was not unlike what Seth’s fancy had painted it, -adding the terrible novelties of the night to a spot he had known from -boyhood. Half-shaded even in the noon sunlight by overhanging branches -from the towering, perpendicular sides of the glen, the miniature valley -lay, a narrow stretch of poor, close-cropped grass, with the spiral, -faded mullein stalks, the soft brown clumps of brake, the straggling, -bloomless thistles, and even some tufts of glowing golden-rod, which -push their way into unfrequented pasture-lands and encompass their -sterility. The stream, which once had been a piscatorial glory of the -section, but now, robbed of its water and its life by distant clearings, -mills and reservoirs, wandered sadly and shallowly on an unnoted course, -divided itself here to skirt each side of the gulf with a contemptible -rivulet--the two coming together abruptly at the mouth of the low stone -culvert, and vanishing into its dark recesses, above which rose, sloping -steeply, the high embankment of the road traversing the ravine. - -It was over this embankment that horses, carriage and owner had -precipitately pitched; it was at its base, on the swail and gravel of -the stream’s edge, that the wreck lay, surrounded by a little knot of -men. Vertical gashes in the earth down the bank, with broken branches -and tom roots, marked the awful track of the descent; the waters of the -brook to the right, dammed by the body of the horse killed in the fall, -had overflowed the sands and made muddy rivulets across to the culvert. - -The Coroner turned with obvious vexation at the sound of the brothers’ -approach. “I thought I give word--” he began; then, recognizing the -newcomers, added, without altering his peremptory, officious tone: “It’s -all right; you can come now, if you want to. The gentlemen of the -jury have completed their labors for the present. I was on the pint of -adjourning the ink-west.” - -The brothers joined the jurors, and dumbly surveyed the spectacle at -their feet. One of the grays lay across the rivulet; the other, more -recently dead, was piled awkwardly upon its mate’s neck and shoulders, -in an unnatural heap. The front portions of the buggy, scratched but not -smashed, were curiously reared in the air, by reason of the pole being -driven deep into the soft earth, between the horses; the rear wheels -and the seat, broken off and riven by the violence of the shock, were -imbedded in the marsh underneath. On the higher ground, close in front -of the brothers, lay something decorously covered with horse-blankets, -which they comprehended with a sinking of the heart. - -“He lay in theer, part under the hind wheels ’n’ part under the nigh -hoss,” explained the Coroner, with dignity. “The fall was enough to brek -his neck twenty times over, let alone the hosses may’ve kicked him on -the way down. We hev viewed the remains, ’n’ we’ve decided-- - -“We ain’t decided nothin’!” broke in one of the jurors, a serious, -almost grim-faced farmer, with a bushy collar of gray whiskers framing -his brown square jaw. “How kin we decide till we’ve heerd some evidence, -’n’ before the ink-west is threw with?” - -“There’s some men’d kick if they was goin’ to be hung. Did I _say_ -we’d arrived at a verdict? What I mean is we’ve agreed to adjourn the -ink-west now till arter the funeral.” - -“Well, why daon’t yeh say what yeh mean, then?” rejoined the objecting -juror. “They can’t no cor’ner make up my verdict fur me, ’n’ you’ll -fine it aout, tew.” - -“The more fool me fur panelin’ yeh!” was the Coroner’s comment. - -The brothers insensibly edged away from this painful altercation. A -little elderly man, in shabby broadcloth which seemed strangely out -of place among the rough tweeds and homespuns of the farmers, detached -himself from the group of jurors, and came over to them, with a subdued -halfsmile of recognition. It was the Thessaly undertaker. - -“Tew bad, ain’t it?” he said glibly, “allus some such scrimmage as -thet, on every one of Timms’ juries. He ain’t got no exec’tive ability, -_I_ say. I’d like to see _him_ run a funer’l with eight bearers--all -green han’s! I told him thet once, right to his face! But then of course -yeh knaow _I_ can’t say much. He’s techy, ’n’ ’twouldn’t do fur me -to rile him. We hev a kind o’ ’rangement, you see. I hev to be on hand -any-way, ’n’ he allus puts me on the jury; it helps him ’n’ it helps -me. I kin always sort o’ smooth over things, if any o’ th’ jurors feels -cranky, yeh knaow. They’ll listen to me, cuz they reelize I’ve hed -experience, ’n’ then there’s a good deal in knaowin’ haow to manage -men, in hevin’ what _I_ call exec’tive ability. Of course, this case is -peculiar. They ain’t no question abaout th’ death bein’ accidental. But -this man you heerd kickin’, this Cyrus Ballou, he’s makin’ a dead set to -hev’ Zeke Tallman condemned fur hevin’ his fence up there in bad repair. -He ’n’ Tallman’s a lawin’ of it abaout some o’ his steers thet got -into Tallman’s cabbages, ’n’ thet’s why-----” - -“I suppose we can leave this to you!” John broke in, impatience -mastering the solemnity of the scene. “Have you made any arrangements? -You know what ought to be done.” - -“Yes, my boy ought to be here by this time with my covered wagon, what I -call my ambulance.” - -The brothers turned away from him. The little man remembered something -and hurrying after them laid his hand on John’s arm. - -“When I spoke abaout allus bein’ on the jury, you knaow, p’raps I ought -to’ve explained.” He proceeded with an uneasy, deprecating gesture. “You -see, a juror gits a dollar a day, ’n’ sometimes friends of the -remains think I ought to deduck thet f’m my bill, but ef you’ll jest -consider----” - -“Oh for God’s sake! leave us alone!” - -It was Seth who spoke, and the undertaker joined his fellow-jurors at -the foot of the hill forthwith. The brothers went back, and stood again -in oppressed silence over the blanketed form. - -Dr. William Henry Timms meanwhile conversed apart with his panel. He -was a middle-aged, shrewdfaced man, who, like so many thousands of -other Whig babes born in the forties, had been named after the hero -of Tippecanoe. He was more politician than coroner, more coroner than -doctor. He hung by a rather dubious diploma upon the outskirts of his -profession, snubbed by the County Society, contemned by most sensible -Thessaly families as “not fit to doctor a sick cat.” But he had a -powerful “pull” in the politics of the county, and the office could not, -apparently, be wrested from him, no matter how capable his opponent. - -In the earlier years of his official service he had been over zealous -in suspecting mysteries, and had twice been reprimanded by the Supreme -Court Judge, and much oftener by the District Attorney, for enveloping -in criminal suspicion cases which, when intelligently examined, were -palpable and blameless casualties. These experiences had sensibly -modified his zeal. He had put the detective habit of mind far away -behind him, and, like a wise official, bent all his energies now to the -more practical labor of dividing each inquest into as many sessions as -possible. Had he been a Federal Deputy Marshal, he could not have been -more skilled in this delicate art of getting eight days’ pay out of -a three hours’ case. A bare suggestion of mystery at the start, to be -almost cleared up, then revived, then exploited carefully, then finally -dissipated, and all so deftly that the District Attorney, who lived at -Octavius, would not be inspired to come over and interfere--this was Dr. -Timms’ conception of a satisfactory inquest. Occasionally there would -be the added zest of an opportunity to formally inflict censure upon -somebody, and if this involved some wealthy or potential person, so much -the better: to withhold the censure meant tangible profit, to sternly -mete it (failing a fair arrangement) meant public credit as a bold, -vigilant official. - -Dr. Timms was still turning over in his mind the professional -possibilities involved in Tallman’s bad fence-building, and casually -sounding his jurors as to their private feelings toward the delinquent; -the brothers had followed the jury up to the meadow plateau, and -were standing aloof from yet among their neighbors, answering in -monosyllables, and following mentally the work of the undertakers’ -squad down in the bottom; the farmers were beginning to straggle off -reluctantly, the demands of neglected work and long-waiting dinners -conquering their inclination to remain--when a big carry-all from Tyre -drove up on the road outside, and a score of men clambered out and -over the fence to join the group. They had driven post-haste from the -Convention, and among them were Ansdell, Beekman, and Milton Squires. - -Mr. Ansdell came straight to the two brothers, giving a hand to each -with a gesture full of tender comprehension. While they talked in low -tones of the tragedy, they were joined by Abe Beekman; upon the normal -eagerness and wistful solemnity of his gaunt face there was engrafted -now a curious suggestion of consuming interest in some masked feature -of the affair. He was so intent upon this, whatever it might be, that -to the sensitive feelings of the other three he seemed to dash into the -subject with wanton brusqueness. - -“How air yeh, Fairchild?” he nodded to John, “I want somebody to tell -me this hull thing, while it’s fresh. Who knaows th’ most ’baout it? -Where’s th’ Cor’ner? What’s he done so far?” - -Obedient to a word from John, the Coroner dignifiedly came over to -the beech tree, where our little group stood, and listened coldly to a -series of searching questions put by the Jay County magnate. When they -were finished he made lofty answer: - -“I ain’t institooted no inquiries yit. That’ll be arranged fur later, -to convenience the family ’n’ the officers of the law. It ain’t -customary, in cases of accident like this, to rush around like a hen -with her head cut off, right at the start. The law takes these things -ca’mly, sir--ca’mly ’n’ quietly.” - -“But have you made an examination?--you are a doctor, I think,” - interposed Ansdell. “Have you satisfied yourself when the death -occurred? Have you learned any of the circumstances of it? Were there -any witnesses?” - -The Coroner looked at the questioner, then at the brothers, as if -including them in his pained censure, then back again at Ansdell: - -“I don’t know ez it’s any o’ _your_ business,” he said. “Who _air_ yeh, -any way?” - -Before anyone else could answer, Beekman spoke: “He’s the next -Congressman from this deestrick--nominated by acclamation over at Tyre -to-day--that’s who _he_ is. But never mind that, what I want to knaow -is--air yeh sure he died from an accident? Kin yeh swear to thet ez a -doctor?” - -“Toe be sure I kin!” responded the official, in a friendlier tone. “He -was simply mashed out o’ shape by the fall. He come down forty feet, ef -it was an inch, plum under the horses. They jest rolled over each other, -all the way down.--And so this is Mr. Ansdell, I presewm. I’m proud to -make yer acquaintance, sir. Only by the merest accident I wasn’t at the -Convention to-day, sir.” - -The undertaker came up now to announce that the first stage of his -labors was completed and that the ambulance wagon was on the road -outside, ready to start for the Fairchild homestead. - -“We went up by t’other side, lower daown the gulf,” he explained; -“’twas easier, ’n’ then there was no shock to yer feelin’s. Ef I -might be ’lowed to s’jest, it ’ud look kine o’ respectful to hev all -these friends of the remains walk two by two, behine the wagon, daown -to the haouse. Yeh might let the carry-all come along arterwards, empty, -yeh knaow, ez a sort o’ token of grief.” - -The suggestion was passively accepted as the proper thing under the -circumstances, and the little procession began to shape itself on the -road outside. Seth was moving toward the fence with the others, when the -thought of the black mare he had ridden to the scene occurred to him. A -farm-boy was holding the animal a little way off, near some bars opening -from the meadow to the road. Seth saw Milton getting over the rails--he -had been busy on the outskirts of the assemblage gathering accounts from -those earlier on the ground--and said to him: “Won’t you get the mare, -and ride her home, along with the carry-all. I shall walk--with the -rest.” - -The cortege had formed just beyond the fateful narrowing of the road, -where it crossed the gulf, and the men who were to follow Albert to the -homestead, including all the late comers from Tyre and a few neighbors, -had looked down the steep declivity, and noted the new breaking away of -earth on the road’s edge, before they passed on to fall in line behind -the black, shrouded vehicle. The procession had moved some rods when -there came sounds of excitement from the rear; at these some of the -walkers turned, then others, and even the driver of the ambulance drew -up his horses and joined the retrospective gaze. - -The black mare was balking again, on the road directly over the gulf, -and was crowding back with her haunches tight against the fencing on the -side opposite to that over which her late master had fallen. It was a -moment of cruel tension to every eye, for the fence was visibly yielding -under the animal’s weight, and another tragedy seemed a matter of -seconds. Milton appeared to have lost all sense, and was simply clinging -to the mare’s neck, in dumb affright. Luckily a farmer ran forward at -this juncture, and contrived to lead the beast forward diagonally away -from the spot. Milton sat up in the saddle again, turned the mare away -from the gulf, and galloped off. - -“Dummed cur’ous thet!” whispered Beekman to Seth; “does thet mare ack -thet way often?” - -“I never knew her to balk before to-day. She acted like that when I -first brought her up to the ravine. It _is_ curious, as you say. But -animal instinct is a strange, unaccountable thing any way.” - -“Hm-m!” answered the Boss of Jay County, knitting his brows in thought, -as the procession moved again. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII.--ANNIE AND ISABEL. - -Annie found the living room of the Fairchild homestead unoccupied. She -could hear Alvira talking with the Lawton girl out in the kitchen, and -from the parlor on the other side there came a murmuring sound which she -did not comprehend at once. As she laid her hand upon the stair door, -with the purpose of ascending to Sabrina’s room, this sound rose to -a distinguishable pitch. It was a woman’s weeping. Annie hesitated, -listening for a moment; then she turned, rolled one of the parlor doors -back, and entered. - -Isabel lay buried in the blue easy-chair, her face, encircled by one -arm, hidden against its back. The great braids of her yellow hair were -dishevelled and loosened, without being in graceful disorder. Her whole -form trembled with the force of her hysterical sobbing. - -At Annie’s touch upon her shoulder she raised her face quickly. It was -tear-stained, haggard, and looked soft with that flabbiness of outline -which trouble may give to the fairest woman’s beauty when it is not -built upon youth; over this face passed a quick look of disappointment -at recognition of Annie. - -“Oh, it is you!” - -The almost petulant words escaped before Isabel could collect herself. -She sat up now, wiping her eyes, and striving with all her might for -control of her thoughts and tongue. - -“Yes, Isabel. I _was_ going up to Sabrina’s room, but I heard you -sobbing here, and I felt that I must come to you. It is all so -terrible--and I do so feel for you!” - -“Terrible--yes, it _is_ terrible! It was kind of you to come--very kind. -I--I scarcely realize it all, yet. It was such a shock!” - -“I know, poor dear.” Annie laid her hand caressingly on the other’s -brow. She had not come with over-tenderness in her heart, but this -unexpected depth of suffering, so palpably real, touched her keenly. “I -know. Don’t try to talk to me--don’t feel that it is necessary. Only let -me be of use to you. It will be a dreadful time for you all--and perhaps -I can spare you some. I shan’t go to the school to-day. Oughtn’t you to -go up to your room now, Isabel, and lie down, and leave me here to--to -arrange things?” - -“No, not yet! Perhaps soon I will. My impulse is to stay down, to spare -myself nothing, to force myself to suffer everything that there is to be -suffered. I’ll see; perhaps that may not be best. But not now! not now! -No--don’t go! Stay with me. I dread to be left alone; my own thoughts -murder me!” She rose to her feet, and began pacing to and from the -piano. “Let me walk--and you talk to me--anything, it doesn’t matter -what--it will help occupy my mind. Oh, yes--were you at Crump’s last -night? I heard them come by, late, singing.” - -“Oh, Isabel, how _can_ we talk of such trivial things? Yes, I was there; -I was in the singing party, too. It makes me shudder to think that at -that very minute, perhaps----” The girl paused for a moment, with -parted lips and troubled face, as if pondering some sudden thought; then -exclaimed, “_Oh-h!_ the horse! Could it have been!” - -“Could what have been!” Isabel stopped in her caged-panther-like pacing, -and looked deep inquiry. - -“But no, of course not! What connection _could_ there have been! You -see, after I left the wagon, to cut across by the path at the end of the -poplars, a horse came galloping like the wind up the road, with some -figure lying low on its back. We were too far away to see distinctly, -though the night was so light”--she had insensibly drifted into the use -of the plural pronoun--“but the thing went by so like a flash that it -seemed an apparition. And come to think of it, there was an effort to -avoid noise. I know I wondered at there being such a muffled sound, and -Seth explained----” - -She stopped short, conscious of having said more than she intended. - -“Seth was with _you_, then?” - -“Yes--he met me, quite unexpectedly, by the thorns. He had been out -walking, he said; the night was too fine to sleep.” - -“Yes, I heard him go out, an hour and a half at least before the singers -came by. Did he say anything to you about what had happened, here in the -house, during the evening?” Isabel’s azure eyes took on their darkest -hue now, in the intentness of her gaze into her companion’s face. - -“Only that he had had words with Albert--poor boy! how like a knife the -memory of them must be to him now!” - -“Did he tell you what the words were about?” - -“No.” - -“Did he say anything else to you?” - -Annie grew restive under this persistent interrogation. The habit of -deference to the older, wiser, more beautiful woman was very strong with -her, but this did seem like an undue strain upon it. - -“Why yes, no doubt he did. We talked of a number of things.” - -“What were they? What did he say?” - -“Well, really, Isabel, I----” - -The elder woman gave a little click with her teeth and, after a -searching glance into the other’s face, resumed her walk up and down, -her hands clenched rather than clasped before her, and her movement more -feline than ever. “Well, really you--what?” she said with the faintest -suggestion of a mocking snarl in the intonation. - -The girl drew herself up. It was not in human nature to keep her tone -from chilling. “Really, I think I would better go up to Sabrina. I -fancied I might be of some service to you.” - -“Annie! Are you going to speak like that to me?--_now_ of all times!” - The tone was outwardly appealing. Annie’s sense was not skilled enough -to detect the vibration of menace in it. - -“No, Isabel, not at all. But you make it hard for me. Can you wonder? I -think to comfort a desolate, stricken woman in her hour of sorrow, and -she responds by peremptory cross-examination as to what a young man may -have said to me, in the moonlight. Is it strange that I am puzzled?” - -“Strange! Is not everything strange around and about me! That I should -have married as I did; that I, loathing farm life, should have come -here to live; that I should be waiting here now for them to bring -my husband’s corpse home to me--is it not all strange, unreal? The -conversation ought to be to match, oughtn’t it?”--she spoke with an -unnatural, tremulous vivacity which pained and frightened the girl--“and -so, while we wait, I talk to you about young men, and the moonlight, and -all that. _Can’t_ you see that my mind is tearing itself to pieces, -like a machine in motion with some big rod or other loose, pounding, -crushing, right and left like a flail! We _must_ talk! Tell me what he -said, anything--everything.” - -“Why, that isn’t so easy,” Annie replied dubiously, much mistrusting the -sanity of all this conversation, but pushed along with it in spite -of herself. “He said something about a misunderstanding with his poor -brother, and then--then something that I didn’t at all understand about -a temptation, a great temptation leading him to the gates of hell he -called it--but you know how Seth is given to exaggerate everything--and -then----” - -“He told you all this, did he. How confiding! How sweet! Go on--what -_else_ did he say to you--in the moonlight.” - -Annie felt vaguely that the tone was cruel and hostile. As she paused in -bewildered self-inquiry, Isabel glided forward and confronted her, with -gleaming eyes and a white, drawn face. - -“Why do you stop there?” she demanded in a swift, bitter whisper. - -“There _are_ things which--a girl doesn’t like to--have dragged from her -in this----” - -Even as Annie was forming this halting halfsentence, a change came over -the elder woman. She dropped the hand which had been raised as if to -clutch Annie’s shoulder. The flashing light passed from her eyes, and -something of color, or at least of calm, came back into her face. - -“I understand!” she said, simply. - -“You can see, Isabel, that this is not a time I should have chosen to -speak of such things to you, if you had not insisted. It seems almost -barbarous to bring my joy forward, at such a time, and appear to -contrast it with your affliction. You _won’t_ think I wanted to do it, -will you?” - -The widow of a day was looking contemplatively at her companion; she -had effaced from both expression and voice every trace of her recent -agitation. “Are you sure it is all joy?” she asked calmly. - -“I wouldn’t admit it to him. And at first I was not altogether clear -about it in my own mind. Indeed, with this other and terrible thing, I -can scarcely think soberly about it, as it ought to be thought of. But -still--you know, Isabel, we were little children together--and I have -never so much as thought of anybody else.” Annie spoke more confidently, -as she went on; the notion that there had been malevolence in Isabel’s -tone had faded into a foolish fancy: there seemed almost encouragement, -sympathy, in her present expression. “I should have lived and died an -old maid if he had not come to me. And it comforts me, dear, too, to -think that in your great trouble I shall have almost a sister’s right to -be with you, and help you bear it.” - -Isabel did not respond to this tender proffer of solace. She still stood -eying her companion reflectively. “You are very certain of being happy, -then?” she mused. - -A sense of discordance touched the girl’s heart again--a something -in the restrained, calm tone which seemed to sting. She looked more -searchingly into the speaker’s eyes, and read in their blue depths a -mystery of meaning which froze and silenced her. While Annie looked, in -growing paralysis of thought, Isabel spoke again, slowly: - -“Your married life at least won’t be deadly dull, as mine was. There -must be great possibilities of excitement in living with a man who can -propose marriage to a girl--in the moonlight--_on his way home from -having murdered his brother!_” - -***** - -Young Samantha Lawton, the member of the tribe who served as -maid-of-all-work at the Warren homestead, had a mind at once imaginative -and curious. From an upper window she had caught sight of the mournful -procession from Tallman’s ravine, winding its way down the hill, in the -distance. She stole out from the house, whose bedridden occupant could -at best only yell herself hoarse in calling if she chanced to need -anything during her absence, and walked up the path by the thorns to the -main road, over which the cortege would presently pass. Inside the sharp -angle of shade made at this corner, where the thorns aspiringly joined -the poplars, there was an old board seat between two trees, the relic of -some past and forgotten habit of rendezvous, perhaps whole generations -old. Samantha knew of this seat, and stood on it now; from it, she had a -clear view of the road in front and, through the tangled thorns, of the -meadow-path to the left, while there were branches enough about her to -render her practically invisible. From this coign of vantage Samantha -saw some things which she had not expected to witness. - -Annie Fairchild came suddenly across the line of vision, from the -direction of the dead man’s house, and walked straight to the stile -at the edge of the thorn row. There was something so curious in -the expression of her face, as she advanced, that Samantha scented -discovery, and prepared on the instant an exculpatory lie. But Annie -passed the one place where discovery was probable, and the hidden girl -saw now that the strange look had some other explanation. She crossed -the stile, and clung to the fence post, as if for support; glanced up -the road, where now the black front of the nearing procession could be -discerned; then with a shudder turned her face in profile toward -her unsuspected observer, and looked vacantly, piteously up into the -afternoon sky. - -Annie’s face, with its straight, firm outlines, was not one which lent -itself to the small facial play of evanescent emotions. Its regular -features habitually expressed an intelligent, self-reliant composure, -not easily responsive to shades of feeling. To see this calm countenance -transfixed now with a helpless stare of anguish was to comprehend that -something terrible had happened. - -She stood at the stile, desperately clinging to the rail at first, then -edging into the thorns to be more out of sight, as the ambulance and -the little file of friends moved slowly by. She noted nothing of the -peculiarities of the procession--that most of the silent followers -were strange men, in city dress--but only gazed at Seth, walking along -gravely behind the vehicle, beside his brother John. She saw him with -eyes distended, fixed--as of one following the unfolding of a hideous -nightmare. So long as the party remained in sight, these set, affrighted -eyes followed him. Then they closed, and the sufferer reeled as if in a -swoon. - -Samantha’s first and best impulse was to get down and go to the agonized -woman’s aid; her second, and controlling, thought, was to stop where she -was, and see and hear all that was going. - -Annie seemed to recover her strength, if not her composure. She wrung -her hands wildly and talked with strange incoherence aloud to herself. -Once she started, as if to cross the stile again and return to the house -of mourning, but drew back. At last, walking straight ahead, like one in -a dream, she moved toward her home. - -Samantha followed at a safe distance, marvelling deeply. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVIII.--BETWEEN THE BREAD-PAN AND THE CHURN. - -WELL, I don’ knaow ’s I go’s fur’s Sabriny, ’n’ say ther’s a cuss -on th’ fam’ly, ’n’ thet M’tildy Warren put it there, fur after all, -three deaths hand-runnin’ in tew years ain’t an onheerd-of thing, but -I don’t blame her fur gittin’ daown-hearted over it. Poor ole creetur, -she’s be’n a carryin’ the hull load o’ grief on her shoulders sence -Sissly died. I shouldn’t wonder if it’d be tew much for her naow.” - -Alvira sighed, and let her eyes wander compassionately from the kneading -board and its batch of dough to the old, cushioned arm chair by the -kitchen stove where Aunt Sabrina customarily sat. This last bereavement -had rendered the hired-girl almost sentimental in her attitude toward -the stricken old maid--so much so that when young Samantha Lawton -dropped in, toward evening, and offered to sit down in this chair, -Alvira had sharply warned her to take another. - -The girl had brought a note over from Annie to Seth, and was not -a little vexed that Alvira should have taken it from her, and gone -upstairs to deliver it herself, instead of allowing the messenger to -complete her errand. She declined, therefore, to display any interest -in the subject of the aged aunt, and warmed her hands over the glowing -stove-griddles in silence. The elder Lawton girl, Melissa, resting for a -moment from her churning, turned the talk into a more personal channel. - -“Fur _my_ part, I think it’s a pesky shame, where there’s three -big strappin’ men ’raoun’ th’ haouse, to make a girl wag this old -chum-dash till her arms are ready to drop off. ’N’ I’ll tell ’em -sao, tew.” - -“I sh’d thought Dany’d done it fur yeh” said her younger sister, with -a grin. “He allus seemed to me to be soft enough to do all yer work fur -yeh, ef you’d let him.” - -“Not he! Both he ’n’ Leander ain’t so much’s lifted a finger ’raoun’ -th’ haouse to-day. They’re off daown to th’ corners, hangin’ raoun’ th’ -store, ’n’ swoppin’ yarns ’baout th’ accident. _They_ wouldn’t keer -’f I churned away here till I spit blood. In th’ mornin’ he’ll be -awful sorry, of course, ’n’ swear he furgot all ’baout Wednesday’s -bein’ churnin’ day. Thet’s th’ man of it!” - -“’N’ I s’pose Milton never does nothin’ ’baout th’ haouse -naowadays,” remarked Samantha, interrogatively. - -“No, siree!” snapped Alvira. “You bet he daon’t! He’s tew high ’n’ -mighty fur thet! Prob’ly he’s furgot so much as th’ name of a churn, -even. He might git his broadcloth suit spotted, tew. I wouldn’t dream o’ -askin’ _him_. I’d ruther ask Seth any day then I hed Milton. _He_ don’t -put on half so many airs, even if he does git thirty dollars a week in -Tecumseh, ’n’ live ’mong ladies ’n’ gentlemen ev’ry day ’f his -life.” - -Melissa rested from her labors again, to say sneeringly: “Pritty ladies -’n’ gentlemen he _use’t_ to travel with, there in Tecumsy, accordin’ -to all accaounts!” Alvira paused in turn, with her arms to the elbow in -the floury mixing, and an angry glitter in her little black eyes. “Ef I -was _some_ folks, ’n’ hed _some_ folk’s relations in Tecumsy, ’pears -to me I’d keep my maouth pritty blamed shut ’baout what goes on -there!” - -The retort was ample. There was no answering sound, save the muffled -splash and thud of Melissa’s vigorously-resumed churning. - -The lull in conversation was beginning to grow oppressive when the young -visitor asked: “Haow does th’ fine lady take it?” - -“She seems more opset than anyone’d given her credit fur,” Alvira -answered, sententiously. - -Melissa interposed to expand this comment, and rest her arms: “Yes, she -_seems_ opset enough. P’raps she _is_. But then agin, p’raps ef you was -young ’n’ good lookin’, with blew eyes ’n’ a lot o’ yalleh hair thet -was all yer own, ’n’ you hed a hus-ban’ twice as old as you was, ’n’ -he sh’d fall daown ’n’ break his neck, ’n’ leave you a rich young -widder, p’raps you’d cry yer eyes aout--when people was lookin’--speshly -if thet husban’ o’ yours left a likely young brother who was soft on -yeh. When you git as old ’s I be, S’manthy, you’ll learn ther’s a good -deal in appear’nces.” - -“When she gits as old as you air,” broke in Alvira, sharply, “I hope -she’ll learn better ’n’ to blab everythin’ thet comes into her head! -You’ll let that cream break, ef yeh don’t look aout!” - -“I don’t b’lieve its within an ’aour o’ comin’” said Melissa, wearily -resuming her task. - -“No, but--reelly,” began Samantha, “_is_ Seth----?” - -“Never you mind whether Seth is or whether he isn’t,” answered Alvira. -“A young tadpole of a girl like you’s got no business pryin’ ’raoun’ -older folks’ affairs. You better go home! M’tildy may need yeh. Yer -sister’s got her work to dew, ’n’ so ’ve I.” - -This plain intimation produced no effect upon Samantha. She continued to -warm her hands, which were already the hue of a red apple with the heat, -and remarked: “No, she don’ want me. Annie said I might stay ’s long -’s I wanted to. She said she wanted to be left alone. She’s abaout the -wuss broke up girl _I_ ever sot eyes on. You ought to see the way _she_ -takes on, though. I bet the widder ain’t a succumstance to her. Ef you’d -seen what _I_ saw, ’n’ heern what _I_ heerd this afternoon, I guess -you’d think so tew.” - -The girl spoke calmly, with a satisfied conviction that nobody would -tell her to go home again in a hurry. - -“What was it?” came simultaneously from the kneading-board and the -churn. - -“Oh, I dunnao,--I ain’t much of a han’ to blab everythin’. A young -tadpole of a girl like me, yeh knaow, ain’t got no business----” - -“Come naow! _Don’t_ be a _fool_, S’manthy! Ef you’ve got anythin’ to -say, spit it aout!” - -Thus adjured by the commanding tones of Alvira, the girl trifled no -more, but related what she had seen, while hidden behind the thorns. She -had a talent for description, and made so much of Annie’s stony face -and strange behavior, that she succeeded in producing an effect of -mystification upon her listeners scarcely second to that under which -she, as an involuntary spectator, had labored. The success of her -recital was not lost upon Samantha, as she went on: - -“Et was after th’ undertaker’s waggin ’n’ th’ men--some gallus lookin’ -young fellers, f’m Tecumsey I guess, was amongst ’em--et was after -these’d all gone by, thet I heerd her talk. She kind o’ hid herself in -th’ bushes while they was a goin’ by, ’n’ stared at ’em like mad, -ez fur’s she c’d folly ’em. Then she bust aout--not a-cryin’ mind yeh, -fur she never shed a tear--but wringin’ her han’s ’n’ groanin’ ’n’ -actin’ ’s ef she was goin’ to faint. I c’d see her jest ez plain ’s I -kin see you stan’in’ there naow, ’n’ heer her, tew. All to onc’t she -up ’n’ said----” - -The young girl stopped here in the narrative abruptly, with a fine -disregard for the consuming interest with which her companions were -regarding her; she lifted her nose, and drew two or three leisured -sniffs. Then she bent down at the side of the stove and repeated them. - -“Ther’s somethin’ burnin’ in thet oven,” she said at last, confidently. - -“Et’s th’ barley. I knowed S’briny’d traipse off ’n’ leave it. She -allus does;” said Alvira, flinging open the oven door, and dragging out -with her apron a smoking pan of scorched grain. - -Through the dense, pungent smudge which temporarily filled the room, -Samantha was heard to remark with offensive emphasis: “We allus drink -genu-wine coffee over to M’tildy’s. She’s mean enough ’baout -some things, but she wouldn’t make us swell ourselves aout with no -barley-wash.” - -“’N’ sao do we here, tew--all but S’briny!” retorted Alvira, -indignantly. “She got use’ to drinkin’ it in war-times, when yeh -couldn’t git reel coffee fur love n’r money, jes’ ez all th’ other -farm-folks did. On’y she’s more contrary ’n’ th’ rest, ’n’ she -wouldn’t drink nothin’ else naow, not ef yeh poured it into her maouth -with a funnel. But go on ’th yer yarn!” - -Samantha had to cough a little, on account of the smoke, and then it -took her some moments to collect the thread of her narrative. But at -last even the spirit of Tantalus could invent no further delay, and she -proceeded: - -“Well, she didn’t say much, fer a fact, but they was business in ev’ry -word she did say. Fust she hollered aout--right aout, I tell yeh: ‘_Et’s -a wicked lie! She’s a bad, wicked woman!_ ’ Then she stopped fer -awhile ’n’ put her han’s up to her for’id--like this. Then she shuk -herself, ’n’ commenced to climb back over th’ stile, but she seemed to -think better of it, ’n’ started fer her own haouse, like’s ef she was -a walkin’ in her sleep, ’n’ a groanin’ to herself: ‘_Seth a murd’rer! -Seth a murd’rer!_’ Thet’s what I heerd!” - -The girl put both feet up on the stove hearth, and tilted her chair back -in conscious triumph. “Got ’n’ apple handy?” she inquired of Alvira, -carelessly, in the tone of one whose position in life was assured. - -To this strange recital, involving such terrible suggestions, there -succeeded a full minute of silence in the kitchen, broken only by the -ponderous clucking of the high wooden clock. Alvira and Melissa looked -at each other dumbly--each for once willing to forego the first word. - -“Well, what d’yeh say to _thet?_” finally asked Melissa. - -After some reflection, Alvira answered, “I sh’d say S’manthy was a -lyin’.” - -“S’elp me die, crisscross, I ain’t!” protested the girl at the stove: -“I’ve told it all, jest’s it happened, straight’s a string. Where’s yer -apples?” - -Alvira meditated again for a moment. Then she said to her subordinate: -“Go down ’n’ git that sister o’ yourn a Spitzenberg--’n’ bring up -some cider, yeh might’s well, too.” - -When Melissa had gone, Alvira went over to the ‘younger girl, and -gripped her sharply by the shoulder: “Look here, you, is what you’ve -be’n tellin’ us here honest? Don’t lie to _me!_” - -“Honest Injun? Alviry! ev’ry word!” - -Alvira returned to her dough, and slapped it savagely into a huge, -unnatural pancake. She maintained silence until Melissa had returned, -and not only supplied her sister’s wants, but poured out a cupful of -the new cider for herself, as a proof of her appreciation of the Lawton -family’s supremacy over the existing crisis. Then Alvira spoke: - -“I don’t ’tach th’ least ’mportance in th’ world to what S’manthy -heerd. Annie’s a school-teacher, ’n’ she’s be’n workin’ pritty -hard, ’n’ this thing’s kind o’ opset her--what with tendin’ to her -gran’mother, ’n’ then this teachin’, which is narvous, wearin’ kine o’ -work. Thet’s th’ trewth o’ th’ matter. _I_ kin un-derstan’ it. She was -jest aout of her senses. But other folks won’t understan’ it as I dew. -Once a hint gits flyin’ amongst outsiders, who knaows where it’ll stop? -Naow, girl ’n’ woman, I’ve be’n in this haouse twenty year ’n’ -more. I’m more a Fairchild than I’m anythin’ else. I remember th’ man in -there--layin’ dead in th’ parlor--when he was a youngster, comin’ home -f’m college; I remember Seth when he was a baby. I ain’t got no folks -of my own thet I keer a thaousandth part ‘s much abaout, nur owe a -thaousandth part ’s much tew, ez I dew this Fairchile fam’ly. _Well!_ -They’ve hed trouble enough, this las’ tew year, ‘thout havin’ any added -onto it by th’ tattlin’, gossipin’ tongues of outsiders. I ain’t goin’ -to _hev_ it! D’yeh understan’! Ef I heer s’ much’s a whisper of this yere -crazy school-teacher’s nonsense reported ‘raound, by th’ Lord above, -I’ll skin yeh both alive!” - -“Who’s _b’en_ a gossipin’?” asked Samantha, reproachfully. “I shouldn’t -never said a word, ef you hadn’t insisted, ’n’ called me a fool fur -holdin’ my tongue.” - -“I dunnao where you’ll gao to when you die, S’manthy,” said Alvira, -reflectively. “But nao, girls, trewly naow, this mustn’t be mentioned. -Yeh kin see with half ’n eye what a raow it’d stir up. Naow prommus -me, both o’ yeh, thet not a word of it shell pass yer lips. Yeh can see -fer yerself haow foolish it is! Ev’rybody knaows he driv off th’ raoad, -’n’ killed himself ’n’ th’ hosses by th’ fall. It’s ez plain ‘s th’ -nose on yer face. Still it’s jest sech cases as this thet people git -talkin’ abaout, once they’re sot goin’--so yeh _will_ promise me, won’t -yeh?” - -They promised. - -“Hon’r bright, ye’ll never say a word to nao livin’ soul?” - -They asseverated solemnly, honor bright, and Samantha had a doughnut as -well as another cup of cider. - -***** - -The tiresome butter came at last, and the dough passed into a higher -form of existence through the fiery ordeal of the oven; supper was laid -and silently eaten; two neighbors, volunteers for the night-watch with -the dead, came, and were ushered into the gloomy parlor; while apples, -cheese, doughnuts and a pitcher of cider were placed on the table -outside, for their refreshment in the small hours. Night fell upon the -farm. - -***** - -Melissa Lawton stole out-doors as soon as Alvira retired to her room, -and made her way through the darkness to the barns. As Albert had done -on the fatal previous evening, she opened the sliding door of the big -stable, and called up the stairs to Milton. There was no response, and -investigation showed that he was not in his room, although the lamp was -burning dimly. The girl stopped long enough to look over the familiar -coarse pictures on the walls and the shelf, and then crept down the -steep stairs again. - -As she groped her way through the blackness to the stable door she came -suddenly in contact with a person entering, and felt herself rudely -seized and pushed back at arms’ length. - -“Who’s here? What d’yeh want?” demanded a harsh voice, which seemed -despite its gruffness to betray great trepidation. - -“It’s me--M’lissy!” - -“Come along aout here into the light, so I kin see yeh. What a’ yeh -doin’ here, praowlin’ ’raoun’ ’n th’ dark, skeerin’ people fur?” - -The Lawton girl’s native assurance all came back to her as she -confronted Milton in the dim starlight outside--which was radiance by -contrast with the stable’s total darkness--and she grinned satirically -at him. - -“You’ve got a nerve on you like a maouse, I swaow! You trembled all -over when yeh tuk holt o’ me, in there. What was yeh skeert abaout? I -wouldn’t hurt yeh!” - -“I wa’n’t skeert,” the man replied, sullenly. “What was yeh after in -there?” - -“I was lookin’ fur you.” - -“What fur?” The tone was still uneasily suspicious. - -“I got somethin’ to tell yeh.” - -“Well?” - -“D’yeh knaow, I more’n half b’lieve this thing wa’n’t an accident at -all. What’d yeh say ’f it sh’d turn aout to be a murder?” - -Even in this faint light Melissa could see that Milton was much taken -aback by the suggestion. He thrust his hands into his pockets, pulled -them out again, shuffled his feet, stammered, and betrayed by other -signs general among rustics his surprise. - -“Pshaw--git aout!” he said at last; “what nonsense! Of caourse ’t was -’n accident. Didn’t th’ Cor’ner say sao? Daon’t ev’rybody knaow it?” - -“Annie Fairchile don’t say sao. _She_ don’t knaow it.” - -The girl went on to relate the substance of Samantha’s revelations, -adding unconsciously sundry embellishments which tended to throw a -clearer light upon Seth as the chief figure in the mystery. - -Milton listened with deep attentiveness. His slow, inefficient brain -worked hard to keep up with the recital, and assimilate its chief -points. When the girl had finished he still thought steadily on this -strange story, with its unforeseen, startling suggestions. Gradually two -items took shape in his mind as most important: that Annie believed Seth -to be the criminal, and hence would be estranged from him; and that if -by any unexpected means people came to suspect foul play, here were the -elements of a ready-made suspicion against Seth. The first of these -was very welcome; it would be time enough to think of the other if a -discovery were made. - -“What dew I think?” he said at last, in response to the girl’s repeated -inquiries. “I think thet sister o’ yourn lied, ’n’ I think yeh better -keep yer maouth, ’n’ her’n tew, pritty dum shet, ef yeh don’t want to -git into trouble.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXIX.--THE BOSS LOOKS INTO THE MATTER. - -COUSIN Seth--_There are reasons why I cannot come to the house again, -even to the funeral; and why I shall not see you again during your stay. -I think you will understand them. If you explain to Aunt Sabrina that -I am ill, it will not be a falsehood. I have been and am -suffering--terribly. But nobody can help me, save by leaving me to -myself. I am trying to forget, too, everything that was said when we -last talked together, and I shall succeed. Never fear, I shall succeed. -A._ - -It was this note, scrawled in a hand very unlike Miss Annie’s customary -prim, school-teacher’s writing, which Samantha had borne over from the -Warren house. Seth had studied it, perplexedly, for a long time on the -evening of its arrival. He ruminated now again upon it, as he walked -along the road toward Thessaly, the following forenoon. The temptation -to confide the thing to John, who had stayed over night with him at the -homestead, and now was walking silently by his side toward the village, -wavered in his mind. Perhaps John could assist him to comprehend it; but -then, it would be necessary to explain so much to him first. Finally the -arguments in favor of confession triumphed, and with a “Here, old man; -this is a letter from Annie. I want you to help me guess what it means,” - he made the plunge. - -John read the note carefully. “What was it you talked about on this -occasion she refers to, and when was it?” he asked. - -“It was night before last, _the_ night, and I asked her to marry me.” - -“And what was her answer?--I’ll tell you afterward how glad I am to hear -what you’ve just told me.” - -“Well, it wasn’t decisive--but she admitted that it made her very -happy.” - -“And you haven’t seen her since?” - -“No--or yes! I did. I met her just for a moment yesterday forenoon, as -I was starting out from the house after hearing--the _news_. We only -exchanged a word or two, though.” - -“Did she seem angry with you then?” - -“Not at all!” - -“Well, what can have happened since? Try and think! She has reasons, she -says, which she thinks you will understand. When a woman says she has -‘reasons’ she means that some mischief-maker has told her something -disagreeable. Now----” - -“Oh, my God! I see it now!” Seth stopped short in the road, and clenched -his fists. - -“Well, what is it?” - -“She went into the house, and saw Isabel!” Seth continued, as if talking -to himself. - -“What has that got to do with it?” - -Seth looked up at his brother with a blanching face, in which fright and -amazement blended. “What is that line of Congreve’s about Hell having no -fury like a woman scorned?” he asked mechanically. - -It was John’s turn to stare. Gradually a light began to spread in his -mind, and make things visible whose existence he had not suspected -before. “Well, you _are_ a simpleton!” he said. - -“Don’t I know it?” was the pained, contrite response. - -The brothers walked on a few yards in silence. Then John said “Of -course, you needn’t tell me any more of this than you want to--but at -least I can ask you--how _much_ of a fool have you made of yourself up -at the farm?” - -“That’s hard to say. Just now I’m inclined to think that I am the -champion ass of the world.” - -“Well, you’re displaying some sense _now_, anyway. What have you done?” - -“I haven’t done anything. That’s the foolish part of it all.” - -John stopped in turn, and looked his brother’s face attentively over. -“Go on, now,” he said, “and tell me what there is of it. There’s no use -in my butting my brains out against a stone wall, guessing at such an -inscrutable mess as this seems to be.” - -“It’s hard to tell--there isn’t anything specially _to_ tell. I simply -got sort of sentimental about Isabel, you know--she was lonely and -disappointed in life, and my coming to the farm was about the only -chance for company she got, and all that--and then I found the thing -might go too far and so I stopped it--and to clinch the thing, asked -Annie to marry me. That’s what there is of it.” - -“That’s good as far as it goes. Go on, youngster; out with the rest of -it!” - -“I tell you that _is_ all.” - -“Humbug! Annie never wrote this letter on the strength of such -philandering nonsense as that. You say Isabel must have told her -something. What _was_ that something? Do you know?” - -“Yes!” The answer was so full of despondent pain, that John’s sympathy -rose above his fraternal censariousness. - -“Come, my boy,” he said, “you’d better make a clean breast of it. It -won’t seem half so bad, once you’ve told me. And if I can help you, you -know I will.” - -“Well, I _will_ tell you, John. Night before last, Monday night, I had -hard words with Albert, up at the house. You know how he sent for me, -insisted on my coming, and what he wanted. Of course I could only say -no, and we quarreled. Toward the end we raised our voices, and Isabel, -who was upstairs, overheard us. Just then he began about me and her--it -seems he had noticed or heard something--and she, hearing her name, took -it for granted the whole quarrel was about her. I went upstairs, and -presently he drove out of the yard with the grays. I couldn’t sleep, I -was so agitated by the idea of our rupture, and I went out to walk it -off. It was while I was out that I met Annie and had the talk I have -told you about. Then I came home, went to bed, and slept till after -ten--long after everybody else had heard the news. I heard of it first -from Isabel, and she--she----” - -He came to an abrupt halt. The duty of saying nothing which should -incriminate the woman rose before him, and fettered his tongue. - -“And she--what?” asked John. - -“Well, she somehow got the idea that I had followed Albert out -and--and--was responsible for his death! _Now_. you have it all!” - -There was a long silence. They were nearing the four corners, and -walking slowly. Finally John, with his eyes on the ground, said: “And so -that’s what she has told Annie, you think?” - -“That’s the only way I can explain the note.” - -“But Annie couldn’t possibly believe such a thing as that!” - -“No--but there’s an explanation for that too. Come to think of it, I -must have said a lot of things to her, that night, which seem now to her -to fit in with this awful theory. Poor girl! I don’t blame her.” - -John answered, after a pause, “There’s no use of my saying anything to -show you what a situation you are in, or to scold you for it. I suppose -you realize it fully enough. What’s more to the purpose, we must -consider what is to be done. It is safe enough to assume that if Isabel -thinks this and has said it to one person, either some one else will -think it, or she will hint about it to another. The thing is too -terrible to have even one person, even if she were silent as the grave, -think about it. The obvious thing, I should think, would be to have a -postmortem examination.” - -“I thought they always had them at inquests.” - -“No, the Coroner can dispense with one if he and the jury agree that it -isn’t necessary. Timms sent me word that he had decided to dispense -with one, in this case, ‘out of consideration for the feelings of the -family.’ That means, of course, that he wants the _Banner_ to help -re-elect him next year. But now out of ‘consideration for the family’ -we’ll have to have one. Don’t be so down in the mouth about it, boy; it -will all come right, never fear!” - -The brothers had reached the solitary building at the corners--a low, -dingy store, with its sloping roof turned to the road, and a broad -platform and steps stretching along its entire front. A horse and vacant -buggy stood at the hitching-post. John proposed to go in and get some -cigars, if Turner had any fit to smoke. - -Their surprise was great at meeting on the steps Mr. Beekman of Jay -County, who was coming out. After terse salutations had been exchanged, -Beekman said: - -“Lucky you fellows come daown jest ez yeh did. I come over this mornin’ -a-purpose to see yeh, ’n’ yit I didn’t quite like to go up to th’ -farm. I’ve got ever so many things I want to ask yeh, ’n’ say to yeh.” - He led the way over to the farther end of the steps, and, following his -example of sitting down on the platform, they waited curiously for him -to proceed: - -“Fust of all, I was daown to Tecumsy last night, ’n’ saw Workman. He -said you”--turning to Seth--“needn’t worry yerself ’baout comin’ back -till yeh was ready. They kin keep th’ paper runnin’ for a week or sao, -while you stay up here ’n’ dew yer duty like a Christian.” - -Seth said he was much obliged, and then asked how it happened that -Beekman had posted off to Tecumseh--over seventy miles--and returned so -soon. - -“Well, there was some things I wanted to see abaout daown there, ’n’ -more thet I’m interested in keepin’ an eye on up here. So I kind o’ -humped myself.” - -“I’m glad to see you taking such an interest in Ansdell’s campaign,” - said John. - -Mr. Beekman’s gaunt visage relaxed for a second: “So yeh calc’late -_thet’s_ what I’m buzzin’ ’raoun’ th’ State fur, do yeh? Yeh never’s -more mistaken in yer life. I’ve heerd reports circ’latin’ ’raoun’ thet -ther’d be an election a fortni’t or so from naow, ’n’ thet Ansdell -’n’ I was concerned in it, but yeh can’t prove it by _us_. We ain’t s’ -much as give a thought to politics sence th’ Convention ended. _We’ve_ -got somethin’ else to occupy aour minds with b’sides politics. I got -a telegraph dispatch from him, sent from New York this mornin’, thet I -want to talk to yeh ’baout presently, but fust----” - -“Ansdell in New York?” asked Seth, all curiosity-now. - -“Yes, he went on daown, while I got off at Te-cumsy, ’n’ I sh’d jedge -from his telegraph thet he’d be’n on the go some sence he got there. But -what I want to ask yeh ’baout is this: Do yeh knaow haow much money -yer brother hed on him night ‘fore last, when he was--when he met his -death?” - -The brothers looked at each other, then at, the speaker, “No,” answered -Seth, finally. “We haven’t the least idea. Why do you ask?” - -“I’ll come to that bimeby. Naow next, do you knaow where he was th’ day -b’fore th’ Convention?--thet is, Monday.” - -“Yes, I can tell you that. He was in New York. He only got back Monday -evening.” - -“Pre-cisely. Well, naow, do yeh knaow what he went there for?” - -“No. Something connected with politics, I suppose, but I can’t say for -certain. He had business there very often, you know.” - -“Yes, I knaow. But he hed very special business this last time. Naow -look at this telegram.” - -The two took the oblong sheet, and read: - -“_New York--Oct. 21. 942 A.M. Unexpectedly easy sailing. Found clue to -money almost without looking. Fancy now must been sixteen instead ten. -Hope return to-night. Ansdell_.” - -“Well, still I am in the dark,” John said, after reading and re-reading -the dispatch. “What is it all about? I suppose you understand it.” - -“I’m beginnin’ to see a leetle ways threw th’ millstone, I think, -myself,” replied Beekman. “But it’s all so uncert’n yit, I don’t want to -say nothin’ thet I can’t back up later on.” - -Seth too had been busily pondering the dispatch, and he said now, with -a flushing face: “_I_ know what you think! You and Ansdell have got an -idea there was foul play!” - -“Well, yes, it ain’t much more’n an idee, _yit_;” assented Beekman. - -“What do you base your idea on?” demanded John, full of a nameless, -growing fright lest there _might_ be something further which Seth’s -confession had not revealed. - -“Jest you wait one day more,” said the Boss of Jay County, grimly, “one -day more ’ll dew. Then I miss my guess ef we ain’t in shape to tell -yeh. Fust of all, there’s got to be a post-mortem.” - -John’s impulse was to say that he and Seth had already agreed upon this, -but a second thought checked his tongue. - -“’N’ it’ll hev to be on th’ quiet. Everything depends on thet--on -keepin’ it dark. There’s some folks might get skeered, ’n’ complicate -things, ef it ain’t kep’ mum. ’N’ thet’s what I wanted to ask yeh -’baout. I’ve thought of Dr. Bacon, over at Thessaly, ’n’ Dr. Pierce -daown at the Springs. They’re both good men, ’n’ got level heads on -’em. What d’yeh say to them?” - -“I’ve no objection to them in the world, but the Coroner----” - -“Oh, I know ’bout him. He’s th’ blamedest fool in th’ caounty. Over -in Jay we wouldn’t elect sech a dumb-head to be hog-reeve. But you ’n’ -Ansdell kin fix it with him to-morrow, ’n’ I’ll drive to-day ’n’ see -both doctors, ’n’ put ’em straight. ’N’ naow yeh must prommus me, -both of yeh, thet yeh won’t breathe a word of this to any livin’ soul.” - -They promised, and he climbed into his buggy, and gathered up the reins. -“Oh, there’s one thing more,” he said, on reflection. “P’raps you wonder -why I’m takin’ so much on myself. I’ll tell yeh bimeby. I’ve got my -reasons. I’m mixed up in it, more’n you’d think.” - -He turned about, and drove off briskly toward Thessaly. The brothers -stood in perplexed silence by the roadside for some minutes. There was -surely enough to think about. - -At last, with a frank gesture, John stretched his hand out to Seth: - -“Old boy,” he said, “I don’t know how this thing is coming out, but -we’ll see it through together. You go down to the office and wait for -me. You might do some things to fill up the paper this week if you’ve -got nerve enough. I’m going back to the farm.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXX.--JOHN’S DELICATE MISSION. - -While Seth tried to divert his thoughts at the _Banner_ office by going -over the freshly-arrived batch of morning dailies, and fastening his -attention upon their political editorials and reports of speeches -instead of their displayed and minute reports of the sensational tragedy -in Tallman’s ravine--John Fairchild retraced his steps toward the -farm. He had a definite purpose in his mind--to confront and silence -Isabel--and he strove hard as he went along to plan how this should be -done, and what he should say. - -He felt that his dominant emotion was wrath against this sister-in-law -of his, and he said to himself as he strode along that he had never -liked her. He could recall the summer a dozen years before when she came -to the farm as a visiting cousin. He had been civil to her then, even -companionable, for she was bright, spirited, in a word good company, -but it seemed to him now that even then he had suspected the treachery -ingrained in her nature--that he had been instinctively repelled by -those hateful qualities, dormant in her girlhood, which were later to -plot infidelity to one of his brothers, and lure into trouble, shame, -perhaps even crime, the other. - -This latter phase of her work was peculiarly abominable in John’s eyes. -He was not going to get up any special indignation on the first count -of the indictment; a bachelor of nearly forty who marries a sentimental -young girl does it at his own risk, John felt, and Albert had invited -just this sort of thing by exiling her to a farm, and forcing her -romantic mind to feed on itself. But that she should have selected -Seth--her own husband’s brother, the Benjamin of the flock, a veritable -child in such matters--to practise her arts upon, was grievously -unpardonable. To be sure, Seth ought to have had more sense. But then -John, habitually thinking of him as “the youngster,” thought he could -see how he had been led on, step by step, never realizing the vicious -tendency of it all, until he had all at once found himself on the brink -of a swift descent. Then, to do the boy justice, he seemed to have -stopped short, turned his back upon the siren, and for the sake of -further security, irrevocably committed himself to Annie. He had been -sadly weak in the earlier stages of the affair, no doubt; but this last -course appeared manly and sensible--and wholly incompatible, too, -with any idea of malice or crime on Seth’s part. What fault there was -belonged-to the woman, and she should be told so, too, straight and -sharp. - -Thus John’s thoughts ran as he entered the house, and bade the Lawton -girl tell her mistress he wished to speak with her. He had not -seen Isabel since her husband’s death--she having kept her room -constantly--nor for a long time previous. They had, indeed, scarcely met -more than half-a-dozen times since she came to live at the homestead, -and then with considerable formality on both sides. As he stood by the -stove in the living-room, awaiting her coming, he knitted his brows and -framed some curt, terse words of address. - -She entered, clad in the same black and dark-gray wrapper which his -memory associated with his mother’s funeral, and which gave the effect -of height and slender dignity to her figure. Her face was pale and -pathetic in expression, and the ghost of a smile which flitted in -greeting over it for a second accentuated its stamp of suffering. She -offered him her hand, and said, in a low mournful voice: - -“It was good of you to come to me, John. I have been expecting, hoping -you would. Won’t you take off your coat and sit down?” - -He had shaken hands with her, loosened his overcoat and taken a seat -before he had time to reflect that he ought to have ignored her greeting -and her proffered hand. The sharp words, too, that he had arranged in -his mind seemed too brusque now to utter to a weak, lone woman who was -so evidently suffering. - -“Yes,” he said, “I thought I ought to talk things over with you. You’ve -got nobody else.” - -“No--not a soul! I couldn’t be more wholly alone if I were at the North -Pole, it has seemed to me this last day. I have eaten nothing; I haven’t -slept an hour. So you must make allowances for me,” she said, with a -weak shadow of a smile, “if I seem nervous or incoherent. My mind goes -all astray, sometimes now, and I seem unequal to the task of controlling -it.” - -He had thought at last of a question which might introduce the desired -subject without wounding her feelings. “Do you happen to know,” he -asked, gently, “whether Albert brought a large sum of money with him -from New York Monday?” - -“I haven’t the least idea, I am sure. In fact, I only saw him for a -moment after his return. And besides, you know, he never told me a -syllable about his business arrangements. No one could be in more -complete ignorance of his affairs than I have always been.” There was -the tone of resigned regret in her voice which a wife might rightly use. -“I do indeed--there is one exception--know about his will. He told me -that, not by way of confidence, but because it came out--in some words -we once had about property of mine in New York. I might as well tell -you. The will gives everything except my third to you and your -aunt and--your brother. _He_ has the lion’s share. Don’t think I am -complaining, John. I wouldn’t have had it altered if I could. I am more -than independent, you know, apart from right of dower. If I had had the -making of the will, it would have been just the same. It is only right -that his money should go to his family.” - -John reflected for some moments before he answered. “I am almost sorry -you told me,” he said then. “It makes me wretched and ashamed to think -of the injustice I have done him in my mind. It sounds brutal, in the -light of what you have told me,--but I am going to confess it to you--I -suspected all along that he intended to come some game over us about -the farm; and now, instead----. Oh, it’s _too_ bad. I wish he could -hear me!” John continued, with a glance toward the folding doors of -the parlor, once more the chamber of death. “I wish he could know how I -despise myself for having wronged him in my mind.” - -Isabel said nothing, but her responsive eyes seemed to express -appreciation and sympathy. John lost all sense of wrath toward her as he -went on: - -“Yes, from the very start we wronged him. We didn’t understand him. -He was different from us--he was a man of the world, and we were -countrymen, and we thought all the while that he held himself outside -the family. I never gave him credit for good motives when he came to the -farm; neither did Seth. We both thought he was playing his own game, for -himself, and nobody else. And here, by George! he turns out to have had -more brotherly feeling, more family feeling, than we ever had. It makes -me miserable to think of it. It’ll break Seth’s heart, too; he’ll always -torture himself with the thought that the last time he ever saw Albert -alive they parted in anger.” - -The words were out before he realized their significance. He stopped -short, and felt himself changing color as he looked at her to see -whether she too was thinking about that terrible night. - -She made a motion as if to rise from her chair; then dropped back again -and returned his inquiring glance with a fixed, intent look. - -“So you know something about _that_,” she said. - -“Did Seth tell you?” - -“Yes!” he answered, falteringly. “Seth told me. We had a long talk this -forenoon. I think he told me about every thing there was to tell. In -fact, that is mostly why I’ve come back now to see you.” - -She was silent, but her eyes seemed to John to be saying disagreeable -things. - -He began again to realize that it was his duty to be indignant in -attitude and peremptory in tone, but he was also conscious of feeling -very sorry for Isabel. The village editor often described himself, and -was uniformly characterized by others, as being “no hand for women.” His -own brief career as a married man--it seemed almost a dream now, and -a very painful dream, with a short period of great happiness, then a -slightly longer season of illness, poverty, debt, despair, and then the -rayless gloom of death in his scarcely established home--had taught him -next to nothing of the sex, and inclined him against learning more. -The impressions of womankind which clustered about the memories of -his girl-wife were, however, all in the direction of gentleness and -softness. As he reflected, it grew increasingly difficult for him to put -on a harsh demeanor toward his sister-in-law. She might deserve it well -enough, but it was not in his heart to speak ugly words to a pretty and -troubled woman at such a time. He stumbled on: - -“Yes, the youngster is fearfully cut up about the whole thing, and -he _had_ to talk to somebody. He’s always been used to telling me -everything. He is not a tattler, though, and I’m bound to say he only -told me because I questioned him, and insisted on his making a clean -breast of it. Then I sent him down to the office, and I came back here, -thinking it might be best for all concerned to have a frank talk with -you about it.” - -She had a course mapped out now in her mind. “I am sure that your -motives are good, John,” she said, “and that you will be fair and -candid. I confess I don’t see what there is to be gained, specially, but -you no doubt know best. What is it you wanted to talk over?” - -“Well, it isn’t easy to state it, off hand. Perhaps I might as well -begin by speaking of motives, as you did. I own that when I came in I -wasn’t so sure that your motives were good, as you say you are about -mine.” - -“That is candid, at all events.” - -“I want to be perfectly open and above-board with you, Isabel. You seem -to have got into your head yesterday--I won’t say you have it now--some -horrible and ridiculously wild suspicion of Seth----” - -“I know what you mean,” she interposed, with nervous haste. “You -mustn’t think of that at all! You mustn’t blame me for it! I was simply -distracted--mad--out of my senses. I don’t know _what_ awful thing my -fancy didn’t conjure up. Don’t pay any attention to that!” - -“But the mischief of it is that you seem to have spoken of this -to--to somebody else. It would have been unimportant otherwise. _This_ -complicates it badly. Don’t you see it does?” - -She made no answer, and kept her eyes on the figures in the carpet. - -“Don’t you see it does?” he repeated. - -“How do you know that I spoke of it to anybody?” she asked, after a -pause, and still with downcast eyes. - -“That has nothing to do with it, Isabel. It’s true, isn’t it, that you -did speak of it?” - -To his surprise and embarrassment she began weeping, and hid her face -in her handkerchief. He sat mutely watching her, wishing that she -would stop, and perplexed at encountering on the very threshold of -his inquiries and argument this un-meetable demonstration of a woman’s -resources. - -She presently sobbed out, from behind the perfumed cambric: “You _can’t_ -hold me accountable for what I did yesterday, or what I said! I was -beside myself! I scarcely know what I thought, or what I said! I acted -like a crazy woman--and felt like one, too! It is easy enough for you to -be cool and collected about the thing. You are a _man!_” - -“Yes, I know, Isabel,” he said, kindly, “I understand all that, and I -can make all the allowances in the world for you, in your position. But -still that doesn’t alter the fact that the thing has been said, and the -harm done. To be sure, I suppose, the harm will be only temporary, but -as it stands it affects the prospects of more than one person--of two -persons, in fact, near to us--very materially. You know what I mean?” - -“Yes.” - -“Well, what can be done to remedy it? That is the question. I am not -going to blame you, but still the fault _was_ yours, and the steps to -set it right ought to be yours, too, oughtn’t they?” - -“What do you mean?” She looked up now, forgetting her tears. - -“I am not quite sure what I do mean. I haven’t thought over details. -There is simply a given situation, with the question how to get out of -it, and the onus of action on you. I want you to help me think what the -best way will be.” - -“How logically you state it! Suppose I disavowed the whole thing, -ignored it, refused to do anything or say anything. What then?” - -“I won’t consider that at all. You couldn’t be so unfair as that--so -ungenerous.” - -“Unfair! Ungenerous!” Isabel rose to her full height, and frowned down -at her brother-in-law, without a trace of tears in her eyes. “Fine -fairness, distinguished generosity, have been shown to _me_, haven’t -they! There has been so much delicacy in regarding _my_ feelings! I -ought to leap at the opportunity of smoothing over matters between Mr. -Seth and his lady-love. My husband’s awful death, my position here, -alone in the world, the shock and suffering of it all--these are mere -trifles compared with the importance of seeing that their love affairs -are uninterrupted! Perhaps I might get a chance at the funeral to have -them kiss and make up--or would you prefer me to leave my dead now and -go----” - -“_Your_ dead!” - -The brother had risen also, and taken his hat. The exclamation carried -in its tone all the bitterness with which his mind had stored itself on -his walk back to the farm. Pity for the woman, perhaps something too of -innate susceptibility to beauty and grace, had restrained and covered up -this bitterness, so that he had supposed it gone. It flamed forth now, -in wrathful satire. - -As she put her handkerchief up again to her eyes, as a token of more -tears, he went on, in a cold kind of excitement: - -“You talk very cleverly--more so than any other woman I ever knew. -But you should pick your strong phrases with more discrimination. For -instance, when you want to produce a really striking effect upon me, it -is unwise to use an expression which recalls to me at once things that -you would rather I didn’t think about. I wouldn’t say ‘_my_ dead ’ if -I were you, especially when you are talking to his brother. It may do -for outsiders, but here in the family it is a bad waste of words.” - -Her only answer was a gust of sobs. They failed to move him and he went -on: - -“I don’t know that I have any means of forcing you to do anything, or -say anything, against your will. If you take that position, perhaps -it won’t be necessary. The wicked, ridiculous thing you thought, or -pretended to think, and said to that poor girl, can be straightened out -very easily. We can’t prevent the pain it has already caused, but we can -stop its causing more. But if you lisp it to another human being--well, -I don’t know what to threaten you with. It isn’t easy to guess what -considerations will weigh with a woman who has your ideas of wifely -duty, and of her responsibilities towards young and foolish members of -her husband’s family, and----” - -“How _can_ you be so cruel, so mean, John? What right have you to talk -to me like that? Everybody attacks me like an enemy. You never have been -decent to me since I was married. Your whole family has treated me like -an outsider, almost a criminal, since I came here. Your old cat of an -aunt never looked at me except to wish me evil. Your brother--yes, if he -could hear me now, from where he lies, I would say it!--never was fond -of me, never tried to make a companion of me, never treated me as a wife -should be treated, or even as his intellectual equal. _You_ avoided me -as if I were poison. The neighborhood disliked me, gossiped about me, -and I hated them. Only one there was of you all who was pleasant with -me, and good to me--and now that you have turned him against me, too, -you come and insult me because I was pleased and grateful for his -friendship. That is _manly_ isn’t it?” - -John had listened to the beginning of this impassioned speech with -a callous heart. But he was a just man, and he had in almost unmeted -degree that habit of mind which welcomes statements of both sides of a -controversy. He might have been a wealthier man, and the owner of a more -thriving paper, if he had had more of the partisan spirit. But to -be strictly fair was the rule of his being. He would not criticise -political opponents for doing things which in his heart he approved, -and, on the same principle he would not condemn unheard even this woman, -if she had any justification. As she went on, he began to feel that -there was considerable force in her argument. She certainly had been -most disagreeably situated, connubially and socially, and her definition -of the Seth episode was plausible, if that were all there was of it. He -softened perceptibly in tone as he answered: - -“No, I am sorry if you think I wanted to insult you. Perhaps I did speak -too strongly. I apologize for it. But I feel very earnestly on this -subject. I’ve always been a sort of father and big brother combined -to Seth, and the idea of his getting into a mess, or doing foolish or -discreditable things, cuts me to the quick. You can see my position in -the matter. I am anxious not to hurt your feelings, but my first duty is -to him. Perhaps the two need not come into conflict. After all, no real -harm has been done, I fancy, except in this one case of repeating your -hysterical suspicion of him. _That_ was inexcusable; can’t you _see_ -that it was? I’m sure that if you’ll think it over calmly, you’ll be -disposed to do what is fair and right. I’m not blaming you particularly -for the other thing. You might have remembered that you were older than -Seth, to be sure, but then I realize that you were not at all pleasantly -placed----” - -“Never mind what you realize! We won’t discuss that at all. There is -nothing to discuss. You and your aunt seem bound to make yourselves -ridiculous about me. I won’t demean myself by answering--or no! I _will_ -say this much to you. There has never a word passed between Seth and me -that every soul of you might not have heard, and welcome. He was simply -pleasant and friendly to me--and I was grateful to him and fond of him, -as I might be of a brother. Where was the harm? In no decent state of -society would any one ever have dreamed of suspecting wrong. But -_here_--why, people live and breathe suspicion! It is the breath of -their nostrils.” - -“I thought you used to correspond,” John said, tentatively. - -“Correspond! There it is again! What of it, I should like to know? -Why shouldn’t my cousin, my brother, write to me? I have all the -letters;--you may see them every one. They gave me a great deal of -pleasure. They represented my sole point of contact with civilization, -with fine feelings and pretty thoughts. But you can go over them all, if -you like. You won’t find a single whisper of proof of your aunt’s mean -suspicion. I am almost ashamed of myself for having stooped to defend -myself--but it is just as well to let you know the truth.” - -“Yes!” John breathed a sigh which was not altogether of relief, but -carried a fair admixture of bewilderment. This ingenious explanation -did not at all points tally with the inferences drawn from Seth’s -confession. Perhaps it was true enough in the letter, but he felt that -as a revelation of the spirit it left much to be desired. He added: - -“Well, I am sorry if I misjudged you. Probably I did. However, even if -Seth had come near getting into a scrape, he’s safe out of it now.” - -This complaisant conclusion nettled-the woman. She went on, as if her -explanation had not been interrupted: - -“Of course, we had what you might call a community of grievance to talk -about, and draw us together. It wouldn’t be fitting in me to say more -now than that my life here was not congenial: you won’t mind my -saying _that_ much? I had dreamed of a very different kind of married -existence. Seth, too, had his trouble. In his boyhood, when it seemed -assured that he was to remain the farmer of the family, his mother had -planned a marriage for him. It isn’t for me to say a word against Annie. -She is a good enough girl, in her way. But when Seth got out of his -chrysalis, and learned what there really was in him, the thought that he -was committed in a sense to marrying a farm girl made him very gloomy. -He used to talk with me about it, not saying anything against Annie, -mind you, but----” - -“That’ll do!” said John, curtly. “We won’t go into that. Evidently there -was no limit to Seth’s asininity. Let that pass. Whatever he said, or -didn’t say, during his vealy period, he’s going to marry Annie now. -There never was a time, and I fear there never will be one, when I would -not call her his superior. The question is: Are you going to retract -before her the false, cruel things you have said?” - -“I am going upstairs again,” she said. “I think I will lie down awhile,” - and moved towards the stair-door. - -The brother looked at her, amazed, pained, indignant. She had her hand -on the latch by the time his emotions found words: - -“I’ve wasted my time in pitying you. God forbid that any of our family, -young or old, should ever fall in with such a woman as you are again!” - He pulled on his hat and left the house. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXI.--MILTON’S ASPIRATIONS. - -The lamps were lighted in the little partitioned-off square which -served as the editorial room of the _Banner_ when John returned. He -found Seth weakly striving to write something for the editorial page, -and in substance laid the situation before him. He was not feeling very -amiably toward his young brother at the moment, and he spoke with cold -distinctness. The tone was lost upon Seth, who said wearily: - -“I don’t see that it makes much difference--her refusing. What good -would it have done, if she _had_ gone to Annie? She could only tell her -that she had abandoned such and such ideas. That isn’t what counts. The -fact of importance is that she ever entertained them, that they ever -existed. To my notion, there’s nothing to do but to wait and see what -comes of Beekman’s suspicions. What do you think of them, anyway? I have -been trying to imagine what he is aiming at, but it puzzles me? What do -you think?” - -“To tell the truth, I haven’t been thinking of that. My mind has been -occupied with the female aspects of the thing. I’m not impatient. -Evidently Beekman and Ansdell think they have got hold of something. -They are not the men to go off on a wild-goose chase. Very good: I can -wait until they are ready to explain. But what I can’t wait for--or bear -to think about--is poor Annie, suffering as she must be suffering to -have written that letter.” - -“Yes, I’ve thought of that, too, but I’m helpless. I can’t think of -anything: I can’t do anything.” - -“You don’t seem to be of much use, for a fact,” mused the brother. “I’ll -tell you what I’ll do, if you think best. To-morrow afternoon, after -I’ve seen Ansdell, or before that if he doesn’t come, I will go over and -see Annie myself. I can go over to the school-house by the back -road, and walk home with her. Perhaps by that time, too, I shall have -something tangible to explain to her. Until then, I suppose she must -continue in suspense. It is the penance she ought to do, I dare say--” - the brother added this in mildly sarcastic rebuke--“for the luxury of -being in love with such a transcendant genius as you are.” - -***** - -Something like an hour before this, Annie had dismissed her classes and -locked up the school-house for the night. As she did so, she mentally -wondered if she should ever have the strength to walk home. - -The day had been one long-drawn out torture from its first waking -moments--indeed there seemed to have been nothing but anguish since her -interview with Isabel the previous day, not even the oblivion of sleep. -Her impulse, and her grandmother’s advice, had been to remain at home; -but she had already left the school unopened on the fatal Tuesday, in -the shock of the news of Albert’s death: to absent herself a second day -might prejudice the trustees against her. Besides, the occupation might -serve to divert her thoughts. - -Perhaps the trustees were satisfied, she said to herself now, locking -the door, but there certainly had been no relief in the day’s labor. The -little children had been unwontedly stupid and trying; the older boys, -some of them almost of her own age, had never before seemed so unruly -and loutishly impertinent. Even these experiences alone would have -availed to discourage her; as it was they added the stinging of insects -to her great heartache. With some organizations, the lesser pain -nullifies the other. She seemed to have a capacity for suffering, now, -which took in, and made the most of, every element of agony, great and -small. She turned from the rusty, squat little old building and began -her journey homeward, with hanging head and a deadly sense of weakness, -physical and spiritual, crushing her whole being. - -Milton Squires had been watching for her appearance for some time, from -a sheltering ridge of berry-bushes and wall beyond the school, and -he hurried now to overtake her, clumsily professing surprise at the -meeting. - -“I jes happened up this way,” he said, “Dunnao _when_ I be’n up here on -this road b’fore. Never dreampt o’ seein’ yeou.” - -She made answer of some sort, as unintelligible and meaningless to -herself as to him. She did not know whether it was a relief or otherwise -that he was evidently going to walk home with her. Perhaps, if she let -him do all the talking, the companionship would help her to get over the -ordeal of the return less miserably. But she could not, and she would -not, talk. - -“I kind o’ thought mebbe you’d shet up schewl fer a week ’r sao,” he -proceeded, ingratiatingly, “but then agin I said to m’self ‘no siree, -she ain’t thet kine of a gal. Ef she’s got any work to dew, she jes’ -does it, rain ’r shine’. Thet’s what I said. Pooty bad business, -wa’n’t it, this death of yer cousin?” - -“Dreadful!” she murmured, wishing he would talk of something else. - -“Yes, sir, it’s about’s bad’s they make ’em. Some queer things -’baout it tew. I s’pose yeh ain’t heerd no gossup ’baout it, hev -yeh?” - -“No,” she whispered with a sinking heart; a real effort was needed to -speak the other words: “What gossip? Is there gossip?” - -“Dunnao’s yeh kin call it real gossup. P’raps nobuddy else won’t -’spicion nothin’. But to me they’s some things ’baout it thet -looks darned cur’ous. Of caourse, it ain’t none o’ my business to blab -’baout the thing.” - -“No, of course.” - -These little words, spoken falteringly, confirmed all that Milton had -wished to learn the truth about. Over night a stupendous scheme had -budded, unfolded, blossomed in his mind. Originally his primitive -intellect had gone no further than the simple idea of committing -homicide under circumstances which would inevitably point to an -accident. The plan was clever in its very nakedness. But through some -row among the women, probably out of jealousy, the hint of murder had -been raised, and coupled with Seth’s name. If this hint ripened into a -suspicion and an inquiry, a new situation would be created, but Milton -could not see any peril in it for him, for Seth would obviously be -involved. But it would be better if no questions of murder were raised -at all, and matters were allowed to stand. This would not only -place Milton’s security beyond peradventure, but it would give him a -tremendous grip upon Annie. It was in this direction that his mind -had been working steadily since he heard of Annie’s suspicions. The -opportunity seemed to have come for placing the cap-stone of acquisition -upon the edifice of desire he had so long and patiently been rearing. - -As for the poor girl, she had reasoned herself out of the suspicion of -Seth’s guilt a thousand times, only to find herself hopelessly relapsing -into the quagmire. Milton’s hints came with cruel force to drag her back -now, this time lower than ever. Even he seemed to know of it, but he -proposed to maintain silence. Of course, he _must_ be induced to keep -silent. Oh! the agony of her thoughts! - -“You’n’ Seth was allus kine o’ frenly,” he proceeded. “Way back f’m -th’ time yeh was boys ’n’ gals.” - -“Yes, we always were.” - -“’N’ they used to say, daown to th’ corners, that yeou two was baoun’ -to make a match of it.” - -“There wasn’t anything in that at all!” She spoke decisively, almost -peremptorily. - -“Oh, they wa’n’t, ay?” There was evident jubilation in his tone. -“Never was nothin’ in that talk, ay?” - -“No, nothing.” - -The pair walked along on the side of the descending road silently for -some moments. A farmer passed them, hauling a load of pumpkins up -the hill, and exchanged a nod of salutation with Milton. This farmer -remarked at his supper-table an hour later, to his wife: “I’d bet a yoke -o’ oxen thet Milton Squires is a’makin’ up to the schewl-teacher. I seed -’em walkin’ togither daown th’ hill to-night, ’n’ he was a lookin’ -at her like a bear at a sap-trough. It fairly made me grit my teeth to -see him, with his broadcloth cloze, ’n’ his watch-chain, ’n’ his -on-gainly ways.” To which his helpmeet acidulously responded: “Well, I -dunnao’s she c’d dew much better. She’s gittin’ pooty well along, ’n’ -fer all his ongainly ways, I don’t see but what he comes on, ‘baout’s -well’s some o’ them thet runs him daown. A gal can’t jedge much by a -man’s ways haow he’ll turn aout afterwards. _I_ thought _I’d_ got a -prize.” Whereupon the honest yeoman chose silence as the better part. - -The red sun was hanging in a purplish haze over the edge of the hill as -the two descended, and the leaves from Farmer Perkins’s maples rustled -softly under their feet. Milton drew near his subject: - -“I’ve be’n gittin’ on in th’ world sence yeou fust knew me, hain’t I?” - -“Yes, everybody says so.” - -“’N’ yit everybody don’t knaow half of it. I ain’t no han’ to tell all -I knaow. Ef some folks c’d guess th’ speckle-ations I be’n in, ‘n’ th’ -cash I’ve got aout in mor’giges ’n’ sao on, it’d make ’em open their -eyes. It’s th’ still saow thet gits th’ swill, as my mother use’ to say, -’n’ I’ve be’n still enough abaout it, I guess.” - -His coarse chuckle jarred on the girl’s nerves, but the importance of -placating him was uppermost in her mind, and she answered, as pleasantly -as she could: - -“I’m sure I’m glad, Milton. You have worked hard all your life, and you -deserve it.” - -“Yeh _air_ glad, reely naow?” - -“Why yes! Why shouldn’t I be? It always pleases me to hear of people’s -prosperity.” - -“But me purtic’ly?” he persisted, earnestly. - -“Oh, yes,” she replied, absent-mindedly. Then the odd nature of -the question occurred to her, but she was too distrait to think -consecutively, and she added no comment to her answer. - -“Well, it eases me to hear yeh say thet,” he went on, with awkward -deliberation, “fer they’s somethin’ I’ve be’n wantin’ to say to yeh fer -a long time. I don’t s’paose you reelize haow well off I am?” She did -not answer. Her mind seemed to refuse to act, and she heard only the -sound of his words. He took her reply for granted and continued: - -“I c’d eena’most buy up thet farm there”--pointing over to the Fairchild -acres on the slope, now within sight--“’n’ I ain’t so all-fired sure -yit thet I won’t, nuther! But what’s th’ good o’ money, on-less yeh kin -git what yeh want with it, ay?” - -The impulse of her soul-weariness was to let this aimless question pass -like the other, without reply. But she was reminded of the importance of -being pleasant to this tedious man, and so answered, entirely at random: - -“What is it you want, Milton?” - -“I dunnao--I’m kind o’ feared o’ puttin’ my foot in it; yeh won’t be mad -ef I tell yeh?” - -“Why no, of course not. What is it?” - -“Well, then,” he blurted out, “I want _yeou!_” The girl looked dumbly at -him, at first not realizing at all the meaning of his words, then held -as in a vise between the disposition to reply to him as he deserved -and the danger, the terrible danger, of angering him. There fluttered -through her senses, too, a mad kind of yearning to shriek with -laughter--born of the hysterical state of her long-oppressed nerves. She -eventually neither rebuked nor laughed, but said vacuously: - -“Want _me?_” - -“Ef yeou’ll marry me, I’ll make one o’ th’ fust ladies o’ Dearb’rn -Caounty aout o’ yeh. Yeh need never lay yer finger to a stitch o’ work -agin, no more’n Is’bel did, daown yander.” He spoke eagerly, with more -emotion in his strident voice than she had ever heard there before. - -The difficulty of her position crushed her courage. Of course she must -say no, but how do it without affronting him? The idea of reasoning him -gently out of the preposterous wish came to her. - -“This is some flying notion in your head, Milton,” she said, civilly. -“You will have forgotten it by next week.” - -“Forgott’n it, ay! Yeh think sao? What ’f I told yeh I hain’t thought o’ -nothin’ else fur nigh onto ten year?” - -His tone was too earnest and excited to render further trifling safe. -He pulled out of an inner pocket and held up before her a little, -irregularly squared tin-type--which she recognized as having been made -in whimsical burlesque of her lineaments by an itinerant photographer -years before. - -“How did you come by that?” she asked, to gain time. - -“I got it fr’m th’ man thet made it, ’n’ I paid a dollar bill fer it, -tew,” he answered triumphantly, “’n’ I’ve kep it by me ever sence!” - -After a pause she said, as calmly as she could: “I never dreamed that -such a thought had entered your head. Of course, it--it can’t be.” - -“Why not, I’d like to knaow?” he demanded. “Don’t yeh b’lieve what I’ve -told yeh ’baout my bein’ well off?” - -“That hasn’t anything to do with it. There are other reasons--a good -many other reasons.” - -“What air they?” His tone was peremptory. - -“I don’t know that I can explain them to you. But truly there are -so many of them--and your words took me so wholly by surprise, -that--that----” - -“Yeh needn’t mince matters! I _knaow!_ Yeh hev sot yer idees on Seth! -Yeh needn’t tell me yeh hain’t!” - -“I won’t talk with you at all if you shout at me in that way, and -contradict me flat when I assure you to the contrary.” - -Milton paused for a moment, to consider the situation. They were -approaching the poplars now, along the lonely turnpike, and the -conversation could not be much protracted. What he had to say must -be said without delay. But what was it that he wished to say? A dozen -inchoate plans rose amorphously to the surface of his mind--to cajole -her, to strive further to impress her with his wealth, to entreat her, -to attempt to bully her. This last resource ran best with his mood, but -there were difficulties. Annie was the reverse of a cowardly girl; there -was nothing timid or tremulous about her; if he attempted to intimidate -her, the enterprise would most probably be a ridiculous failure, for -he stood too much in awe of her self-reliance and intelligence to have -confidence in his own mastery. - -But stay--she was fearful about Seth. Whether it was true or not that -she had no idea of marrying her cousin, she was evidently solicitous -for his safety. An idea born of this conclusion swiftly engrafted itself -upon the hired man’s general strategy. He lifted his light, shifty eyes -from the grass of the roadside path to her face, once more, and said: - -“Well, ef you’re a mine to be mean, I kin be mean tew--meaner ’n’ -pussly. Ef yeh think I’m goin’ to stan’ still, ’n’ let yeou ’n’ Seth -hev it all yer aown way, yer mistaken. I’ve only got to open my maouth -to th’ Cor’ner, ’n’ whair’d _he_ be, ’n’ yeou tew?” - -There was a certain indefinable suggestion of bravado in his tone which -caught Annie’s attention. It was the barest, most meagre of shadows, but -she grasped at the chance of substance behind it. - -“I don’t believe you could say anything, or do anything, which would -injure him,” she said, with more confidence in her words than she felt -in her heart. - -“Oh, yeh daon’t, ay!” he growled. “Ef yeh knaowed what I knaow, p’raps -yeh’d change yer teune.” - -“What do you know, then? Come now, let us hear it!” She grew defiant, -with an instinctive sense that the inferior being beside her was ready -to retreat, if only she could keep up her boldness of front. - -“Never yeou mind what I knaow!” he answered, evasively. “It’ll be -enough, I guess, to cook _his_ geuse, when th’ time comes.” - -“Ah, I thought so!” she exclaimed. “You were simply talking to hear -yourself talk--to scare me. Well, you see now that you wasted your -breath.” - -“Oh, _did_ I! Well, I won’t waste any more of it, then, till I talk to -th’ Cor’ner. I kin tell him some things ’baout who rid th’ black -mare aout thet night, after Albert’d gone. Guess thet’ll kind ’o’ fix -things!” - -His slow imagination, working clumsily in the mazes of falsehood, had -carried Milton a step too far; his simple plan of substituting Seth for -himself in the events of the fatal night miscarried in a way he could -not suspect. - -Annie did not answer. An exclamation had risen to her lips, but -something akin to presence of mind checked it there. Her brain seemed to -be working with lightning flashes. The black mare had played a part -in the tragedy, then; Seth had certainly not had the animal out that -evening; the rushing, almost noiseless apparition which had startled -them in the moonlight must have been the mare; it was coming from the -direction of Tallman’s; it had a rider; who could that rider have been? -and how did Milton know about it?--so the swift thoughts ran, in a -chain which seemed luminous in the relief it brought to her. These two -questions she could not answer--in her joy at the apparent exculpation -of Seth it did not seem specially important that they should be -answered--and she had self-possession enough to ask nothing about them. - -It was a nice question what she should say to her companion, who was -now, without any distinct suspicions on her part, growing luridly -loathsome and repugnant in her eyes. The fear of angering him had died -away, but a vague sense that mischief might be done by arousing his -curiosity or apprehensions had come to take its place. She spoke -cautiously: - -“I hope you won’t do anything rash, that you would regret afterwards.” - -“They ain’t nao need o’ my doin’ nothin’, ef yeou’d only hev some sense. -But if yeou’re goin’ to be agin me, ther’s nao tellin’ what I won’t -dew,” he answered with sullen terseness. - -They had come to the poplars, and Annie stopped at the stile under the -thorns. - -“I shall have to leave you here,” she said. - -“Then yeh won’t hev me, ay? Yeh better think twice ’fore yeh say nao! -Yeh won’t git another sich a chance--to live like a lady, ’n’ hev -ev’rything yeh want. ’N’ ef yeh dew say nao, yeh kin rest ’sured yeh -ain’t heerd th’ last of it, ner him nuther.” Milton’s little green-gray -eyes watched her face intently, and he fingered his flaring plated -watch-chain with nervous preoccupation. “What d’yeh say, yes’ ’r nao?” - -“I can’t say anything more than I have said--_now_,” she answered, and, -stepping over the stile, left him. - -For a long time afterward Annie’s conscience debated the justification -of that final word, the last one she ever addressed to Milton, and which -was obviously intended to keep alive a hope that she knew to be absurdly -without ground or reason. Sometimes even now she has momentary -doubts about it--but she silences cavil by whispering to herself in -unanswerable defence: “I thought then that possibly it might be needed -to help Seth--perhaps even to save him.” - -She had little leisure just then, however, to devote to moral -introspection, for Samantha met her, half-way down the thorn-walk, to -excitedly tell her that her grandmother, Mrs. Warren, was very much -worse than usual. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXII.--“A WICKED WOMAN!” - -When Isabel looked into her mirror next morning, the image shown back -fairly startled her. Day by day during this eventful week the glass -had helped her to grow familiar with reddened eyes, with harsh, ageing -lines, and with a pallor which no devices of the toilet could efface. It -was not so much an added accentuation of these which riveted her gaze, -now, upon the mirror, as the suggestion of a new face--of a stranger’s -countenance, reflecting meanings and thoughts of the uncommon kind. - -She studied the face at first with an almost impersonal interest; then -as the brain associated these lineaments with her own, and made their -expression a part of her own spiritual state, she said to this other -self in the glass, audibly: - -“Another week of this will make you an old woman.” She added, after a -pause of fascinated yet critical scrutiny: “Yes, and a wicked woman, -too!” There has been what one can only hope is an intelligible -reluctance, from the beginning of this recital, to essay analysis or -portrayal of Isabel’s thoughts and motives. A complex, contradictory -character like hers, striving now to assimilate, now to sway the simple, -straightforward, one-stringed natures with which it is environed, may be -illustrated; it is too great a task to dissect it. Yet for the once we -may venture to look into this troubled mind. - -A wicked woman! The phrase which she had addressed aloud to the -mocking image in the glass, in mingled doubt and irony, clung to her -meditations. Had she ever meant to be wicked--ever deliberately, or -even consciously, chosen evil instead of good? No! There was no dubious -reservation in her answer. Yet within the week--oh, the horrible -week!--she had come to occupy a moral position for which hell could not -hold too relentless or fierce a punishment. She had hugged to her heart -thoughts which, when they are linked with acts, go to expiation on the -gallows. She shuddered now at the recollection of them; she could recall -that she had shuddered then, too. Yet all the same these thoughts were a -part of her--belonged to her. She had not repelled them as alien, or as -unwelcome. Even while in terror at their mien, she had embraced them. -Was this not all wickedness? - -The reply came, in sophistical self-defense, that no one act or emotion -of a life could be judged by itself. The antecedent circumstances, -leading up to it, must be taken into account. She had been borne -along on the current of a career shaped for her by others. She was not -responsible--she had never fought with her destiny--she had done nothing -but seek to bring some flowers and light and color into the desolate -voyage of life. Was it fair to say that these little innocent, -womanish efforts to soften a sterile existence were the cause of the -shipwreck--that it was these which had brought her so suddenly, dazed -and terrified, into the very breakers on the sinister rocks of crime? -No, the answer came again; surely it could not be fair. - -Yet she had hated her husband; she had been overjoyed, even while -she was affrighted, by the news of his death--or at least there was a -tremulous sensation very like joy; she had hailed as her deliverer the -young man whom her wild fancy made responsible for that death--yes, had -even in her frenzy kissed his hand, the hand which she then believed to -have blood upon it, his brother’s blood! her husband’s blood! Were not -these the thoughts and actions of a wicked woman? What difference -was there between her and the vilest murderess confined for life in a -penitentiary? - -Or no! What nonsense this was! What single thing had she said or done to -bring on the catastrophe? It was an accident--everybody knew that now. -But even if it had not been an accident, how would she have been to -blame? Was it her fault that she was pleasing in men’s eyes, or that -Seth had been attracted by her, and had been sympathetic to her? How -could she have helped it? Was there any reason why she should have tried -to help it? Was it wrong for her, exiled as she was to this miserable -farm life, to make a friend of her cousin--her husband’s brother? And if -they had grown to be attached to each other, could it be wondered at? - -And it had all been so innocent, too! What single compromising word, -even, had ever been spoken! Might not the most blameless of women have -had just such a pretty little romantic friendship, without dream of -harm? - -As for the frantic things she had thought and said on that awful -forenoon after the discovery, she strove to put them away from her -memory, as born of a hysterical, wholly irresponsible state. - -But they would come back, no matter how often banished. - -Then, too--perhaps worst of all, for honest John seemed to lay -particular stress upon it--was the terrible declaration she had made -to Annie. About this there could be no self-deception. She would not -pretend to herself that this had been done through any but revengeful? -spiteful motives--pure cruelty, in fact. But was she to be thus coolly -pushed aside, her romance shattered, her dear day-dream dissipated--and -not to be justified in striking back? - -This conceited boy--she was able thus to think of Seth now, in his -absence, and in the light of the affront she felt he had put upon -her--and this country school-teacher, to come billing and cooing in the -very hour of her supreme excitement--did they not deserve just what -they had received? After all, her words had done no permanent harm.. -Doubtless by this time they had all been cleared up. And if Miss Annie -_did_ suffer a little, what better was she than other people, to be free -all her life from heartaches? - -But then came a mental picture of Annie’s calm, sweet, lightful face -transfixed with speechless horror at the brutal words--and after it, -close and searching, the question: “Why should I have stabbed Annie? She -was always kindness itself to me. Was it not heartless to make that poor -girl suffer?” And there followed in her mind, as an echo of her first -exclamation to the mirror--that had gathered reverberating force from -all the thoughts we have striven to trace--the haunting cry: “A wicked -woman!” - -Afternoon came, and the battle still went on. Bitter condemnation of her -own conduct struggled with angry pleas of grievance against others, and -the conflict wearied her into what threatened to be a sick headache. -The idea of getting out into the open air and seeking relief in a walk, -which had been dormantly in her mind all day, finally took form, and led -her outside the homestead for the first time since her husband’s death. - -Once outside, she walked aimlessly through the orchard--in preference to -the high road, where she might meet neighbors--toward the little family -graveyard. It was not until she had nearly reached this spot that she -recalled having heard that Seth, too, came here on that terrible night. -The recollection brought an added sense of all the wrongs she held to -have been done her. She stood for a long time by the old board fence, -with its coating of dry, mildew-like moss on the weather-beaten surfaces -turned to the north, and its inhospitable hedging of brown, half-bare -briars, and looked in reverie upon the tombs within the enclosure. - -Three generations of the Fairchilds lay here under the straggling mat -of withered strawberry vines. She saw the low blue-slate slabs, nearly -covered now by aspiring weeds and brambles, which modestly pleaded in -antique letters that the original shoemaker, Roger, and his lowly spouse -might not be altogether forgotten. Rising ostentatiously above these -timid, ancient memorials, as if with intent to divert attention from -their humility, was the marble obelisk marking the resting-place of the -family’s greatest man, the Hon. Seth Fairchild. The monument was not so -white or so imposing now as it once had been, and the proud inscription -setting forth how its subject had been “twice Senator of the State of -New York,” was almost illegible from the storm-stains and mould on its -venerable front. There were some other stones, gray and small, tipping -humbly toward the central monolith, as if mutely begging at least a -little share of the Senator’s greatness for his wife and sisters, and -nearer were two plain modern slabs recounting the sole interesting facts -of the colorless lives of Lemuel and Cicely Fair-child--that they had -been alive, and now were dead. - -Here still nearer her, almost at her feet, the widow saw some pegs -driven in the ground, with string stretched around them to form a long -rectangle. The sight brought no thrill to her. She was conscious of all -its meaning, but felt herself scarcely interested. In life she had -owed nothing but dislike to the man whose last coming these signs of -preparation betokened. His death had shocked her at first by its fearful -suddenness; it did not especially disturb her now, save at times with a -furtive elation at the accompanying thought that at last she was free. -Her thoughts were with the living--and their relation to those long -since dead. - -If these rambling thoughts could have been summarized in words they -would have run in this fashion: - -“What has all your family pride brought you, all your planning and -manoeuvring, you dull countrymen? _I_ wasn’t good enough for you, -eh? Your breed must conspire against me, eh? and treat me like an -interloper, an outsider, eh? You thought I was to be brought here too, -did you, when my time arrived, and be snubbed and bullied into some back -corner like the rest of your wives, while my husband, ‘the Congressman,’ -had a big monument like this of your old humbug, the Senator? And you -expected to patronize me, or cut me dead, as the living dolts here on -the turnpike have done, did you? Well, you are fooled! I’ve escaped you! -I shall never come here but once again--to bring you your ‘Congressman.’ -You can have him and welcome. And that old cat of an aunt of his, she -will come presently, too, and I wish you much joy of _her!_ And perhaps -you will give up your idea, then, that you amount to anything, or ever -will amount to anything. The farm is going to a young man who will sell -it, and who doesn’t care a cent for the whole crowd of you, and who will -live in a city, and eat with his fork, and forget that there ever were -such people as you. And he will forget, too, that----” - -She came to a full stop in her meditations. Yes, Seth would forget her, -too. She had no illusions on this point. Perhaps this was too kindly a -view of it, even--he might be compelled to remember her by sheer force -of his bitterness toward her. There could be no doubt, after his cruel -words on the eventful forenoon--their last meeting--that he scorned -and despised her. What an idiot she had been to disclose to him her -thoughts--those mad fancies and beliefs of that frantic morning! She -might have known that the idea of his fighting his brother, on _her_ -account, was preposterous. What did he care about her? He had been nice -with her, had written her pretty, graceful letters when she asked him to -do so, and had sent her books to read--that was all. There was nothing -else. She had been a fool to dream that there was anything else. He -would sell the farm, and go back to Tecumseh, and marry Annie--yes, -marry Annie! And they, too, would refer to her now and then, and comment -on her wickedness, and hope that they might never have a daughter like -her. That would be all. - -She turned from the little enclosure of graves, without giving them -another thought. The mental picture which she conjured up of the young -couple, contented by a fireside of their own, perhaps with a child, tore -at her heart-strings. - -In the farm-yard she was met by Mr. Ansdell, who was evidently watching -for her, and who introduced himself courteously. - -“The Coroner is here,” he said, “with some medical gentlemen, and there -are also your late husband’s partner, Mr. Hubbard, who accompanied me -from New York last night, and the District Attorney and some others. In -a couple of hours or so we expect to be able to tell you what brought -us. Meanwhile, we are anxious to spare you any possible intrusion--and -also a possible scene. It is for this that I have waited outside for -you. If you could prolong your walk for that length of time, going to -some friend’s house near by, for instance, without saying that anything -unusual was transpiring here----” - -“Yes, I will go,” she answered. “Will two hours be long enough?” - -“I hope so,” he said, bowing his thanks. - -She walked out through the great swing-gate to the turnpike, and -idly chose the westward turning, along under the poplars. The curious -incident of all these visitors at the house did not excite her -attention. Her mind was too busy torturing itself with that marriage -which was already spoken of as assured. - -At the stile by the thorns, the idea of going to the Warren house -suddenly occurred to her. It was a bold, purposeless, almost crazy -thought; perhaps for those very reasons it commended itself to her mood. -She felt herself impelled alike by good and malignant impulses to cross -the stile; she walked down the thorn path, scarcely knowing whether her -purpose was to bless or to curse. - -The door was opened by Samantha, whose scared face took on an added -expression of anxiety on recognizing the visitor. - -“Go into the parlor, ’n’ I’ll light the stove fer yeh,” she whispered. -“Th’ old lady’s very laow. Soon’s she comes hum from schewl I’ll send -Annie in to see yeh.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIII.--THE SHERIFF ASSISTS. - -While Isabel sat over the stove in the cold, austere parlor of the -Warren house, with its ancient furniture, the never failing photograph -album, and those huge pink shells on the mantle-shelf without which -no rural home used to be complete--waiting for she scarcely knew -what--strange things were going forward in the home of the Fairchilds. - -On the forenoon of this same day, Thursday, there had been a gathering -in the office of the Thessaly _Banner of Liberty_. It was the -publication day of the paper, but for once it went to press without -enlisting even the most careless scrutiny, let alone the solicitude, of -its editor-proprietor. He had more serious business on hand. Closeted -with him in the little editorial room, whose limited space had rarely -before been so taxed, were Beekman, Ansdell, the District Attorney, -the Sheriff, and the younger of the dead man’s two New York partners, a -shrewd, silent, long-faced man. Seth had desired to be of the party but -his brother had sent him off, to return after dinner. - -These men gravely discussed some subjects with which our readers are -familiar, and some now first brought to light. John had a letter from -Annie, sent by hand the previous evening, detailing the strange things -Milton had said to her about the black mare. Ansdell and Mr. Hubbard, -the partner, recited how they had discovered that Albert Fairchild, on -the preceding Monday, sold $16,000 worth of government bonds, and the -abortive effort he made to so arrange the transfer that it would not be -traced. Beekman recalled how the black mare had balked on the edge of -the gulf the day after the murder--for they all thus characterized it -now. Later, the Coroner came in by appointment, and in the presence of -the dreaded District Attorney was meekness itself. He even heard that -two physicians were to go out with the party, and make an examination, -without taking offence. - -After the noon-day dinner the gathering was reinforced by the two -doctors and by Seth, the latter devoured by curiosity and vexed at being -kept so long in the dark. Soon after, all of the party save the Sheriff -made their way to the Fairchild house, driving by twos or threes, and at -intervals, to avoid exciting suspicion. It was after the arrival of the -last division that Ansdell met Isabel, and advised her to stay away from -the house for a time. - -The two surgeons and the Coroner went silently into the parlor, and -closed the door behind them. In the living-room Ansdell, Hubbard, John, -and the District Attorney took chairs around the stove, having given -word that Milton, who was off on the other side of the hill, arranging -the sale of some apples, should be sent in to them when he arrived, -which could not be very long now. In the kitchen, opening back from the -living-room as this in turn did from the parlor, Seth and Beekman sat -with the three women of the household. - -These latter had been told that something was going on, or rather had -inferred it from being forbidden to leave the room, and were agog with -puzzled excitement. They had no clue, save a vague understanding that -important personages were in the front portions of the house, but Alvira -and Melissa stole unhappy glances toward Seth, in uneasy fear that the -worst suspicions born of Samantha’s recital were to be realized in fact. -Aunt Sabrina, sitting with her shawl wrapped about her gaunt shoulders, -and with her feet on a piece of wood in the oven, did not know of this -story which gave point to the other women’s anxiety, but was in misery -between a deep yearning to learn what had happened, and a pessimistic -conviction that it must be another addition to the Fairchilds’ load of -calamities. - -They heard Milton drive up presently, and hail Dana with instructions to -put the horse out, and a query concerning the several strange vehicles -under the shed. Then he came into the kitchen, stamping his feet with -the cold, and walking straight to the stove to warm his hands. It was -growing dark in the low room, and he did not recognize Beekman. - -Seth delivered his errand, saying that his brother John wished to see -Milton, as soon as he returned, in the living-room. The hired man -gave the speaker a curious glance, and, after a moment or two of hand -warming, went in to learn what was wanted. - -Almost as he closed the door behind him, the Sheriff entered the kitchen -from the outside, and after an interrogative glance toward Beekman, -which the latter answered by a nod, drew up a chair leisurely by the -stove. - -“Who’d a thought it ’d a turned out so cold, ‘fore the moon changed?” - he asked of the company collectively. “Hev yeh got any cider abaout -handy? ’N’ a daoughnut, tew, ef yeh don’t mine.” - -While Melissa was in the cellar, the Sheriff, who was a Spartacus man -and a stranger to both Seth and the females, asked of Beekman: “What did -yeh agree on fer a sign?” - -“Th’ shakin’ of th’ stove.” - -Seth had been annoyed all day at the pains taken by John to keep the -facts of the enterprise now in hand from him, and he displayed so much -of this pique in the glance he now cast from the Sheriff to Beekman, -that the latter felt impelled to speak: - -“P’raps you disremember my askin’ yeh ’t’ other day ’baout whether -yer brother had much money on him that night. Well, we’ve settled thet -point. He did hev’--’n’ ’twas a considerable sum tew--‘baout sixteen -thaousan’ dollars.” - -“No!” Seth’s exclamation was of incredulous surprise. - -“Yes, sixteen thaousan’. We knaow it.” - -“Oh! I remember now,” said Seth, searching his impressions of the night. -“I remember that when I said he might fail to be nominated, he slapped -his breast two or three times as if he had something in the pocket. By -George! I wonder----” - -“Yeh needn’t waste no more time wond’rin’. Thet was it! ’N’ d’yeh -knaow what he was goin’ to dew with thet money? No, yeh daon’t! He was -agoin’ to buy me! I wouldn’t say this afore aoutsiders; I dunnao’s I’d -say it to yeou ef your paper wa’n’t so dum fond o’ pitchin’ into me fer -a boss, ’n’ a machine man ez yeh call it, ’n’ thet kine o’ thing. -Yer brother hed th’ same idee o’ me thet your paper’s got. He was wrong. -They tell me ther air’ some country caounties in th’ State where money -makes th’ mare gao. But Jay ain’t one of ’em. Yer brother wanted to -git into Congress. Ther was nao chance fer him in New York City. He come -up here ’n’ he worked things pooty fine, I’m baoun’ to say, but he -slipped up on me. Bribes may dew in yer big cities, but they won’t go -daown in Jay. I don’t b’lieve they’s ez much of it done anywhere ez -folks think, nuther.” - -“But this money, then, was----” - -“Lemme go on! P’raps this ’d never be’n faound aout, ef yer brother -hadn’t made mistake number tew in pickin’ aout the wust ’n’ meanest -cuss in th’ caounty to be his gao-between. I kin tell mean cusses when -I see ’em, ’n’ this feller he had was jest _the_ dirtiest scalawag I -ever did see. I kin stan’ a scoundrel in a way ef he’s bright abaout it, -but this was a reg’lar, natchul born fool. Somehaow in th’ kentry, these -men don’t seem to hev no sense. Ef they’re goin’ to rob a man, or set -his barns afire, or kill him, they dew it in the darnedest, clumsiest -saort o’ way, so they’re sure to git faound aout the minute anybody -looks an inch beyond his nose into th’ thing. It makes a man ashamed to -be a kentry-man to see th’ foolish way these here blockheads git caught, -ev’ry time.” - -The women had been listening intently to this monologue. They looked -at one another now, with the light of a strange new suspicion in their -eyes. - -“Who is this man? Who are you talking about?” Seth asked eagerly. - -At that moment the sound of a stove being shaken vigorously came from -the living-room. The Sheriff rose to his feet, and strode toward the -door of this room. - -“I’ll shaow him to yeh in th’ jerk of a lamb’s tail,” he said. - -***** - -The conversation in the living-room, after Milton entered, had been -trivial for a time, then all at once very interesting. He had been -disagreeably surprised at finding three men with John, but had taken -a seat, his big hands hanging awkwardly over his knees, and had been -reassured somewhat by the explanation that Mr. Hubbard, the dead man’s -partner, was anxious to hear all he could about the sad occurrence. The -District Attorney he did not know by sight, and he did not recognize -Ansdell, who stood looking out of the window, softly drumming on the -panes. - -Milton told a lot of details, about Albert’s return, about hitching up -the grays for him, about how the news was received at the Convention and -the like, all recited with verbose indirectness, and at great length. -Once he stopped, his attention being directed to a slight sound in the -parlor, and looked inquiry. John promptly explained that it was the -undertaker, and the hired man went on. - -At last the District Attorney, who had hitherto been silent, asked -quietly: - -“You went back to the stable--to your own room--after Mr. Fairchild -drove away?” - -“Yes, ’n’ went to bed.” - -“Did you hear any one enter the stables afterward?” - -“No, nary a soul.” - -“There is a black mare in the stables, used under the saddle. Was she -taken out that night?” - -“Not thet I knaow of. Why?” - -“Well, there seems to be a pretty positive story that she was. She was -seen on the road, in fact, late that night, coming from the ravine. -The rider was not recognized, but the mare was. How do you account for -that?” - -“Tain’t none o’ my business to ’caount for it.” Milton did not like -the tendency of the conversation. - -“No, I know that, but we are interested in finding out. I don’t think -you know me--I am the District Attorney--and I shall take particular -pains to find out.” - -A gulf suddenly yawned before Milton’s feet, and he made a prompt, bold -attempt to leap it. “I didn’t like to say nothin’ ’baout it, bein’ as -it’s in th’ fam’ly”--he cast an uneasy glance at John here--“but Seth -Fairchild rides th’ mare a good deal. I did hear somebody saddlin’ th’ -mare, but I took it fer granted it was him, ’n’ sao I didn’t git up. -It’d be jes like him, I said to myself, to go ridin’ in th’ moonshine. -He’s thet sort of a feller, naow ain’t he, John?” - -The sound of his own voice frightened Milton as he went on, and his -closing appeal to the brother for corroboration carried the nervous -accent of fear. John did not answer, but rose and walked over to join -Ansdell at the window. - -“Of caourse,” Milton began, in a lower voice, to which he sought to give -a confidential tone, “I don’t wan’ to say nothin’ agin Seth. Of caourse, -he’s John’s brother, ‘n’----” - -The words were cut short by the rolling back of one of the parlor doors, -and the entrance of the three doctors. The Coroner, who came last, -pulled the door shut again. The older of the other two came to the -District Attorney and said, with deliberate distinctness: - -“We are both prepared to swear that Mr. Fairchild’s death was caused by -a gunshot wound in the head.” - -It was then that John sprang to the stove, and shook its grate -vehemently. - -At sight of the Sheriff, who advanced upon him with a directness which -left no ambiguity as to his purpose, Milton rose excitedly from his -chair, cast a swift scared glance around the company, and then, while -the handcuffs were being snapped upon his wrists, began to whimper. - -“I didn’t do it! It’s a put-up job! It’s them brothers o’ his thet allus -hankered after his money, ’n’ naow they got it they’re tryin’ to put -the thing on me. ’N’ his wife, tew, thet stuck-up city gal, she----” - -“Come naow, yeou better shut up,” said the Sheriff sententiously. “Th’ -more yeh say th’ wuss it’ll be fer yeh.” - -Most of the men present averted their gaze during the brief period of -alternate threats and cringing, of rough curses and frenzied fawning on -the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and even the Coroner, which ensued; -but Mr. Hubbard watched it all carefully with evident interest. - -“That is a very curious type of criminal,” he said, as the Sheriff and -his prisoner left the room; “very curious indeed! I never saw a murderer -before who had so little nerve, and funked so absolutely when he was -confronted with detection. Why, I’ve seen men, guilty as guilty could -be, who would deceive even their own lawyers. But such a simpleton as -that--he’s not worth his rope.” - -“That is because you are a city man,” explained the District Attorney. -“You don’t know the kind of murderers we raise here in the country. The -chances are that your city assassin would be tortured by remorse, if -he escaped discovery, and that he committed the deed in a moment of -passion. But the rural murderer (I am speaking of native Americans, -now) plans the thing in cold blood, and goes at it systematically, with -nerves like steel. He generally even mutilates the body, or does some -other horrible thing, which it makes everybody’s blood boil to think of. -And so long as he isn’t found out, he never dreams of remorse. He has no -more moral perspective than a woodchuck. But when detection does -come, it knocks him all in a heap. He blubbers, and tries to lay it on -somebody else, and altogether acts like a cur--just as this fellow ’s -doing now, for instance.” - -A hubbub of shrieks and sobs rose from the kitchen as he finished this -sentence, and they with one accord moved toward the door. - -The Sheriff, with an eye to his promise to the two men in the kitchen, -had led the livid and slinking wretch out to the centre of the room, -where the dim candles had now been lighted, and, forcing him to hold up -his hands so that the manacles might be fully visible, said to Seth: - -“Here yeh air! I said I’d shaow him to yeh! Here is the whelp thet did -th’ mischief. Look at him!” - -There was a second of dead silence, as the several listeners took in the -significance of his words, and of the spectacle. - -The silence was broken by an inarticulate, indescribable cry from -Aunt Sabrina. Then came with startling swiftness a confusion of moving -bodies, of screams, and the rattling of the handcuffs’ chain, which no -one could follow. When the intervention of the Sheriff and Beekman had -restored quiet, it was discovered that the old lady, with an agility of -which none could have supposed her capable, had snatched a potato -knife from the table, and made a savage attempt to wreak the family’s -vengeance upon Milton. She had not succeeded in inflicting any injury, -save a slight cut on one of his pinioned hands, and Seth now with some -difficulty persuaded her to leave the room. - -It fell to Alvira’s lot to bind up the bleeding hand--for Melissa, -undertaking the task, was too nervous and trembling to perform it. - -A little dialogue, in hushed whispers, which only imperfectly reached -even the sentinel Sheriff, ensued: - -“Sao this is what yeh’ve come tew!” - -“It’s all a lie!” - -“Oh, don’t tell _me!_ Ef you’d be’n contented with yer lot in life, -’n’ hadn’t tried to swell yerself up like a toad in a puddle, this -wouldn’t a happen’d. But nao, yeh poor fewl, yeh must set yerself up to -_be_ somebody! ’N’ naow where air yeh?” - -Words with which to answer rose to Milton’s bloodless lips, but he could -not give them utterance. He could not even look at her, but in a dazed -way stared at the hand, which he held so that she could wind the bandage -in spite of the gyves. - -“I didn’t use to think yeh was aout-’n-aout bad,” she continued, -more slowly; “they was a time when yeh might a made a decent man o’ -yerself--ef yeh’d kep’ yer word to me.” - -This time he did not make an effort to answer. - -The task of sustaining the talk alone was too great for her. The tears -came into her eyes, and blinded the last touches to the bandage. As -it was completed, the Sheriff put his hand roughly on the prisoner’s -shoulder. The meaning of this movement spread over her mind, and -appalled her. With a gesture of decision she stood on tiptoe, lifted -her face up to Milton’s, and kissed him. Then, as he was led away, she -turned to the onlookers, and said defiantly, between incipient sobs: - -“I daon’t keer! Ef t’ was th’ last thing I ever done in my life, I’d dew -it. We was--engaged--once’t on a time!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIV.--AT “M’TILDY’S” BEDSIDE AGAIN. - -Do you clip over and tell Annie,” John had said to Seth, when the first -excitement of the scene had passed off, and they stood at the kitchen -window, watching the Sheriff’s buggy fade off in the dusk down the hill -toward Thessaly jail. “It’s the thing for you to do--the quicker the -better!” - -Annie had been home from her day’s task some minutes, and sat by -her grandmother’s bedside. The patient was in a semi-comatose state, -breathing with unnatural heaviness, and Samantha had been dispatched -with all haste to bring a doctor from Thessaly. It seemed terribly -probable that Mrs. Warren’s last day had come. - -Yet as she sat by the curtained recess, holding in her’s the withered -hand which lay inanimate on the high edge of the bed, Annie still -thought very little of the great change impending over her home; she had -faced this death in life so long that its climax did not startle her, -or wear the garb of strangeness. Instead, she was pondering the -unaccountable, unwelcome fact with which Samantha had greeted her on her -return--that Isabel was in the adjoining room, and had asked to see her. - -What could it mean? What could Isabel’s purpose be in coming? And ought -she to sacrifice her own feelings to the dictates of politeness, and go -in to see this wicked, cruel woman? Perhaps she had come to retract and -apologize for the fearful words of Tuesday. Perhaps her intention was to -reiterate them, or worse, to recount that now the whole world would know -of them--and gloat over her pain. No, that could scarcely be, for -since her interview with Milton Annie felt satisfied at least of Seth’s -innocence. But still something new might have been disclosed--Isabel -might have evil tidings of some sort with which to overwhelm her afresh. -What should she do? - -The parlor door was ajar, and though she could not see her visitor, she -could plainly hear the snapping of the wood fire within, which Samantha -had kindled. Isabel must be perfectly aware of her return, and of her -presence in this sick chamber. Every minute that she hesitated would -only augment the widow’s anger at being thus inhospitably neglected. -Even if she had relented, and had come with kindly intent, this -reception might alter her impulses. - -She rose to enter the parlor, but still stood irresolute, holding her -grandmother’s hand, when there came the sound of footsteps in the front -hall--then of a hasty knock on the door opening from the hall into this -room in which she was. She opened the door, and before her, excited and -jubilant, stood her cousin Seth. - -“I’ve come to tell you!” he burst out, “It’s all cleared up. There -_was_ a murder. Milton did it! He’s just been arrested! I tried to -ring your bell, but it didn’t seem to work. So I _had_ to come in! And -now----” - -He opened his arms with an unmistakable gesture, and they closed fondly -upon an overjoyed maiden, who sobbed upon his breast for very relief. - -When she found breath and words, it was to say: - -“Oh, you can’t guess what I have suffered these last two days; I thought -I should never live through them! And now it seems as if I should go -wild with joy--as if I couldn’t keep my feet down on the floor!” - -“Yes, yes, I know, my darling. But we shall be all the happier for -this spell of wretchedness. Dry your eyes, pet. There shall be no more -thought or talk of tears--much less of dying.” - -“O Seth!--I forgot!--my grandmother!” - -She lowered her voice, and told him her fears. - -Hand in hand, and with his arm about her shoulder, they moved softly to -the bedside of the dying woman. The noise of the talking, or some less -apparent influence, had aroused her from her lethargy. Her pale eyes -were brilliant still, with an unearthly light, it seemed to the awed -young man, and she rested their gaze fixedly upon the couple. - -“Who is that?” she asked in a querulous whisper. - -“It is Seth, Granny,” the girl answered, relapsing unconsciously into -the familiar form she had not used since childhood. - -The aged woman restlessly moved her head, and her eyes snapped with -impatience at her inability to raise herself from the pillow. - -“I won’t have him here! Tell him to take his arm away. What’s he doin’ -here, anyway? He desarted yeh! His own father told me so! Tell him to go -away! I hate the sight of the hull breed!” - -“But he’s come back to me, Granny,” the girl pleaded, while Seth shrank -backward in the shadow of the curtain. “Truly he has, and he’s not to -blame. And I love him very dearly”--a pressure from the young man’s -hand answered the sweetness of this avowal--“and he will be all I shall -have left when--when--” she stopped, unwilling to conclude her thought -in words. - -“An’ will he take yeh away, an’ do by yeh ez a husban’ ought to do, or -will he take yeh onto that Fairchild farm, an’ break yer heart out ez -his father did his mother’s, an’ ez his uncle did yer mother’s, an’ ez -his brother, so they tell me, is doin’ with his wife?” - -“Oh, mercy!” the girl exclaimed, involuntarily; then she whispered -to Seth, back of the curtains: “What shall I do! I forgot all about -it--Isabel is there in the parlor and she has heard every word we’ve -said.” - -The quick ears of the invalid caught the whispered explanation. . - -“Isabel!” she said, sharply. “That’s Albert Fairchild’s wife ain’t it?” - -“Yes!” the girl answered. She tried in dumb show to convey to Seth that -her grandmother was ignorant of his brother’s death. - -“Go an’ fetch her in here,” said Mrs. Warren, with more animation in her -voice than it had shown before. “I want to see her--to talk with her.” - -“But, Granny, you ought’nt to see strangers; you know, the doctor----” - -“I guess she ain’t much more of a stranger than this young man you’ve -got here. Go an’ fetch her, I say! I won’t hurt her, an’ she won’t hurt -me.” - -There was nothing for Annie to do, but go into the parlor, and bow -shamefacedly to Isabel, and say, with embarrassment in every syllable: -“Excuse me for not coming before, but I think my grandmother is dying. -She wants very much to see you. Won’t you come, please?” - -Isabel had risen to her feet upon Annie’s entrance. To the latter’s -surprise and increased confusion she held forth her hand with a friendly -gesture. “Yes, I will come with you,” she said, as Annie doubtingly took -the proffered hand, and the two women entered the sick-room. - -Isabel did not seem to see Seth, who stood at the head of the bed, among -the drawn curtains, but walked to the bedside and said softly: “I am -Isabel, Mrs. Warren; I am sorry that our first meeting should find you -so low.” - -“So you’re Albert’s wife, eh?” The old woman eyed her keenly, for what -seemed a long time. “I’ve heered tell o’ you. Would you mind gettin’ -that candle there, on the mantle-piece, an’ holdin’ it, so’t I kin see -yer face?” - -Isabel gravely complied with the request, and stood before the invalid -again, with the yellow light glowing upon her throat and lower chin and -nostrils and full, Madonna-like brows. Her face was at its best with -this illumination from below. She would have been a rare beauty close -before the footlights. - -“Well,” said Mrs. Warren, after a long inspection, “P’raps it’ll sound -ridiculous to yeh, but yeh don’t look unlike what I did when I was your -age. The farm ain’t had time to tell on yeh yit. But it will! It made -me the skeercrow that you see; it’ll do the same for you. When I was a -girl, I was a Thayer, the best fam’ly in Norton, Massachusetts. We held -our heads high, I kin tell yeh. Why, when I brought my side-saddle -here, stitched with silk, ’twas the fust one they’d ever seen in these -parts. But I married beneath me, an’ I come up here into York State to -live, on this very farm. With us, farmin’ don’t mean a livin’ death. -P’raps we don’t hev sech fine big barns ez yeh build here, but our -houses are better. We don’t git such good crops, but we pay more heed -to education and godly livin’. It’s th’ diff’rence ’twixt folks who -b’lieve there’s somethin’ else in life b’sides eatin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ -makin’ money, an’ folks that don’t. Well, I left a good home, an’ I -come here, an’ here I am. Look at me! Look at Lemuel Fairchild’s wife, -Cicely--she was a relation of yours, wasn’t she?--see how the farm made -an ole woman o’ her, an’ broke her down, an’ killed her! You’re young, -an’ you’re good lookin’ yit, but it’ll break yeh, sure’s yer born. -Husban’s on these farms ain’t what they air in the cities, nor even -in the country in New England. I’m told your husban’ don’t treat you -right.” - -“Don’t let us talk about that--please!” said Isabel: she stole a swift, -momentary glance toward Seth as she spoke. - -The keen eyes in the recess followed this look. “Well, no,” the husky, -whispering voice went on, “p’raps it ain’t none o’ my business. But -tell me about this young man here--yer husband’s brother. I want to know -about him.” - -“What about him?” asked Isabel slowly, after a pause. - -“Why, is he a likely man? Air his habits good? Could he take this girl -o’ mine--an’ she’s a good girl, Annie is--could he take her to Tecumsy, -an’ make a fit home fer her? An’ _would_ he do it? Would he make her a -good husban’--ez good ez she desarves? I ask you, ’cause you know him. -I leave it to you--would you yerself marry him ef yeh was free, an’ feel -safe about him? Come, now, tell me that!” - -Isabel hesitated so long that the old woman, seemingly wandering a -little after her long, laborious concentration of thought, broke in -again: - -“Oh, I know ’em! I know ’em! Of all the Fair-childses, there never -was one decent one. They stole my daughter, an’ let her die ’mongst -strangers, an’ they made a broken ole woman o’ me, an’ they slaved -Cicely’s life out o’ her, an’ now they want my Annie----” - -“No,” said Isabel here, speaking softly, and putting her hand on the -wasted arm which lay above the coverlet. “I think you wrong Seth. -Whatever the rest may have done, I think he will be a good husband to -Annie. I am _sure_ he will.” - -No answer, save a low, incoherent murmuring, came from the recess. The -invalid had lapsed into the lethargy of exhausted nature. As the trio -stood by the bedside even this sound ceased. Nothing was to be heard but -the labored, unnatural breathing. - -Isabel placed the candle again upon the shelf. She had not removed her -bonnet and wrap, and she turned now irresolutely toward the door. - -Annie went to her, and silently took her hand. “I forgive you,” she -whispered. “Was there anything else? Did you want to speak to me?” - -“I don’t know what I wanted when I came. Let me go now. Perhaps if I -said any more, I should hate myself afterward.” - -And thus, without a glance at Seth, she went. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXV.--“SUCH WOMEN ARE!” - - -THE story, such as it is, is told. - -Before the daily press of the State, which had given great attention -to the tragedy in Dearborn County, became fairly aware that a mystery -attached to it, the wretched Milton had confessed his crime. He had -followed and come up with his employer, who stopped at his call. There -was a conversation--then the killing. The prisoner made a weak effort -to pretend that there was a quarrel first, and that his deed was in -self-defence, but he deceived no one. He had with much difficulty led -the grays off the side of the ravine, the murdered man being first -thrown over, and the horses and buggy purposely hurled down upon him. -There was some angry criticism when it became known that the District -Attorney had agreed to accept a plea of murder in the second degree, and -the popular explanation--that it was done from motives of consideration -for the family--provoked not a few jibes from people who wanted to know -why the Fairchilds were any better than other folk. But the course of -the law was not affected by this comment, nor did the District Attorney -suffer appreciably from it when he came up the succeeding autumn for -re-election. The money was all recovered--and, if you have the influence -requisite to obtain a visiting pass to New York’s forest-girt prison -on the Eastern watershed of the Adirondacks--that terrible subterranean -place of woe from which even Siberian gaolers might get some hints of -new things in anguish--you may still see a thin, bent, evil-faced wretch -dragging out existence in the mines, who once was reckoned a likely man -in Dearborn County, and who cast its united vote at the most famous of -all Tyre’s Conventions. - -The funeral of Albert Fairchild will long be remembered in all the -section round. More than one State official attended, and there was a -vast concourse of lesser political lights, who kept a shrewd eye upon -opportunities for profitable discourse with each other, before and after -the services, while they put themselves dignifiedly in evidence before -the public by getting their names in the local papers. - -There were no surprises to the inner circle of the family when the will -came to be read. Subject to the widow’s third, the farm was devised -in equal parts to the two brothers, but the major share of the other -property went to Seth. The partner from New York remained at the -homestead long enough to arrange the details by which the widow’s -portion was bought by the brothers, and her leave-taking accomplished. - -John Fairchild lives in high contentment on the ancestral farm. He grows -stout now, in the accustomed Fairchild fashion, and though his light -ruddy face and brown beard are hostile to the suggestion, people profess -to see the family likeness in him as he grows older. Aunt Sabrina -especially cherishes this fancy with fondness. She has come to regard -this nephew, whom once she so deeply disliked, with some affection and -vast esteem, and she devotes her hours to dreaming of the great things -he may accomplish as the Fairchild of Dearborn--what time she is not -joining Alvira in prayer that he may not be moved to marry a city woman. -Thus far there are no indications that he thinks of marrying any one, -and his ambitions seem to take no higher form than the re-invigoration -of the _Banner of Liberty_, which he drives over to Thessaly three times -a week to superintend, and which, they say, promises soon to blossom -into a daily. - -***** - -One closing scene we may glance at--a pretty room, with modern -furniture, and wide, flower-clad windows looking upon one of the best of -Tecum-seh’s residential streets. Annie, grown brighter-faced and yet no -older in looks, despite the nearly four years of married life which have -gone by, stands at the window with a baby in her arms, and laughs as she -tosses the infant forward toward the panes, in greeting to the paternal -parent, who is coming up the front steps. The wife is in gay spirits, -not only because the head of the house has come home to dinner instead -of stopping at the Club, but for another reason, compared with which all -dinners were trivial. - -“O Seth, her first tooth has come through!” - -“That so? It’s about time, I should-think.” - -His reception of the great tidings is so calm, not to say indifferent, -that the beaming wife looks at him in mock surprise. Seth has not -aged specially either, but he wears this evening an unwontedly serious -expression of face, and gets into his dressing-gown and slippers with an -almost moody air. - -Baby is brought up in frowning, blinking proximity to her sire and made -by proxy to demand an explanation of this untoward gloom, on an occasion -which ought to be given over to rejoicing. - -“Oh, I’m tired,” Seth answers; “and then--then I have a letter which -puzzles and annoys me a little.” - -“Is it anything that I know about?” Annie has seated herself beside him -now, and looks sweet inquiry. - -“Well, yes. It is a letter from Dent--you know I’ve let him go down to -Washington to get an idea of the place and the men while the session -is on--and along with a letter to the paper, pretty good stuff, too, he -sends me this personal note. Read it for yourself.” - -Annie took the letter, and reads steadily along through its neat -chirography: - -“Washington, March 7th. - -“Dear Fairchild: - -“I send a letter going into the Silver question from the standpoint of -some of the Western men I have talked with. They impress me as being -more sincere than sensible on the subject. I think the trip will be of -vast service to me--and also, I trust, to the paper. - -“Last evening, I met for the second time since I have been here, an -elderly gentleman from your part of the State, named Beekman. Like -myself, he is down here to look around, and get an idea of things. It is -the first time, I should judge, that he has been so far away from home, -and his comments are extremely droll--often very clever, too. He seems -to know you very well, and asked me to remember him kindly to you, and -express his congratulations upon your purchase of a controlling interest -in the paper. He wanted me to be sure and say to you that while the -experiment of electing Ansdell had worked very well--he seems to admire -Ansdell greatly--you mustn’t allow that to lead you into the habit of -thinking that all bolters are saints and all straight-party men devils. -It seems that since he has been here he has encountered some foolish -and exceptional Southern Congressman who provoked him by saying ‘_Your_ -Government’ and _your_ laws’ instead of using the pronoun and that has -made him a great Stalwart again--for the time-being.” - -Annie looked up from the sheet. “I must say I don’t see anything in all -this to particularly disturb anybody. This seems just the harmless sort -of letter I should expect your innocuous Mr. Dent to write.” - -“Read the rest of it,” was Seth’s reply. - -She went on:-- - -“By the way, I met your sister-in-law among the guests at a reception -the other evening, to which Mr. Ansdell kindly secured me an invitation. -Her residence on K street--she gave me the number, which I have -somewhere--is said to be one of the most charming homes in Washington. -She is very-popular in society here, and I am told that you meet her at -every fashionable gathering. She was certainly very pleasant with me, -when Mr. Ansdell presented me and explained who I was. She especially -asked me if I knew what you had named your baby-girl, but I could not -tell her. - -“_I_ could tell her if she asked _me!_” remarked the young wife, grimly. -“The very idea!” - -“Go on,” said Seth--“or I shall feel that we ought to have named her -Proscrastinatia instead of Annie; get to the end of the thing.” - -Annie got to the end with a single sentence: - -“By the way, it may interest you--and I hope you won’t be annoyed at -my mentioning it, and indeed you may very possibly have heard it -already--to learn that everybody here seems to understand that Mr. -Ansdell is shortly to marry your sister-inlaw, and he himself, speaking -to me, referred to her in a way which amounted to a declaration of the -fact.” - -“Well, there you have it!” said Seth slowly, after a long pause in which -husband and wife looked at each other. “That _is_ news, isn’t it?” - -“I should think so!” Annie spoke deliberately, too, turning the letter -over with a meditative air. “I should think so!” - -The gravity of his wife’s tone seemed to Seth to be more profound than -the circumstances altogether demanded. - -“I don’t know after all,” he said, in half-apology for his own earlier -confession of gloom, “but that it would be a tolerable match. I don’t -say that they would be happy in the sense that we are happy, my girl; -but she has a great many qualities which would make her a helpful wife -to an ambitious, successful, masterful sort of public man like Ansdell. -Come, now, let’s be fair to her. Dent says that she is very popular in -Washington.” - -“Yes,” replied Annie thoughtfully, drawing her daughter closer to her -breast, “she always will be popular with people who are not married to -her. Such women are!” - - -THE END. - - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Seth's Brother's Wife, by Harold Frederic - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SETH'S BROTHER'S WIFE *** - -***** This file should be named 54987-0.txt or 54987-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/8/54987/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/54987-0.zip b/old/54987-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index b924d5f..0000000 --- a/old/54987-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/54987-h.zip b/old/54987-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index d4c1ad2..0000000 --- a/old/54987-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/54987-h/54987-h.htm b/old/54987-h/54987-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index c07d685..0000000 --- a/old/54987-h/54987-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,13055 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> - -<!DOCTYPE html - PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> - <title>Seth's Brother's Wife, by Harold Frederic</title> - <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" /> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> - - body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} - P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; } - H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } - hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} - .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;} - blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} - .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} - .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} - .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} - .xx-small {font-size: 60%;} - .x-small {font-size: 75%;} - .small {font-size: 85%;} - .large {font-size: 115%;} - .x-large {font-size: 130%;} - .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;} - .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;} - .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;} - .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;} - .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;} - .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;} - div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } - div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } - .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} - .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} - .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em; - font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; - text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD; - border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;} - .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0} - span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 } - pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} - -</style> - </head> - <body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Seth's Brother's Wife, by Harold Frederic - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Seth's Brother's Wife - A Study of Life in The Greater New York - -Author: Harold Frederic - -Release Date: June 26, 2017 [EBook #54987] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SETH'S BROTHER'S WIFE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - SETH’S BROTHER’S WIFE - </h1> - <h2> - A Study Of Life In The Greater New York - </h2> - <h2> - By Harold Frederic - </h2> - <h4> - New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons - </h4> - <h3> - 1887 - </h3> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0007.jpg" alt="0007 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <h3> - TO - </h3> - <h3> - MY MOTHER - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>SETH’S BROTHER’S WIFE.</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I.—THE HIRED FOLK. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II.—THE STORY OF LEMUEL. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III.—AUNT SABRINA. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV.—THE TWO YOUNG WOMEN. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V.—THE FUNERAL. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI.—IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII.—THE THREE BROTHERS. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII.—ALBERT’S PLANS. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX.—AT “M’TILDY’s” BEDSIDE. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X.—THE FISHING PARTY. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI.—ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE WORLD. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII.—THE SANCTUM. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII.—THIRTEEN MONTHS OF IT. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV.—BACK ON THE FARM. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV.—MR. RICHARD ANSDELL. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI.—DEAR ISABEL. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII.—AN UPWARD LEAP. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII.—BOLTING THE TICKET. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX.—THE WELCOME. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX.—THE NIGHT: THE BROTHERS. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI.—THE NIGHT: MASTER AND MAN. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII.—THE NIGHT: THE LOVERS. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII.—THE CONVENTION: THE BOSS. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV.—THE CONVENTION: THE NEWS. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV.—“YOU THOUGHT I DID IT!” </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI.—THE CORONER. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII.—ANNIE AND ISABEL. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII.—BETWEEN THE BREAD-PAN AND - THE CHURN. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX.—THE BOSS LOOKS INTO THE - MATTER. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX.—JOHN’S DELICATE MISSION. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI.—MILTON’S ASPIRATIONS. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII.—“A WICKED WOMAN!” </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII.—THE SHERIFF ASSISTS. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER XXXIV.—AT “M’TILDY’S” BEDSIDE - AGAIN. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XXXV.—“SUCH WOMEN ARE!” </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - SETH’S BROTHER’S WIFE. - </h1> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER I.—THE HIRED FOLK. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>f ther’ ain’t a - flare-up in <i>this</i> haouse ’fore long, I miss <i>my</i> guess,” - said Alvira, as she kneaded the pie-crust, and pulled it out between her - floury fingers to measure its consistency. “Ole Sabriny’s got her back up - this time to stay.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, let ’em flare, says I. ’Taint none o’ aour business, - Alviry.” - </p> - <p> - “I knaow, Milton; but still it seems to me she might wait at least till - th’ corpse was aout o’ th’ haouse.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s thet got to dew with it?” - </p> - <p> - The callousness of the question must have grated upon the hired-girl, for - she made no reply, and slapped the dough over on the board with an - impatient gesture. - </p> - <p> - It was near the close of a fair day, late in May, and the reddened - sunlight from the West would have helped to glorify any human being less - hopelessly commonplace than Milton Squires as he sat in its full radiance - on the doorstep, peeling and quartering apples over a pan which he held - between his knees. This sunlight, to reach him, painted with warm tints - many objects near at hand which it could not make picturesque. The three - great barns, standing in the shadow to the south, were ricketty and - ancient without being comely, and the glare only made their awkward - outlines and patched, paintless surfaces the meaner; the score of lean - cows, standing idly fetlock-deep in the black mire of the barnyard, or - nipping the scant tufts of rank grass near the trough, seemed all the - dingier and scrawnier for the brilliancy of the light which covered them; - the broken gate, the bars eked out with a hop-pole, the wheelbarrow turned - shiftlessly against a break in the wall, the mildewed wellcurb, with its - antiquated reach—all seemed in this glow of dying day to be - conscious of exhibiting at its worse their squalid side. The sunset could - not well have illumined, during that hour at least, a less inspiring scene - than this which Alvira, looking out as she talked, or the hired man, - raising his head from over the apples, could see from the kitchen door of - Lemuel Fairchild’s farm-house. But any student of his species would have - agreed that, in all the uninviting view, Milton was the least attractive - object. - </p> - <p> - As he rose to empty his pan within, and start afresh, he could be seen - more fully. He was clumsily cased from neck to ankles in brown over-alls, - threadbare, discolored, patched, with mud about the knees and ragged edges - lower down. He wore rubber boots, over the bulging legs of which the - trousers came reluctantly, and the huge feet of these were slit down the - instep. His hat had been soft and black once; now it seemed stiffened with - dirt, to which the afternoon milking had lent a new contribution of short - reddish hair, and was shapeless and colorless from age. His back was - narrow and bent, and his long arms terminated in hands which it seemed - sinful to have touch anything thereafter to be eaten. Viewed from behind, - Milton appeared to be at least fifty. But his face showed a somewhat - younger man, despite its sun-baked lines and the frowzy beard which might - be either the yellow of unkempt youth or the gray of untidy age. In - reality he was not yet thirty-six. - </p> - <p> - He slouched out now with a fresh lot of apples, and, squatting on the - door-stone, resumed the conversation. - </p> - <p> - “I s’pose naow Sissly’s gone, ther’ won’t be no livin’ under th’ same roof - with Sabriny fer any of us. Ther’ ain’t nobuddy lef’ fer her to rassle - with ’cep’ us. Ole Lemuel’s so broken-up, he won’t dare say his - soul’s his own; ’n John—well, Lize Wilkins says she heerd him - say he didn’t know’s he’d come to th’ funer’l ’t all, after th’ way - him ’n’ Sabriny hed it aout las’ time he was here.” - </p> - <p> - “I wasn’t talkin’ o’ <i>them!</i>” said Alvira, slapping the flour from - her hands’ and beginning with the roller; “it’d be nothin’ new, her tryin’ - to boss <i>them</i>. But she’s got her dander up naow agin somebuddy that - beats them all holler. They won’t no Richardsons come puttin’ on airs ’raoun’ - here, an’ takin’ th’ parlor bedroom ’thaout askin’, not ef th’ ole - lady knaows herself—’n’ I guess she does.” - </p> - <p> - “What Richardsons?” asked Milton. “Thought Sissly was th’ last of ’em—thet - they wa’n’t no more Richardsons.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, man alive, ain’t Albert’s wife a Richardson, th’ daughter of - Sissly’s cousin—you remember, that pock-pitted man who kep’ th’ fast - hoss here one summer. Of course she’s a Richardson—full-blooded! - When she come up from th’ train here this mornin’, with Albert, I see by - th’ ole lady’s eye ’t she meant misch’f. I didn’t want to see no - raow, here with a corpse in th’ haouse, ’n’ so I tried to smooth - matters over, ’n’ kind o’ quiet Sabriny daown, tellin’ her thet - they had to come to th’ fu-ner’l, ’n’ they’d go ’way soon’s - it was through with, ’n’ that Albert, bein’ the oldest son, hed a - right to th’ comp’ny bed-room.” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ what’d she say?” - </p> - <p> - “She didn’t say much, ’cep’ thet th’ Richardsons hed never brung - nothin’ but bad luck to this haouse, ’n’ they never would, nuther. - ’N’ then she flaounced upstairs to her room, jis’s she allus does - when she’s riled, ’n’ she give Albert’s wife sech a look, I said to - m’self, ‘Milady, I wouldn’t be in <i>your</i> shoes fer all yer fine - fixin’s.’” - </p> - <p> - “Well, she’s a dum likely lookin’ woman, ef she <i>is</i> a Richardson,” - said Milton, with something like enthusiasm. “Wonder ef she wears one o’ - them low-necked gaowns when she’s to hum, like th’ picters in th’ <i>Ledger</i>. - They say they all dew, in New York.” - </p> - <p> - “Haow sh’d I knaow!” Alvira sharply responded. “I got enough things to - think of, ’thaout both’rin’ my head abaout city women’s dresses. ’N’ - you ought to hev, tew. Ef you’n’ Leander’d pay more heed to yer - work, ’n’ dew yer chores up ship-shape, ’n’ spen’ less time - porin’ over them good-fer-nothin’ story-papers, th’ farm wouldn’t look so - run-daown ’n’ slaouchy. Did yeh hear what Albert said this mornin’, - when he looked ’raoun’? ‘I swan! ’ he said, ‘I b’lieve this - is th’ seediest lookin’ place ’n all Northern New York.’ Nice thing - fer him to hev to say, wa’n’t it!” - </p> - <p> - “What d’ I keer what <i>he</i> says? He ain’t th’ boss here, by a - jug-full!” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ more’s th’ pity, tew. He’d make yeh toe th’ mark!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, ’n’ Sabriny’d make it lively fer his wife, tew. Th’ ole fight - ’baout th’ Fairchileses ’n’ th’ Richardsons wouldn’t be a - succumstance to thet. Sissly’d thank her stars thet she was dead ’n’ - buried aout o’ th’ way.” - </p> - <p> - These two hired people, who discussed their employer and his family with - that easy familiarity of Christian names to be found only in Russia and - rural America, knew very well what portended to the house when the - Richardson subject came up. Alvira Roberts had spent more than twenty - years of her life in the thick of the gaseous strife between Fairchild and - Richardson. She was a mere slip of a girl, barely thirteen, when she had - first hired out at the homestead, and now, black-browed, sallow from much - tea-drinking, and with a sharp, deep wrinkle vertically dividing her high - forehead, she looked every year of her thirty-five. Compared with her, - Milton Squires was a new comer on the farm, but still there were lean old - cows over yonder in the barnyard, lazily waiting for the night-march to - the pastures, that had been ravenous calves in their gruel-bucket stage - when he came. - </p> - <p> - What these two did not know about the Fairchild family was hardly worth - the knowing. Something of what they knew, the reader ought here to be - told. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER II.—THE STORY OF LEMUEL. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>emuel Fairchild, - the bowed, gray-haired, lumpish man who at this time sat in the main - living room within, feebly rocking himself by the huge wood-stove, and - trying vaguely as he had been for thirty-six hours past, to realize that - his wife lay in her final sleep in the adjoining chamber, had forty-odd - years before been as likely a young farmer as Dearborn County knew. He was - fine-looking and popular in those days, and old Seth Fairchild, dying - unexpectedly, had left to this elder son his whole possessions—six - hundred acres of dairy and hop land, free and clear, a residence much - above the average farm-house of these parts, and a tidy sum of money in - the bank. - </p> - <p> - The contrast now was sweeping. The Fairchild’s house was still the largest - residential structure on the Burfield road, which led from Thessaly across - the hills to remote and barbarous latitudes, but respect had long since - ceased to accrue to it upon the score of its size. To the local eye, it - was the badge and synonym of “rack and ruin;” while sometimes strangers of - artistic tastes, chancing to travel by this unfrequented road, would voice - regrets that such a prospect as opened to the vision just here, with the - noble range of hills behind for the first time looming in their true - proportions, should be spoiled by such a gaunt, unsightly edifice, with - its tumble-down surroundings, its staring windows cheaply curtained with - green paper, and its cheerless, shabby color—that indescribable gray - with which rain and frost and Father Time supplant unrenewed white. The - garden, comprising a quarter-acre to the east of the house, was a tangled - confusion of flowers and weeds and berry-bushes run wild, yet the effect - somehow was mean rather than picturesque. The very grass in the yard to - the west did not grow healthfully, but revealed patches of sandy - barrenness, created by feet too indifferent or unruly to keep the path to - the barns. - </p> - <p> - Yet the neighbors said, and Lemuel had come himself to feel, that the - blame of this sad falling off was not fairly his. There had been a fatal - defect in the legacy. - </p> - <p> - The one needful thing which the Hon. Seth Fairchild did <i>not</i> leave - his elder son was the brains by means of which he himself, in one way or - another, had gathered together a substantial competency, won two elections - to the State Senate, and established and held for himself the position of - leading citizen in his town—that most valued and intangible of - American local distinctions. But while Lemuel’s brown hair curled so - prettily, and his eyes shone with the modest light of wealthy and - well-behaved youth, nobody missed the brains. If there was any change in - the management of the farm, it passed unnoticed, for all attention was - centred on the great problem, interesting enough always when means seeks a - help-meet, but indescribably absorbing in rural communities, where - everybody knows everybody and casual gallants never come for those - luckless damsels neglected by native swains—Whom will he marry? - </p> - <p> - It boots not now to recall the heart-burnings, the sad convictions that - life would henceforth be a blank, the angry repinings at fate, which - desolated the village of Thessaly and vicinity when Lemuel, returning from - a mid-winter visit to Albany, brought a bride in the person of a bright - eyed, handsome and clever young lady who had been Miss Cicely Richardson. - He had known her, so they learned, for some years—not only during - his school-days at the Academy there, but later, in what was mysteriously - known in Thessaly as “society,” in whose giddy mazes he had mingled while - on a visit to his legislative sire at the Capital City. No, it is not - worth while to dwell upon the village hopes rudely destroyed by this shock—for - they are dim memories of the far, far past. - </p> - <p> - But to one the blow was a disappointment not to be forgotten, or to grow - dim in recollection. Miss Sabrina Fairchild was two years younger than her - brother in age—a score of years his senior in firmness and will. She - had only a small jointure in her father’s estate, because she had great - expectations from an aunt in Ohio, in perpetual memory of whose - anticipated bounty she bore her scriptural name, but she was a charge on - her brother in that she was to have a home with him until she chose to - leave it for one of her own. I doubt not that her sagacious father - foresaw, from his knowledge of his daughter, the improbability that this - second home would ever be offered her. - </p> - <p> - Miss Sabrina, even at this tender age, was clearly not of the marrying - kind, and she grew less so with great steadiness. She was at this early - date, when she was twenty-four, a woman of markedly strong character, of - which perhaps the most distinct trait was family pride. - </p> - <p> - There has been a considerable army of State Senators since New York first - took on the honors of a Commonwealth, and unto them a great troop of - daughters have been born, but surely no other of all these girls ever - exulted so fondly, nay, fiercely, in the paternal dignity as did Sabrina. - She knew nothing of politics, and little of the outside world; her - conceptions of social possibilities were of the most primitive sort; one - winter, when she went to Albany with her father, and was passed in a - bewildered way through sundry experiences said to be of a highly - fashionable nature, it had been temporarily apparent to her own - consciousness that she was an awkward, ignorant, red-armed country-girl—but - this only for one wretched hour or so. Every mile-post passed on her - homeward ride, as she looked through the stage window, brought restored - self-confidence, and long before the tedious journey ended she was more - the Senator’s daughter than ever. - </p> - <p> - Through this very rebound from mortification she queened it over the - simpler souls of the village with renewed severity and pomp. The itinerant - singing master who thought to get her for the asking into his class in the - school-house Wednesday evenings, was frozen by the amazed disdain of her - refusal. When young Smith Thurber, the kiln-keeper’s son, in the flippant - spirit of fine buttons and a resplendent fob, asked her to dance a measure - with him at the Wallaces’ party, the iciness of her stare fairly took away - his breath. - </p> - <p> - Something can be guessed of her emotions when the brother brought home his - bride. With a halfcowardly, half-kindly idea of postponing the trouble - certain to ensue, he had given Sabrina no warning of his intention, and, - through the slow mails of that date, only a day’s advance notice of his - return with Mrs. Lemuel. The storm did not burst at once. Indeed it may be - said never to have really burst. Sabrina was not a bad woman, according to - her lights, and she did nothing consciously to make her sister-in-law - unhappy. The young wife had a light heart, a sensible mind and the faculty - of being cheerful about many things which might be expected to annoy. But - she had some pride, too, and although at the outset it was the very simple - and praiseworthy pride of a well-meaning individual, incessant vaunting of - the Fairchilds quite naturally gave a family twist to it, and she soon was - able to resent slights in the name of all the Richardsons. - </p> - <p> - After all, was she not in the right? for while the grass was scarcely - green on the grave of the first Fairchild who had amounted to anything, - there were six generations of Richardsons in Albany chronicles alone who - had married into the best Dutch families of that ancient, aristocratic - town, to say nothing of the New England record antedating that period. - Thus the case appeared to her, and came gradually to have more prominence - in her mind than, in her maiden days, she could have thought possible. - </p> - <p> - So this great Forty Years’ War began, in which there was to be no single - grand, decisive engagement, but a thousand petty skirmishes and little - raids, infinitely more vexatious and exhausting, and was waged until the - weaker of the combatants, literally worn out in the fray, had laid down - her arms and her life together, and was at peace at last, under the sheet - in the darkened parlor. - </p> - <p> - The other veteran party to the feud, her thin, iron-gray hair half - concealed under a black knit cap, her bold, sharp face red as with stains - of tears, sat at the window of her own upper room, reading her Bible. If - Milton and Alvira had known that she was reading in Judges, they might - have been even more confident of a coming “flare-up.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER III.—AUNT SABRINA. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>EIGHBORING - philosophers who cared, from curiosity or a loftier motive, to study the - Fairchild domestic problem, in all its social and historic ramifications, - generally emerged from the inquiry with some personal bias against Miss - Sabrina, tempered by the conclusion that, after all, there was a good deal - to be said on the old lady’s side. - </p> - <p> - Certainly, as the grim old maid in the rusty bombazine gown and cap, which - gave a funereal air even to the red plaid shawl over her shoulders, sat at - her upper window, and tried through a pained and resentful chaos of - secular thoughts to follow the Scriptural lines, there was an extremely - vivid conviction uppermost in her mind that justice had been meted out - neither to her nor to the Fairchilds. She would have repelled indignantly, - and honestly enough too, the charge that there was any bitterness in her - heart toward the sister-in-law whose burial was appointed for the morrow. - She had liked poor Cicely, in her iron-clad way, and had wept genuine - tears more than once since her death. Indeed, her thoughts—and they - were persistent, self-asserting thoughts which not even her favorite - recital of Gideon’s sanguinary triumph could keep back—ran more upon - the living than upon the dead. - </p> - <p> - And what gloomy, melancholy thoughts they were! They swept over two score - of years, the whole gamut of emotion, from the pride and hope of youth to - the anguish of disappointed, wrathful, hopeless old age, as her hand might - cover all there was of sound in music by a run down her mother’s ancient - spinet which stood, mute and forgotten, in the corner of the room. Her - brother, this brother whom satirical fate had made a Lemuel instead of a - Lucy or a Lucretia, a man instead of a woman as befitted his weakness of - mind and spirit—had begun life with a noble heritage. Where was it - now? He had been the heir to a leading position among the men of his - county. What was he now? The Fairchilds had been as rich, as respected, as - influential as any Dearborn family. Who did them honor now? - </p> - <p> - The mental answers to these questions blurred Miss Sabrina’s spectacles - with tears, and Gideon’s performance with the lamps seemed a tiresome - thing. She laid the Book aside, and went softly down stairs to her - brother, who sat, still rocking in his late wife’s high, cushioned - arm-chair, disconsolate by the stove. - </p> - <p> - There were also in the room his oldest son and this son’s wife, sitting - dumbly, each at a window, making a seemly pretence of not being bored by - the meagre prospect without. They looked at their aunt in that far-off - impassive manner with which participants in a high pageant or solemn - observance always regard one another. There was no call for a greeting, - since they had already exchanged whispered salutations, earlier in the - day. Miss Sabrina glanced at the young wife for an instant—it was - not a kindly glance. Then her eyes turned to the husband, and while - surveying him seemed suddenly to light up with some new thought. She - almost smiled, and her tight pressed lips parted. Had they followed the - prompting of the brain and spoken, the words would have been: - </p> - <p> - “Thank God, there is still Albert!” - </p> - <p> - Albert Fairchild would have been known in any company, and in any guise, I - think, for a lawyer. The profession had its badge in every line and aspect - of his face, in every movement of his head, and, so it seemed, in the way - he held his hands, in the very tone of his voice. His face was round, and - would have been pleasant, so far as conformation and expression went, had - it not been for the eyes, which were unsympathetic, almost cold. Often the - rest of his countenance was wreathed in amiable smiles; but the eyes - smiled never. He had looked a middle-aged man for a decade back, and - casual acquaintances who met him from year to year complimented him on not - growing old, because they saw no change. In fact he had been old from the - beginning, and even now looked more than his age, which lacked some few - months of forty. He was growing bald above the temples, and, like all the - Fairchilds, was taking on flesh with increasing years. Nothing could have - better shown the extremity of poor Sabrina’s woe than this clutching at - the relief afforded by the sight of Albert, for she was not on good terms - with him. Albert had been born and reared through boyhood at a time when - the farm was still prosperous and money plenty. He had been educated far - beyond the traditions of his sires, and was the first University man of - his family, so far as was known. He had been given his own bent in all - things, before he settled down to a choice of profession, and then, at - considerable expense, had been secured a place with one of the greatest - legal firms in New York City. For years the first fruits of the soil, the - cream off all the milk—so the Aunt’s mingled scriptural and dairy - metaphors ran—had been his. And what return had they had for it? He - had become a sound, successful lawyer, with a handsome income, and he had - married wealth as well. Yet year after year, as the fortunes of the - Fairchild homestead declined, he had never interfered to prevent the fresh - mortgage being placed—nay, had more than once explicitly declined to - help save it. - </p> - <p> - “Agriculture is out of date in this State,” she had heard him say once, - with her own ears, “Better let the old people live on their capital, as - they go along. It’s no use throwing good money after bad. Farm land here - in the East is bound to decrease in value, steadily.” - </p> - <p> - This about the homestead—about the cradle of his ancestors! Poor old - lady, had the Fairchilds been sending baronial roots down through all this - soil for a thousand years, she couldn’t have been more pained or mortified - over Albert’s callous view of the farm which her grandfather, a revolted - cobbler from Rhode Island, had cleared and paid for at ten cents an acre. - </p> - <p> - Then there was his marriage, too. In all the years of armed neutrality or - tacit warfare which she and Cicely had passed together under one roof, - they had never before or since come so near an open and palpable rupture - as they did over a city-bred cousin of Cicely’s—a forward, - impertinent, ill-behaved girl from New York, who had come to the farm on a - visit some ten years before, and whose father was summoned at last to take - her away because otherwise she, Sabrina, threatened to herself leave the - house. There had been a desperate scene before this conclusion was - reached. Sabrina had stormed and threatened to shake the dust of the - homestead from off her outraged sandals. Cicely for the once had stood her - ground, and said she fancied even worse things than that might happen - without producing a universal cataclysm. Lemuel had almost wept with - despair over the tumult. The two older boys, particularly John, had not - concealed their exuberant hope that their maiden Aunt might be taken at - her word, and allowed to leave. And the girl herself, this impudent huzzy - of a Richardson, actually put her spoke in too, and said things about old - cats and false teeth, which it made Sabrina’s blood still boil to recall. - </p> - <p> - And it was this girl, of all others in the world, whom Albert must go and - marry! - </p> - <p> - Yet Sabrina, in her present despondent mood, felt herself able to rise - above mere personal piques and dislikes, if there really was a hope for - the family’s revival. She was not very sanguine about even Albert, but - beyond him there was no chance at all. - </p> - <p> - John, the second brother, had talent enough, she supposed. People said he - was smart, and he must be, else he could scarcely have come in his - twenty-eighth year to be owner and editor of the Thessaly <i>Banner of - Liberty</i>, and put in all those political pieces written in the first - person plural, as if he had the power of attorney for all Dearborn county. - But then he was mortally shiftless about money matters, and they did say - that since his wife’s death—a mere school-teacher she had been—he - had become quite dissipated and played billiards. Besides she was at open - feud with him, and never, never would speak to him again, the longest day - <i>he</i> lived! So that settled John. - </p> - <p> - As for Seth, the youngest of the brothers, it is to be doubted if she - would have thought of him at all, had he not come in at the moment. He had - been down to the village to get some black clothes which the tailor had - constructed on short notice for him, and he, too, passed through the - sitting room to the stairs with the serious look and the dead silence - which the awful presence imposes. - </p> - <p> - Then she did think of him for a moment, as she stood warming her fingers - over the bald, flat top of the stove—for though bright and warm - enough outside, the air was still chilly in these great barns of rooms. - </p> - <p> - Seth was indisputably the handsomest of all the Fairchilds, even handsomer - than she remembered his father to have been—a tall, straight, - broadshouldered youth, who held his head well up and looked everybody in - the face with honest hazel eyes. He had the Richardson complexion, a dusky - tint gained doubtless from all those Dutch intermarriages of which poor - Cicely used to make so much, but his brown hair curled much as Lemuel’s - used to curl, only not so effeminately, and his temper was as even as his - father’s had been, though not so submissive or weak. His hands were rough - and coarse from the farm work, and his walk showed familiarity with - ploughed ground, but still he had, in his way, a more distinguished air - than either Albert or John had ever had. - </p> - <p> - Looking him over, a stranger would have been surprised that his aunt - should have left him out of her thoughts of the family’s future—or - that, once pausing to consider him, she should have dropped the idea so - swiftly. But so it was. Miss Sabrina felt cold and aggrieved toward - Albert, and she came as near hating John as a deeply devout woman safely - could. She simply took no account of Seth at all, as she would have - expressed it. To her he was a quiet, harmless sort of youngster, who - worked prettily steadily on the farm, and got on civilly with people. She - understood that he was very fond of reading, but that made no special - impression on her. - </p> - <p> - If she had been asked, she would undoubtedly have said that Seth was her - favorite nephew—but she had never dreamed of regarding him as a - possible restorer of the family glories. - </p> - <p> - “Is yer oven hot enough?” she asked Alvira in the kitchen, a minute later. - “If they’s anything I <i>dew</i> hate, it’s a soggy undercrust.” - </p> - <p> - “I guess I kin manage a batch o’ pies by this time,” returned the - hired-girl with a sniff. Through some unexplained process of reasoning, - Alvira was with the Fairchilds as against the Richardsons, but she was - first of all for herself, against the whole human race. - </p> - <p> - “Milton gone aout with the caows?” asked the old lady, ignoring for the - once the domestic’s challenge. “When he comes back, he ’n’ Leander - better go over to Wilkinses, and get what chairs they kin spare. I s’pose - there’ll be a big craowd, ef only to git in and see if there’s any holes - in our body-Brussels yit, ’n’ haow that sofy-backed set in the - parlor’s holdin’ out. Poor Cicely! I think they better bring over the - chairs tonight, after dusk. What people don’t see they can’t talk abaout.” - </p> - <p> - “Heard Milton say he was goin’ to borrer some over at Warren’s,” remarked - Alvira, in a casual way, but looking around to see how the idea affected - Miss Sabrina. - </p> - <p> - “Well he jis’ won’t!” came the answer, very promptly and spiritedly. “If - every mortal soul of ’em hes to stan’ up, he won’t! I guess Lemuel - Fairchild’s wife can be buried ’thaout asking any help from Matildy - Warren. I wouldn’t ask her if ’twas th’ las’ thing I ever did.” - </p> - <p> - “But Annie sent word she was comin’ over fus’ thing in th’ mornin’, so’s - to help clear up th’ breakfast things. If she’s good enough fer that, I - don’t see why you need be afeered o’ borryin’ her chairs.” - </p> - <p> - “They ain’t her chairs, and you knaow it, Alviry. I ain’t got a word to - say agin’ Annie Fairchild, but when it comes to her gran’ mother, I kin - ride a high horse as well’s she kin. After all the trouble she made my - family, the sight of a single stick of her furnitur’ here’d be enough to - bring the rafters of this haouse daown over my head, I do believe!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, of course, ‘tain’t none o’ my business, but seems to me there’ll be - a plaguey slim fun’r’l when <i>your</i> turn comes if you’re goin’ to keep - up all these old-woman’s fights with everybody ’raound abaout.” - </p> - <p> - “Naow Alviry!” began Miss Sabrina, in her shrillest and angriest tone; - then with a visible effort, as if remembering something, she paused and - then went on in a subdued, almost submissive voice, “You knaow jis’ haow - Matildy Warren’s used us. From the very day my poor brother William ran - off with her Jenny—and goodness knaows whatever possessed him to dew - it—thet old woman’s never missed a chance to run us all daown—ez - ef she oughtn’t to been praoud o’ th’ day a Fairchild took up with a - Warren.” - </p> - <p> - “Guess you ain’t had none the wu’st of it,” put in Alvira, with sarcasm. - “Guess your tongue’s ’baout as sharp as her’n ever was. B’sides - she’s bed-ridden naow, ’n’ everybody thought she wouldn’t get threw - th’ spring. ’N’ ef Seth’s goin’ to make up to Annie, you ought to - begin to smooth things over ’fore she dies. There’s no tellin’ but - what she mightn’t leave the farm away f’m th’ girl at th’ last minute, - jis’ to spite you.” - </p> - <p> - “Yeh needn’t talk as if <i>I</i> wanted her pesky farm!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, well now, you knaow what I mean’s well’s I dew. What’s th’ use o’ - harpin’ on what yer brother William did, or what ole Matildy said, ’fore - I was born, when you knaow th’ tew farms jine, and yer heart’s sot on - havin’ ’em in one—Yes, ’fore I was born,” repeated the - domestic, as if pleased with the implication of juvenility. - </p> - <p> - Miss Sabrina hesitated, and looked at Alvira meditatively through her - spectacles, in momentary doubt about the propriety of saying a sharp thing - under all the circumstances; but the temptation was not to be resisted. “’N’ - you ain’t percisely a chicken yourself, Alviry,” she said and left the - kitchen. - </p> - <p> - Later, when Milton had returned from the pasture, and hung about the - kitchen, mending the harness that went with the democrat-wagon while - waiting for Leander to return from the cheese factory, Alvira remarked: - </p> - <p> - “Seems ’if Sabriny’d lost all her sper’t this last day or tew. - Never see sech a change. She don’t answer up wuth a cent. I shouldn’t be - s’prised if she didn’t tackle Albert’s wife after all. Oh yes, ’n’ - you ain’t to go to Warren’s for them chairs. Sa-briny’s dead-set agin - that.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s up?” asked Milton, “Hez Seth broke off with Annie?” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t knaow’s they ever was anything particular to break off. No, ’t - ’aint that; it’s the same raow ‘tween the two ole women. Goodness - knaows, I’m sick ’n’ tired of hearin’ ’baout it.” - </p> - <p> - “No, but ain’t Seth ’n’ Annie fixed it up?” persisted Milton; - “Daown’t th’ corners they say it’s all settled.” Then he mutteringly - added, as he slouched out to meet Leander, who drove up now with a great - rattle of empty milk-cans. “I wish’t <i>I</i> was in Seth’s shoes.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you <i>dew</i>, dew yeh!” said Alvira, thus left to herself. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IV.—THE TWO YOUNG WOMEN. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he young girl - whose future had been settled down at the corners, came along the road - next morning toward the Fairchild house, all unconscious of her destiny. - She lived in a small, old-fashioned farm-dwelling back in the fields, - alone with her grandmother, and although there was a bitter feud between - the heads of the two houses, it had not stopped her from being a familiar - and helpful figure in her uncle’s homestead. - </p> - <p> - Annie Fairchild was a country girl in some senses of the term, calm-faced, - clear-eyed, self-reliant among her friends, but with a curious disposition - toward timidity in the presence of strangers. She was held to be too - serious and “school-ma’am-ish” for pleasant company by most rural maidens - of her acquaintance, and the few attempts of young farmers of the - country-side to establish friendly relations with her had not been crowned - with conspicuous success. It could scarcely be said that she was haughty - or cold; no one could demonstrate in detail that her term of schooling in - a far-off citified seminary had made her proud or uncivil; but still she - had no intimates. - </p> - <p> - This was the more marked from the fact that she was a pretty girl—or - if not precisely pretty, very attractive and winning in face. No other - girl of the neighborhood had so fine and regular a profile, or such - expressive, dark eyes, or so serenely intelligent an expression. It had - been whispered at one time that Reuben Tracy, the school-master, was - likely to make a match of it with her, but this had faded away again as a - rootless rumor; by this time everybody on the Burfield road tacitly - understood that eventually she was to be the wife of her cousin Seth, when - it “came time for the two farms to join.” And she had grown accustomed - long since to the furtive, half-awed, half-covetous look which men cast - upon her, without suspecting the spirit of reluctant renunciation - underlying it. - </p> - <p> - She met Milton Squires on the road, close in front of the Fairchild’s - house, this morning, and, nodding to him, passed on. She did not - particularly note the gaze he bent upon her as she went by, and which - followed her afterward, almost to the Fairchild gate. If she had done so, - and could have read all its meaning, she would not have gone on with so - unruffled a face, for it was a look to frighten an honest young woman—an - intent, hungry, almost wolfish look, unrelieved by so much as a glimmer of - the light of manliness. - </p> - <p> - But she was alike unconscious of his thoughts and of the gossip he had - heard at the corners. Certainly no listener who followed her to the gate, - where she encountered Seth at work screwing on a new hinge, would have - gathered from the tone or words of the greeting on either side any - testimony to confirm the common supposition that they were destined for - each other. - </p> - <p> - “Good morning, Seth,” she said, halting while he dragged the great gate - open for her, “you’re all through breakfast, I suppose?” - </p> - <p> - “No, I think Albert and his wife are at the table still. We didn’t call - them when the rest got up, you know. They’re not used to country ways.” - </p> - <p> - “Anybody else here?” - </p> - <p> - “No, except John.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I’m so glad he came. That Lize Wilkins has been telling everybody he - wouldn’t come on Sabrina’s account. And it would have looked <i>so</i> - bad.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, Lize Wilkins talks too much. All John ever said was that he wouldn’t - stay here in the house any more than he could help. It’s too bad he can’t - get along better with Aunt; it would make things so much pleasanter.” - </p> - <p> - “How’s your father, Seth? He seemed at first to take it pretty hard.” - </p> - <p> - “He appeared a little brighter yesterday, after Albert came, but he’s very - poorly this morning. Poor old man, it makes a sad difference with him—more - I suppose than with us boys, even with me, who never have been away from - her hardly for a day.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, Seth, a boy outgrows his mother, I suppose, but for an old couple - who have lived together forty years a separation like this must be awful. - I shall go up to the house now.” - </p> - <p> - Seth followed her with his eyes as she walked up the road, past the - old-fashioned latticed front door with its heavy fold of crape hanging on - the knocker, and turned from sight at the corner of the house; and the - look in his face was soft and admiring, even if it was hardly loverlike. - In his trouble—and he felt the bereavement most keenly—it - seemed restful and good to have such a girl as Annie about, Indeed, a - vague thought that she had never before seemed so sweet and likeable came - to him, as he turned again to the hinge, and lightened his heart - perceptibly, for almost the last words his mother had spoken to him had - been of his future with Annie as his wife. - </p> - <p> - “You will have the farm before long, Seth,” she said, smiling faintly as - he stroked her pale hair—somehow to the last it never grew grey—and - looked at her through boyish tears, “and Annie will bring you the Warren - farm. Her grandmother and I have talked it over many a time. Annie’s a - good girl, there’s no better, and she’ll make my boy a good, true wife.” - </p> - <p> - For a year or two back Seth had understood in a nebulous way that his - parents had an idea of his eventually marrying Annie, but his mother’s - words still came to him in the form of a surprise. First, it had been far - from his thoughts that old Mrs. Warren, Annie’s invalid grandmother, would - listen to such a thing, much less plan it. There was a bitterness of long - standing between the two families, he knew. His father’s younger brother—a - halfbrother—named William Fairchild, had married Mrs. Warren’s only - daughter under circumstances which he had never heard detailed, but which - at least had enraged the mother. Both William and his wife had died, out - West he believed, years and years ago, leaving only this girl, Annie - Fairchild, who came an orphan to the grandmother she had never seen - before, and was reared by her. In this Mrs. Warren and his aunt Sabrina - had found sufficient occasion for a quarrel, lasting ever since he could - remember, and as he had always understood from his aunt that her battle - was in defense of the whole family, he had taken it for granted that he - not less than the other Fairchilds was included in Mrs. Warren’s disfavor. - He recalled, now, indeed, having heard Annie say once or twice that her - grandmother liked him; but this he had taken in a negative way, as if the - grandmother of the Capulets had remarked that of all the loathed Montagus - perhaps young Romeo was personally the least offensive to her sight. - </p> - <p> - And second, he was far from being in a Romeo’s condition of heart and - mind. He was not in love with Annie for herself—much less for the - Warren farm. To state plainly what Seth had not yet mustered courage to - say in entire frankness even to himself, he hated farming, and rebelled - against the idea of following in his father’s footsteps. And the dreams of - a career elsewhere which occupied the mutinous thoughts Seth concealed - under so passive an exterior had carried him far away from the plan of an - alliance with the nice sort of country cousin who would eventually own the - adjoining farm. So in this sense, too, his mothers dying words were a - surprise—converting into a definite and almost sacred desire what he - had supposed to be merely a shapeless fancy. - </p> - <p> - Not all this crossed his mind, as he watched Annie till she disappeared, - and then turned back to his work. But the sight of her had been pleasant - to him, and her voice had sounded very gentle and yet full of the - substance of womanliness—and perhaps his poor, dear mother’s plan - for him, after all, was the best. - </p> - <p> - The gate swinging properly at last, there was an end to Seth’s out-door - tasks, and he started toward the house. The thought that he would see - Annie within was distinct enough in his mind, almost, to constitute a - motive for his going. At the very door he encountered his brother Albert’s - wife, coming out, and stopped. - </p> - <p> - Isabel Fairchild was far from deserving, at least as a woman, the epithets - with which Aunt Sabrina mentally coupled her girlhood. There was nothing - impertinent or ill-behaved about her appearance, certainly, as she stood - before Seth, and with a faint smile bade him good-morning. - </p> - <p> - She was above the medium height, as woman’s stature goes, and almost - plump; her hair, much of which was shown in front by the pretty Parisian - form of straw hat she wore, was very light in color; her eyes were blue, a - light, noticeable blue. She wore some loose kind of black and gray morning - dress, with an extra fold falling in graceful lines from her shoulders to - her train, like a toga, and she carried a dainty parasol, also of black - and gray, like the ribbons on her dark hat. To Seth’s eyes she had seemed - yesterday, when he saw her for the first time, a very embodiment of the - luxury, beauty, refinement of city life—and how much more so now, - when her dingy traveling raiment had given place to this most engaging - garb, so subdued, yet so lovely. It seemed to him that his sister-in-law - was quite the most attractive woman he had ever seen. - </p> - <p> - “I thought of going for a little stroll,” she said, again with the faint, - half-smile. “It is so charming outside, and so blue and depressing in the - house. Can I walk along there through the orchard now?—I used to - when I was here as a girl, I know—and won’t you come with me? I’ve - scarcely had a chance for a word with you since we came.” - </p> - <p> - The invitation was pleasant enough to Seth, but he looked down - deprecatingly at his rough chore clothes, and wondered whether he ought to - accept it or not. - </p> - <p> - “Why, Seth, the <i>idea</i> of standing on ceremony with <i>me!</i> As if - we hadn’t played together here as children—to say nothing of my - being your sister now!” - </p> - <p> - They had started now toward the orchard, and she continued:— - </p> - <p> - “Do you know, it seems as if I didn’t know anybody here but you—and - even you almost make a stranger out of me. Poor Uncle Lemuel, he is so - broken-down that he scarcely remembers me, and of course your Aunt and I - couldn’t be expected to get very intimate—you remember our dispute? - Then John, he’s very pleasant, and all that, but he isn’t at all like the - John I used to look up to so, the summer I was here. But you—you - have hardly changed a bit. Of course,” she made haste to add, for Seth’s - face did not reflect unalloyed gratification at this, “you have grown - manly and big, and all that, but you haven’t changed in your expression or - manner. It’s almost ten years—and I should have known you anywhere. - But John <i>has</i> changed—he’s more like a city man, or rather a - villager, a compromise between city and country.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I’m a countryman through and through, I suppose,” said Seth, with - something very like a sigh. - </p> - <p> - “John has seen a good deal of the world they tell me, and been on papers - in large cities. I wonder how he can content himself with that little - weekly in Thessaly after that.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t think John has much ambition,” answered Seth, meditatively. “He - doesn’t seem to care much how things go, if he only has the chance to say - what he wants to say in print. It doesn’t make any difference to him, - apparently, whether all New York State reads what he writes, or only - thirty or forty fellows in Dearborn County—he’s just as well - satisfied. And yet he’s a very bright man, too. He might have gone to the - Assembly last fall, if he could have bid against Elhanan Pratt. He <i>will</i> - go sometime, probably.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, do you have an auction here for the Assembly?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no, but the man who’s willing to pay a big assessment into the - campaign fund can generally shut a poor candidate out John didn’t seem to - mind much about being frozen out though—not half so much as I did, - for him. Everybody in Thessaly knows him and likes him and calls him - ‘John,’ and that seems to be the height of his ambition. I can’t imagine a - man of his abilities being satisfied with so limited a horizon.” - </p> - <p> - “And, you, Seth, what is your horizon like?” asked Isabel. - </p> - <p> - They had entered the orchard path, now, and the apple blossoms close above - them filled the May morning air with that sweet spring perfume which seems - to tell of growth, harvest, the fruition of hope. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I’m picked out to be a countryman all the days of my life I suppose.” - There was the sigh again, and a tinge of bitterness in his tone, as well. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I hope not—that is, if you don’t want to be. Oh, it must be - such a dreary life! The very thought of it sets my teeth on edge. The - dreadful people you have to know: men without an idea beyond crops and - calves and the cheese-factory; women slaving their lives out doing bad - cooking, mending for a houseful of men, devoting their scarce - opportunities for intercourse with other women to the weakest and most - wretched gossip; coarse servants who eat at the table with their employers - and call them by their Christian names; boys whose only theory about - education is thrashing the school teacher, if it is a man, or breaking her - heart by their mean insolence if it is a woman; and girls brought up to be - awkward gawks, without a chance in life, since the brighter and nicer they - are the more they will suffer from marriage with men mentally beneath them—that - is, if they don’t become sour old maids. I don’t wonder you hate it all, - Seth.” - </p> - <p> - “You talk like a book,” said Seth, in tones of unmistakable admiration. “I - didn’t suppose any woman could talk like that.” - </p> - <p> - “I talk as I feel always, when I come into contact with country life, and - I get, angry with people who maunder about its romantic and picturesque - side. Where is it, I should, like to know?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it isn’t all so bad as you paint it, perhaps, Isabel. Of course——“—here - he hesitated a little—“you don’t quife see it at its best here, you - know. Father hasn’t been a first-rate manager, and things have kin all so - bad as you paint it, perhaps, Isabel. Of course——” here he - hesitated a little—“you don’t quife see it at its best here, you - know. Father hasn’t been a first-rate manager, and things have kind o’ run - down.” - </p> - <p> - “No, Seth, it isn’t that; the trail of the serpent is over it all—rich - and poor, big and little. The Nineteenth century is a century of cities; - they have given their own twist to the progress of the age—and the - farmer is almost as far out of it as if he lived in Alaska. Perhaps there - may have been a time when a man could live in what the poet calls daily - communion with Nature and not starve his mind and dwarf his soul, but this - isn’t the century.” - </p> - <p> - “But Webster was a farm boy, and so was Lincoln and Garfield and Jackson—almost - all our great men. Hardly any of them are born in cities, you will find.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, the country is just splendid to be born in, no doubt of that; but - after you are born, get out of it as soon as you can.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know as I can leave Father very well,” said Seth slowly, and as - if in deep thought. - </p> - <p> - They walked to the end of the pasture beyond the orchard, to within view - of the spot where all the Fairchilds for three generations had been laid, - and where, among the clustering sweet-briars and wild-strawberry vines - Milton had only yesterday dug a new grave. The sight recalled to both - another subject, and no more was said of country life as they returned to - the house. Indeed, little was said of any sort, for Seth had a thinking - mood on. Nothing was very clear in his mind perhaps, but more distinctly - than anything else he felt that existence on the farm had all at once - become intolerable. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER V.—THE FUNERAL. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he American - farm-house funeral is surely, of all the observances with which civilized - man marks the ending of this earthly pilgrimage, the most pathetic. The - rural life itself is a sad and sterile enough thing, with its unrelieved - physical strain, its enervating and destructive diet, its mental - barrenness, its sternly narrowed groove of toil and thought and - companionship—but death on the farm brings a desolating gloom, a - cruel sense of the hopelessness of existence, which one realizes nowhere - else. The grim, fatalist habit of seizing upon the grotesque side, which a - century of farm life has crystallized into what the world knows as - American humor, is not wanting even in this hour; and the comforting - conviction of immortality, of the shining reward to follow travail and - sorrow, is nowhere more firmly insisted upon than among our country - people. But the bleak environment of the closed life, the absence of real - fellowship among the living, the melancholy isolation and vanity of it - all, oppress the soul here with an intolerable weight which neither fund - of sardonic spirits nor honest faith can lighten. - </p> - <p> - Something of this Isabel felt, as the mid-day meal was hurried through, on - Alvira’s sharp intimation that the room couldn’t be cleared any too soon, - for the crowd would begin coming now, right along. There were three - strangers at the table—though they seemed to be scarcely more - strangers than the members of her husband’s family—of whom two were - clergymen. - </p> - <p> - One of these, who sat next to her, was the Episcopalian minister at - Thessaly, a middle-aged, soft sort of man, with short hair so smooth and - furry that she was conscious of an impulse to stroke it like a seal-skin, - and little side-whiskers which reminded her of a baby brush. He impressed - her as a stupid man, but in that she was mistaken. He was nervous and ill - at ease, first because he could not successfully or gracefully use the - narrow three-tined steel fork with a bone handle that had been given him, - and second, because he did not understand the presence of the Rev. Stephen - Bunce, who sat opposite him, offensively smacking his lips, and devoting - to loud discourse periods which it seemed might better have been employed - in mastication. - </p> - <p> - If quiet Mr. Turner was ill at ease, the Rev. Stephen was certainly not. - He bestrode the situation like a modern Colossus. The shape of his fork - did not worry him, since he used it only as a humble and lowly adjunct to - his knife. The presence of Mr. Turner too, neither puzzled nor pained him. - In fact, he was rather pleased than otherwise to have him there, where he - could talk to him before sympathetic witnesses, and make him realise how - the man of the people who had a genuine call towered innately superior to - mere beneficed gentility. “Beneficed gentility”—that was a good - phrase, and he made a mental note of it for future use; then—the - temptation was too strong—he bundled it neck and crop into the - florid sentence with which he was addressing Albert—and looked at - the Episcopalian to watch its effect. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Turner was occupied with his javelin-shaped fork, and did not seem to - hear it. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Bunce suspected artifice in this, and watched the rector’s meek face - for a sign of secret confusion. After a moment he said, with his full, - pompous voice at its loudest and most artificial pitch:— - </p> - <p> - “Ah, Mr. Turner, this is a sad occasion!” - </p> - <p> - The rector glanced up with some surprise, for he had not expected this - overture, and answered “Yes, truly it is; extremely sad.” - </p> - <p> - “Yet it is consoling to feel that even so sad an occasion can be converted - into a means of grace, a season of spiritual solace as it were.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Turner only nodded assent to this; he felt that the whole company - around the table, hired people and all, were eagerly watching him and the - burly, bold-faced preacher opposite, as if they were about to engage in - gladiatorial combat. - </p> - <p> - But Mr. Bunce would not permit the challenge to be declined. He stroked - his ochre-hued chin whisker, looked complacently around the board, and - asked: - </p> - <p> - “I s’pose you’ve brought your white and black riggins’ along, eh? Or don’t - you wear ’em except in Church?” - </p> - <p> - There was a pained look in Mr. Turner’s face; he made a little gesture - toward the folding doors leading to the parlor, beyond which lay the dead, - and murmured: - </p> - <p> - “It will be better, will it not, to speak of these matters together, after - dinner?” - </p> - <p> - Again the Rev. Stephen glanced around the table, looking especially toward - Miss Sabrina for approval, and remarked loftily: - </p> - <p> - “There is no need of concealment here, sir. It is all in the family here. - We all know that the Mother in Israel who has departed was formerly of - your communion, and if she wanted to have you here, sir, at her funeral, - why well and good. But the rest of this sorrowin’ family, sir, this - stricken household, air Baptists—” - </p> - <p> - “I declare! there’s the Burrells drivin’ into the yard, a’ready!” said - Alvira, rising from her chair abruptly. “If you’re threw we better hustle - these things aout, naow; you women won’t more’n have time to dress ’fore - they’ll all be here.” - </p> - <p> - The interruption seemed a welcome one to everybody, for there was a - general movement on both sides of Mr. Bunce, which he, with his sentence - unfinished, was constrained to join. - </p> - <p> - The third stranger, a small, elderly man with a mobile countenance and - rusty black clothes, drew himself up, put on a modifiedly doleful - expression, and, speaking for the first time, assumed control of - everything: - </p> - <p> - “Naow, Milton, you ’n’ Leander git the table aout, ’n’ bring - in all the extry chairs, ’n’ set ’em ’raound in rows. - Squeeze ’em pooty well together in back, but the front ones kind o’ - spread aout. You, Miss Sabriny, ’n’ the lady”—indicating - Isabel with his thumb—“’n’ Annie’d better go upstairs ’n’ - git yer bonnets on, ’n’ things, ’n’ go ’n’ set in the - room at the head o’ the stairs. You men, tew, git your gloves on, ’n’ - naow be sure ’n’ have your hankch’fs in some pocket where you can - git at ’em with your gloves on—’n’ have your hats in - your hands, ‘n’ then go ’n’ set with the ladies. Miss Sabriny, - you’ll come daown arm-in-arm with yer brother, <i>when</i> I call, ’n’ - then Albert ’n’ his wife, ’n’ John with Annie, ’n’ - Seth with—pshaw, there’s odd numbers. Well, Seth can come alone. And - dew keep step comin’ daown stairs!” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ naow, gents,” turning to the Rev. Mr. Turner, “your gaown’s in - the fust room to the right on the landin’, and if you”—addressing - Mr. Bunce—“will go up with him, and arrange ’baout the - services, so’s to come daown together—it’ll look pootier than to - straggle in by yourselves,—’n’ you, Milton, ain’t you got - somethin’ besides overalls to put on?” - </p> - <p> - Thus the autocrat cleared the living room. Then, going around through the - front hall, he entered the parlor to receive, with solemn dignity and a - fine eye to their relative social merit, the first comers. - </p> - <p> - These were almost exclusively women, dressed in Sunday garb. As each buggy - or democrat wagon drove up inside the gate, and discharged its burden, the - men would lead the horses further on, to be hitched under or near the - shed, and then saunter around to the kitchen side of the house, where - cider was on tap, and other men were standing in the sunshine, chewing - tobacco and conversing in low tones, while the women from each conveyance - went straight to the front door, and got seats in the parlor as close to - the coffin as possible. The separation of the sexes could hardly have been - more rigorous in a synagogue. There were, indeed two or three meek, - well-brushed men among the women, sitting, uncomfortable but resigned, in - the geranium-scented gloom of the curtained parlor, but, as the more - virile brethren outside would have said, they were men who didn’t count. - </p> - <p> - The task of the undertaker was neither light nor altogether smooth. There - were some dozen chairs reserved, nearest the pall, for the mourners, the - clergymen and the mixed quartette expected from Thessaly. Every woman on - entering made for these chairs, and the more unimportant and “low-down” - she was in the rural scale of social values, the more confidently she - essayed to get one of them. With all of these more or less argument was - necessary—conducted in a buzzing whisper from which some squeak or - guttural exclamation would now and again emerge. With some, the undertaker - was compelled to be quite peremptory; while one woman—Susan Jane - Squires, a slatternly, weak-eyed creature who presumed upon her position - as sister-in-law of Milton, the hired man—had actually to be pushed - away by sheer force. - </p> - <p> - Then there was the further labor of inducing all these disappointed ones - to take the seats furthest back, so that late comers might not have to - push by and over them, but efforts in this direction were only fitful at - the best, and soon were practically abandoned. - </p> - <p> - “Fust come, fust sarved!” said old Mrs. Wimple. “I’m jes ez good ez them - that’ll come bimeby, ’n’ ef I don’ mind their climbin’ over me, <i>you</i> - needn’t!” and against this the undertaker could urge nothing satisfactory. - </p> - <p> - In the intervals of that functionary’s activity, conversation was quite - general, carried on in whispers which, in the aggregate, sounded like the - rustle of a smart breeze through the dry leaves of a beach tree. Many - women were there who had never been in the house before—could - indeed, have had no other chance of getting in. These had some fleeting - interest in the funeral appointments, and the expense incident thereto, - but their chief concern was the furnishing of the house. They furtively - scraped the carpet with their feet to test its quality, they felt of the - furniture to see if it had been re-varnished, they estimated the value of - the curtains, speculated on the cost of the melodeon and its age, wondered - when the ceiling had last been whitewashed. Some, who knew the family - better, discussed the lamentable decline of the Fairchilds in substance - and standing within their recollection, and exchanged hints about the - endemic mortgage stretching its sinister hand even to the very chairs they - were sitting on. Others, still more intimate, rehearsed the details of the - last and fatal illness, commented on the character of individuals in the - family, and guessed how long old Lemuel would last, now that Cicely was - gone. - </p> - <p> - In the centre of these circling waves of gossip lay the embodiment of the - eternal silence. Listening, one might fain envy such an end to that living - death of mental starvation which was the lot of all there, and which - forced them, out of their womanhood, to chatter in the presence of death. - </p> - <p> - The singers came. They were from the village, belonging to the - Congregational church there, and it was understood that they came out of - liking for John Fairchild. None of the gathering knew them personally, but - it was said that the contralto—the woman with the bird on her - bonnet, who took her seat at the melodeon—had had trouble with her - husband. A fresh buzz of whispering ran round. Some stray word must have - reached the contralto, for she colored and pretended to study the music - before her intently, and, later, when “Pleyel’s Hymn” was being sung, she - played so nervously that there was an utter collapse in the sharps and - flats of the third line, which nearly threw the singers out. - </p> - <p> - The undertaker now stalked in, and stood on tiptoe to see if the back room - was also filled. He had been out with the men at the kitchen door, fixing - crape on the arms of six of the best dressed and most respectable looking - farmers in an almost jocular mood, and drilling them affably in their - duties; drinking cider, exchanging gossip with one or two acquaintances, - and conducting himself generally like an ordinary mortal. He had now - resumed his dictatorship. - </p> - <p> - Most of the men had followed him around to the front of the house, and - clustered now in the hall, or in a group about the outer door, holding - their hats on a level with their shoulders. - </p> - <p> - A rustle on the stairs told that the mourners were descending. Then came - the strains of the melodeon, and the singing, very low, solemn and sweet. - </p> - <p> - A little pause, and the full voice of the Baptist preacher was heard in - prayer—then in some eulogistic remarks. What he said was largely - nonsense, from any point of view, but the voice was that of the born - exhorter, deep, clear-toned, melodious; there seemed to be a stop in it, - as in an organ, which at pathetic parts gave forth a tremulous, weeping - sound, and when this came not a dry eye could be found. He was over-fond - of using this effect, as are most men possessing the trick, but no one - noticed it, not even Isabel, who from sitting sternly intolerant of the - whispering women around her, and indignant at Mr. Bunce for his dinner - performance, found herself sobbing with all the rest when the tremulo stop - was touched. - </p> - <p> - There was more singing, this time fine, simple old “St. Denis” and then - the bearers were summoned in. - </p> - <p> - The men asked one another in murmurs outside if the Episcopal clargyman - was to take no part in the services. Within, Mrs. Wimple went straighter - to the point. She plucked him by the sleeve of his robe and leaning over - with some difficulty, for she was a corpulent body, whispered to the - hearing of a score of her neighbours: - </p> - <p> - “What air you here fer, mister, if you ain’t goin’ to say nor dew - nothin’?” - </p> - <p> - “I officiate at the grave,” he had said, and then regretted all the - remainder of the day having answered her at all. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - On the return of the procession from the little knoll where the slate and - marble tomb-stones of long dead Fairchilds bent over the new brown mound, - Annie and Seth walked together. There was silence between them for a time, - which he broke suddenly. - </p> - <p> - “It’s <i>all</i> very hard, Annie, for you know how much mother and I - loved each other. But, truly, the hardest thing of all is to think of - staying here among these narrow dolts. While she was here I could stand - it. But I can’t any more.” - </p> - <p> - Annie said nothing. She felt his arm trembling against hers, and his voice - was strained and excited. What <i>could</i> she say? - </p> - <p> - “They’re not like me,” he went on; “I have nothing in common with them. I - hate the sight of the whole of them. I never realised till to-day how big - a gulf there was between them and me. Didn’t <i>you</i> see it—what - a mean, narrow-contracted lot they all were?” - </p> - <p> - “Who do you mean, Seth?” - </p> - <p> - “Why all of them. The Burrells, the Wimples, old Elhanan Pratt, old Lyman - Tenney, that fellow Bunce—the whole lot of them. And the women too! - Did you watch them—or, what’s worse, did you hear them? I wonder you - can bear them yourself, Annie, any more than I can.” - </p> - <p> - “Sometimes it <i>is</i> hard, Seth, I admit; when I first came back to - grandma from school it was awfully hard. But then I’ve got to live here, - and reconcile myself to what the place offers,—and, after all, Seth, - they are well-meaning people, and some of them are smart, too, in their - way.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, well-meaning—in their way,—yes! But I haven’t got to live - here, Annie, and I haven’t got to reconcile myself, and I <i>won’t</i> - That’s the long and short of it. I can make my living elsewhere—perhaps - more than my living—and be among people who don’t make me angry - every time I set eyes on them. And I can find friends, too, who feel as I - do, and look at things as I do, instead of these country louts who only - know abominable stories, and these foolish girls—who—who—” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody can blame you to-day, Seth, for feeling blue and sore, but you - ought not to talk so, even now. They’re not all like what you say. Reuben - Tracy, now, he’s been a good friend and a useful friend to you.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, Rube’s a grand, good fellow, of course. I know all that. But then - just take his case. He’s a poor schoolmaster now, just as he was five - years ago, and will be twenty years from now. What kind of a life is that - for a man?” - </p> - <p> - “And maybe the girls <i>are</i>—foolish, as you started to say, but—” - </p> - <p> - “Now, Annie, don’t think I m’eant anything by that, <i>please!</i> I know - you’re the dearest girl and the best friend in the world. Truly, now, you - won’t think I meant anything, will you?” - </p> - <p> - “No, Seth, I won’t” said Annie softly. It was her arm that trembled now. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VI.—IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>ISS Sabrina sat by - her accustomed window an hour after the return from the grave, waiting for - Albert. The mourning dress, borrowed for the occasion from a neighbor, was - cut in so modern a fashion, contrasted with the venerable maiden’s - habitual garments, that it gave her spare figure almost a fantastic air. - The bonnet, with its yard of dense, coarse ribbed crape, lay on the table - at her elbow, beside her spectacles and the unnoticed Bible. Miss Sabrina - was ostensibly looking out of the window, but she really saw nothing. She - was thinking very steadily about the coming interview with her nephew, and - what she would say to him, and wondering, desponding, hoping about his - answers. - </p> - <p> - The door opened, and Albert entered. “You wanted to see me, Aunt, so Annie - said,” he remarked! gravely, in a subdued tone. - </p> - <p> - She motioned him to a chair and answered, in a solemn voice curiously like - his own: “Yes, there’s some things I want to say to you, all by yourself.” - </p> - <p> - They sat for some moments in silence, the lawyer watching his aunt with - amiable forbearance, as if conscious that his time was being wasted, and - she, poor woman, groping in a novel mental fog for some suitable phrases - with which to present her views. Under Albert’s calm, uninspiring gaze - those views seemed to lose form, and diminish in intelligence as much as - in distinctness. It had all been so clear to her mind—and now she - suddenly found it fading off into a misty jumble of speculations, mere - castles in the air. She had expected to present an unanswerable case - lucidly and forcibly to her lawyer nephew; instead, it seemed increasingly - probable that he would scout the thing as ridiculous—and, what was - worse, be justified in so doing. So it was that she finally made her - beginning doubtingly, almost dolefully: - </p> - <p> - “Of course I dunno haow you feel abaout it, Albert, but I can’t help - thinking something ought to be settled abaout th’ farm, while yer here.” - </p> - <p> - “Settled? How settled?’’ asked Albert. There was a dry, dispassionate - fibre in his voice which further chilled her enthusiasm. - </p> - <p> - “Why—well—you knaow—what I mean, Albert,” she said, - almost pathetically. It was so hard to know just how to say things to - Albert. - </p> - <p> - “On the contrary, I don’t in the least know what you mean. What do you - want settled about the farm? What is there to settle about it?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, nothin’, ef yeh don’t choose to understand” said Miss Sabrina. - </p> - <p> - Another period of silence ensued. Albert made a movement as if to rise, - and said: - </p> - <p> - “If there is’nt anything more, I think I’ll go down again.” - </p> - <p> - There was an artificial nicety of enunciation about this speech, which - grated on the old lady’s nerves. She squared her shoulders and turned upon - her nephew. - </p> - <p> - “Naow what’s the use of bein’ mean, Albert? Yeh dew knaow what I’m - thinking of, jis’ ez well ez I dew! Yeh unly want to make it ez hard fer - me to tell yeh as yeh possibly kin. I s’pose thet’s the lawyer of it!” - </p> - <p> - Albert smiled with all his face but the eyes, and slightly lifting his - hands from his fat knees, turned them palms up, in mute deprecation of his - aunt’s unreasonableness. The gesture was as near the shoulder-shrug as the - self-contained lawyer ever permitted himself to go. It was a trifle, but - it angered the old maid enough to remove the last vestige of hesitation - from her tongue: - </p> - <p> - “Well, ef yeh <i>don’t</i> knaow what I mean, then I’ll tell yeh! I mean - that ef th’ Fairchilds are goin’ to be a Dearborn caounty fam’ly, ’n’ - hole their heads up amongst folks, ther’s got to be a change o’ some sort - right away. Your father’s let everything slide year after year, till - there’s pesky little lef’ naow to slide on. He’s behine hand agin in money - matters, even with th’ Pratt mortgage on top of t’others. What’s wuss, - it’s in everybody’s maouth. They’ve left him off th’ board at th’ - cheese-factory this year, even; of course they say, it’s cuz he never ’tended - th’ meetin’s—but I knaow better! It’s jis cuz Lemuel Fairchild’s - goin’ deown hill, ’n’ the farm’s goin’ to rack ’n’ ruin, ’n’ - ev’rybuddy knaows it. Jis’ think of it? Why, ’twas th’ Fairchilds - made that cheese-factory, ’n’ it’s allus gone by aour name, ’n’ - we used to sen’ th’ milk of a hundred ’n’ thirty caows there—almost - as much as all th’ rest of ’em put togither—’n’ ez I - said to Leander Crump, when he was squirmin’ raound tryin’ to make me - b’lieve they didn’t mean nothin’ by droppin’ Lemuel aout o’ th’ board, - says I—‘nobuddy ever ’spected a table spoonful o’ water in - aour milk!’—’n’ he colored up, <i>I</i> tell yeh!” - </p> - <p> - “No doubt” said Albert, impassively. - </p> - <p> - Miss Sabrina paused to mentally retrace her argument, and see if this - remark had any special bearing. She could discover none, and grew a little - angrier. - </p> - <p> - “Well, then, th’ question’s right here. My father, your grand father, made - a name fer hisself, and a place for his fam’ly, here in Dearborn caounty, - second to nobuddy. Fer years ’n’ years I kin remember thet th’ one - question people ast, when it was proposed to dew anything, was ‘what does - Seth Fairchild think ’baout it?’ He went to th’ Senate twice; he - could ’a gone to Congress from this dees-trick time ’n’ time - agin, if he’d be’n a mine to. Ev’rybuddy looked up to him. When he died, - all of a suddent, he lef’ Lemuel th’ bes’ farm, th’ bes’ stock, th’ bes’ - farm haouse, fer miles raound. Well, thet’s forty year ago. I’ve lived - here threw it all. I’ve swallered my pride every day in th’ week, all thet - time. I’ve tried to learn myself a humble spirit—but I’ve hed to see - this place, and the fam’ly, going daown, daown, daown!” - </p> - <p> - There were tears in the old maid’s eyes now, as she spoke, tears of - mortification and revolt against her helplessness, for she seemed to read - the failure of her appeal in the placid face of her nephew, with its only - decent pretence of interest. She went on, with a rising voice: - </p> - <p> - “You knaow a little of haow things hev’ gone, though you’ve allus took - precious good pains to knaow ez little ez yeh could. You knaow that when - you were a boy you were a rich man’s son, with yer pony, ’n’ yer - dancin’ lessons, ’n’ yer college eddica-tion; ’n’ yer mother - dressed well, ’n’ had a kerridge, ’n’ visited with th’ bes’ - people of Albany, people who were <i>my</i> friends tew when I used to go - to Albany with yer grandfather. ’N’ what hev we come to? Yer mother - slaved her life aout, lost all her ambition, lost all her pride, saw - things goin’ to th’ dogs and didn’t knaow haow to stop ’em—sakes - forbid thet I should say anything agin Sissly; she did all she could; - p’raps ’twould ’ev gone different if she’d be’n a different - kine o’ woman, p’raps not; there’s no use talkin’ ’baout thet. ’N’ - ef I’d hed <i>my</i> say, tew, maybe things’d be’n different; but its ez - it is, ’n’ it’s no use cryin’ over spilt milk. - </p> - <p> - “Father never meant to be hard with me. When he lef’ me nothin’ but a - living aout o’ th’ farm, he expected, everybuddy expected, my Aunt - Sabrina’d leave me a clean sixty thaousand dollars when she died. She was - an ole woman, ’n’ a widow, ’n’ she hed no childern. She’d - allus promised my father thet if I was named after her—confaound her - name!—I shaould be her heir. ’N’ then, Iess’n a year after - his death, what does the old huzzy up ’n’ do but marry some fortune - hunter young enough to be her son, ’n’ give him every cent she hed - in the world. He led her a fine dance of it, tew, ’n’ serve her - right! But there I was, lef ’thaout a thing ’cep a roof over - my head. - </p> - <p> - “’N’ then Lemuel, nothin’ ud do but he must go to Californy when - the gold cry riz, ’n’ no sooner’d he git there than he was homesick - ’n’ hed to come back; ’n’ when he got back, ’n’ begun - to hear what fortunes them who’d gone aout with him were a making, than he - must start aout again. But where it’d be’n wilderness a few months b’fore, - he faound cities naow, ’n’ ev’ry chance took up; then he got robbed - o’ all his money, ’n’ hed to borrer, ’n’ then he took chills - ’n’ fever off th’ isthmus, n’ hed to lay in quarantine fer weeks, - on ’caount o’ th’ yellah fever; it’d be’n a poor year on the farm, - ’n’ when he got back, it took ev’ry cent of his ready-money to set - himself right. - </p> - <p> - “From thet day to this, his Californy luck hez stuck to him like death to - a nigger, tell here, to-day, the Fitches don’t think it wuth while to come - to your poor mother’s fun’ral—I kin remember Lije Fitch when he was - glad enough to beg beans o’ my father fer seed—’n’ I’m - wearing borrered mournin’ of Sarah Andrewses, <i>a mile tew big for me!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “It seems to me I’ve been told all this a good many times, Aunt Sabrina,” - said Albert, as his aunt stopped and glared at him trembling with the - excitement of her peroration. “There’s nothing very-pleasant in it, for - either of us, to listen to or talk about; but I don’t see that there’s - anything more than I’ve heard over and over again, except about your - having on another woman’s dress, and I don’t assume that I am expected to - interfere about <i>that!</i>” - </p> - <p> - Poor Miss Sabrina was too deeply moved, and too much in earnest, to note - the sarcastic levity underlying the lawyer’s conclusion. She caught only - the general sense of a negative response, and looked at her nephew - steadily with a gaze half-indignant, half appealing. - </p> - <p> - “Then you won’t dew anything, ay?” she asked at last. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am very far from saying that. <i>That’s</i> another thing. You send - for me, saying that you have an important communication to make to me—at - least, I assume that it is important, from the circumstances surrounding - the request. I come, and you first insist that I know as well as you do - what you mean, and then, when I demur, you rehearse all the unfortunate - details of my father’s failure in life. I suggest that these are already - tolerably familiar to me, and <i>this</i> mild statement you construe as a - definite refusal on my part to do something—what, I don’t know.” - </p> - <p> - “I declare, Albert, you better send in a bill fer givin’ me this - consultation. <i>I</i> never knew a son who could take his father’s ruin - ’n’ his fam’ly’s disgrace so cool, before. I s’pose <i>that’s</i> - th’ lawyer of it, tew!” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it’s an advantage that some one of the family should keep cool, - Aunt, and look at things one by one, in their true relation. Now, if you - have any proposition to make to me, any plan to present for my - consideration, I should like to hear it—because really this other - style of conversation is profitless beyond description. In a word, what do - you want me to do?” - </p> - <p> - “What do I want yeh to do?” The old maid leaned forward and put a thin, - mitted hand on Albert’s knee, looking eagerly into his face, and speaking - almost shrilly. “I want yeh to take this farm, to come here to live, to - make it a rich gentleman’s home agin! to put the Fairchilds up once more - where my father left ’em.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes?” was the provokingly unenthusiastic response. - </p> - <p> - Miss Sabrina felt that she had failed. She put her spectacles on, and took - the Bible into her lap, as if to say that she washed her hands of all - mundane matters. But it did not suit Albert to regard the interview as - closed. - </p> - <p> - “There is one thing you don’t seem to see at all, Aunt,” he said. “That - is, that Dearborn County is relatively not altogether the most important - section of the Republic, and that it is quite possible for a man to win - public recognition or attain professional distinction in other communities - which might reconcile him to a loss of prestige here. It may sound like - heresy to you, but I am free to admit that the good opinion of the - business men of New York City, where I am regarded as a successful sort of - man, seems to me to outweigh all possible questions as to how I am - regarded by Elhanan Pratt and Le-ander Crump and—and that Baptist - gentleman, for instance, whom you had here to-day. The world has grown so - large, my dear aunt, since your day, that there are thousands upon - thousands of Americans now who go all their lives without ever once - thinking about Dearborn County’s opinion. Of course I can understand how - deeply you must feel what you regard as a social decline in the eyes of - your neighbours. But truly, it does not specially affect me. They are not - my neighbours; if I seem to them to be of less importance than I was in my - boyhood, when I had a pony, I can’t help it, and I am sure I don’t want - to. Frankly, to use my mother’s old phrase, I don’t care a cotton hat for - their opinion good, bad, or indifferent. It is this, I think, which you - leave out of your calculation.” - </p> - <p> - Miss Sabrina had listened, with the Book opened only by a finger’s width. - The elaborate irony of her nephew’s words had escaped her, but she saw a - gleam of hope in his willingness to discuss the matter at all. - </p> - <p> - “But then this is the home o’ the Fairchilds; the fam’ly belongs to - Dearborn Caounty; father was allus spoken of ez Seth Fairchild o’ - Dearborn, jis’ as much ez—ez Silas Wright o’ Dutchess.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course that last is a powerful argument,” said Albert with a furtive - smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “But, after all, the county - family idea doesn’t seem to attract me much. Why, aunt, do you know that - your grandfather Roger was a journeyman shoemaker, who walked all the way - here from Providence. There was nothing incongruous in his son becoming a - Senator. Very well; if you have a state of society where sudden elevations - of this sort occur, there will inevitably be corresponding descents—just - as lean streaks alternate with fat in the bacon of commerce. The - Fairchilds went up—they, come down. They have exhausted the soil. Do - you see?” - </p> - <p> - “Nao! I don’t see a bit! ’N’ I b’lieve at heart you’re jis’ ez - praoud ez I be!” - </p> - <p> - “Proud? Yes! Proud of myself, proud of my practice, proud of my position. - But proud because three or four hundred dull countrymen, seeing my cows - sleek, my harness glossy, my farm well in order, and knowing that my - grandfather had been a State Senator, would consider me a ‘likely ’ - man—no, not at all.” - </p> - <p> - Albert rose at this to go, and added, as he turned the door-knob: - </p> - <p> - “As soon as he’s equal to it, Aunt Sabrina, I’ll get father to go over his - affairs with me, and I’ll try and straighten them out a trifle. I dare say - we can find some way out of the muddle.” - </p> - <p> - “But yeh won’t take up the thing yerself? Yeh won’t dew what I wanted yeh - tew?” - </p> - <p> - The lawyer smiled, and said: “What really? Come here and be a farmer?” - </p> - <p> - Miss Sabrina had risen, too, and came toward her nephew. “No” she said, - “not a farmer. Be a country gentleman, ’n’—’n’—a - Congressman!” Albert smiled again, and left the room. He smiled to himself - going down the stairs, and narrowly escaped forgetting to change his - expression of countenance when he entered the living room, where were - sitting people who had not entirely forgotten the fact that it was a house - of mourning. - </p> - <p> - For Albert had a highly interesting idea in his mind, both interesting and - diverting. Curiously enough, he had begun developing it from the moment - when his aunt first disclosed her ambition for him. At the last moment, in - a blind way she had suggested the first political office that entered her - mind as an added bribe. She could not know that her astute nephew had, - from the first suggestion of her plan, been trying to remember whether it - was Jay and Adams Counties, or Jay and Morgan, that were associated with - Dearborn in the Congressional district; or that, when she finally in - despair said “Be a country gentleman and a Congressman,” his brain had - already turned over a dozen projects in as many seconds, every one - Congressional. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VII.—THE THREE BROTHERS. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>fter the early - supper of stale bread, saltless butter, dark dried apple sauce, and chippy - cake had been disposed of, Lemuel returned to his rocking chair by the - stove, Aunt Sabrina and Isabel took seats, each at a window, and read by - the fading light, and Albert put on his hat, lighted a cigar, and went - out. His brother John stood smoking a pipe in the yard, leaning against - the high well-curb, his hands deep in his pantaloons pocket, and his feet - planted far to the front and wide apart. Seth was coming from the barns - toward the well, with a bucket in his hand. Albert walked across to the - curb, and the three brothers were alone together for the first time in - years. - </p> - <p> - “It does one good to be out of doors such an evening as this,” said - Albert. “It seems to me it would be better if father would get out in the - open air more, instead of sitting cooped up over that stove all the - while.” - </p> - <p> - “When a man’s been out in the open air, rain or shine, snow or blow, for - fifty years, he ought to have earned the right to stay inside, if he wants - to. | That’s about the only reward there is at the end of a farmer’s - life,” answered Seth, turning the calfbucket upside down beside John, and - sitting on it. Seth had his old clothes on once more, and perhaps there - was some consciousness of the contrast between his apparel and that of his - black-clad brethren in the truculent tone of his reply. - </p> - <p> - John had nodded at Albert on his approach, and thrust his feet a trifle - further forward. He still stood silent, looking meditatively at the row of - poplars on the other side of the road through rings of pipe smoke. - </p> - <p> - “So you don’t think much of farm work, eh?” said Albert. - </p> - <p> - “Who does?” replied Seth, sententiously. - </p> - <p> - A considerable period of silence ensued. Albert had never had a very high - idea of his younger brothers’ conversational qualities, and had rarely - known how to talk easily with them, but to-night it seemed a greater task - than ever. He offered them cigars, in a propitiatory way. Seth accepted - and lit one; John said “Thanks, I prefer a pipe,” and silence reigned - again. - </p> - <p> - It was twilight now, and in the gathering dusk there was no sign of motion - about, nor any sound save the tinkle of a sheep-bell in the pasture - opposite. - </p> - <p> - John’s pipe burned out, and Albert pressed a cigar upon him again. - </p> - <p> - “I <i>want</i> you to try them,” he said, almost pleadingly, “I’m sure - you’ll like them. They are a special brand the steward at the Union League - gets for me.” - </p> - <p> - This time John consented, and he seemed to feel that the act involved a - responsibility to talk, for he said, with an effort at amiability as he - struck a match: - </p> - <p> - “Your wife seems to be looking very well.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, Isabel’s health is perfect, and it always benefits her to get out in - the country. That’s a kind of Irishism isn’t it? I mean it makes her good - health more obvious.” - </p> - <p> - “Good health is a great thing,” John answered. - </p> - <p> - The conversation was running emptings again, almost at the start. Albert - made a heroic effort to strengthen it. - </p> - <p> - “Well, this is a regular quakers’ meeting,” he said, briskly. “We see each - other so seldom, we are almost strangers when we do meet. I want to be - frank with you, come now, and you should be frank with me. You have - something on your minds, I can see. Isn’t it something I ought to know?” - </p> - <p> - Seth spoke again: “Perhaps on the evening of one’s mother’s funeral it - isn’t to be expected that even brothers should feel chatty.” - </p> - <p> - The village journalist felt the injustice of this comment from the - youngster. - </p> - <p> - “No, Seth,” he said, “Don’t snap Albert up in that fashion. I dare say he - feels the thing, in his own way, as much as the rest of us. You are right, - Albert; there <i>is</i> something, and I’ll tell you plainly what it is. - Do you see those poplars over there? In the morning their shadows Come - almost to our front door. Father planted them with his own hands. When I - was a boy, I used to play over there, and climb up on to the bolls, and - pretend I was to build houses there, like in Swiss Family Robinson. Well, - that land passed out of our hands so long ago—it’s been an old story - for years. Do you see the roof of the red school-house over back of the - hill?” turning toward the South. “Or no, the light is too poor now, but - you know where it is. When I used to cut ’cross lots to school - there, I went the whole way over father’s land. Now, if I wanted to go - there, how many people would I trespass on, Seth?” - </p> - <p> - “Ferguson owns the clover meadow, and Pratt has the timothy meadow, and - what we used to call the berry patch belongs to Sile Thomas; he’s begun to - build a house on it.” - </p> - <p> - “Precisely. Why even the fence close to where mother’s grave is, divides - ours from another man’s land now.” - </p> - <p> - “Sabrina spoke to me about all this this afternoon,” said Albert - hesitatingly, “and I tried, as I often have before, to make her understand - that that must be the natural course of affairs, so long as the East tries - to compete with the West in farming.” - </p> - <p> - “Well that may be all right, but Elhanan Pratt seems to manage to compete - with the West, as you call it, and so do the Fergusons and all the rest of - them. We are the only ones who appear to get left, every time. Of course, - it’s somebody’s fault. Father’s been a poor manager, no use of denying - that. But that doesn’t make it any the easier to bear. Father hardly knows - which way to turn for ours from another man’s now. Money; he might have - scraped through the year if hops had had a good season, but at nine cents - a pound it was hardly worth while to take them to the depot. You can’t - clear expenses at less than eleven cents. And then if he does have a - fairly decent year, his hop-pickers are always the most drunken, idle gang - of them all, who eat their heads off, and steal more fruit and chickens - than they pick boxes, and if anybody’s hops are spoiled in the kiln, you - can bet on their being Fairchild’s, every time. And three years ago, it - was the hop merchant who failed, just at the opportune moment, and let - Father in for a whole years’ profit and labor. Of course, it’s all bad - luck, mismanagement, whatever you like to call it, and it can’t be helped, - I suppose. But it makes a man sour, and it broke poor mother’s heart. And - then here’s Seth.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, never mind me, I can stand it, I guess, if the rest can. I’m not - complaining” came from the figure on the bucket—only dimly to be - seen now, in the shadow of the curb, and the increasing darkness. - </p> - <p> - “Here’s Seth,” continued John, without noting the disclaimer. “You and I - had <i>some</i> advantages—of course, mine were not to be compared - with yours, but still I was given a chance, such as it was and I don’t - know that I would trade what I learned at work during college years for a - college education—but this poor boy, who’s thought about him, who’s - given him a chance to show what’s in him? He’s been allowed to come up as - he could, almost like any farm laborer. His mother tried to do her little, - but what spirit did she have for it, and what time did the drudgery here - give him? Thank God! He’s had the stuff in him to work at education - himself, and he’s got the making of the best man of us three. But it’s no - thanks to you. And <i>that’s</i> why we feel hard, Albert. Nobody supposes - you could make a good farmer and manager out of father; nobody blames you - for a bad hop season, or the dishonesty of Biggs. But I do say that of us - three brothers there’s one who frets and worries over the thing, and - though he’s a poor man, does all he can afford to do, and more too, to - help make it better; and there’s another, young, ambitious, capable, whose - nose is held down to the grindstone, and the best years of whose life are - being miserably spent in a hopeless wrestling with debt and disaster; and - there’s a third brother, the oldest brother, rich, easy, enjoying all the - luxuries of life, who don’t give a damn about it all! <i>That’s</i> what I - say, and if you don’t like it, you needn’t!” - </p> - <p> - The silence which ensued was of the kind that can be felt. The two cigars - at the corners of the old curb glowed intermittently in the darkness. - John’s had gone out during his speech, and as he re-lighted it, the glare - of the match showed an excited, indignant face. There was no room for - doubt, after the momentary exhibit which the red light made, that John was - very much in earnest. - </p> - <p> - Albert was thinking laboriously on his answer. Meantime, he said, to fill - the interval “Do you like the cigar?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes; a fifteen center, isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - Albert had it in his mind to say truthfully that he paid $180 per - thousand, but the fear of invidious comparisons rose before him in time, - and he said “About that, I think.” - </p> - <p> - He waited a moment, still meditating, and threw out another stop-gap: - “It’s curious how the rhetorical habit grows on a man who writes leading - articles. I noticed that you used three adjectives every time, the regular - cumulative thing, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “Maybe so; it would be more to the purpose to hear what you think about - the spirit of my oration; the form doesn’t matter so much.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I will tell you, John,” said Albert, slowly, still feeling his way, - “to speak frankly, no doubt there’s a good deal in what you say. I feel - that there is. But you ought to consider that it isn’t easy for a man - living in a great city, immersed in business cares, and engrossed in the - labors of his profession, to realise all these things, and see them as - you, who are here on the ground, see them. It’s hardly fair to attack me - as heartless, when you present these facts to me for the first time.” - </p> - <p> - “For the first time! You ought to have seen them for yourself without - presenting. And then you said Sabrina had often discussed the subject with - you.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, but her point of view is always family dignity, the keeping up of the - Fairchilds’ homestead in baronial state, and that sort of thing. You - should have heard her this afternoon, telling me how her fathers name used - to be coupled with Dearborn County, just as Silas Wright’s was with - Dutchess—either Dutchess or Delaware, I forget which she said—but - it was very funny.” - </p> - <p> - “Sabrina and I haven’t spoken for I don’t know how long, and we’re not - likely to again in a hurry, but for all that I’m bound to say I wish some - others of the family had as much pride as she’s got,” said John. “Whatever - else she may be, she’s as loyal and as faithful to the family idea, as - jealous of the family’s name, as any old Spanish grandee. And I confess - the Silas Wright thing doesn’t seem funny to me at all—any fellow - with the right kind of a heart in him would feel that it was deucedly - pathetic—the poor old maid clinging through the shipwreck to that - one spar of support—the recollection of a time when her father was - bigger than his county. Such things oughtn’t to be laughed at.” - </p> - <p> - Albert lost his patience. “Confound it, man, do you want to force me into - a quarrel—this night of all others! By George, was there ever such a - brace of brothers! I come out here to get you by yourselves, to talk over - with you some plans that have occurred to me for setting things right here—and - I haven’t had a civil answer yet from either of you. First it’s the - youngster who scowls and snarls at me, and then you read me lofty lectures - on my behavior, and then both together in concerted condemnation. No - wonder I come rarely to the farm! It’s enough to sicken any man of family - ties, to be bullyragged in this way. I’ve a good mind to tell you you can - all go to the devil, and be hanged to you!” - </p> - <p> - The figure on the bucket rose to its feet with a spring, so energetically - that there seemed a menace in the action. The village editor restrained - this movement with a quiet hand, and a whispered “Keep cool, Seth.” Then - he said with exaggerated calmness of voice: - </p> - <p> - “Personally, perhaps I shouldn’t mind much if you did. But there are - others to look after, and so, before you do, it might be worth while to - learn what the fine alternative was to have been. It would be a great pity - to not even to hear these noble plans with which you were primed, you say, - when you came out.” - </p> - <p> - “But you must admit, John, that you and Seth tonight have been enough to - try the patience of a saint.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, we admit that. Go on!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you’ve made it a little difficult for me to develop my plans—they - were scarcely formed in my mind. In a general way, I wanted to consult you - about freeing the farm, perhaps buying back some of the original land that - has gone, putting the house in shape again, improving the stock, placing - Father and Sabrina beyond the chance of ever being embarrassed again—and—and—doing - something for Seth.” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody wants you—” began the impatient Seth. - </p> - <p> - “Youngster, <i>you</i> shut up!” said John, again using the quieting hand. - “Do you really mean all this, Albert?” - </p> - <p> - “I should scarcely have spoken in detail as I have, otherwise,” answered - the lawyer loftily. - </p> - <p> - “Well, this—” said John, “this takes a fellow’s breath away.” - </p> - <p> - “If you hadn’t been in such haste to impute bad motives and convict me - without judge or jury, perhaps the effect of my plans might not have been - so overpowering.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, we did you an injustice, Albert, clearly we did. We were full of the - idea that all these troubles rolled off you like water off a duck’s back. - It seems that was our mistake. But—what’s your scheme?” - </p> - <p> - “Definitely, I have none, except to do all I can, in the way we may decide - will be best all around. I have been thinking some of coming to live here - myself, say from May to November of each year, and taking the farm into my - own hands.” - </p> - <p> - “H’m—m! That might have its advantages, perhaps—<i>but</i>——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I know what you mean. If I do, everybody’s rights shall be respected. - We’ll fix that beyond question, to your satisfaction, before a thing is - done.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t care about myself, particularly; you know that: but then there’s - Seth, you know—we’ve always figured on the farm as his. It’s true he - don’t want to be a farmer, that he hates the whole thing, but still that - represents all his capital, so to speak, and—” - </p> - <p> - “My dear John, that shall all be arranged. I am a childless man—probably - always shall be. As long as Father lives the farm shall remain in his - name. Either his will can be in my favor, or I can manage the farm as a - trustee for all three of us, after he’s gone. In either case, you shall - both be protected in turn by my will—absolutely protected. Meantime, - what do you want me to do for Seth? What does he want to do?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing needs to be done for me,” began Seth, “I can—” - </p> - <p> - “Now, youngster, <i>will</i> you be quiet!” said John, in mock despair. - “I’ll tell you what you can do for Seth, and do easily. Get him a place on - some decent newspaper, in New York or one of the larger cities of the - State, and let him have money enough to eke out a small salary at first, - so that he can begin at editorial work instead of tramping up through the - reporter’s treadmill, as I had to. That’s all Seth’ll ask, and it will be - the making of him.” - </p> - <p> - “Begin at editorial work—Seth? Nonsense!” - </p> - <p> - “No nonsense about it. For two years back Seth has been doing some of the - best work on my paper—work that’s been copied all over the State.” - </p> - <p> - “Bless my soul, what a literary family we are!” said the lawyer. “Does - Aunt Sabrina write, too? Perhaps those love poems you have on the last - page are hers.” - </p> - <p> - John continued without noticing the interjection. “Do you remember that - long article on Civil Service Reform we had in the <i>Banner</i> last - January?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t think I do, John. To be frank, although we enjoy having you send - us the <i>Banner</i> immensely, occasionally it happens that the stress of - professional duties compels me to miss reading a number.” - </p> - <p> - “Well that article was reprinted in all the big papers, from Boston to - Chicago. I never knew any other thing from a little village paper to - travel so far, or attract so much attention. I had lots of letters about - it, too. That article was Seth’s—all his own. I didn’t change a word - in it. And he’s hardly seen any thing of the world yet, either.” - </p> - <p> - The lawyer was heard chuckling, when John’s voice died away in the - darkness. The cigars had long since burned out, and the men could with - difficulty see one another. The two younger brothers waited, the one - surprised, the other increasingly indignant, to learn the cause of - Albert’s hilarity. - </p> - <p> - “Do you realise, John,” he said at last, with merriment still in his - voice, “what a delightful commentary on Civil Service Reform your words - make. The best article on that doctrine is written by a youngster who has - never left the farm, who doesn’t know the difference between a Custom - House and a letter-box on a lamp-post! Ho, ho, I must tell that to - Chauncey when I see him.” - </p> - <p> - An hour later, John and Seth still leaned against the mossy curb, smoking - and talking over the words of their elder brother, who sometime before had - gone in to avoid the dew-fall. - </p> - <p> - “I wonder if we <i>have</i> misjudged him, after all,” said Seth. “I’m - almost ashamed to accept his favors, after the way I pitched into him.” - </p> - <p> - “I wonder what his scheme really is,” mused the more experienced village - editor. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VIII.—ALBERT’S PLANS. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t became generally - known, before Sunday came again, that Albert was to take the farm, and - that Seth was to go to the city—known not only along the rough, - lonesome road leading over the Burfield hills, which had once been a proud - turnpike, with hospitable taverns at every league, and the rumbling of - great coaches and the horn of the Postboy as echoes of its daily life of - bustle and profit, and now was a solitary thoroughfare to no place in - particular, with three or four gaunt old farmhouses, scowling in - isolation, to the mile—not only on this road, and at the four - corners below, but even at Thessaly people learned of the coming change as - if by magic, and discussed it as a prime sensation. It need not be added - that the story grew greatly in telling—grew too ponderous to remain - an entity, and divided itself into several varying and, ultimately, - fiercely conflicting sections. - </p> - <p> - The Misses Cheesborough had the best authority for saying that Albert had - acted in the most malignant and shameful manner, seizing the farm, and - turning poor Seth out of doors, and it was more than a suspicion in their - minds that the feeble old father would soon be railroaded off to an - asylum. - </p> - <p> - On the other hand, Miss Tabitha Wilcox, who by superior vigor and resource - held her own very well against the combined Misses Cheesbrough, knew, - absolutely <i>knew</i>, that Albert had behaved most handsomely, paying - off all the mortgages, making a will in favor of John and Seth, and - agreeing to send Seth to College, and what was more, Miss Tabitha would - not be surprised, though some others might be, if the public-spirited - Albert erected a new library building in Thessaly as a donation to the - village. - </p> - <p> - Between these two bold extremes there was room for many shades of - variation in the story, and many original bents of speculation. Down at - the cheese factory they even professed to have heard that a grand coal - deposit had been surreptitiously discovered on the Fairchild farm, and - that Albert was merely the agent of a syndicate of city speculators who - would presently begin buying all the land roundabout. Old Elhanan Pratt - did not credit this, but he did write to his son in Albany, a clerk in one - of the departments, to find out if a charter for a railroad near Thessaly - had been applied for. The worst of it was, neither John nor Seth would - talk, and as for Albert, he had gone back to New York, leaving his wife - behind. - </p> - <p> - On the farm the fortnight following the funeral passed without event. In - the lull of field labor which precedes haying time, there was not much for - Seth to do. He went down to the river several times on solitary fishing - trips; it seemed to him now that he was saying farewell not only to the - one pastime which never failed him in interest or delight, but to the - valley itself, and the river. How fond he was of the stream, and all its - belongings! - </p> - <p> - More like home than even the old farmhouse on the hill seemed some of - these haunts to which he now said good-bye—the shadowed pool under - the butternut tree, with its high steep bank of bare clay where, just - under the overhanging cornice of sod, the gypsy swallows had made holes - for their nests, and at the black base of which silly rock bass lay - waiting for worms and hooks; the place further up where the river grew - sharply narrow, and deep dark water sped swiftly under an ancient jam of - rotting logs, and where by creeping cautiously through the alders, and - gaining a foothold on the birch which was the key to the obstructing pile, - there were pike to be had for the throwing, and sometimes exciting - struggles with angry black bass, who made the pole bend like a whip, and - had an evil trick of cutting the line back under the logs; and then the - broader stretch of water below the ruined paper mill’s dam, where the - wading in the thigh-deep rifts was so pleasant, and where the white fish - would bite in the swift water almost as gamely as trout, if one had only - the knack of playing his line rightly in the eddies. - </p> - <p> - A score of these spots Seth had known and loved from the boyhood of twine - and pin hooks; they seemed almost sacredly familiar now, as he wandered up - and down the stream, dividing his attention between the lures and wiles of - the angler’s art and musings on the vast change of scene which was so - close before him. Ah, how fair were the day dreams he had idly, fondly - built for himself here in these old haunts, with kingfishers and water - rats for sympathizers, and the ceaseless murmur of the water, the buzz of - the locusts in the sun, the croak of the frogs among the reeds, for a soft - inspiring chorus of accompaniment to his thoughts! - </p> - <p> - Now these dreams were really to come true; he was actually going to the - city, to wear decent clothes, to mingle as much as he chose with men of - wisdom and refinement, to attain that one aim and vision of his life, a - place on a great paper! - </p> - <p> - It was only here by the river, rod in hand, that he seemed able to fully - realize the beatitude of the vista. So as often as he could he came, and - if there was a ground note of sorrow at leaving these nooks, this dear old - river, there was also a triumphant song of exaltation in the air, the - water, the sunshine, which he could not hear on the farm. - </p> - <p> - Partly because these excursions generally led him from the house before - she made her appearance mornings, partly because he felt vaguely that his - own victory over fate involved disappointment for her, Seth did not see - much of Isabel during her husband’s absence. So far as he knew, she had - taken the news of Albert’s determination to move into the country quietly - enough. Neither by word or sign had she discovered to Seth any distaste - for the prospect. But none the less he had a half-guilty conviction that - she did not like it, and that she must blame him, or at least have some - feeling against him, for it. She had spoken so earnestly to him about the - curse of existence in the country; it was not conceivable to him that she - should suddenly accept for herself without protests or repining, the very - life she had thus commiserated with him about. - </p> - <p> - Yet it seemed after all that he was mistaken. It was the evening after - Albert’s return, and Annie had come over after supper, ostensibly to - borrow a wrapper-pattern from Isabel, but really, it need not be doubted, - to hear the news. - </p> - <p> - What news there was to be given out the eldest brother dispensed to the - family circle, after Alvira had cleared away the “tea-things.” - </p> - <p> - That domestic had a clear idea of making one in the circle, and, hastening - in from the kitchen without her apron, drew up a chair to sit with the - others, and enjoy the revelations which, from Albert’s manner during - supper, all felt to be impending. But the invasion of city manners, which - she and Milton had deplored and ridiculed for a fortnight back, had an - unsuspected bitterness in its train for her. The lawyer looked at her - coolly, as he struck a match on the under side of the mantel-piece, and - asked: “Hadn’t you better go out, Alvira, and see that the chickens don’t - get into the kitchen?”—and she flounced out again, with nose in air, - and black eyes flashing. - </p> - <p> - Albert lighted his cigar, put an arm chair down near the old rocker in - which his father sat and took his seat. Near the open door, overlooking - the farmyard and the barns, and full in the light from the west, sat Miss - Sabrina, knitting, and Isabel, with a paper. At the latter’s feet, on a - hassock, was Annie, and Seth sat on the doorstep. - </p> - <p> - “Father,” said Albert, “things have been arranged in New York so that I - can speak, now, about the plans which I hinted of ten days ago.” - </p> - <p> - The old man nodded his head, and said plaintively, “Whatever yew think - best, Albert, s’long as the boys git a fair shaow.” - </p> - <p> - “You needn’t worry about that. My business is settled now, I think, so - that I can live here six or eight months in the year, say from March till - October, running down occasionally, perhaps, but making this my residence. - I will take up all the mortgages—perhaps buy back some of the old - farm, may be all of it. There are three or four ways in which this can be - equitably arranged—we’ll talk of those in detail later on, some day - when John can come up. I will have the carpenters here in a few days, to - look over the house, and figure on putting it in first-class repair. The - barns will have to be new throughout. There must be new machinery, new - fences, and a pretty thorough weeding out of the cattle. We shall want a - carriage house—but then its no use of enumerating, there is so much - to be done. We will put some money into horseflesh down on Long Island, - and see if something can’t be done in the way of a stock-farm. I’m - thinking of a trout pond, up beyond the orchard, in the ravine there, - too.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Albert, this is what I’ve be’n prayin’ for this thirty year!” It was - Sabrina who spoke. There were tears of joy in her eyes. - </p> - <p> - Lemuel Fairchild seemed rather dazed, not to say dismayed, at the prospect - thus bewilderingly unfolded. “It’ll cost a heap o’ money, Albert,” he said - at last, rather dubiously, “an’ I dunnao’ ’baout yer gittin’ it - back agin.” - </p> - <p> - “That will be <i>my</i> look out,” said the lawyer, confidently. “At any - rate, Isabel and I will make a good home for you and Aunt Sabrina, as long - as you both live. It will be a pleasant change for us both. As for Seth—” - </p> - <p> - There was a pause, and Annie nestled closer to Isabel, with a soft “Oh - yes, about Seth.” - </p> - <p> - “As for Seth, it’s time he saw something of life besides grubbing here - like a farm-hand. We will try and get along without him here. I’ve talked - the matter over with a friend of mine, the proprietor of the Tecumseh <i>Chronicle</i> - and he is willing to give him a start there, under the most favorable - conditions. The salary will be small at first, of course, but I will - supplement it with enough to give him a decent living, if he is frugal. - After that of course it all depends on himself.” - </p> - <p> - Seth stood up, as these last words were spoken, and replied, stammeringly. - “You needn’t be afraid of my not trying hard, Albert. I’m sure I’m very - grateful to you. It’s more than I dared expect you would do for me.” He - pushed his way past the women to shake hands with his brother, and say - again “It’s so good of you.” - </p> - <p> - Albert received these expressions of gratitude benevolently, adding some - words of advice, and concluding with “You had better get ready to start as - early next week as you can. One of the <i>Chronicle</i> men is going on a - vacation, and its Workman’s idea that you would be handy in his absence. - You could go, say, Wednesday, couldn’t you?” - </p> - <p> - “So far as getting ready is concerned, I don’t know that there is anything - to do which couldn’t be done in a day. But—but—” - </p> - <p> - “Of course you will need some things. I’ll talk with you about that in the - morning. We’ll drive down to Thessaly day after to-morrow together.” - Albert rose with this to go out and see Milton, and the family interview - was at an end. - </p> - <p> - Miss Sabrina hurried out to the kitchen, impatient to begin discussing - with Alvira, as had been her wont for years, this new development in the - affairs of the household. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IX.—AT “M’TILDY’s” BEDSIDE. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>emuel Fairchild - sat still, smoking his wooden pipe, and looking absently, straight ahead, - into the papered wall. This habit of gazing at nothing was familiar to - them all, and when, at Isabel’s suggestion, the three young people started - for a stroll through the orchard path, they left him entirely without - ceremony. This was growing to be the rule; no one in the family now - consulted him, or took the trouble to be polite to him. He seemed to have - become in his own house merely an article of animated furniture, of not - much more importance than the rough-furred sickly old cat who dozed his - life away back of the stove. - </p> - <p> - He sat thus in solitude for some time, blankly studying the grotesque - patterns in the old-fashioned wall-paper, and drawing mechanically at the - pipe in his mouth, unconscious that no smoke came. Thus Miss Sabrina found - him when, after a more than ordinarily sharp passage at arms with Alvira, - she returned from the Kitchen. - </p> - <p> - “I swaow! thet girl gits wuss tempered ’n’ more presumin’ ev’ry day - o’ her life,” she exclaimed. - </p> - <p> - “Who—Annie?” asked her brother, rousing himself as if from a nap. - </p> - <p> - “Annie! nao! who’s talkin’ abaout <i>her?</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Oh nothin’, unly I was thinkin’ ’baout Annie—‘baout her ’n’ - Seth, yeh knaow,” answered Lemuel, apologetically. - </p> - <p> - “Well, what abaout ’em?” The query was distinctly aggressive in - tone. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, nothin’ much. I was sort o’ thinkin’—well, <i>you</i> knaow - S’briny, haow Sissly used to lot on their makin’ a match of it—’n’ - I was kine o’ wond’rin’ ef this here notion o’ Seth’s goin’ away wouldn’t - knock it all in th’ head.” - </p> - <p> - “Well?” Miss Sabrina’s monosyllabic comment had so little of sympathy or - acquiescence in it, that Lemuel continued in an injured tone and with more - animation, not to say resolution: - </p> - <p> - “Well, I’ve hed kine of an idea o’ goin’ over ’n’ talkin’ it over - with M’tildy. Mebbe that’ll be the best thing to dew.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh <i>you</i> think so, dew yeh? Thet’s all th’ pride <i>you’ve</i> got - lef’, is it? I think I see <i>my</i>self goin’ hangin’ raound Matildy - Warren, beggin’ her to let her granddaughter marry a Fairchild! I’m - ashamed of yeh, Lemuel.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’ see, much, what ther’ is to be ashamed on.” He added, with the - faintest shadow of a grin on his face. “’N’ b’twixt you ’n’ - me, I don’t see ’s there’s so blamed much fur me to be praoud - abaout, nuther. ‘Tain’t’s if I was goin’ to ask a favor o’ M’tildy, at - all. She ’n’ Sissly used to talk ‘baout the thing’s if ’twas - settled. ’N’ now’t she’s gone, ’n’ Seth’s talkin’ o’ - quittin’ th’ farm, seems to me it’d be the sensible thing to kind o’ fine - aout ef M’tildy wouldn’t offer th’ young folks her farm, ef they’d stay.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Very</i> well, sir. Hev’ yer own way,” answered Miss Sabrina, with - stern formality. “You allus <i>would</i> hev yer own way—and yeh kin - go muddle things up to yer heart’s content, for all o’ me!” - </p> - <p> - Lemuel watched his sister march to the stairs door and close it decisively - behind her. He was accustomed of old to this proof of her wrath; as far - back as he could remember it had been Sabrina’s habit to figuratively wash - her hands of unpleasant complications on the ground-floor by slamming this - self-same door, and going up to sulk in her own room. She did it as a - young girl, in the first months of her disagreements with his young wife; - it seemed to him a most natural proceeding now, when they were both old, - gray-headed people. - </p> - <p> - Just now, it was a relief to him that she had gone, for if she had stayed - he might not have had the courage to put his thoughts into actions. As it - was he took his hat from its nail back of the kitchen door, and started - across-lots for the Warren homestead. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - There was no danger of not finding Mrs. Warren at home. For seven or eight - years she had scarcely stirred beyond her own door, and for the past - eighteen months she had been bed-ridden. The front door was opened to Mr. - Fairchild by a young slip of a girl, one of the brood of daughters with - which a neighboring poor family was weighted down, and all of whom had - been driven to seek work at any price among the farmers of the vicinity. - It seemed as if there was a Lawton girl in every other farmhouse the whole - length of the Burfield road. - </p> - <p> - The girl ushered him into the gloomy hall, gloomier than ever now in the - gathering twilight, and unceremoniously left him there, while she went to - announce his presence. He heard through a door ajar at the end of the hall - a thin, querulous voice ask, “Which one of the Fairchilds is it?” and the - girl’s reply “The old man.” - </p> - <p> - Then the servant returned to him and with a curt “Come ahead,” led him to - the mistress of the house, who lay in her bed-home, in a recess off the - living room. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Matilda Warren had never been what might be called a popular woman in - the neighborhood. She and her husband, the latter dead now for many years, - had come from Massachusetts. They were educated people in a sense, and had - not mingled easily with their rougher neighbors. The widow Warren had, - after her daughter’s escapade, carried this exclusiveness to a point which - the neighborhood found disagreeable. Gradually she had grown into the - recluse habit, and younger generations on the hillside, eking out the - gossip of their elders with fancies of their own, born of stray glimpses - of her tall, gaunt figure and pale face, came to regard her with much that - same awe which, two centuries before, reputed witches had for children, - young and old. - </p> - <p> - Something of this feeling Lemuel himself was conscious of, as he stood - before her. The coverlet came up close under her arms. She wore a - wrapper-dress of red flannel. As he entered she raised herself, with an - evidently cruel effort, upon her elbow, dragging the pillow down to aid in - supporting her shoulder. She panted with this exertion as she confronted - him. Her scanty white hair was combed tightly back from her forehead, and - bound in place with a black-velvet band; a natural parting on the side of - the hair gave the withered face a suggestion of juvenile jauntiness, in - grotesque, jarring contrast with the pale blue eyes which glittered from - caverns of dark wrinkles, and the sunken, distorted mouth. She had changed - so vastly since their last meeting that Lemuel stood bewildered and - silent, staring at her. - </p> - <p> - She spoke first. “I’m trying to think—it must be twenty year since - we’ve met, Lemuel Fairchild.” - </p> - <p> - “Nigh onto that, M’tildy,” he replied, turning his hat in his hands. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t expect ever to lay eyes on you again, I couldn’t come to you, - and wouldn’t if I could, and I didn’t dream you would ever show your face - here.” The aged woman said this in a high, sharp voice, speaking rapidly - and with an ungracious tone. - </p> - <p> - Lemuel fidgetted with his hat and moved his feet uneasily on the dog-skin - rug. “Yeh needn’t be afeered, M’tildy, I wouldn’t hev come naow ef it - hadn’t been somethin’ partikler ’baout Annie.” - </p> - <p> - The invalid raised her shoulder from the pillow with a sudden movement, - and bent her head forward. “What’s happened to her? Is she hurt? Tell me, - quick!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh nao, they ain’t nothin’ th’ matter with her. It’s unly ’baout - her ’n’ Seth. I kine o’ thought we ought to talk it over ’n’ - see haow the land lay. That’s all.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh that’s it, is it? <i>Samantha!</i>” - </p> - <p> - Betrayed out of her shrewdness by the suddenness of the summons the - servant girl made her immediate appearance through the hall door. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I knew you were listening, you huzzy,” said Mrs. Warren grimly. “You - get along up stairs, go into Annie’s room, an’ make a noise of some sort - on the melodeon till I call you. Not too much noise, mind; jest enough so - I can know you’re up there.” As the girl left the room, the invalid - explained: “What she don’t hear, the rest of the Lawtons won’t know. That - family’s as good as a detective force for the whole county.” Then, in a - less amiable tone: “You might as well set down. What is it about my girl - an’ Seth?” - </p> - <p> - As Lemuel awkwardly seated himself near the bedside and prepared to - answer, a wailing, discordant series of sounds came from the floor above. - The knowledge that the girl was creating this melancholy noise to order, - and on his account, confused his thought and he found himself stating the - case much more baldly than he had intended. “The fact is,” he said, - stroking his hat over his knee, “Seth’s thinkin’ o’ goin’ away to Tecumsy—Albert’s - got him a place there—’n’ so I s’pose it’ll be all up b’twixt - him ’n’ Annie.” - </p> - <p> - The grandmother never took those light, searching eyes off her visitor’s - face. He felt himself turning uncomfortably red under their malevolent - gaze, I and wished she would speak. But she said nothing. At last he - explained, deferentially: - </p> - <p> - “I thought it’d only be right to tell yeh. I know Sissly ’n’ you - use to talk abaout th’ thing. Th’ way she use to talk, speshly jis’ ’fore - she died, it ’peared ‘s if you tew hed it all settled. But Albert’s - goin’ to take th’ farm, it seems, ’n’ Seth, he’s fig’rin’ on goin’ - away to be a neditor, ’n’ it looks to me’s if th’ hull plan’d fell - threw.” - </p> - <p> - Still no reply from the bed. He added, helplessly “Don’t it kind o’ seem - so to you, M’tildy?” - </p> - <p> - The wretched discords from the chamber above mocked him. The witch-like - eyes from the shadows of the recess began to burn him. It was growing into - the dusk, but the eyes had a light of their own, a cold, steely, fierce - light. Would she never speak? How he regretted having come! - </p> - <p> - “I’ll tell you what seems to me, Lemuel Fairchild,” she said at last, not - speaking so rapidly now, and putting a sharp, finishing edge on each of - her words. “It seems to me that there’s never been but one decent, - honorable, likely human bein’ in your whole family an’ she came into it by - the mistake of marrying you. I blame myself for not remembering the blood - that was in you all, an’ for thinking that this youngest son of yours was - different from the rest. I forgot that he was a Fairchild like the others, - an’ I forgot what I owed that family of men, so mean and cowardly and - selfish that they have to watch each other like so many hyenas. An’ so - you’ve come to tell me that Seth has turned out like his father, like his - uncle, like all of his name, eh? The more fool I, to need to be told it!” - </p> - <p> - Lemuel’s impulse was to rise from his chair, and bear himself with - offended dignity, but the glitter in the old woman’s eyes warned him that - the attempt would be a failure. He scowled, put his hat on the other knee, - crossed his legs, pretended to be interested in the antics of a kitten - which was working havoc with a ball of yarn at his feet. Finally he said: - </p> - <p> - “You ain’t fair to Seth. He’s a good boy. He ain’t said nothin’ nor done - nothin’ fer yeh to git mad at. Fer that matter, you never was fair to any - of us, ’cept Sissly.” - </p> - <p> - “Fair! <i>Fair!</i>” came the answer promptly, and in a swifter measure. - “Hear the man! Why, Lemuel Fairchild, you know that you cheated your own - brother out of the share in that farm that was his by all rights as much - as yours. You <i>know</i> that your father intended you both to share - alike, that he died too suddenly to make a new will and that you grabbed - everything under a will made when your brother William was thought to be - too sickly to ever raise. You <i>know</i> that you let him grow up an - idle, worthless coot of a fellow, an’ then encouraged him—yes, don’t - deny it, encouraged him I say—to make a fool of my daughter, and run - away with her. - </p> - <p> - “You knew I wouldn’t look at him as a suitor for Jenny; but you thought I - would be soft enough, once they were married, to give him my farm, an’ you - counted on getting it away from him afterwards, just as your father got - the Kennard farm before you. You egged him on into the trouble, an’ you - let him die in it, without help. Oh <i>I</i> know you, Lemuel Fairchild—I - know your breed! - </p> - <p> - “Your <i>wife</i> was a good woman—a million times better than you - deserved. <i>She</i> knew the wrongs that had been done me, an’ Annie, an’ - her poor ne’er-do-well of a father before her; <i>she</i> was anxious to - make them good, not I. It was she who talked, year after year, when she - ran over here on the sly to visit me, of squaring everything by the young - folk’s marriage. For a long time I didn’t like it. I distrusted the - family, as, God knows, I had reason to. But all that I heard of Seth was - in his favor. He was hardworking, patient, even-tempered, so everyone - said. What little I saw of him I liked. An’ I felt sorry for him, too, - knowing how dear he was to his mother, and yet how helpless she was to - give him advantages, an’ make something besides a farm-drudge out of him. - So little by little, I gave in to the idea, an’ finally it became mine - almost as much as Cecily’s. - </p> - <p> - “As for Annie, I don’t know how much she has grown to care for him; I’m - afraid she’s known about our talks, and lotted on ’em, though if - anything has passed between them she would have told me. For she’s a good - girl—a <i>good</i> girl—and she’ll stand by me, never fear, - and say as I say now, that it’s good riddance! D’ye mind? Good riddance to - bad rubbish—to your whole miserable, conniving, underhanded family! - There ain’t an honest hair in your head, Lemuel Fairchild, and there never - was. And you can go back to them that sent you, to your old catamaran of a - sister and your young sneak of a son, and tell ’em what I think of - them, and you, and the whole caboodle of you, that ruined and killed my - Jane, and made me a broken old woman before my time, and now tries to - break my grand-daughter’s heart! And the longest day you Jive, don’t ever - let me lay eyes on you again. That’s all!” - </p> - <p> - Lemuel groped his way out again through the dark hall, to the front door. - The groaning discords from upstairs rose to a triumphant babel of sound as - he knocked against the hat-rack, and fumbled for the latch, as if to - emphasize and gloat over his discomfiture. The cold evening air, after the - sweltering heat of the sick-room, was a physical relief, but it brought no - moral comfort. - </p> - <p> - Old Lemuel was much pained, and even more confused, by the hard words to - which he had had to listen. They presented a portrait of himself which he - felt to be in no way a likeness, yet he could not say wherein a single - line should be altered. He knew that he was not a bad man; he felt - conscious of having done no special wrong, intentionally, to anybody; he - had always tried to be fair and square and easy-going with everybody: yet - the mischief of it was that all these evil things which the witchlike - M’tildy had piled at his door were of indubitable substance, and he could - not prove, even to himself, much less to her, that they did not belong - there. It was a part of the consistently vile luck of his life that all - these malignant happenings should be charged up against him, and used to - demonstrate his wickedness. He had not enough mental skill or alertness to - sift the unfair from the true in the indictment she had drawn, or to put - himself logically in her place, and thus trace her mistakes. He only - realized that all these events which she enumerated had served to convince - Mrs. Warren that he was a villain. The idea was a new one to him, and it - both surprised and troubled him to find that, as he thought the matter - over he could not see where she was particularly wrong. Yet a villain he - had certainly never intended to be—never for a moment. Was this not - cruelly hard luck? - </p> - <p> - And then there was this business about Seth. He had meant it all in the - friendliest spirit, all with the best of motives. And how she had snapped - him up before he had a chance to explain, and called him a scoundrel and - his boy a sneak, and driven him from the house! Here was a muddle for one—and - Sabrina had said he would make a muddle of it, as he had of everything - else, all through his life. The lonely, puzzled, discouraged old man felt - wofully like shedding tears, as he approached his own gate—or no, it - was Albert’s gate now—and passed the young people chatting there, - and realized what a feeble old fool they all must think him. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER X.—THE FISHING PARTY. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he young people - were arranging, as Lemuel slunk past them in the dark, a fishing party for - the following day. The proposal had been Isabel’s—she had a fertile - mind for pleasure planning—and Annie and Seth were delighted with - it. They would take a basket of food, and make the tea over a fire in the - woods, and the two women could take turns in playing at fishing with a - little rod which Seth had made for himself as a boy. It would be an ideal - way of bidding good-bye to Seth, said his pretty sister-in-law, and Annie, - feeling more deeply both the significance of saying good-bye and the charm - of having a whole day to herself along the river and in his company, had - assented eagerly. - </p> - <p> - As for Seth, this sudden accession of feminine interest in, and concern - for, him was extremely pleasant and grateful. The very suggestion of the - trip, in his honor, was like a sweet taken in advance from the honeyed - future which he was so soon to realize. Long that night, after he had - walked over to the Warren gate with Annie, and returned to the unlathed - attic where Milton lay already snoring, he thought fondly of the morrow’s - treat. - </p> - <p> - The morning came, warm but overcast, with a soft tendency of air from the - west. “It couldn’t have been better if it had been made to order,” Seth - said enthusiastically, when Isabel made her appearance before breakfast. - “It will be good fishing and good walking, not too hot and not wet.” - </p> - <p> - Albert smiled a trifle satirically when the project was unfolded to him—with - that <i>conceited tolerance which people who don’t fish always extend to - those who do</i>. “You’ll probably get wet and have the toothache” he said - to his wife, but offered no objection. - </p> - <p> - The lunch was packed, the poles were ready, the bait-can stood outside the - shed door, breakfast was a thing of the past, and Isabel sat with her - sunhat and parasol—but Annie did not come. Seth fidgeted and fumed - as a half-hour went by, then the hour itself. It was so unlike Annie to be - late. He made an errand to the hay-barn, to render the waiting less - tedious, and it was there that Milton found him, rummaging among some old - harness for a strap. - </p> - <p> - “Annie’s come over,” said Milton, “I heerd her say somethin’ ’baout - not goin’ fishin’, after all. Looks ’sif she’d be’n cryin’ tew. I - tole ’em I’d fetch yeh.” - </p> - <p> - Seth came out into the light, slapping the dust off his hands. “What’s - that you say? Why isn’t she going?” - </p> - <p> - “I dunnao nothin’ more ’n I’ve told yeh. Ask her yerself. I ’spose - she’s be’n cryin’ at the thought of yer goin’. That’ll be the eend o’ - ev’rythin’ atwixt you two, won’t it?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, do mind your own business, Milton!” Seth said, and hurried across the - barnyard to where the two young women stood, on the doorstep. “Why aren’t - you going, Annie? What’s the matter?” he called out as he approached. - </p> - <p> - Poor Annie looked the picture of despair. Her face bore the marks of - recent tears and she hung her head in silence. Isabel answered for her. - </p> - <p> - “Going? Of course she is going. It would be ridiculous not to go, now that - everything’s arranged. Get the things together, Seth, and let us make a - start.” - </p> - <p> - “But Milton said she wasn’t going,” persisted Seth. - </p> - <p> - “Dear, dear, how downright you are! Don’t I tell you that she <i>is</i> - going, that there is nothing the matter, that we are waiting for you?” And - there was nothing more to be said. - </p> - <p> - The sun came out before the trio had gone far, but not before they had - begun to forget the cloud at the start. The grass in the pastures was not - quite dry yet, but wet feet were a part of the fun of the thing, Isabel - said gaily. The meadow larks careened in the air about them, and the - bobolinks, swinging on the thistle tops, burst into chorus from every side - as the sunlight spread over the hill-side. There were robins, too, in the - juniper trees beyond the white-flowering buckwheat patch, Seth pointed - out, too greedy to wait till the green berries ripened. A flock of crows - rose from the buckwheat as they passed and who could help smiling at - Isabel’s citified imitation of their strident hawing? They came upon some - strawberries, half-hidden in the tall grass beside the rail-topped wall, - and Isabel would gather them in her handkerchief, to serve as dessert in - their coming <i>al fresco</i> dinner, and Annie helped her, smiling in - spite of herself at the city lady’s extravagant raptures. - </p> - <p> - When they stopped to rest, in the fresh-scented shadow of the woods, and - sat on a log along the path, two wee chipmunks came out from the brake - opposite and began a chirping altercation, so comical in its suggestions - of human wrangling that they all laughed outright. The sound scared away - the tiny rodents in a twinkling, and it banished as swiftly the restraint - under which the excursion had begun. - </p> - <p> - From that moment it was all gayety, jesting, enjoyment. Isabel was the - life of the party; she said the drollest things;—passed the - quaintest comments,—revealed such an inexhaustable store of spirits - that she lifted her companions fairly out of their serious selves. Seth - found himself talking easily, freely, and even Annie now and again made - little jokes, at which they all laughed merrily. - </p> - <p> - The fisherman’s judgment as to the day was honored in full measure. The - fish had never bitten more sharply, the eddies had never carried the line - better. It seemed so easy, to let the line wander back and forth between - the two currents, to tell when the bait was grabbed underneath, and to - haul out the plunging, flapping beauty, that Isabel was all eagerness to - try it, and Seth rigged the little pole for her, baited the hook - self-sacrificingly with his biggest worm, which he had thought of in - connection with a certain sapient father of all pike further up the river, - and showed her where and how to cast the line. - </p> - <p> - Alas, it was not so simple, after all, this catching of fish. - </p> - <p> - First she lost a hook on a root; then it seemed to her that ages passed in - which nothing whatever happened and this was followed by the discovery - that her hook had entirely been stripped of bait without her suspecting - it. At last there came a bite, a deep, determined tug, which she answered - with a hysterical pull, hurling through the air and into the thistles far - back of her a wretched little bull-head which they were unable to find for - a long time, and which miserably stung her thumb with its fin when she - finally did find it. - </p> - <p> - After this exploit Annie must try, and she promptly twitched her line into - the tree overhead. And so the day went forward, with light-hearted - laughter and merriment, with the perfect happiness which the sunshine and - color and perfume of June can bring alone to the young. - </p> - <p> - They grew a trifle more serious at dinner time. It was in the narrow - defile where the great jam of logs was, and where the river went down, - black and deep, under the rotting wood with a vicious gurgle. Just above - the jam there was a mound, velvety now with new grass, and comfortably - shaded—a notable spot for dinner and a long rest, and then the girls - could watch to much advantage Seth’s fishing from the logs, of which great - things were prophesied. Here then the cloth was spread on the grass, the - water put on over a fire lighted back of the mound, and the contents of - the basket laid in prandial array. It was in truth a meagre dinner, but - were appetites ever keener or less critical? - </p> - <p> - Once during the forenoon, when allusion was made to Seth’s coming - departure, Isabel had commanded that nothing be said on that subject all - day long. “Let us not think of it at all,” she had said, “but just enjoy - the hours as if they would never end. That is the only secret of - happiness.” But now she herself traversed the forbidden line. - </p> - <p> - “How strange it will all seem to you, Seth,” she mused, as she poured out - the tea. “As the time draws near, don’t you almost dread it?” - </p> - <p> - “What I’ve been thinking most about to-day is your coming to the farm to - live. It can’t be that you are altogether pleased—after what I’ve - heard you say.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh yes, why not?” said Isabel. “My case is very different from yours. I - shall be just as idle as I like. I shall have horses, you know and a big - conservatory, and a piano, and all that. We shall have lots of people here - all summer long—just think what fishing parties we can make up!—and - whenever it gets stupid we can run down to New York. Oh, I’ve got quite - beyond the reconciled stage now. I am almost enthusiastic over it. When - you come back in a year’s time, you won’t know the place. It will have - been transformed into a centre of fashion and social display. I may get to - have a veritable salon, you know, the envy and despair of all Dearborn - County. Fancy Elhanan Pratt and Sile Thomas in evening dress, with patent - leather pumps and black stockings, scowling at Leander Crump, with a - crushed hat under his arm, whom they suspect of watering his milk! Oh, we - shall be gay, I assure you.” - </p> - <p> - Seth looked at her attentively, puzzled to know how much of this was - badinage, how much sincerity. She smiled archly at him—what a - remarkably winning smile she had!—and continued: - </p> - <p> - “Then Annie will be company for me, too. I mean to bring her out, you - know, and make her a leader of society. In a year’s time when you come - back and I introduce you to her, you won’t be able to credit your senses, - her air will be so <i>distingué</i>, and her tastes so fastidious.” - </p> - <p> - She ceased her gay chatter abruptly, for Annie had turned away and they - could see that her eyes were filling with tears. - </p> - <p> - Seth bethought him of those earlier tears, the signs of which had been so - obvious when they started, and it was natural enough to connect the two. - </p> - <p> - “Something <i>has</i> happened, Annie,” he said. “Can’t you tell us what - it is?” - </p> - <p> - And then he bit his tongue at having made the speech, for Annie turned a - beseeching look at him, then at Isabel, and burst into sobs. - </p> - <p> - “Isn’t it reason enough that you are going away?” said Isabel. “What more - could you ask?” - </p> - <p> - “No, it isn’t that alone,” protested Annie through her tears. Her pride - would not brook the assumption. “There is something else; I can hardly - tell you—but—but—my grandmother has suddenly taken a - great dislike to Seth; if she knew where I was she would be very angry: I - never deceived her, even indirectly, before, but I couldn’t bear not to - come after I got to the house, and if I’ve done wrong—” - </p> - <p> - “Now, now dear” cooed Isabel, leaning over to take Annie’s hands, “what - nonsense to talk of wrong; come now, dry your eyes, and smile at us, like - a good girl. You are nervous and tired out with the task of tending your - grandmother—that’s all—and this day in the woods will do you a - world of good. Don’t let us have even the least little bit of unhappiness - in it.” - </p> - <p> - Seth watched his sister-in-law caress and coax away Annie’s passing fit of - gloom, with deep enjoyment. The tenderness and beauty of the process were - a revelation to him; it was an attribute of womanhood the existence of - which he had scarcely suspected heretofore, in his untutored, bucolic - state. Annie seemed to forget her grief quickly enough, and became - cheerful again; in quaint docility she smiled through her tears at - Isabel’s command, and the latter was well within the truth when she cried: - “There! You have never looked prettier in your life!” - </p> - <p> - Seth nodded acquiescence, and returned the smile. But somehow this grief - of Annie’s had bored him, and he felt rather than thought that his - country-cousin, even in this radiant moment, was of slight interest - compared with the city sister-in-law, who not only knew enough not to cry - herself, but could so sweetly charm away tears from others. - </p> - <p> - Seth tested all the joints of his pole, and changed the hook and baited it - with studious care, before he climbed out on the jam. Gingerly feeling his - way from log to log, he got at last upon the wet mossy birch which - projected like a ledge at the bottom of the pile. The women watched his - progress from the mound, and gave a little concerted shout of triumph - when, at the very first cast of his line into the froth of the dark eddy, - it was caught and dragged swiftly across the stream, and a handsome pike a - moment later paid the penalty. - </p> - <p> - “That’s by far the biggest yet, isn’t it?” Annie asked. - </p> - <p> - “Wait, there are bigger yet. Watch this!” - </p> - <p> - The line, thrown in again, had been sharply jerked and was now being drawn - upstream under the logs. Seth moved down to the end of the birch, stooping - under the jutting heap of logs above, to be able to play the pole - sidewise, and save the fish. It was a difficult position to stand in; he - held the rod far forward with one hand, and grasped a bough above for - support as he leaned out over the stream. - </p> - <p> - The thing snapped—exactly how it was no one knew—a log - released from its bondage shifted position, a dozen others rolled over it - rumbling, and the women held their breath affrighted as they saw, without - moving, the whole top of the jam tremble, lift a jagged end or two, and - then collapse with a hollow noise. As they found voice to scream, the - water was covered with floating debris, and the air filled with a musty - fungus-like smell. - </p> - <p> - There was no sign of Seth. - </p> - <p> - The roar of the falling timber had scarcely died away before Annie had - left the mound, had torn her way through the alders at the bottom, and - stood panting on the wet slimy rocks at the edge of the stream. She hardly - heard the frightened warning which Isabel, pale and half-fainting, called - out to her: - </p> - <p> - “Keep away from the water, Annie! You’ll surely be drowned!” - </p> - <p> - She was painfully intent upon another thing, upon the search for some - indication of her cousin. The logs were moving but slowly in the current, - and were heaped so irregularly that no clear survey of the whole surface - could be had. There seemed an eternity of suffering in every second which - she spent thus, scanning the scene. Could the crush of logs have killed - him? Even if he had escaped that, would he not be drowned by this time? - The grinding of the logs against each other, the swash of the water at her - feet, Isabel’s faint moaning on the mound above, seemed to her dazed - terror a sort of death dirge. - </p> - <p> - Oh, joy! She caught sight of something in cloth between two great - tree-trunks, drenched, covered with the red grime of rotten wood, - motionless; but it was Seth. His face she could not see, nor whether it - was under water or not. She walked boldly into the stream—kneedeep - at the outset, and the slippery rocks shelving off swiftly into unknown - brown-black depths—but there was no hesitation. A halfdozen steps, - and she disappeared suddenly beneath the water. Isabel wrung her hands in - despair, too deep now to find a voice; but Annie had only slipped on the - treacherous slates, and found her footing again. The water came to her - shoulders now, and was growing deeper steadily. - </p> - <p> - With a strength born of desperation she clambered up on the birch, which - floated nearest her, and pulled herself along its length, swaying as it - rolled in the current under her weight, but managing to keep on top. It - was nothing short of miraculous to Isabel’s eyes, the manner in which she - balanced herself, clambered from log to log, overcame all the obstacles - which lay between her and the inanimate form at the other side. The - distance was not great, and a swimmer would have made nothing of the feat, - but for a girl encumbered with heavy wet skirts, and in deep water for the - first time, it was a real achievement. - </p> - <p> - At last she reached Seth—her progress had covered three minutes, and - seemed to her hours long—and, throwing herself across both logs, - with a final effort lifted his head upon her shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “He is alive!” she said to Isabel, feebly now, but with a great sigh of - relief. - </p> - <p> - The city woman ran down at this, all exultation. At Annie’s suggestion, - she tied their two shawls together, fastened one end to a pole, and - managed to fling the other over to the rescuer; it was easy work after - that to draw the logs to the bank, and then Annie, standing knee-deep - again in the water, made shift to get the heavy dead weight safe on land. - The two women tugged their burden through the alders, and up to the place - where the dinner dishes still lay, with scarcely a word. Then exhausted, - excited, overjoyed, Isabel threw herself in Annie’s arms and they both - found relief in tears. - </p> - <p> - Seth had been struck on the head and stunned by the first falling log; how - much he had been in the water or how near he had been to drowning could - not be discovered. - </p> - <p> - He presently opened his eyes, and a smile came almost instantaneously to - his face as he realised that his head was resting in Isabel’s lap, that he - was muffled up in her shawl, and that she was looking down upon him - anxiously, tenderly. A second sufficed to bring the whole thing to his - mind, or at least the facts that he had gone under with the logs and by - some agency had been landed here safe and comfortable, if not dry—and - to bring also the instinctive idea that it would be the intelligent part - to lie still, and be petted and sympathised with. - </p> - <p> - Isabel scarcely returned his smile. She had not recovered from her fright. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Seth,” she asked earnestly, “Are you hurt? Do you feel any pain?” - </p> - <p> - “Not a bit” he replied—“only dizzy like. By George! How they did - come down though. I must have had a pretty narrow squeak of it. Funny—I - don’t remember coming out at all.” - </p> - <p> - She smiled now. “I should think not. You lay perfectly senseless way out - there among the logs. We fished you out, and dragged you up here. I feel - like a heroine in a Crusader’s romance, really!” - </p> - <p> - It entered Seth’s mind to say something nice in reply, that she looked - like one, or that they were not equal in those benighted ages to producing - such women, or something of that sort; but his tongue did not seem to - frame the words easily and as he looked up at her he grew shy once again, - and felt himself flushing under her smile, and only said vacuously, - “Mightly lucky I wasn’t alone, isn’t it?” Annie appeared on the scene now, - her clothes steaming from the heat of the fire, over which she had - endeavoured to dry them, and her teeth displaying a spasmodic tendency to - knock together between sentences. She too was full of solicitude as to - Seth’s condition, and to satisfy this he reluctantly sat up, stretched his - arms out, felt of the bump on his forehead, beat his chest, and finally - stood erect. - </p> - <p> - “I’m all right, you see” he said—“only, bo-o-o, I’m cold,” and he - made for the fire, upon which Annie had heaped brushwood, which crackled - and snapped now, giving forth a furious heat. - </p> - <p> - They stood about the fire for a considerable time. Isabel was opposite - Seth, rather ostentatiously drying sundry damp places in her dress which - had come in contact with the rescued man’s dripping hair and clothes. He - was so interested in watching her, and in thinking half-regret fully, - half-jubilantly, that she had been put to this discomfort in saving his - life, that he failed to notice how completely drenched his cousin had - been. The conversation turned entirely, of course, upon the recent great - event, but it was desultory and broken by long intervals of silence, and - somehow Seth did not get any clear idea of how he was saved, much less of - the parts the two women had respectively played in the rescue. - </p> - <p> - It would be unfair to say that Isabel purposely misrepresented anything; - it is nearer the truth to describe her as confounding her own anxiety with - her companion’s action. At all events, the narrative to be gleaned from - her scattering descriptions and exclamations had the effect of creating in - Seth’s mind the impression that he could never be sufficiently grateful to - his sister-in-law. - </p> - <p> - As for Annie, the whole momentous episode had come so swiftly, had been so - imperative, exhaustive in its demands of all her faculties, and then had - so suddenly dwindled to the unromantic conditions of drying wet clothes at - a brush fire, that her thoughts upon it were extremely confused. She - scarcely took part in the conversation. Perhaps she felt vaguely that her - own share in the thing was not made to stand forth with all the prominence - it deserved, but she took it for granted that, in his first waking - moments, while he was alone with Isabel, Seth had been told the central - fact of her going into the water for him, and, if he was not effusively - grateful, why—it was not Seth’s way to be demonstrative. Besides she - said to herself, she did not want to be thanked. - </p> - <p> - Still, late that night, long hours after Seth had said good-night to her - at the Warren gate, and she had almost guiltily stolen up to her room - without braving her grandmother’s questions, Annie could not go to sleep - for thinking:— - </p> - <p> - “He might at least have <i>looked</i> some thanks, even if he did not - speak them.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Three days later, Seth departed for the city. It was not a particularly - impressive ceremony, this leave-taking, not half so much as he had - imagined it would be. - </p> - <p> - He had risen early, dressed himself in one of the two new, ready-made, - cheap suits Albert had bought for him at Thessaly and packed all his - possessions in the carpet satchel which had been in the family he knew not - how long—and still found, when he descended the stairs, that he was - the first down. It was a dark, rainy morning, and the living room looked - unspeakably desolate, and felt disagreeably cold. He sat for a long time - by a window pondering the last copy of John’s <i>Banner</i>, and trying to - thus prepare his mind for that immense ordeal of daily newspaper work, - that struggle of unknown, titanic proportions, now close before him. - </p> - <p> - Alvira at last came in to lay the breakfast table. - </p> - <p> - “Hello, you up already?” was all she said; but he felt she was eyeing him - furtively, as if even thus soon he was a stranger in the house of his - birth. - </p> - <p> - Aunt Sabrina next appeared. “There! I knew it ’d rain,” she - exclaimed. “I told Alviry so last night. When th’ cords on th’ curtains - git limp, yeh can’t fool me ’baout it’s not rainin’. ’N’ - Seth, I hope you’ll go to Church regular whatever else you dew. ’N’ - ef yeh could take a class in th’ Sunday schewl, it’d go a long ways tow’rd - keepin’ yeh aout o’ temptation. Will yeh go to th’ Baptist Church, think? - Th’ Fairchilds ’v’ allus be’n Baptists.” - </p> - <p> - The breakfast passed in constrained silence, save for Albert, who - delivered a monologue on the evils of city life, and the political and - ethical debauchery of the press, to which Seth tried dutifully to pay - attention—thinking all the while how to say goodbye to Isabel, how - to invest his words with a fervor the others would not suspect. - </p> - <p> - When the time came, all this planning proved of no avail. He found himself - shaking hands as perfunctorily with her as with her husband, and his - father and aunt. Only the latter kissed him, and she did it with awkward - formality. - </p> - <p> - Then he climbed into the buggy where Milton and the carpet bag were - already installed, and, answering in kind a chorus of “Good-byes” drove - out into the rain—and the World. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XI.—ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE WORLD. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>eth’s first - impressions of the World, gathered when he found himself and his valise - alone on the sidewalk of one of Tecumseh’s chief streets, were distinctly - gloomy. - </p> - <p> - Other passengers who had left the train here, and in whose throng he had - been borne along thus far, started off briskly in various directions once - they reached the busy thoroughfare, elbowing their way through the horde - of clamorous hotel porters much as one might push through a clump of - obstructing bushes. He had firmly fixed in his mind the cardinal rule of - traveling countrymen, that these shouting runners were brigands intent - upon robbing him, and he was clear in his resolution to give them no hold - upon him, not even by so much as a civil expression of countenance. He - said “No, thank you!” sternly to at least a dozen solicitations, so it - seemed to him, and walked away steadily, fearful that their practised eyes - had detected in him an utter stranger, and intent only upon proving to - them that he knew where he was going. When at last it seemed likely that - they were no longer watching him, he stopped, put his bag down in a door - way, and looked about. - </p> - <p> - It was half-past six of a summer afternoon (for a failure to make - connections had prolonged the sixty-mile journey over eight hours), and - the sun, still high, beat down the whole length of the street with an - oppressive glare and heat. The buildings on both sides, as far as eye - could reach, were of brick, flat-topped, irregular in height, and covered - with flaring signs. There was no tree, nor any green thing, in sight. - </p> - <p> - Past him in a ceaseless stream, and all in one direction, moved a swarm of - humanity—laborers and artisans with dinner-pails, sprucely dressed - narrow-chested clerks and book-keepers, and bold faced factory-girls in - dowdy clothes and boots run down at the heels—a bewildering, - chattering procession. No one of all this throng glanced at him, or paid - the slightest attention to him, until one merry girl, spying his forlorn - visage, grinned and called out with a humorous drawl “Hop-pick—ers!” - and then danced off with her laughing companions, one of whom said, “Aw, - come off! You’re rushin’ the season. Hop’s ain’t ripe yet.” - </p> - <p> - Seth felt deeply humiliated at this. He had been vaguely musing upon the - general impudence of his coming to this strange city to teach its people - daily on all subjects, from government down, while he did not even know - how to gracefully get his bag off the street. This incident added the - element of wounded self-pride to his discomfort—for even casual - passers-by were evidently able to tell by his appearance that he was a - farmer. Strange! neither Albert nor John had told him anything calculated - to serve him in this dilemma. They had warned him plentifully as to what - not to do. Indeed his head was full of negative information, of pit-falls - to avoid, temptations to guard against. But on the affirmative side it was - all a blank. John had, it was true, advised him to get board with some - quiet family, but if there were any representatives of such quiet families - in the crowd surging past, how was he to know them? - </p> - <p> - While he tormented himself with this perplexing problem, two clerks came - out of the store next to which he stood, to pull up the awning and prepare - for night. A tall young man, with his hands deep in his trouser’s pockets, - and a flat straw hat much on one side of his head, sauntered across the - street to them, and was greeted familiarly. - </p> - <p> - “Well, Tom,” shouted one of these clerks, “you just everlastingly gave it - to that snide show to-night. <i>Wasn’t</i> it a scorcher, though?” - </p> - <p> - The young man with the straw hat put on a satisfied smile: “That’s the - only way to do it,” he said lightly. “The sooner these fakirs understand - that they can’t play Tecumseh people for chumps, the better. If the <i>Chronicle</i> - keeps on pounding ’em, they’ll begin to give us a wide berth. Their - advance agent thought he could fix me by opening a pint bottle of - champagne. That may work in Hornellsville, but when he gets to-night’s <i>Chronicle</i> - I fancy he’ll twig that it doesn’t go down here.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, by the way, Tom,” said the other clerk, in a low tone of voice, “my - sister’s engaged to Billy Peters. I don’t know that she wants to have it - given away, that is, names, and everything, but you might kind o’ hint at - it. It would please the old folks, I think—you know father’s taken - the <i>Chronicle</i> for the last twenty years.” - </p> - <p> - “I know” said Tom, producing an old envelope from a side pocket and making - some dashes on it with a pencil—“the regulation gag: ‘It is rumored - that a rising young hat-dealer will shortly lead to the altar one of the - bright, particular social stars of Brewery street ’ eh? Something - like that?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, that’s it. You know how to fix it so that everybody’ll know who is - meant. Be around at Menzel’s to-night?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll look in. The beer’s been fearfully flat there, - though, this last carload. So long, boys!”—and Tom moved down the - street while the clerks re-entered the store. - </p> - <p> - Seth followed him eagerly, and touched him on the shoulder, saying: - </p> - <p> - “I beg your pardon, sir, but I heard you mention the <i>Chronicle</i> just - now. I would be much obliged if you could tell me where the office is.” - </p> - <p> - The young man turned, looked Seth over and said, affably enough: - </p> - <p> - “Certainly. But you’ll find it shut up. The book-keeper’s gone home.” Then - he added, as by a happy afterthought: “If you want to pay a weekly - subscription, though, I can take it, just as well as not.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” answered Seth, “I’ve come to work on the <i>Chronicle</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh—printer? I guess some of the fellows are there still, throwing - in their cases. If you like, I’ll show you.” - </p> - <p> - Seth replied, with some embarrassment, “No, I’m not a printer. I’ve come - to be—to be—an editor.” - </p> - <p> - Tom’s manner changed in a twinkling from civility to extreme cordiality. - </p> - <p> - “Oh—ho! you’re the new man from Thessaly, eh? Jack Fairchild’s - brother! By Jove! How <i>are</i> you, anyway? When did you get in? Where - are you stopping?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m not stopping anywhere—unless it be this stairway here,” Seth - replied, pointing to his carpetbag with a smile, for his companion’s - cheerfulness was infectious. “I came in half an hour ago, and I scarcely - knew where to go, or what to do first. I gather that you are connected - with the <i>Chronicle</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I should remark!” said Tom, taking the bag up as he spoke. “Come - along. We’ll have some supper down at Bismarck’s, and leave your grip - there for the evening. We can call for it on our way home. You’ll stop - with me to-night, you know. It ain’t a particularly fly place, but we’ll - manage all right, I guess. And how’s Jack?” - </p> - <p> - In the delight of finding so genial a colleague, one, too, who had known - and worked with his brother, Seth’s heart rose, as they walked down the - street again. He had been more than a little dismayed at the prospect of - meeting these unknown writers whose genius radiated in the columns of the - <i>Chronicle</i>, and in whose company he was henceforth to labor. - Especially had he been nervous lest he should not speak with sufficient - correctness, and should shock their fastidious ears with idioms insensibly - acquired in the back-country. It was a great relief to find that this - gentleman was so easy in his conversation, not to say colloquial. - </p> - <p> - They stopped presently at a broad open door, flanked by wide windows, in - which were displayed a variety of bright-tinted play bills, and two huge - pictures of a goat confidently butting a small barrel. There was a steep - pile of these little, dark-colored barrels on the sidewalk at the curb, - from which came a curious smell of resin. As they entered, Seth discovered - that this odor belonged to the whole place. - </p> - <p> - The interior was dark and, to the country youth’s eyes, unexpectedly vast. - The floor was sprinkled with gray sand. An infinitude of small, circular - oak tables, each surrounded with chairs, stretched out in every direction - into the distant gloom. Away at the farther end of the place, somebody was - banging furiously on a piano. In the middle distance, three elderly men - sat smoking long pipes and playing dominoes, silently, save for the sharp - clatter of the pieces. Nearer, three other men, seated about a table, were - all roaring in German at the top of their lungs, pounding with their - glasses on the resounding wood, and making the most excited and menacing - gestures. While Seth stared at them, expecting momentarily to see the - altercation develop into blows, he felt himself clutched by the arm, and - heard Tom say: - </p> - <p> - “Bismarck, this is Mr. Fairchild, a new <i>Chronicle</i> man. You must use - him as well as you do me.” - </p> - <p> - Seth turned and found himself shaking hands with an old German monstrous - in girth, and at once fierce and comical in aspect, with short, upright - gray hair, a huge yellowish-white moustache, and little piggish blue eyes - nearly hidden from view by the wave of fat which rendered his great purple - face as featureless as the bottom of a platter. - </p> - <p> - “Who effer vas Misder Vott’s frent, den you bed he owens dis whole - houwus,” this stout gentleman wheezed out, smiling warmly, and releasing - Seth’s hand to indicate, with a sweeping gesture of his pudgy paw, the - extent of Seth’s new and figurative possessions. - </p> - <p> - On the invitation of the host they all took seats, and a lean, - wolfish-faced young man named “Ow-goost,” who shuffled along pushing his - big slippers on the floor, brought three tall foaming glasses of - dark-brown beer. Seth did not care for beer, and had always, in a general - way, avoided saloons and drink, but of course, under these circumstances, - it would be ridiculous not to do as the others did. The beverage was - bitter, but not unpleasant, and with an effort he drank it half down at a - time, as he saw his companions do. Then he looked about, while they - discussed the merits of this new “bock,” Tom speaking with an air of great - authority, and pronouncing it better than the last, but a bit too cold. - </p> - <p> - The piano was still jangling, and the dominoes were being rattled around - for a new game. The three noisy old men had grown, if possible, more - violent and boisterous than ever. One of them now sprang to his feet, - lifted his right hand dramatically toward the dusky ceiling, and bellowed - forth sonorously something which Seth thought must be at least a challenge - to immediate combat, while the others hammered their glasses vehemently, - and fairly shrieked dissent. - </p> - <p> - “I’m afraid those men are going to fight,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Fight? Nonsense! They’re rather quieter than usual,” remarked Tom. “What - are they chewing on to-night, Bismarck—the Sigel racket?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said their host, listening indifferently. “Dot’s Sigel.” Then, - addressing Seth, he explained: “Somedimes it’s Sigel, unt somedimes the - reffolution uff forty-eighd, unt den somedimes der k-vestion of we haf a - vood bafement by Main streed. It all makes no differunce to dem, vicheffer - ding dey shdarts mit, dey git yust so much oxcited. Dot rooster you see - standing up mit der spegtacles, dot Henery Beckstein, he’s a tailor; he - sits mid his legs tvisted all day, den when night comes he neets some - exercises. Efery night for tweluf years he comes here, unt has his liddle - dalk, und de udders, dey alvays pitches into him. He likes dot better as - his dinner. De vurst is, dey all don’t know vat dey talk aboud. I bleef, - so help me Gott, no one of ’em ever laid eyes by Sigel, unt dey all - svear he vas deir dearest frent. Now—hear dot! Dot Beckstein say uff - he didn’t shleep mid him four years in his dent, in de same bet! How was - dot for lies, huh?” The host, pained and mortified at this mendacity, left - his seat and waddled over to the disputants, shouting as he went, and - joined the conversation so earnestly that his little eyes seemed bursting - from his beet-red face. - </p> - <p> - “Great old man, that,” said Tom, pounding with his glass for the waiter; - “there’s no flies on <i>him!</i> I named him Bismarck three or four years - ago—everybody calls him that now—and it tickled him so, - there’s nothing here too good for me. You like cheese, don’t you?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, yes, I eat cheese sometimes.” - </p> - <p> - Seth never <i>had</i> eaten this kind of cheese which Owgoost presently - slapped down before them, along with a mustard cup, a long bulging roll of - black bread, and more beer. It was pale and hard and strong of scent, was - cut in thick slabs, and was to be eaten, he judged from Tom’s procedure, - under a heavy top-dressing of the brown mustard. He liked it though, and - was interested to find how well beer went with it, or it went with beer. - Then they had each a little pickled lambs-tongue, pink and toothsome, to - be eaten with plenty of salt, and it was quite remarkable how ideally beer - seemed to go with this, too. In all, three large glasses went. - </p> - <p> - Tom was a delightful companion. It was simply charming to hear him talk, - as he did almost continuously, describing the round of life in Tecumseh, - relating gay little anecdotes of personal experience, and commenting - trenchantly on various men as they came in. To some of these he introduced - Seth. They seemed extremely affable young people, and some of them who - took seats near by invited Tom and him with much fervor and still greater - frequency, to have their glasses filled up. The former accepted these - proffers very freely, but the beer did not taste as good to Seth as it had - during supper, and he kept to his one glass—the fourth—sipping - at it from time to time. Tom was so urgent about it, though, that he did - take a cigar, a dark, able-bodied cigar which annoyed him by burning up on - one side. - </p> - <p> - The beer-hall presented a brilliant appearance now, with all the lights - flaming, with most of the chairs filled by merry young men, with three or - four white-jacketed waiters flitting about, bearing high in air both hands - full of foaming glasses—a fine contrast to the dingy, bare interior - of the twilight, with only the solitary Owgoost. Above the ceaseless hum - of conversation and laughter, rose, at intervals, the strains of lively - music from the far-off piano, reinforced now by a harp and a flute. - </p> - <p> - After a time cards were proposed, and Tom made one of a quartette who - ranged themselves at the table. Seth could not play, and so moved his - chair back, to watch the game. His cigar burned badly and he relighted it. - Then it tasted bitter, and, after some hesitation, he threw it away. The - game, called seven-up, was one he had never seen before; the ten-spots - were invested with a fictitious value which puzzled him. Tom, over whose - shoulder he watched had three of these tens, and silently indicated to - Seth that they were of especial interest. Seth fixed his eyes upon them, - to see how they were to be managed. They were very curious ten-spots, - being made of beer-glasses running over with lambs-tongues, with lambs - chasing them to rescue their lamented members, and burly “Bismarck” - striving in vain to secure order. General Sigel came to help him, and Tom - dealt him a terrific blow. Here <i>was</i> a fight at last, and John - Fairchild stood by, rapidly taking notes. Then it came bed-time, and—Seth - was being shaken into sensibility by Tom, who said between fits of - chuckling: - </p> - <p> - “Wake up, old boy! Wake up!” - </p> - <p> - Another great change had taken place in the beer-hall—the lights - were out, the music had ceased, the crowd was gone. A solitary gas-jet - flickered from the chandelier over the table; the game was ended, and the - players were standing ready to depart, and laughing. Fat Bismarck stood - behind him, in the half-shadow, looking very sleepy, and he seemed to be - grinning too. - </p> - <p> - Seth saw all this first. Then he discovered that he held his collar and - necktie in his hand, and that his coat and waistcoat were on the table. He - dimly began to understand that he had been asleep, and that, in the - operation of his dream, he had commenced undressing. Everybody was - laughing at him, his friend Tom, who now was helping him on with his coat, - most heartily of all. - </p> - <p> - “I declare,” Seth said, “I must have fallen asleep. I had no idea—I - suppose I was dreaming of getting ready for bed.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, dots all right, dots all right,” said Bismarck heartily. “Ve don’d - mind it a bit. You vas only dired owut.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, that’s it,” said Tom, “he’d had a hard day of it, traveling all the - way from Thessaly. Are you ready? We’ll get the bag, and trot along home. - Good night, boys!” - </p> - <p> - Seth responded to the chorus of answering “good nights,” and the twain - started out. Tom not only carried the bag, but took his companion’s arm—much - to Seth’s satisfaction, for he felt very tired, and it seemed unusually - difficult for him to shake off his sleepiness. Tom was more talkative than - ever, and he seemed to be saying extremely clever things, but Seth somehow - did not follow their meaning, and he could think of nothing to say in - reply. They were in a dark side street now. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, I thought he’d be open!” said Tom, abruptly, stopping before a place, - through the closed shutters of which long horizontal threads of light - gleamed. “Let’s go in and have a night-cap. It’ll set you straight in a - minute.” - </p> - <p> - The curious reluctance to speak, of which Seth had felt vaguely conscious - all along, now prompted acquiescence as the easiest course, and he - followed Tom into a small, low room, thick with cigar-smoke and the odor - of kerosene, where four or five men, with their hats tilted over their - eyes, were playing cards: there was a pile of money in the centre of the - table, to which each in turn seemed to be adding from a smaller heap - before him. They were so much engrossed in the game that they only nodded - at Tom, and Seth felt relieved at escaping the ordeal of being introduced - to them. At Tom’s suggestion he took a little glass of brandy—“to do - their duty by the National debt,”—what ever that meant. It was - burning, nauseous stuff, which brought the tears to his eyes, but it made - him feel better. - </p> - <p> - It especially enabled him to talk, which he proceeded to do now with a - fluency that surprised him. Tom was evidently much impressed by his - remarks, saying little, it is true, but gripping his arm more closely. - Thus they walked to Tom’s lodgings—a tall, dark brick house opposite - a long line of coal sheds. The hall was so dark that Seth, in trying to - follow his guide, stumbled over an umbrella-rack, and fell to the floor. - Tom assisted him to rise, with a paternal “steady now, steady; that’s it, - lean on me,” and so helped him up the two flights of steep, narrow stairs. - In all the world, it seemed to Seth, he could not have met a more amiable - or congenial friend than Tom, and he told him so, as they climbed the - stairs, affectionately leaning upon his arm, and making his phrases as - ornate in diction and warm in tone as he could. - </p> - <p> - “Here we are,” said Tom, opening a door, and lighting a lamp which - revealed a small, scantily furnished room, in extreme disorder. “Make - yourself at home, my boy. Smoke a pipe before you go to bed?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, mercy, no. I thinks—do you know, I feel a little dizzy.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you’ll be all right in the morning. Just undress and pile into bed. - I’ll smoke a pipe first.” Half an hour after Seth’s first day in the World - had closed in heavy slumber, Tom looked at him before blowing out the - light, and smiled to himself: “He <i>is</i> about as fresh as they make ’em.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XII.—THE SANCTUM. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he young men - dressed next morning in almost complete silence. Tom was still sleepy, and - seemed much less jovial and attractive than he had been the previous - evening; Seth, accustomed to far earlier rising, was acutely awake, but - his head ached wearily and there was a dreadful dryness in his mouth and - throat. They went through the forms of breakfast in the basement, too, - without much conversation. Seth was ashamed of the number of cups of - coffee he drank, and carried away only confused recollections of having - been introduced to a middle-aged woman in black who sat at the head of the - table, and of having perfunctorily answered sundry questions about - business in Dearborn County, put by a man who sat next to him. - </p> - <p> - They were well on their way to the office before Tom’s silent mood wore - away. - </p> - <p> - “You must brace up!” he said. “Don’t let Workman know that we were out - together last night. He’s a regular crank about beer—that is, when - anybody but himself drinks it. What’s the matter? You look as melancholy - as a man going to be hanged.” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose I’m nervous about the thing. It’s all going to be so new and - strange at the start.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, that’ll be all right. You’ll get the hang of it fast enough. They are - rather decent fellows to work with upstairs, all but Samboye. He’ll try to - sit on you from the start, but if you hold your own with him you’ll get - along with the rest.” - </p> - <p> - “Samboye—he’s the editor, isn’t he?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes. You don’t know any of them, I suppose?” - </p> - <p> - “Not even by name.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, after Workman, who’s very rightly named, and who runs the thing, - there’s Samboye, who koo-toos to Workman and bullies all the rest. He puts - on more airs than a mowing machine agent at a state fair. He makes <i>everybody</i> - tired. Next to him comes Tyler—Tony Tyler, you’ll like him—that - is, if he takes a fancy to you. He knows about eighteen hundred times as - much as Samboye does, only somehow he hasn’t the faculty of putting it on - paper. Too much whisky. Then there’s Dent—he’s a Young Man - Christian; plays duets on the piano with his sister, you know, and all - that sort of thing—but he’s away now on his vacation. And then Billy - Murtagh—he’s a rattling good fellow, if you don’t let him borrow - money of you. He does part of the telegraph and news. Those are the only - fellows upstairs.” - </p> - <p> - “But where do you come in?” - </p> - <p> - “Me? Oh, I’m the City Editor. I and my gang are downstairs. I made a - strike to have you down with me, and put you on police court, but Workman - wouldn’t have it. It’s all poppycock, for they’ve got more men upstairs - now than they know what to do with. However, if Workman thinks the people - want to read editorials on the condition of Macedonia more than they do - local news, he can go ahead. It’s none of my funeral.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you know what special work I am to do?” - </p> - <p> - “From all I hear, it would be easier to tell what you’re not to do. - Everyone of them has got a scheme for unloading something on you. First - you’re to do a lot of Dent’s work, like the proofs and Agricultural and - Religious; then Murtagh wants to put State News on you, and Tyler tells me - you’ve got to do the weekly as soon as you get your hand in, and Art, - Music and the Drama is a thing that must go up stairs, now that the - baseball season has begun, for I can’t attend to it. But if they play it - too low down on you, just you make a stout kick to Workman about it.” - </p> - <p> - While Seth pondered this outlook and advice, they reached the <i>Chronicle</i> - office, and presently, by a succession of dark and devious stair-ways, he - found himself in an ancient cockloft, curiously cut up by low partitions - into compartments like horse-stalls, each with a window at the end, and - was introduced as “the new man” to Mr. Anthony Tyler, otherwise Tony. - </p> - <p> - This gentleman bore no outward signs of the excess of spirituous liquor to - which Tom had alluded, and was very cordial and pleasant. He was extremely - dark in hair, beard and eyes, seemed to be not more than thirty, and sat - at a table piled high with books, clippings and the like, and surrounded - by great heaps of papers. Tom glanced over two or three of these latter, - and then went off humming a tune lightly and calling out to Seth in - imitation of a popular air, as he rattled down stairs “I’ll meet you when - the form goes down.” - </p> - <p> - Among other polite questions Tyler asked Seth where he was stopping. - </p> - <p> - “Nowhere permanently. I must find some place. I stopped last night with - Mr. Votts.” - </p> - <p> - “With whom?” - </p> - <p> - “With Mr. Votts, the gentleman who just left us.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you mean Tom Watts. You’ve got his name wrong.” - </p> - <p> - “Come to think of it, it was a German who called him that last evening, - and I was misled by his pronunciation.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Tyler’s face grew more serious. - </p> - <p> - “You are a stranger here. Let me give you some advice. Don’t cultivate Mr. - Watts’ German friends. He’s not a bad chap of his sort, but he drinks - altogether too much beer. Who drinks beer, thinks beer, as Johnson says. - Perhaps I can be of use to you in the matter of a boarding house. Oh, - here’s Mur-tagh,” he continued introducing Seth to another tall, slender - young man who had come up the stairs with an arm-full of papers; “he will - take you now, and give you an idea of your work.” Whereupon Mr. Tyler - turned again to his papers and shears, and Seth followed the new comer to - the farthest stall in the row, which was henceforth to be his own. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - There came a brief quarter of an hour in the afternoon when what seemed to - the novice a state of the wildest excitement reigned in the editorial - room. An inky boy in a huge leather apron dashed from stall to stall - shouting an interrogative “Thirty for you?” His master and patron, the - foreman, also aproned from chin to knees, with shirt-sleeves rolled to the - biceps, followed with the same mysterious question, put in an injured and - indignant tone. A loud, sharp discussion between this magnate and Tyler, - profanely dictatorial on the one side, profanely satirical on the other, - rose suddenly and filled the room with its clamor. An elderly man, bald as - a billiard ball, and dressed like a clergyman, came bounding up the - stairs, pulling out his watch as he advanced, and demanding fiercely the - reason for this delay. There was an outburst of explanation, in which four - or five voices joined, mingling personal abuse freely with their analysis - of the situation. Tom Watts leaped up the stairs four steps at a time and - hurled himself into the controversy. Seth could distinguish in this babel - of exclamations such phrases as— - </p> - <p> - “You better get some india-rubber chases!” - </p> - <p> - “If that fire’s cut down, you might as well not go to press at all!” - </p> - <p> - “If somebody would get down here in the morning, we could get our matter - up in time.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m sick and tired of getting out telegraph for these chuckle-headed - printers to throw on the floor!” “That Mayhew matter’s been standing on - the galleys so long already that it’s got grey-headed!” - </p> - <p> - “By the Lord Harry, I’ll make a rule that the next time we miss the - Wyoming mail it shall be taken out of your wages!” - </p> - <p> - Here the inky boy galloped through to Seth with a proof-sheet, shouting, - “You’ve got a minute and a half to read this in!” The bald, elderly - gentleman, who seemed to be Mr. Workman, came and stood over Seth, watch - in hand, scowling impatiently. Under this embarrassment the wet letters - danced before his eyes, and he could find no errors, though it turned out - later that he had passed “elephant” for “elopement” and ruined Watts’ - chief sensation. A few minutes later, the clang of the presses in the - basement shook the old building, and the inky boy bustled through the room - again, pitching a paper into each of the stalls. There was a moment of - silence, broken only by the soft rustling of the damp sheets. Then - simultaneously from the several tables rose a chorus of violent - objurgation. - </p> - <p> - Seth heard the voice which he had learned was Samboye’s roar out, “What - dash-dashed idiot has made me say ‘our martyr President Abraham Sinclair? - ’ Stop the press!” There were other voices: “Here’s two lines of - markets upside down!” “Oh, I say, this is <i>too</i> bad. <i>Moyen age</i> - is ‘mayonaise ’ in my Shylock notice, and it’s Mrs. McCullough - instead of Mr. ————.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m dashed if the paper looks as if it had been read at all. We can’t - have such proof-reading as this!” - </p> - <p> - While these comments were still proceeding the noise of the press suddenly - ceased. The silence was terrible to Seth’s guilty consciousness, for he - had heard enough to know that it was his fault. Mr. Workman entered the - room again, and again Sam-boye’s deep voice was heard, repeating the awful - Sinclair-Lincoln error. Seth had looked at his fresh copy of the <i>Chronicle</i>, - with some vague hope that the Editor was mistaken, but alas! it was too - true. Mr. Workman came over to his stall; he had put his watch back in his - pocket, but his countenance was stern and unbending. - </p> - <p> - “You are Mr. Fairchild, I presume,” he said. - </p> - <p> - Seth rose to his feet, blushing, and murmured, “Yes, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “I understood from your brother that you were used to newspaper work.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I thought I was. I have been around the <i>Banner of Liberty</i> - office a great deal, but it seems so different on a daily.” - </p> - <p> - “H’m,—yes. Well, I dare say you’ll learn.” - </p> - <p> - Luckily the press started up again here, and Mr. Workman, looking at his - watch once more, went down stairs. - </p> - <p> - Seth felt most grievously depressed. Looking back, his first day had been - full of mortification and failure. The use of scissors and mucilage brush - was painfully unfamiliar to his clumsy fingers. The scope and intention of - the various news departments he had been told to take charge of were - unknown to him, and he had watched Murtagh go over the matter he - submitted, striking out page after page, saying curtly, “We’ve had this,” - “This is only worth a line or two,” or “this belongs in county notes,” - with a sinking heart. His duties were so mechanical and commonplace, after - what he had conceived an editor’s functions to be, that his ineptitude was - doubly humiliating. - </p> - <p> - Then there was this dreadful proof-reading failure. Murtagh had given him - the sample proof-sheet in the back of the dictionary to copy his marks - from—and he had copied them with such scrupulous efforts after - exactness that the printers couldn’t understand them. These printers—he - could see them through the windows opposite, standing pensively over their - tall cases, and moving their right arms between the frames and their - sticks with the monotonous regularity of an engine’s piston-rod—seemed - a very sarcastic and disagreeable body of men, to judge by the messages of - criticism on his system of marking which the inky boy had delivered for - them with such fidelity and enjoyment during the day. He had eaten nothing - since the early breakfast, and felt faint and tired. The rain outside, - beating dismally on the window and the tin roof beyond, added to his - gloom, and the ceaseless drumming of the presses below increased his - headache. - </p> - <p> - The other men seemed to have nothing to do now save to talk, but he turned - wearily to the great mound of exchanges from which Murtagh had directed - him to extract “Society Jottings” and “Art, Music and the Drama” after the - paper went to press. - </p> - <p> - He spent a few despairing minutes on the threshold of the task—enough - to see clearly that it was beyond his strength. Society was Syriac to him, - and he had never seen a play acted, beyond an occasional presentation of - “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or “The Octoroon” by strolling tenth-rate mummers in - the tiny hall at Thessaly. How could he select matter for such - departments? He wavered for a time, from a disinclination to confront men - who had just condemned his work so unsparingly, but at last he got up from - the table where he had been pinned all day, and went over to the further - end of the room. - </p> - <p> - There was a sort of conclave about Tyler’s table. Both he and Samboye - reclined in tipped-back chairs, with their feet upon it; Watts sat on the - table swinging his legs, his straw hat still on the back of his head, and - Murtagh was perched in the window seat. Their conversation, which had been - flowing freely, stopped as Seth approached. He had expected to be - introduced to his Editor, Mr. Samboye, but no one seemed to think of it, - and that gentleman himself relieved him of the embarrassment by nodding - not uncourteously but with formality. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Fairchild,” he said, with impressive slowness, “in the pursuit of a - high career you will be powerfully aided by keeping in recollection the - fact that the sixteenth President of the United States was named Lincoln - and not Sinclair. We have a prejudice too, weak as it may seem, in favor - of spelling ‘interval’ with a ‘v’ rather than an ‘n’.” - </p> - <p> - Seth did not find it so difficult to address this great man as he had - anticipated. He said simply that he was very sorry, but the work was - utterly new to him, it was his first day, he hoped to learn soon, etc. - Emboldened by the sound of his own voice, he added his doubts about being - able to satisfactorily preside over such exacting columns as “Society - Jottings” and “Art, Music and the Drama”—and gave reasons. - </p> - <p> - “By George!” cried Watts, “I envy you! Just fancy a man who has never seen - anything but ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’—and not even that with real - Siberian bloodhounds. You shall begin going tonight. I’ll take you to - ‘Muldoon’s Picnic.’” - </p> - <p> - “Well, at any rate,” remarked Mr. Tyler, “you can do ‘Agricultural.’ You - must know that right down to the ground.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” assented Seth, “I think I ought to manage that. The truth is, most - of the stuff the papers print for farmers is nonsense—pure rubbish.” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose it is. I know that Dent—he is a New York city boy, who - doesn’t know clover from cabbage—once put in a paragraph about the - importance of feeding chickens on rock salt, and an old farmer from Boltus - came in early one morning and whaled the bookkeeper out of his boots - because he had followed the advice and killed all his hens. There must be - some funny man out West somewhere who makes up these bad agricultural - paragraphs, and of course they get copied. How can fellows like Dent, for - instance, tell which are good and which are not? But they can’t fool you, - and that’ll be an advantage. Then there’s Religious. You can do that - easily enough. I should think.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” interposed Murtagh, “all you have to do is to lay for the Obago <i>Evening - Mercury</i>. Every Saturday that has a column of religious. Alec Watson, a - fellow in that office, has fifty-two of these columns, extracts from - Thomas à Kempis, and Wesley and Spurgeon and that sort of thing, which - have been running in the <i>Mercury</i> since before the war. When New - Year’s comes he starts ’em going again, round and round. Nobody - knows the difference. Well, their columns are longer than ours, so each - week you can run about half their paragraphs—the shortest ones—and - then fill in with some news notes, statistics, you know, about how many - churches the Moravians have now, and that sort of thing. You can pick - those up during the week, anywhere.” - </p> - <p> - “Then there ought to be some originality about it too,” said Tom Watts. - “It is just as well to sling in some items of your own, I think, such as - ‘There is a growing desire among the Baptists to have Bishops, like other - people,’ or, ‘It is understood that at the coming Consistory the Pope will - create seven new American Cardinals.’ That last is a particularly good - point. Every once in a while, predict more Cardinals. It doesn’t hurt - anybody, and it makes you solid when the thing does happen. There’s - nothing like original news to show the influence of journalism. One - morning, after the cakes had been bad for a week, heavy, sour or something - else, I said to my landlady that I believed the fault must be in the - buckwheat. She said no, she didn’t think so, for the flour looked very - nice indeed. I put a line in ‘Local Glimpses’ that day, saying that - unfortunately the buckwheat this year was of inferior quality, and the - very next morning she apologised to me: said I was right; the buckwheat <i>was</i> - bad; she had read so in the <i>Chronicle</i>. Can you imagine a nobler - illustration of the power of the press?” - </p> - <p> - Seth looked attentively at the speaker, to see if he was joking, but there - was no more evidence of mirth in his thin face than in the serious tone of - his voice. None of the others laughed. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Samboye said some of the most remarkable things, at once humorous and - highly original, and put in an elaborate frame of big unusual words. He - was a huge man in frame, with an enormous head, bushy eyebrows, heavy - whiskers, a ponderous manner, a tremendous voice—in fact seemed to - Seth precisely the kind of man from whom delicate wit, and soft shading of - phrases were not to be expected. He happened for the nonce to be in a - complaisant mood, and was relaxing himself in the company of “his young - men,” as he liked to call his colleagues. But ordinarily he was - overbearing and arbitrary, and this had rankled so deeply in their minds - that they listened with apathy, unresponsive, to his choicest sallies, and - Watts even combated him, with scant courtesy it seemed to Seth. - </p> - <p> - To him this monologue of the Editor’s was a revelation. He had never heard - such brilliant talk, such a wonderful mastery of words, such delicious - humor. He drank it all in eagerly, and laughed aloud at its broader points—the - more heartily, perhaps, because no one else smiled. This display of - appreciation bore fruit after its kind. Before Mr. Samboye went he spoke - some decidedly gracious words to Seth, saying among other things: - </p> - <p> - “However harshly we may be tempted by momentary stress of emotion to - speak, always remember that we unitedly feel your fresh bucolic interest - in things, your virginal capacity for admiration, and your pristine flush - of enthusiasm for your work to be distinct acquisitions to the paper,” - which Seth felt to be somewhat nonsensical, but still was grateful for. - </p> - <p> - After Mr. Samboye had gone, Tom Watts took occasion to warn him in an - aside: - </p> - <p> - “Be careful how you appear to curry favor with Samboye before the other - fellows. Oh, I know you didn’t think of it—but don’t laugh at his - jokes. They’ll think you’re trying to climb over them, and they’ll be - unpleasant to you, perhaps.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIII.—THIRTEEN MONTHS OF IT. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">G</span>ROWING familiarity - with his work did not restore to Seth the lofty conceptions of - journalism’s duties and delights which he had nourished on the hill-side - farm, and which had been so ingloriously dimmed and defaced by his first - day’s experience. - </p> - <p> - The tasks set before him, to which he gradually became accustomed, seemed - almost as unintellectual and mechanical as the ploughing and planting he - had forsaken. The rule of condensation, compression, continually dinned - into his ears by his mentors, robbed his labors of all possible charm. To - “boil down” columns of narrative into a few lines of bald, cold statement; - to chronicle day after day in the curtest form, fires, failures, crimes, - disasters, deaths, in a wearying chain of uninteresting news notes; to - throw remorselessly into the journalistic crucible all the work of - imagination, of genius, of deep fine thought which came into his hands, - together with the wordy dross spun out by the swarm of superficial - scribblers, and extract from good and bad alike only the meaningless, - miserable fact—this was a task against which, in the first weeks of - experience, his whole soul revolted. - </p> - <p> - By the time he had become reconciled to it, and had mastered its tricks, - his dream of journalism as the most exalted of all departments of activity - seemed to him like some far-away fantasy of childhood. - </p> - <p> - He not only had failed to draw inspiration from his work; it was already - ceasing to interest him. Under pleasanter conditions, he felt that he - would have at least liked the proof-reading portion of the daily routine; - but the printers were so truculent and hostile, and seemed so - pre-determined to treat him as their natural enemy, that this was irksome, - too. There was no relief to the distasteful monotony in other branches of - his work. Even the agricultural column, which he had promised himself to - so vastly improve, yielded no satisfaction. The floating, valueless stuff - from which his predecessors had selected their store came so easily and - naturally to the scissors that after a week or two he abandoned the idea - of preparing original matter: it saved time and labor, and nobody seemed - to know the difference. These words, in fact, came to describe his mental - attitude toward all his work. He had no pride in it. If he escaped curses - for badly-read proofs, and criticism for missing obvious matters of news, - it was enough. - </p> - <p> - Seth did not arrive at this condition of mind without much inner protest, - or without sundry efforts to break through the crust of perfunctory - drudgery which was encasing him. At the start he bestowed considerable - thought and work upon an effort to brighten and improve, by careful - re-working of materials, one of the departments entrusted to him, and, - just when he expected praise, Tyler told him to stop it. Then he tried to - make his religious column a feature by discarding most of the ancient - matter which revolved so drolly in the Obago <i>Evening Mercury</i>, and - picking out eloquent bits from the sermons of great contemporary - preachers; but this elicited denominational protest from certain pious - subscribers, and Mr. Workman commanded a return to the old rut. - </p> - <p> - But <i>the</i> cruel humiliation came when Seth took to Mr. Samboye an - editorial paragraph he had written with great care. It was a political - paragraph, and Seth felt confident that it was exactly in the <i>Chronicle’s</i> - line, and good writing as well. The Editor took it, after regarding the - young writer with a stony, half-surprised stare, and read it over slowly. - He delivered judgment upon it, in his habitual pomposity of phrases: “This - is markedly comprehensive in scope and clarified in expression, Mr. - Fairchild.” Then, as Seth’s heart was warming with a sense of commendation - and success, the Editor calmly tore the manuscript in strips, dropped them - in his waste-basket, and turned reflectively to his newspaper. - </p> - <p> - Seth’s breath nearly left him: “Then you can’t use it;” he faltered. “I - thought it might do for an editorial paragraph.” - </p> - <p> - There was the faintest suggestion of a patronising smile on Mr. Samboye’s - broad, ruddy face. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am reminded, Mr. Fairchild,” he answered, with bland irrelevance; - “pray do not allow Porte to pass again with a small p, as you did - yesterday in the proof of my Turkish article. It should be capitalized - invariably.” - </p> - <p> - The beginner went back to his stall both humiliated and angry. The cool - insolence with which he had been reminded that he was a proof-reader, and - warned away from thoughts of the editorial page, enraged and depressed - him. He passed a bitter hour at his table, looking savagely through the - window at the automatic motions of the printer directly opposite, but - thinking evil thoughts of Samboye, and cursing the fate which had led him - into newspaper work. So uncomfortable did he make himself by these - reflections that it required a real effort to throw off their effects when - Watts came upstairs, and the two left the office for the day. It was - impossible not to relate his grievance. - </p> - <p> - Tom did not see its tragic side, and refused utterly to concede that Seth - ought to be cast down by it. - </p> - <p> - “That’s only Samboye’s way,” he said, lightly. “He won’t let any of the - fellows get on to the page, simply because he’s afraid they’ll outwrite - him. He’d rather do it all himself—and he does grind out an immense - load of stuff—than encourage any rivals. Besides, he never loses a - chance to snub youngsters. Don’t let it worry you for a minute. If he sees - that it does, he’ll only pile it on the thicker. In this business you’ve - got to have a hide on you like the behemoth of Holy Writ, or you’ll keep - raw all the while.” - </p> - <p> - Seth found some consolation in this view, and more still in Tom’s cheery - tone. The two young men spent the evening together—at Bismarck’s. - </p> - <p> - This came gradually but naturally to be Seth’s habitual evening resort. It - represented to him, indeed, all that was friendly and inviting in Tecumseh - society. He was able to recall dimly some of the notions of coming social - distinction he indulged in the farm days—dreams of a handsome young - editor who was in great request in the most refined and luxurious home - circles, who said the most charming things to beautiful young ladies at - parties and balls, who wavered in his mind between wedding his employer’s - daughter and taking a share in the paper, or choosing some lowlier but - more intellectual maid to wife, and leading with her a halcyon and - exaltedly literary career in a cottage—but they were as unreal, as - indistinct now as the dreams of night before last. All the social bars - seemed drawn against him as a matter of course. - </p> - <p> - This did not impress him as a hardship, because he was only vaguely - conscious of it, at first, and then grew into the habit of regarding it as - a thing to be grateful for. Tom Watts pointed out to him frequently the - advantage of being a Bohemian, of being free from all the fearsome, - undefined routine and responsibility of making calls, of dressing up in - the evening, and of dangling supine attendance upon girls and their - mammas. This “social racket,” the city editor said, might please some - people; Dent, for instance, seemed to like it. But for his part it seemed - quite the weakest thing a young man could go in for—entirely - incompatible with the robust and masculine character demanded in a - successful journalist. - </p> - <p> - This presented itself to Seth as an extremely sound position, and he made - it his own so willingly that very soon he began to take credit to himself - in his own eyes for having turned a deaf ear to the social siren, and - having deliberately rejected the advances of fashionable Tecumseh. He - grew, really, to believe that it was by preference, by a wise resolution - to preserve his freedom and individuality, that he remained outside the - mysterious, impalpable regions which were labelled in his mind as - “Society.” - </p> - <p> - On the other hand, there was no nonsense at Bismarck’s, or at the other - similar beer halls to which Tom introduced him. One dressed as one chose, - and did as one liked; seven-up or penochle provided just the mental - recreation a wearied literary brain demanded; and the fellows one met - there were cheerful, companionable young men, who likewise had no nonsense - about them, who put on no airs of superiority, and who glided swiftly and - jovially through the grades of acquaintanceship to intimacy. - </p> - <p> - Seth was greatly strengthened in his liking for this refuge from - loneliness in a strange city by what he saw of Arthur Dent, whom Watts had - prepared him to regard as the embodiment of the other and strait-laced - side. - </p> - <p> - This young man was not at all uncivil, but he was delicate, almost - effeminate in frame, wore eye-glasses, dressed with fastidious neatness, - never made any jokes or laughed heartily at those of others, and rarely - joined the daily lounge and smoke around Tyler’s table after the paper had - gone to press—and in all these things he grated upon Seth’s - sensitiveness. He was the one member of the staff whom Mr. Workman seemed - to like and whom Mr. Samboye never humiliated publicly by his ponderous - ridicule, and these were added grievances. He worked very steadily and - carefully, and was said to do a good deal of heavy reading at home, - evenings, in addition to the slavish routine of high social duties in - which Seth indefinitely understood him to be immersed. His chief tasks - were the book reviews, the editing of correspondence, and the preparation - of minor editorial paragraphs in a smaller type than Mr. Samboye’s. Seth - thought that his style, though correct and neat, was thin and emasculated, - and he came to associate this with his estimate of the writer, and account - for it by his habits and associations—which the further confirmed - him in his judgment as to the right way to live. - </p> - <p> - But there was something more than this. The first few days after his - return from his vacation, Dent had tried to be courteous and helpful to - the newcomer from the country, in his shy, undemonstrative way, and Seth, - despite his preconceived prejudice, had gone a little way on the road to - friendship. Then one night, as he and Watts were returning arm-in-arm to - their joint lodgings from Bismarck’s, a trifle unsteadily perhaps, they - had encountered Dent walking with a young lady, and Tom had pleasantly - accosted them—at least it seemed pleasantly to Seth—but Dent - had not taken it in the right spirit at the time, and had been decidedly - cool to Seth ever since. This was so unreasonable that the country boy - resented it deeply, and the two barely spoke to each other. - </p> - <p> - His relations with the others were less strained, but scarcely more - valuable in the way of companionship. Mr. Tyler did not seem to care much - for his company, and never asked him to go to the “Roast Beef”—a - sort of combination of club and saloon where he spent most of his - evenings, where poker was the chief amusement and whisky the principal - drink. From all Seth could learn, it was as well for him that he was not - invited there. As for Murtagh, all his associations outside the office - seemed to be with young men of his own race, who formed a coterie by - themselves, and frequented distinctively Irish resorts. Like most other - American cities Tecumseh had its large Irish and German elements, and in - nothing were ethnographic lines drawn so clearly as in the matter of - amusements. There were enough young Americans holding aloof from both - these foreign circles to constitute a small constituency for the “Roast - Beef,” but a far greater number had developed a liking for the German - places of resort, and drank beer and ate cheese and rye bread as if to the - manner born. Seth found himself in this class on his first step over the - threshold of city life; he enjoyed it, and he saw very little of the - others. - </p> - <p> - The two most important men on the <i>Chronicle</i>, Mr. Workman and Mr. - Samboye, were far removed from the plane upon which all these Bohemian - divisions were traced. They belonged to the Club—the Tuscarora Club. - Seth knew where the club house was—but he felt that this was all he - was ever likely to know about it. The first few days in Tecumseh had - taught him the hopelessness of his dream of associating with his employer. - Socially they were leagues apart at the outset, and if the distance did - not increase as weeks grew into months, at least Seth’s perception of it - did, which amounted to the same thing. - </p> - <p> - He did not so readily abandon the idea of being made a companion by - Samboye, but at last that vanished too. The Editor held himself very high, - and if he occasionally came down off his mountain top, his return to those - heights only served to emphasize their altitude. There were conflicting - stories about his salary. Among the lesser lights of the editorial room it - was commonly estimated at forty-five dollars a week, but some of the - printers had information that it was at least fifty—which fatigued - the imagination. Seth himself received nine dollars, which his brother - supplemented by five, and he found that he was regarded as doing - remarkably well for a beginner. But between this condition and the state - of Samboye with his great income, his fine house on one of the best - streets, his influential position in the city, and his luxurious - amusements at the Club, an impassable gulf yawned. - </p> - <p> - There is no pleasure in following further the details of the country boy’s - new life. He lost sight of his disappointment in the consolations of a - phase of city existence which does not show to advantage in polite-pages. - He did not become vicious or depraved. - </p> - <p> - The relentless treadmill of a daily paper forbade his becoming indolent. - By sheer force of contact his mind expanded, too, more than even he - suspected. But it was a formless, unprofitable expansion, which did not - help him to get out of the rut. He performed his work acceptably—at - least he rarely heard any criticisms upon it—lived a trifle ahead of - his small income, and ceased to even speculate on the chance of promotion. - </p> - <p> - When, thirteen months after his advent in Tecumseh, the news came to him - from the farm that his father was dying, he obtained leave to go home. Mr. - Workman remarked to Mr. Samboye that afternoon: - </p> - <p> - “I shan’t mind much if Fairchild doesn’t come back.” - </p> - <p> - “Is that so? He seems to get through his work decently and inoffensively - enough. He will never set the North River ablaze, of course, but he is - civil and all that.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, but I can’t see that there’s anything in him. Beside, I don’t like - his influence on Watts. I’m told you can find them together at Bismarck’s - every night in the week.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course, that makes it bad,” said Mr. Samboye. - </p> - <p> - Then the proprietor and the editor locked up their desks, went over to the - Club, and played pyramid pool till midnight. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIV.—BACK ON THE FARM. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he farm seemed - very little like home to Seth, now that he was back once more upon it. He - could neither fit himself familiarly into such of the old ways as remained - nor altogether appetize the changes which he felt rather than discerned - about him. - </p> - <p> - Of all these alterations his father’s disappearance was among the least - important. Everybody had grown out of the habit of considering Lemuel as a - factor in any question. Nobody missed him now that he was gone, or felt - that it was specially incumbent to pretend to do so—nobody save Aunt - Sabrina. Those who cared to look closely could see that the old maid was - shaken by her weak brother’s death, and that, though she said little or - nothing about it, an augmented sense of loneliness preyed upon her mind. - For the rest, the event imposed a day or two of solemnity, some - alterations of dress and demeanor, a sombre journey with a few neighbors - to the little burial plot beyond the orchard—and then things resumed - their wonted aspect. - </p> - <p> - To the young journalist this aspect was strange and curious. The farm had - put on a new guise to his eyes. It was as if some mighty hand and brush - had painted it all over with bright colors. It was not only that the house - had been restored and refurnished, that new spacious buildings replaced - the ancient barns, that the fences had been rebuilt, the farm yard cleaned - up and sodded, the old well-curb and reach removed—the very grass - seemed greener, the bending of the boughs more graceful, the charm of sky - and foliage and verdure far more apparent. The cattle were plumper and - cleaner; there were carriage horses now, with bright harness and sweeping - tails, and a costly black mare for the saddle, fleet as the wind: the food - on the table was more uniformly toothsome, and there were now the broad - silver-plated forks to which Seth had somewhat laboriously become - accustomed in his Tecumseh boardinghouse. He admired all these changes, in - a way, but somehow he could not feel at home among them. They were - attractive, but they were alien to the memories which, in his crowded, - bricked-up city solitude, had grown dear to him. - </p> - <p> - There were droll changes among the hired people. For one thing, they no - longer all ate at the table with the family. An exception was made in - favor of Milton Squires, who had burst through the overalls chrysalis of - hired-manhood, and had become a sort of superintendent. He had not learned - to eat with a fork, and he still talked loudly and with boisterous - familiarity at the table, reaching for whatever he wanted, and calling the - proprietor “Albert,” and his aunt “Sabriny.” He did not bear his social - and industrial promotion meekly. He bullied the inferior hired men—Leander - had a colleague now, a rough, tow-headed, burly young fellow named Dana - Pills-bury—and snubbed loftily the menials of the kitchen. This - former haunt scarcely knew him more, and his rare conversations with - Alvira were all distinctly framed in condescension. This was only to be - expected, for Milton wore a black suit of store-clothes every day, with a - gold-plated watch chain and a necktie, and met the farmers round about on - terms of practical equality. He was reputed to be a careful and capable - manager; his wrath was feared at the cheese-factory; his judgment was - respected at the corners’ store. Naturally, such a man would feel himself - above kitchen associations. - </p> - <p> - Of course this defection evoked deep wrath in Alvira’s part of the house, - some overflowings of which came to Seth’s notice before he had been a day - at the farm. Alvira was not specially changed to the young man’s eyes—indeed - her sallow, bilious visage, dark snapping eyes and furrowed forehead - seemed the most familiar things about the homestead, and her acidulous - tones struck a truer note in his chords of memory than did any other - sound. - </p> - <p> - Aunt Sabrina, wrapped as of old in her red plaid shoulder shawl, but - seemingly less erect and aggressive, spent most of her time in the - kitchen, ostentatiously pretending to pay her board by culinary labor. - Behind her back Alvira was wont to say to her assistant, a slatternly - young slip from the ever-spreading Lawton family tree, that the old lady - only hindered the work, and that her room would be better than her - company. But when Aunt Sabrina was present, Alvira was customarily civil, - sometimes quite friendly. The two were drawn together by community of - grievance. - </p> - <p> - They both hated Isabel, with her citified notions, her forks and napkins, - and stuck-up airs generally. It had pleased Aunt Sabrina’s mood to regard - herself as included in the edict which ordained that servants should eat - in the kitchen, and only the sharpest words she had ever heard Albert - speak had prevented her acting upon this. She had come to the family - table, then, but always with an air of protest; and she had a grim - pleasure in leaving her napkin unfolded, month after month, and in keeping - everybody waiting while she paraded her inability to eat rapidly or - satisfactorily with the new fangled “split spoon.” - </p> - <p> - She and Alvira had a never-failing topic of hostile talk in the new - mistress. To judge by their threats, their jibes and their angry - complaints, they were always on the point of leaving the house on her - account. So imminent did an outbreak seem to Seth, when he first heard - their joint budget of woes and bitter resolves, that he was frightened, - but the Lawton girl reassured him. They had talked just like that, she - said, every day since she had been there, which would be “a year come - August,” and she added scornfully: “They go away? You couldn’t chase ’em - away with a clothes-pole!” - </p> - <p> - The two elderly females had another bond of sympathy, of course, in - Milton’s affectation of superiority. - </p> - <p> - They debated this continually, though as Sabrina had the most to say about - her niece-in-law, with Alvira as a sympathetic commentator, so the hateful - apotheosis of the whilom hired-man was recognized to be Alvira’s special - and personal grievance, in girding at which Sabrina bore only a helping - part. - </p> - <p> - Seth accounted for this by calling up in recollection an old vague - understanding of his youth that Milton was some time going to marry - Alvira. He could remember having heard this union spoken of as taken for - granted in the family. Doubtless Alvira’s present attitude of ugly - criticism was due to the fear that Milton’s improved prospects would lead - him elsewhere. The Lawton girl indeed hinted rather broadly to him that - there were substantial grounds for Alvira’s rage. “I’d tear his eyes out - if I was her, and he wouldn’t come up to the scratch,” she said, “after - all that’s happened.” Seth understood her suggestion, but he didn’t - believe it. The Lawtons were a low-down race, anyway. He had seen one of - the girls at Tecumseh once, a girl who had gone utterly to the bad, and - this sister of hers seemed a bold, rude huzzy, with a mind prone to mean - suspicions. - </p> - <p> - It was a relief to go back again to the living-room, where Isabel was, and - he both verbally and mentally justified her gentle hint that the kitchen - was not a good place for young men to spend their time. - </p> - <p> - “You have no idea,” she said, letting her embroidery fall in her lap for - the moment, “how ruinous to discipline and to household management - generally this country plan of making companions of your servants is. I - had to put a complete stop to it, very soon after I came. There would be - no living with them otherwise. There’s not much comfort in living with - them as it is, for your Aunt sits out in the kitchen all day long, - pretending that she is abused and encouraging them to think that they are - ill-used too. She makes it very hard for me—harping all the time on - my being a Richardson, just as she did with your mother. - </p> - <p> - “Then there’s Milton. I did not want to make any difference between him - and the other hired people, but your brother insisted on it—on - having him at the table with us, and treating him like an equal. He is as - coarse and rough and horrid as he can be, but it seems that he is very - necessary on the farm, and your brother leaves so much to him and relies - so much on him that I couldn’t help myself. He hasn’t got to calling me - ‘Isabel’ yet, but I expect him to begin every day of my life. You can’t - imagine what an infliction it is to see him eat—or rather, to hear - him, for I try not to look.” - </p> - <p> - Isabel took up her work again, and Seth looked at her more closely than he - had done before. She sat at the window, with the full summer light on her - bright hair and fair, pretty face. Her tone had been melancholy, almost - mournful; looking at her, Seth felt that she was not happy, and more—for - he had never supposed her to be particularly happy—that she was - bitterly disappointed with the result of the farm experiment. She had not - said so, however, and he was in doubt whether it would be wise for him to - assume it in his conversation. - </p> - <p> - “Albert seems to thrive on country fare,” he said, perhaps unconsciously - suggesting in his remark what was turning in his mind—that she - herself seemed not have thrived. The rounded outlines of her chin and - throat were not so perfect as he remembered them. She looked thin and - tired now, in the strong light, and there was no color to speak of in her - face. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes!” she said, with that falling inflection which is sister to the - sigh, and keeping her eyes bent upon her work, “<i>he</i> grows fat. I did - not imagine that a man who had always been so active, who was so - accustomed to regular office work and intellectual professional pursuits, - could fall into idle ways so easily. But it is always a bore to him now - when he has to go down to New York at term time. Once or twice he has had - a coolness with his partners because he failed to go at all. I shouldn’t - be surprised if he gave New York up altogether. He talks often of it—of - practising at Tecumseh instead. Oh, and that reminds me. You can tell. - What relation does Tecumseh bear to this place? I know they have some - connection in his mind, because he spoke once of the ‘pull’—whatever - that may mean—being a Tecumseh lawyer would give him here. I know - they are not in the same county, for I looked on the map. Whatever it is, - that would be his purpose in going there, I am curious to learn. You - know,” she added, with a smile and tone pathetic in their sarcasm, “a wife - ought to be interested in whatever concerns her husband.” - </p> - <p> - “They are in the same Congressional district,” Seth replied. “There are - three counties in the district, Dearborn (where we are now), Jay, which - lies east of us, and then Adams, which is a long, narrow county, and runs - off South of Dearborn. Tecumseh is away at the extreme southern end of - Adams county. Perhaps that is what you have in mind.” - </p> - <p> - “It is what <i>he</i> has in mind,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “But how does Albert fill his time here—what does he do?” - </p> - <p> - “In about equal parts,” she made answer, lifting her eyes again, with the - light of a little smile in them now, “he reads novels here in the house, - and drives about the neighborhood. What time he is not in the easy-chair - upstairs, devouring fiction, he is in his buggy on the road. He won’t let - me have anybody up from New York, even of the few I know, but he has - developed a wonderful taste for striking up acquaintances here. He must by - this time know every farmer for twenty miles around. First of all, in - buying his stock when he took the farm, he spread his purchases around in - the queerest way—getting a cow from this man, a colt from another, a - pig here and a bull there. Milton and he went together, and they must have - driven two hundred miles, I should think, collecting the various animals. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t understand it at first, but I begin to now. He wanted to - establish relations with as many men here as he could. And the farmers he - invites here to dinner—you should see them! Sometimes I think I - shall have to leave the table. It’s all I can do, often, to be decently - civil to them, rough, vulgar men, unwashed and untidy, whom he waylays out - on the road and brings in. He thinks I ought to exert myself to make them - feel at home, and chat with them about their wives and children, and ugh! - call on them and form friendships with them. But I draw the line there. If - he enjoys bringing them here, why I can’t help it; and if he likes to - drive about, and be hail-fellow-well-met with them, that is his own - affair. But——” - </p> - <p> - She stopped, and Seth felt that the silence was eloquent. He began to - realize that his pretty sister-in-law was in need of sympathy, and to rank - himself, with indignant fervor, on her side. - </p> - <p> - Annie Fairchild came in. Seth had seen and spoken with her several times, - during the period of his father’s death and funeral, but hurriedly and in - the presence of others. Her appearance now recalled instantly the day of - the fishing trip—a soft and pleasant memory, which during his year’s - exile had at times been truly delicious to him. - </p> - <p> - The women thought of it too, now, and talked of it, at Seth rather than to - him, and with a playful spirit of badinage. As of old, Isabel did most of - the talking. Annie had become quite a woman, Seth said to himself, as she - took off her hat, tidied her hair before the glass, and laughingly joined - in the conversation. She talked very well, too, but she seemed always to - think over her words, and there appeared to be in her manner toward him a - certain something, intangible, indefinite, which suggested constraint. He - could feel, though he could not explain, it. - </p> - <p> - During his stay in Tecumseh he had seen almost nothing of the other sex. - There were often some young women at the boarding-house, but he had not - got beyond a speaking acquaintance at the table with any of them, in the - few instances where his shyness had permitted even that. His year in a - city had improved him in many ways. He could wear good clothes now without - awkwardness; he spoke readily among men, and with excellent choice of - language; he knew how to joke without leading the laughter himself. But he - had had no chance to overcome by usage his diffidence in female company, - and he had not been quite at ease in his mind since Annie came in. She - seemed to make a stranger of him. - </p> - <p> - He thought upon this, and felt piqued at it. He wondered, too if he was - not sitting clumsily in his chair—if it was not impolite in him to - cross his legs. Gradually, however, he grew out of his reserve. It dawned - upon him that Annie was timorous, nervous, about the impression she was - making on him, and that Isabel listened with real respect and deference to - what he had to say. He grew bold, and took the lead of the conversation, - and the two women followed meekly. It was a delightful sensation. He said - to himself: “It is the easiest thing in the world, once you make the - plunge. I could talk with women now in the finest drawing room in the - land.” He sat back in his chair, and told them some anecdotes about Mr. - Samboye, from which somehow they gathered the notion that he was at the - best coordinate in rank with Seth. They were more than ever proud of their - relative, who had so rapidly conquered a high and commanding position for - himself in that mystic, awesome sphere of journalism. Seth expanded and - basked in this admiration. - </p> - <p> - He had heretofore found the evenings on the farm stupidly tedious. To sit - at the big table till bed time, reading by the light of a single kerosene - lamp, or exchanging dry monosyllables with Albert, offered a dismal - contrast to the cheerful street lamps, the bright store-windows, the noise - and gaiety and life of the places of evening resort in Tecumseh. But this - evening revealed a far more attractive side of country life than he had - known before. Annie stayed after tea, and the three played dominoes. - Albert seemed somewhat out of sorts, but they did not mind his silence in - the least. They chatted gaily over their games, and time flew so merrily - and swiftly, that Seth was surprised when Annie said she must leave, and - he discovered that it was a quarter to ten. - </p> - <p> - “How pleasantly the evening has passed,” Isabel said, and smiled at him, - and Annie answered, “Hasn’t it! I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so - much—” and she, too, smiled at him. - </p> - <p> - The old walk over the fields, down the poplar lane, to see Annie home—how - like the old times it seemed! And yet how far away they were! Sometimes in - these bye-gone walks, as they came up now in Seth’s memory, he and Annie - had been almost like lovers—not indeed, in words, but in that - magnetic language which the moon inspires. It occurred to neither of them - to saunter slowly, now. They walked straight ahead, and there were no - “flashes of eloquent silence.” Their conversation was all of Isabel. - </p> - <p> - “Not as happy as she expected!” said Annie, repeating a question of - Seth’s; “you can’t guess how wretched she is! Sometimes it’s all she can - do to keep from breaking down. I am literally the only person she has to - talk to, that she cares about, week in and week out. Albert is away a - great deal. I don’t think he is much company when he <i>is</i> home. She - did try, when she first came, to make some acquaintances round about, - among the well-to-do farmers’ wives. But she couldn’t bear them, and they - said she was stuck up, and so <i>that</i> came to nothing. She doesn’t get - on at all with Aunt Sabrina, either. Poor girl! she is so blue at times - that my heart aches for her. Of course she wouldn’t let you see it. - Besides she has been ever so much more cheerful since you came. I <i>do</i> - hope you will stay as long as you can—just for <i>her</i> sake.” - </p> - <p> - She added this explanation with what sounded to Seth’s ear like gratuitous - emphasis. The disposition rose swiftly within him to resent this. - </p> - <p> - “You are very careful,” he said, “to have me understand that it’s for her - sake you want me to stay.” Then he felt, even while the sound of his voice - was in the air, that he had made a fool of himself. - </p> - <p> - His cousin did not accept the individual challenge. “No, of course we are - all glad to see you. You know we are. But <i>she</i> specially needs - company; it’s a mercy to her to have somebody to brighten her up a little. - Really, I get anxious about her at times. I try to run over as much as I - can, but then I have grandmother to tend, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “How is the old lady, by the way? And oh—tell me, Annie, what it was - that all at once set her against me so. You remember—the day before - we went fishing, and Isabel saved my life.” - </p> - <p> - The answer did not come immediately. In the dim starlight Seth could see - that his cousin’s face was turned away, and he guessed rather than saw - that she was agitated. - </p> - <p> - “I will tell you,” she said at last, nervously, “why grandmother—or, - no, I will <i>not</i> tell you! You have no right to ask. Don’t come any - further, I am near enough to the house now. Good night.” - </p> - <p> - She had hurried away from him. He watched her disappear in the darkness, - then turned and walked meditatively home. - </p> - <p> - He was not so sure as he had been that it was easy to understand women. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XV.—MR. RICHARD ANSDELL. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was no light - task to spend a vacation contentedly on the farm. There were thousands of - city people who did it, and seemed to enjoy it, but Seth found it - difficult to understand how they contrived to occupy themselves. What work - on a farm meant, he knew very well; but the trick of idling in the country - was beyond him. It was too hot, in these July days, for driving much, and - besides, Albert rarely invited him into the buggy when the grays were - brought around to the step. The two brothers saw little of each other, in - fact. It was not precisely a coolness, but Albert seemed to have other - things on his mind beside fraternal entertainment. The old pastime of - fishing, too, failed him. In the renovation of the house his fine pole and - tackle had somehow disappeared, and he had no money wherewith to replace - them. He had entered upon his vacation unexpectedly, at a time when he - happened to be particularly short of cash—and there was something in - Albert’s manner and tone which rendered it impossible to apply to him, - even if pride had not forbidden it. - </p> - <p> - There was, it is true, the increasing delight of being in Isabel’s - company, but alongside this delight grew a doubt—a doubt which the - young man shrank from recognizing and debating, but which forced its - presence upon his mind, none the less—a doubt whether it was the - part of wisdom to encourage too much of a friendship with his - sister-in-law. This friendship had already reached a stage where Aunt - Sabrina sniffed at its existence, and she hinted dimly to Seth of the - perils which lurked in the lures of a citified siren, with an expression - of face and a pointedness of emphasis which clearly had a domestic - application. There was nothing in this, of course, but the insensate - meddlesomeness of a disagreeable old maid, Seth said to himself, but still - it annoyed him. - </p> - <p> - More serious, though, was his suspicion—lying dormant sometimes for - days, then suddenly awakened by a curt word or an intent glance—that - Albert disliked to see him so much with Isabel. Often this rendered him - extremely nervous, for Isabel had no discretion (so the young man put it - to himself) and displayed her pleasure in his society, her liking for him, - quite as freely in her husband’s presence as when they were alone. There - was nothing in this, either, only that it made him uneasy. Hence it came - about that, just when one set of inclinations most urgently prompted him - to stay about the house, another set often prevailed upon him to absent - himself. On these occasions he generally walked over to Thessaly, and - chatted with John. - </p> - <p> - “John and I have so much to talk about, you know, being both newspaper - men,” he used to say, with a feeling that he owed an explanation of some - sort to Isabel. “And then I can see the daily papers there. That gets to - be a necessity with a journalist—as much so as his breakfast.” - </p> - <p> - “I scarcely dare to read a paper now,” Isabel once replied. “It drives me - nearly mad with longing to get back among people again. I only read heavy - things, classic poetry and history—and then, thank Heaven, there is - this embroidery.” - </p> - <p> - It was at John’s, or rather on the way there, that Seth met one day a man - of whom he was in after life accustomed to say, “He altered the whole bent - of my career.” Perhaps this was an exaggerated estimate of the service - Richard Ansdell really rendered Seth; but it is so difficult, looking - back, to truly define the influence upon our fortunes or minds by any - isolated event or acquaintance, and moreover, gratitude is so wholesome - and sweet a thing to contemplate, and the race devotes so much energy to - civilizing it out of young breasts, that I have not the heart to insist - upon any qualification of Seth’s judgment. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Ansdell at this time was nearly forty years of age, and looked to be - under thirty. He was small, thin-faced, clean-shaven, dark of skin and - hair, with full, clear eyes, that by their calmness of expression - curiously modified the idea of nervousness which his actions and mode of - speech gave forth. He was spending his fortnight’s vacation in the - vicinity, and he was strolling with his friend the school-teacher, Reuben - Tracy, toward the village when Seth overtook them. Seth and Reuben had - been very intimate in the old farm days—and <i>here</i> was a young - man to the latent influence of whose sobriety of mind and cleanliness of - tastes he never fully realized his obligation—but since his return - they had not met. After greetings had been exchanged, they walked together - to the village, and to the <i>Banner of Liberty</i> office. - </p> - <p> - It was the beginning of the week, and publication day was far enough off - to enable John to devote all his time to his visitors. There was an hour - or more of talk—on politics, county affairs, the news in the city - papers, the humors and trials of conducting a rural newspaper, and so - forth. When they rose to go, John put on his hat, and said he would “walk - a ways” with them. On the street he held Seth back with a whispered “Let - us keep behind a bit, I want to talk to you.” Then he added, when the - others were out of hearing: - </p> - <p> - “I have got some personal things to say, later on. But—first of all—has - Albert said anything since to you about the farm?” - </p> - <p> - “Not a word.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I have been thinking it all over, trying to see where the - crookedness comes in—for I feel it in my bones that there <i>is</i> - something crooked. But I am not lawyer enough to get on to it. I’ve had a - notion of putting the whole case to Ansdell, who’s a mighty bright lawyer, - but then again, it seems to be a sort of family thing that we ought to - keep to ourselves. What do you think?—for after all, it is mostly - your affair.” - </p> - <p> - “I can’t see that Albert isn’t playing fair. It must be pretty nearly as - he says—that he has put as much money in the farm as it was worth - when he took it. It’s true that father’s will leaves it to him outright—and - that wasn’t quite as Albert gave us to understand it should be—but - Albert pledges us that our rights in it shall be respected, and it seems - to me that that is better than an acknowledged interest in a bankrupt farm - would be, which we hadn’t the capital to work, and which was worthless - without it.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps you are right.” John paused for a moment, then began again in a - graver tone: “There’s something else. How are you getting on on the <i>Chronicle?</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, well enough; I get through my work without anybody’s finding fault. I - suppose that is the best test. A fellow can’t do any more.” - </p> - <p> - “That is where you are wrong. ‘A fellow’ can do a great deal more. And - when you went there I, for one, expected you were going to do a deuced - sight more. You have been there now—let’s see—thirteen months. - You are doing what you did when you went there—sawing up miscellany, - boiling down news notes, grinding out a lot of departments which the - office boy might do, if his own work weren’t more important. In a word - you’ve just gone on to the threshold, and you’ve screwed yourself down to - the floor there—and from all I hear you are likely to stay there all - your life, while other fellows climb over your head to get into the real - places.” - </p> - <p> - “From all you <i>hear?</i> What do you mean by that—who’s been - telling you about me?” - </p> - <p> - “That you shan’t know, my boy. It is enough that I <i>have</i> heard. You - haven’t fulfilled your promise. I thought you had the makings of a big man - in you; I believed that all you needed was the chance, and you would rise. - You were given the chance—put right in on the ground floor, and - there you are, just where you were put. You haven’t risen worth a cent.” - </p> - <p> - “What do you expect a fellow to do? Get to be editor-in-chief in thirteen - months? What could I do that I haven’t done? There have been no vacancies, - so no one has climbed over my head. I’ve done the work I was set to do—and - done it well, too. What more can you ask?” - </p> - <p> - Seth spoke in an aggrieved tone, for this attack seemed as unjust as it - had been unexpected. - </p> - <p> - John replied, “Now keep cool, youngster! Nobody expected you to get to be - editor-in-chief in thirteen months, so don’t talk nonsense. And I am not - blaming you for not getting promotion, when there have been no vacancies. - What I do mean, if you want to know, is that you have failed to make a - good impression. You are not in the line of promotion. Workman doesn’t say - to himself when he thinks of you ‘There’s a smart, steady, capable young - man on whom we can count, who’s able to go as high as we are able to put - him.’ No! instead of that he says—but no, never mind. I don’t want - to hurt your feelings.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you are mighty considerate, all at once,” retorted Seth, angrily. “Go - on! Say what you were going to say! What is it that Workman says, since - you’ve been spying on me behind my back?” - </p> - <p> - “Now you are talking like a fool,” said the elder brother, keeping his - temper. “I haven’t been spying on you. I have only been commenting on - facts which have come to my knowledge without seeking and which were - brought to me by one who has your interests at heart. I have only been - talking to you as I ought to talk, with the sole idea of benefiting you, - helping you. If you don’t want to hear me, why I can shut up.” - </p> - <p> - Seth did not reply for a minute or so; then he growled moodily: “Go ahead! - Let’s hear it all.” - </p> - <p> - “The ‘all’ can be said in a few words. You have been wasting your time. I - grant that you have done your work well enough to escape blame—but - what credit is there in that? a million mechanics do that every day. - Instead of improving yourself, elevating and polishing yourself, by good - reading, by studying the art of writing, above all by choosing your - associates among men who are your superiors, and from whom you can learn, - you have settled down in a Dutch beer saloon, making associates out of the - commonest people in town, and having for your particular chum that - rattle-headed loafer Tom Watts. Do you suppose Mr. Workman doesn’t know - this? Do you suppose he likes it, or that it encourages him to hope for - your future?” - </p> - <p> - Seth was silent longer than ever, this time. When he spoke it was to utter - something which he instantly regretted: “I haven’t been able to gather - from your old friends that you were altogether a bigot, yourself, on the - subject of beer, when you were my age.” - </p> - <p> - Fortunately John did not get angry; Seth honestly admired and envied his - elder brother’s good temper as he heard the reply: - </p> - <p> - “That’s neither here nor there. Perhaps I did a good many things that I - want you to avoid. Besides, there was nothing in me. I am good enough as - far as I go, but if I had worked on a daily paper till my teeth all fell - out, I should never have got any higher than I was. With you it is - different; you can go up to the head of the class if you are a mind to. - But the beer saloon isn’t the way—and Tom Watts isn’t the guide.” - </p> - <p> - “He is the only friend I have got. What was I to do? It is easy enough to - talk, John, about my knowing good people and all that, but <i>how?</i> - That is the question? It isn’t fair to blame me as you do. All the men - like Workman and Samboye—I suppose you mean them—hold - themselves miles above me. Do you suppose I’ve ever seen the inside of - their houses or of their club? Not I! You dump a young countryman in a - strange city, new at his work, without knowing a solitary soul—and - then you complain because he gets lonesome, and makes friends with the - only people who show any disposition to be friendly with him. Do you call - that fair play?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, there’s something in that,” John replied, meditatively. “Some time - I’m going to write a leader on the organized indifference of modern city - society to what becomes of young men who deserve its good offices and - drift into beer saloons because they are not forthcoming. It would make - the <i>Banner</i> immensely solid with orthodox people.” - </p> - <p> - “You wouldn’t have wanted me to go to the Young Men’s Christian - Association, I suppose?” - </p> - <p> - “No-o, I don’t know that I would. I don’t know, after all, that you could - have done much differently. But you’ve done enough of it, do you - understand? You have served your time; you have taken your diploma. It is - time now to quit. And I can put you on to a man, now, who will help you on - the other tack. Do you see Ansdell, ahead there?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes;—is he the man who told you about Workman and me?” - </p> - <p> - John ignored the question. “Ansdell is one of the cleverest men going; - he’s head and shoulders over anybody else there is in Tecumseh, or in this - part of the State. For you to know him will be a college education in - itself. He is more than a big lawyer, he is a student and thinker; more - than that, he is a reformer; best of all, he is a man of the world, who - has sown more wild oats than would fill Albert’s new bins, and there’s not - an atom of nonsense about him. He knows about you. We’ve talked you over - together. He understands my idea of what you ought to be, and he can help - you more than any other man alive—and what is more he will.” - </p> - <p> - “It was he who told you about me, wasn’t it?” Seth persisted. - </p> - <p> - “If you will know, it was and it wasn’t. All he said was that he had heard - Workman speak of you; that he had got the idea from his tone that you were - not making the most of your opportunities; that he thought this was a - great pity; and that if he could be of any use to you he would be very - glad. That is all—and not even your sulkiness can make anything but - kindness out of it.” - </p> - <p> - This practically ended the dialogue, for the others had stopped to let the - brothers come up, and John shortly after left the party. - </p> - <p> - The three men had a long stroll back to the hillside road, with a still - longer lounge on the grass under the elms by the bridge. Seth watched and - listened to this swarthy, boyish-looking mentor who had, so to speak, - thrust himself upon him, very closely, as was natural. Did he like him? It - was hard, he found, to determine. Mr. Ansdell was extremely opinionated. - He seemed to have convictions on almost every subject, and he clung to - them, defended them, expanded them, with almost tearful earnestness. His - voice was as strong and powerful as his figure was diminutive; he talked - now chiefly about the Tariff, which he denounced with a vibrating - intensity of feeling. Seth knew nothing about the Tariff, or next to - nothing, but he admired what Ansdell said, mainly because it was said so - well. But he grew quite enthusiastic in his endorsement when he heard his - Editor, Mr. Samboye, used as a typical illustration of the dishonesty with - which public men treated that question. After that he felt that it would - be easy to make friends with Mr. Ansdell. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVI.—DEAR ISABEL. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was the last day - but one of Seth’s vacation on the farm. He was not sorry, although the - last week, by comparison, had been pleasant enough. He had seen a good - deal of Mr. Ansdell, who interested him extremely, and who had come for - him three or four times for long walks in the fields. He sat now in the - living room near Isabel, dividing his attention between her and his book—one - of Albert’s innumerable novels. The desultory conversation mixed itself up - with the unfolding work of fiction so persistently that he presently gave - over the attempt to read, and drew his chair nearer to his sister-in-law. - It was raining outside, and wet weather always made her want to talk. She - said: - </p> - <p> - “Tell me, Seth, if you have noticed any change in Alvira.” - </p> - <p> - “No, I can’t say that I have. In fact, she seems to me the one person - about the place who has <i>not</i> altered a bit.” - </p> - <p> - “See what eyes men have! Why, she has grown ages older. She goes about now - muttering to herself like an old, old woman. And the way she looks at one, - sometimes, it is enough to give one the chills. I tell Albert often that I - am almost afraid to have her in the house.” - </p> - <p> - Seth chuckled audibly, in good-natured derision. “What a mountain out of a - mole hill! Why Alvira has glared at people that way, with her little - black-bead eyes, ever since I was a boy. She doesn’t mean anything by it,—not - the least in the world. The trouble is, Isabel, that you let your - imagination run away with you. You are desperately lonesome here, and you - amuse yourself by conjuring up all sorts of tragic things. You will have - Aunt Sabrina a professional witch next thing you know, and Milton a mystic - conspirator, and this plain old clap-boarded farm house a castle of - enchantment.” - </p> - <p> - He had never before assumed even this jocose air of superiority over his - blond sister-in-law, and he closed his sentence in some little trepidation - lest she should resent it. But no, she received it with meekness, and only - protested mildly against the assumption underneath. - </p> - <p> - “No, I am sure there is something in it. She is brooding about Milton. Not - in any sentimental way, you know, but it used to be understood, I think, - that they were to marry, and now he carries himself way above her. Why, I - can remember, as long ago as when I visited here that summer, when we were - all boys and girls and cousins together, I heard your mother say they - would make a match of it some time. But now he avoids the kitchen and her. - It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, for me to be speculating in this way - about the love affairs of the servants. But you are driven to it here. You - have no idea how grateful one gets to be, here in the country, for the - smallest item of human gossip.” - </p> - <p> - Seth was still considering whether it was possible for him, in careful - language, to suggest his own—or rather the Lawton girl’s—view - of the Milton-Alvira affair, when Isabel spoke again: - </p> - <p> - “Speaking of gossip, there is something I have been tempted half a dozen - times to mention to you—something I heard almost every day during - the little time that the women round-about were calling on me. You will - guess what I mean—the talk about you and Annie.” - </p> - <p> - Seth did not immediately answer, and she continued: - </p> - <p> - “Of course, you know, Seth, that I wouldn’t speak of it if I thought it - would be distasteful to you. But I know it used to be the idea that you - two were marked for each other. I have heard ever so much about it since - we have lived here. And yet you don’t seem to me to be at all like lovers—hardly - even like affectionate cousins. I think she has rather avoided the house - since you have been here, although that, of course, may be only - imagination. She is such a dear, good girl, and I am <i>so</i> fond of - her, but still I can hardly imagine her as your wife. You don’t mind my - speaking about it, do you?” - </p> - <p> - Seth was still at a loss what to say, or, better, how to say it. While she - had been speaking the contrast between the two young women, which had been - slumbering in his mind for a year, had risen vividly before him. The - smile, half-deprecating, half-inviting, with which she looked this last - question at him, as she laid the everlasting embroidery down, and leaned - slightly forward for a reply, gave the final touch to his vanishing - doubts. - </p> - <p> - “Mind <i>your</i> speaking about it? No, no, Isabel.” He scarcely knew his - own voice, it was so full of cooing softness. “I am glad you did—for—for - who has a better right? No, there is nothing in the gossip. Our people—my - mother, her grandmother—had it in mind once, I believe, but Annie - and I have never so much as hinted at it between ourselves. Ever since - mother’s death old Mrs. Warren has, however, taken a deep dislike to me—you - remember how she forbade Annie to go with us on that fishing trip—but - even without that——” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, I shan’t forget that fishing trip,” Isabel whispered, still with the - tender smile. - </p> - <p> - “Nor I, you may be very sure.” The caressing tone of his voice sounded - natural to him now. “As I was saying, even if we two young people had once - thought of the thing, I fancy it would be different now, anyway. <i>Then</i>, - I was going to be a farmer. <i>Now</i>, of course, that is all changed. My - career is in the city, in circles where Annie would not be at home. She is - a dear, good girl, as you say: nobody knows that better than I do. But you - must admit she <i>is</i>—what shall I say?—rural. Now that I - have got my foot on the ladder, there is no telling how far I may not - climb. It would be simply suicide to marry a wife whom I perhaps would - have to carry up with me, a dead weight.” - </p> - <p> - The youngster was not in the least conscious of the vicious nonsense he - was talking. In the magnetic penumbra of Isabel’s presence his words - seemed surcharged with wisdom and good feeling. And the young woman, too, - who was four years his senior, and who should have known better, never - suspected the ridiculous aspect of the sentiments to the expression of - which she listened with such sweet-faced sympathy. We <i>are</i> such - fools upon occasion. - </p> - <p> - “Besides, there is no reason why I should think of marriage at all, for a - long time to come—at least not until I have made my way up in my - profession a bit. When the time does come, it will be because I have found - my ideal—for I have an ideal, you know, a very exalted one.” - </p> - <p> - He looked at her keenly, blushing as he did so, to discover if she had - caught the purport of his words; then he addressed himself, with an - absence of verbal awkwardness at which he was himself astonished, to - making it more clear. - </p> - <p> - “I mean, Isabel, that my brother has won a prize which would make anything - less valuable seem altogether worthless in my eyes. If there is not - another woman in the world like my brother Albert’s wife, then I shall - never marry.” - </p> - <p> - “Brother Albert’s wife” looked up at the speaker for an instant—a - glance which seemed to him to be made of smiles, sadness, delight, - reproach and many other unutterable things; then she bent over her work, - and he fancied that the pretty fingers trembled a little between the - stitches. There was a minute of silence, which seemed a half hour. At last - she spoke: - </p> - <p> - “Does your brother impress you as being a particularly happy man? I won’t - ask a similar question about his wife.” - </p> - <p> - Seth found it necessary to stand up, to do this subject justice. “No!” he - answered. “He doesn’t deserve such a wife. But because one man is - incapable of appreciating a treasure which he has won, it’s no reason why - another man shouldn’t—shouldn’t say to himself ‘I will either marry - that kind of woman or I’ll marry none.’ Now, <i>is</i> it, Isabel?” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps this wife is not altogether the treasure you think she is,” the - young woman answered, with the indirection of her sex. - </p> - <p> - Seth found words entirely inadequate to express his dissent. He could only - smile at her, as if the doubt were too preposterous to be even suggested, - and walk up and down in front of her. - </p> - <p> - Still intent upon her work, and with her head inclined so that he saw only - a softened angle of face beneath the crown of glowing light-hued hair, she - made answer, speaking more slowly than was usual with her, and with - frequent pauses: - </p> - <p> - “I don’t think you know all my story, though it is a part of your family’s - history on both sides. You remember my father—a sporting, - horse-racing man of the world, and you know that my mother died when I was - a baby. You knew me here, one summer, as a visiting cousin, and we played - and quarrelled as children do. Now you know me again as your brother’s - wife—but that is all. You know nothing of the rest—of how my - father, proud about me as he was common in other things, kept me mewed up - among governesses and housekeepers in one part of the house, while his - flash companions rioted in another part; of how my wretched, chafing - girlhood was spent among servants and tutors, with not so much as a - glimpse of the world outside, like any Turkish girl; of how, when your - brother, because he was a cousin, did become the one friend of my father’s - who might be invited into the drawing room, and be introduced to me, and - took a fancy that he would like to marry me, I welcomed even such a chance - for emancipation, and almost cried for joy; and of how I woke up afterward—no, - this is what you do not know.” There was a considerable pause here. “And I - do not know why I tell this to you now, except that I want you to - understand.” - </p> - <p> - “I <i>do</i> understand, Isabel.” - </p> - <p> - As a matter of fact he did not understand at all, but he thought he did, - which, for present purposes, came to the same thing. - </p> - <p> - “And you can realize,” she went on, “how I feel at the thought of staying - here the rest of my life—or, even if we go elsewhere—of having - my life mapped out for me without any regard to my wishes and aspirations, - while you are just pluming your wings for soaring, and can fly as high as - you like with no one to gainsay you. Oh, what it must be to be a man!” She - was looking up at him now, with enthusiasm supplanting the repining in her - eyes. “And you love your work, so, too! You are so clever and capable! You - can be anything you like in your profession—and it is impossible - that I should ever be anything that I want to be.” - </p> - <p> - A month ago, when he first came to the farm, this calm assumption of his - ability to carve whatever part he desired out of the journalistic cake - would have fallen upon Seth like cruel and calculated sarcasm. As it was, - he winced a little under its exaggeration, but the substance pleased him. - He squared his shoulders unconsciously as he answered: - </p> - <p> - “Well, I am only at the threshold as yet, but if there is any such thing - as doing it, I am going to push my way on. It doesn’t seem so easy always, - when you are right in the thick of the fight, but now, after my rest here, - I feel like an eagle refreshed. I am full of new ideas and ambitions. I - owe a good deal of it to Ansdell, I suppose. You never saw such a fellow - for making everybody believe as he does, and take an exalted view of - things, and long to be doing something great. John prescribed him to me as - a doctor would some medicine, and I took him more or less under protest, - but I feel immensely better already.” - </p> - <p> - Isabel took only a languid interest in the inspiring qualities of this - prodigy, and reverted to her own grievance: - </p> - <p> - “Yes, you will go and conquer your position. I will stay here and count - those miserable poplars across the road—did you ever see a more - monotonous row?—and work anti-macassars for no one to see, and mope - my heart out. Why, do you know, I haven’t one single correspondent!” - </p> - <p> - The full enormity of the situation thus revealed was lost upon Seth, who - had never written more than half-a-dozen letters in his life, and did not - see why people who did not have to write letters should want to do so. But - he said “Indeed!” as compassionately as he could. - </p> - <p> - “No, not one. I did think you might have taken pity on me, but for all the - year that you have been away, I have never heard a word from you.” - </p> - <p> - “I wrote once or twice to Albert,” Seth answered, tentatively, to occupy - time until he could turn around in his mind the immense suggestion - involved in this complaint. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, and I used to hear at the breakfast table—‘Oh, by the way, - Aunt Sabrina, Seth sends his love to you and Isabel—’ only this and - nothing more! What is the good of having a literary man in the family, if - he doesn’t write you long, nice letters?” The vista which had flashed - itself before Seth’s mental vision was filled with dazzling light. He - could not mask the exultation in his voice as he asked: - </p> - <p> - “Do you really want me to write to you?” - </p> - <p> - “You ought not to have waited to be asked,” she said, smiling again. “Yes, - you shall write me—and long letters too, mind—as often as you - like.” She added after a moment’s pause, in which both had been turning - over the same idea, “You needn’t be afraid of writing too often. The - bundle from the post office always comes to me in the morning, hours - before <i>he</i> gets downstairs. Dana brings it up when he comes back - from the cheese-factory, and it never goes into any one’s hands but mine. - Beside, henceforth I shall watch for it all the more carefully.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Next morning Seth prepared once again to leave the homestead, but this - time with a light heart and a gay demeanor. A month’s absence had served - so to remodel his views of the <i>Chronicle</i>, that he already felt - himself to be a personage of importance, in its control. He had been - constantly spoken of in the village as “one of the editors” of that - journal, and found so much pleasure in the designation that he had come to - use it in thinking of himself. He felt himself fired, too, with new - enthusiasm and power by his talks with Ansdell, and he believed, not only - that he saw where his past errors had lain, but that he knew now the trick - of success. Above all, he was to write long letters to Isabel, and receive - answers equally long and nice from her, and—this gave him an - especial sense of delight—it was all to be a secret between them. - </p> - <p> - The sun shone brightly, too, after the rain, as if to be in harmony with - his mood. Albert was more affable than he had been before, and after - breakfast, and while the carriage was being brought around, gave him some - cigars for the journey, and a $20 bill for pocket money. These were - pleasant preludes to a little brotherly conversation. - </p> - <p> - “I wish you would hurry up and get to have a say on the <i>Chronicle</i> - as soon as you can, Seth,” said the lawyer, holding him by the lappel in - fraternal fashion. “You can help me there, help me very materially. I am - going to be nominated for Congress in this district next year—don’t - whisper about it yet, but I’ve got it solid. I haven’t let any grass grow - under my feet since I moved here, and they can’t beat me in the - Convention. But the <i>Chronicle</i> can do a good deal in the election, - and I look to you for that. I am not going to Washington without knowing - my business after I get there. There is a big thing on hand, big for me, - big for you too. Good-bye now, my boy; I must get upstairs to my writing. - You won’t forget!” - </p> - <p> - No, Seth promised, very cordially and heartily, he would not forget. - </p> - <p> - When his traps had been piled again into the carriage, and he said - good-bye to his Aunt and to Alvira, no Isabel was to be seen. She had been - at breakfast, but had subsequently disappeared. Seth went into the living - room—no one was there. He opened the door to the stairs and called - out her name—no answer. As he closed the door again, he heard the - faintest tinkle imaginable from a piano key. He had not thought of the - parlor, which was ordinarily unused, but he hastened to it now. Isabel - stood at the instrument, her head bowed; her finger still pressing the - key. She turned with a dear little exclamation, which might be either of - surprise or satisfied expectancy, and held out her hand. - </p> - <p> - “So you <i>wouldn’t</i> go, after all, without saying good-bye to me!” - </p> - <p> - “Why, Isabel, you know better!” answered Seth, still very downright for - his years. He was actually pained at her having fancied him capable of - such a thing, and while he held her hand, he looked at her with mild - reproach in his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, do I?” she answered, rather inconsequently. Then she sighed, and - bowed her fair head again. “Have you given it a thought at all—how - lonely it will be after you are gone for—for those who are left - behind? I can’t bear to think of it—I came in here because I - couldn’t stand and see the horses at the door, and the preparations for - your going. It is as if the tomb door were swinging back on me again. I am - foolish, I know—” here the words were much hampered in their flow by - incipient sobs—“but if you could realize my position—the awful - desolation of it, the—the—” She broke down altogether, and, - with the disengaged hand, put her handkerchief to her eyes. - </p> - <p> - Seth had never seen a young and beautiful woman in tears before, off the - stage, but his racial instincts served him in the emergency. He gently - took her hand down again, holding them both, now, in his. He told her, - again surprising himself by the smoothness and felicity of his words, how - delightful she had made his visit, how deeply he prized her sympathy and - compassionated her lot, and how the pangs of regret at parting were only - solaced by the thought that she had permitted him to write. Then he kissed - her—and hurried out to the carriage. - </p> - <p> - The handsome, high-bitted grays made short work of the drive to Thessaly - station, where John was waiting to have a parting word, so that Seth - scarcely had time to collect his thoughts and settle accounts with - himself, before the train started. Three hours later when he got off at - Tecumseh, he had progressed no further in his work of striking a moral - balance than: - </p> - <p> - “After all, she is my cousin as well as my sister-in-law.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVII.—AN UPWARD LEAP. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HAT man of - achievement cannot recall some one short period of his life which seems to - transcend in significance and value all the rest of his career—when - great things for which he had only unconsciously waited came to him - without the asking; when the high court of events rendered its sudden, - unexpected verdict of success, without costs to him who had never made a - plea; when the very stars in their courses seemed to have privily - conspired to fight for him? How swift, inexplicable, even amazing it all - was! And yet how simple too! And when the first flush of astonishment—half - delight, half diffidence—had passed, how natural it all seemed; how - mind and manners and methods all expanded to meet the new requirements; - how calmly and as a matter of course the dignity was worn, the increment - appropriated, the mental retina adapted to the widened focus! How easily, - too, he sloughed off his own conviction that it was all pure luck, and - accepted the world’s kind judgment of deserved success! Who is it that - accuses the world, and rails at its hardness of heart? What man among us - all, in the hour of honest introspection, does not know that he is rated - too high, that he is in debt to the credulity, the generosity, the dear - old human tendency to hero-worship, of his fellows? - </p> - <p> - This is an extract from a letter which the successful Seth Fairchild wrote - a few months ago. Chronologically, it is dated only a couple of years - after the occurrences with which we are now concerned—but to him an - interval of decades doubtless seemed to separate the periods. Perhaps the - modesty of it is a trifle self-conscious, and the rhetoric is of a - flamboyant kind which he will never, apparently, outgrow, but at all - events it shows a disposition to be fair as between himself and history. - The period of great fortune, to which he alludes, is to be glanced at in - this present chapter—to be limned, though only in outline, more - clearly no doubt than he himself could be trusted to do it. For, though a - man have never so fine a talent for self-analysis, you are safe to be - swamped if you follow him a step beyond your own depth. In cold fact, Seth - could no more tell how it was that, within one short year, he rose from - the very humblest post to become Editor of the <i>Chronicle</i>, than - Master Tom here can explain why he has outgrown his last summer’s - knickerbockers while his twin brother hasn’t. - </p> - <p> - He had been back at his work in Tecumseh only a month when word came to - the office one morning that Mr. Tyler could not come—that he had - been seriously injured in the havoc wrought by a runaway horse. It was too - early for either editor or proprietor to be on the scene, and Arthur Dent - at that hour was the visible head of the staff. He and Seth had scarcely - spoken to each other for months—in fact since that disagreeable - evening encounter—but he walked over now to our young man’s desk and - said: - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Fairchild, you would better take the News to-day. Tyler has been - badly hurt.” - </p> - <p> - Marvelling much at the favoritism of the selection, for Dent had not only - passed Murtagh over but had waived his own claims of precedence, Seth, - changed desks. He got through the work well enough, it appeared, but he - mistrusted deeply his ability to hold the place. Mr. Samboye did not seem - to approve his promotion, though he said nothing, and the manner in which - Mr. Workman looked at him in his new chair seemed distinctly critical. - </p> - <p> - After the paper had gone to press, and some little routine work against - the next morning’s start was out of the way, he wavered between idling the - remaining two hours away among the exchanges, or attempting an editorial - article for the morrow, such as Mr. Tyler occasionally contributed. His - former experience with Mr. Samboye dismayed him a bit, but he concluded to - try the editorial experiment again. Some things which Ansdell had said one - day on the Silver question remained in his mind, and he made them the - basis of a half-column article. He was finishing this when the office-boy - told him Mr. Workman wished to see him below. He took his Silver article - with him, vaguely hoping, hardly expecting, to be congratulated on his - day’s work, and told to keep the desk. - </p> - <p> - Seth’s impressions of his employer were that he was a hard, peremptory - man, and he searched his face now for some sign of softness in vain. Mr. - Workman motioned him to a seat, and said abruptly: - </p> - <p> - “You were on the News desk to-day. Did you take it yourself, or were you - sent there?” - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Dent told me to take it, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “Why didn’t he take it himself, or put Murtagh on?” - </p> - <p> - Seth had it in mind to explain that Murtagh did not come down early - enough, but he remembered how strenuous the rules were in the matter of - matutinal punctuality, and concluded to say simply that he didn’t know. - Mr. Workman looked at him for a moment, made some arabesque figures with - his pencil on the edge of the blotter, looked at him again, and then said, - in a milder tone than Seth had supposed his voice capable of: - </p> - <p> - “I may as well be candid with you. I have been very much disappointed in - you so far. You haven’t panned out at all as your brother led me to expect - you would.” - </p> - <p> - This was a knock-down blow. Poor Seth could only turn his copy about in - his hands and stammer: “I am very sorry. In what way have I failed?” - </p> - <p> - “It would be hard to tell exactly in what way. I should say it was in a - general failure to be the sort of young man I thought you were going to - be. You have shown no inclination, for example, to write anything—and - yet your brother praised you up to the skies as a writer.” - </p> - <p> - “But what was the good? I did write a long paragraph when I first came - here, and handed it in to Mr. Samboye, and he tore it up before my eyes! - That would be enough to discourage anybody!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, he did that with you too, did he?” Mr. Workman made more arabesques - on his blotter, shading them with great neatness. - </p> - <p> - Seth thought this was a favorable opportunity to get in his Silver - article, and handed it to the proprietor with a word of explanation. Mr. - Workman read it over carefully and laid it aside without a syllable of - comment. There was nothing in his face to show whether he liked it or not. - He surrounded all his penciled figures with a wavy border, and said again: - </p> - <p> - “Then there are your associations. Before ever you came I was discouraged - at the amount of money and time and health my young men were squandering - in saloons. It had become a scandal to the town. I get a young man in from - the country, whose habits are vouched for as perfect, with an idea that he - will influence the rest, and lo and behold! he becomes the boss guzzler of - the lot!” - </p> - <p> - “There is a good deal of justice in that, Mr. Workman—or there was. - But since I’ve been back this time it has been changed. I have moved into - another boarding house where I have a room to myself, and I have read at - home almost every evening when I was not with Mr. Ansdell. I think I see - the folly of that old way, as clearly as any one can.” - </p> - <p> - “Ansdell and I had a long talk about you the other day. It was he who gave - me my first idea that there was anything in you. He is something of a - crank on certain subjects, but he knows men like a book. I have been - saying to myself that if he liked you there must be more in you than I had - discovered. If I am right in this, now is your time to show it. It is a - toss up, the doctors say this afternoon, whether poor Tyler lives or dies. - In any case he won’t be about in months. You can keep on at the desk for a - while. We’ll see how you make it go.” - </p> - <p> - The next afternoon, when the inky boy brought up the damp first copies - from the clanging, roaring region of the press, Seth was transfixed with - bewilderment at seeing his article in the position of honor on the - editorial page. While he still stared at it, amazed and troubled, Mr. - Samboye with an angry snort swung around in his chair to face him: - </p> - <p> - “Is this Silver thing yours?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “And it is your conception of the ethics of journalism, is it, to sneak - leaders into the composing, room without authority?” - </p> - <p> - “I sneaked nothing in! I gave the copy to Mr. Workman last night. I am as - much surprised to see it the leader as you are.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Samboye rose abruptly, and strode through the room to the stairs. They - were ricketty at best and they trembled, the whole floor trembled, under - his wrathful and ponderous tread. - </p> - <p> - The fat-armed foreman, who was in on his eternal quest for copy, had heard - this dialogue. He grinned as the Editor slammed the door below, and - chuckled out “He’ll get his comb cut now. The boss ordered your thing to - be the leader himself.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Samboye presently returned with his broad face glowing crimson, and - seated himself at his work again in gloomy silence. He made more erasures - than usual, and soon gave it up altogether, taking his hat and stick with - an impatient gesture, and stamping his way out. - </p> - <p> - Time went on. The luckless Mr. Tyler died, and Seth became confirmed in - his place. He had developed more strongly, perhaps, than any other one - trait, the capacity for system, and he was able to so remodel and expedite - the routine work of the News desk that he had a good deal of time for - editorial writing. His matter was never again given the place of honor, - but it came to be and important and regular feature of the page. - </p> - <p> - He worked hard on the paper—and almost equally hard, by spells, at - home evenings. He did drop in at Bismarck’s or some like place, for a few - moments now and then, but he was careful to avoid games, or any further - intimacy with habitués. Had it not been for Ansdell and Dent, this part of - his new regimen would have been well nigh impossible, for the gregarious - instinct was strong in him—as it is in any young man worth his salt—and - associations of some sort were as necessary as food to him. He had - discovered, long before this, that Dent was an old acquaintance of - Ansdell’s, and that he, in fact, had told the latter about Seth and his - profitless courses, and interested the lawyer in his case. - </p> - <p> - He had learned, too, that this pale “Young Man Christian” as Watts had - called him derisively, had from the first been well-disposed toward him, - and, when the emergency of Tyler’s absence came up, had waived alike his - own claims to preferment and his justifiable personal pique, and thrust - Seth forward into the place because he felt that he needed some such - incentive to make a man of himself. This was very high conduct, and Seth - tried hard to like Dent a great deal in return. He never quite succeeded. - They were too dissimilar in temperament to ever become close friends. Seth - explained it to himself by saying that Dent was too cold and - non-emotional. But Dent himself never seemed conscious of anything lacking - in their relations, and they were certainly cordial and companionable - enough when they met, generally two evenings a week, at Mr. Ansdell’s - chambers. - </p> - <p> - Nothing less like the bachelor’s den dear to tradition can be imagined. - There were no pipes, for the lawyer smoked cigars and nothing else; there - was no litter of papers, opened books, pamphlets, scraps and the like, for - he was the soul of order; no tumbled clothes, odd boots, overflowing - trunks, etc., for he was the pink of neatness. He used to like to describe - himself in the words with which Evelyn paints his father, as “of a - thriving, neat, silent, methodical genius,” but it was always with a - twinkling eye, for surely no man was ever less silent. He was a born - talker—nervous, eager, fluent, with a delicate sense of the sound - and shading of words, a keen appreciation of all picturesque and salient - points, a rare delight in real humor, and, above all, with tremendous - capabilities of earnestness. Conceive such a man, if you can—for - there will never be another like him—and then endow him in your mind - with a marvelous accumulation of knowledge, with convictions upon every - conceivable subject, and with nothing short of a passion for enforcing - these upon those of whom he was fond—and some idea of the perfect - ascendancy he gained over Seth will have been obtained. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Ansdell was neither impeccable nor omniscient. There was much in both - his theories and his practice which would not commend itself to the moral - statutes of the age; he attempted no defense, being incredulous as to the - right of criticism upon personal predilections. But he had a flaming - wrath, a consuming, intolerant contempt, for men who were unable to - distinguish between private tastes and public duty. On this subject of - public duty he was so strenuous, so deeply earnest, that often there - seemed but a microscopic line between his attitude and fanaticism. But - this zeal had its magnificent uses. Often it swayed despite themselves the - politicians of his party who had least in common with him, and who - disliked him and vaunted their conventional superiority to him even while - they were being swept along toward nobler purposes than their own small - souls could ever have conceived, in the current of feeling which his - devotion had created. - </p> - <p> - He took complete possession of Seth’s mind, and he worked wonders upon it. - There is neither room here, nor power, to analyze these achievements. The - young man, heretofore through circumstances slow and mechanical, revealed - under the inspiration of this contact his true temperament. He became as - receptive as a sensitized plate in the camera. He seemed to take in facts, - theories, emotions, prejudices, beliefs, through the very pores of his - skin. He found himself hating one line of public action, and all its - votaries, vividly; he found himself thrilling with violent enthusiasm for - another line, and its exponents—such an enthusiasm as exiled men - tremble under when they hear the national air of their native land. - </p> - <p> - He was not always right. Very often indeed he did injustice, in his mind, - and in the types as well, to really well-meaning men who after their - lights were just as patriotic as he was. He condemned with undue ferocity - where he could not unreservedly praise, and, like most men of - three-and-twenty who sit on the tripod of judgment upon their fellow - mortals, he made many mistakes. But his mental and moral advance, despite - these limitations, was tremendously swift, and, in the main, substantial. - No man ever made the world budge an inch ahead who had not well developed - the capacity for indignation at weak and wrong things. This indignant - faculty grew and swelled in Seth’s nature like a strong vine, spreading - upon the tree of his admiration for his ideals. - </p> - <p> - He had a fair income now—twenty dollars a week—and he lived - very well, having a room in a good house, and taking his meals down town. - This was a condition of life which had always commended itself to his - imagination, and he revelled now in realising it. Of course he saved no - money. Through Ansdell and others he had made the acquaintance of a number - of Tecumseh men of position, and he had been asked a little to their - houses, but he had not gone more than once. This single experience did not - dismay or humiliate him; he flattered himself that he came out of it with - credit. But it did not interest him; it was wofully difficult to talk to - the women he met—to know what to say to them. It was the easier to - come back from this one excursion to his old Bohemian bachelor notions, - and justify them to himself. - </p> - <p> - The correspondence with Isabel had not been altogether so attractive as he - had anticipated. It had its extremely pleasant side, of course, but there - were drawbacks. She wrote well, but then most of her writing was about - herself, which grew wearisome after a time. It was difficult too, to find - time to answer her letters always when the philandering mood was upon him, - and in this matter he found himself curiously the creature of his moods. - The routine of daily newspaper toil had rendered him largely independent - of them in his ordinary work. He wrote about as well one day as another. - But there were seasons when he could not write to Isabel at all. Then he - would say to himself that the need of doing so was a nuisance, and in this - frame of mind he would generally end by reproaching himself for even - entertaining the idea of a mild flirtation with his brother’s wife. Not - that there was anything wrong in it, of course; he was quite clear on this - point; but it was so useless, such a gratuitous outlay of time and talent! - </p> - <p> - But then next day, perhaps, a good dinner, or a chance glimpse of fresh - romance in the exchanges, or some affecting play at the theatre of an - evening, would bring back all the glamour of her pretty, tender face, the - magic of her eyes, the perfume of her tawny hair. And then he could write, - and did write, often with a force of sweet rhetoric, a moving quality of - caressing ardor, which it is difficult to distinguish from love making. - </p> - <p> - To him these letters did not mean that at all; they were really abstract - reflections of the sentimental side of his nature, which might have been - evoked by almost any likable, intelligent woman. - </p> - <p> - But to the wife on the farm they seemed deeply, deliciously, personal. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVIII.—BOLTING THE TICKET. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was the year of - a great political revival—coming none too soon. - </p> - <p> - It is a part of the history of human progress that grand moral movements, - once they have fulfilled their immediate purpose, swing backward to the - establishment of some new abuse. The net gain is, no doubt, century by - century, continuous. But to those who look for episodic interest rather - than epochal meaning the march of the race must often seem crab like—as - when a Henry VIII utilizes a reforming revolt to crush and plunder a vast - system of benefaction, and create a hard-fisted, commercial plutocracy - with one hand, while calling into existence with the other a permanent - class of starving poor; or when a Bonaparte makes the waning impetus of a - democratic uprising serve his imperial ambition, and converts the legions - of the Republic into the guards of a Caesar. - </p> - <p> - So, in our own time, in our own country, craft and greed had climbed to - the control of a great organization, baptized in the name of Freedom and - excited still with the thoughts of its tremendous achievements, and - diverted its forces to the service of base ends. - </p> - <p> - This ignoble mastery had not gone unchallenged. More than one revolt - against it had given promise, for a little, of success. But each in its - failure had but repeated the familiar experience of yeomanry against - trained troops, of sporadic, scattering popular impulses against the cool, - consecutive plans of organized power. But it is the fate of despotisms, - whether of a man or of a machine, to by excesses sap their own - foundations. There came a time when the political usurpers who, through - the listlessness of some citizens, the ancient prejudices of others, the - mean lust for profit and place of still a third class, had attained power, - went just a step too far. - </p> - <p> - As this is a romance, and not a political history, it is permitted to - avoid both dates and any details which might seem to fix a particular - occurrence, and ask the reader to conceive that the crisis grew out of the - manner in which these politicians obtained control of an imaginary but - important Convention—that they bribed delegates, that they forged - telegrams to secure a majority for themselves on the organizing committee, - and that they made drunk the poor tool they had selected for Chairman and - locked him in his hotel room that he might not escape them. It strains - credulity to assume all this, I know, but its acceptance is essential to - the story. Fortunately it is less difficult to credit the corollary—that - the decent people of the State, led by an honest press, rose <i>en masse</i> - and pulverized this machine at the following election. - </p> - <p> - It was at the outset of this crisis that Seth became Editor of the - Tecumseh <i>Chronicle</i>. The young man had been, it need scarcely be - said, deeply interested in the events which led up to it, and when the - first of the party papers came out frankly, the morning after the - Convention, refusing to support its nominations, he was in a tremor of - delight. He scarcely dared hope that the <i>Chronicle</i> would follow - their lead, but still he did hope. Mr. Samboye remained downstairs in - consultation with Mr. Workman longer than usual on that eventful forenoon. - They were settling the policy of the paper, of course, and the young news - editor, perfunctorily weeding out copy for the “first side,” was conscious - all the while of being eagerly anxious to know what this policy was to be. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Samboye presently came up, took his seat without the ordinary prelude - of conversation, and began writing. He finished his article, still without - a word to any one, and took it down to Mr. Workman. He was absent but a - few moments. On his return Seth asked him: - </p> - <p> - “Do we bolt the ticket?” - </p> - <p> - Before he could answer, a telegraph boy came running up the stairs (this - one actually did run) with a dispatch for Mr. Samboye. The editor opened - and read it in a puzzled way at first, then more carefully and with a - light of comprehension on his broad face. He folded the telegram up - carefully, put it into his inner vest pocket and said to Seth: - </p> - <p> - “No, we occupy a picturesque position on the top rail of the fence.” - </p> - <p> - The editor did not seem quite himself that day. He stayed about the - editorial room instead of going out to lunch, until the leader proof was - ready, and then he asked to read it himself, instead of letting it go in - the ordinary course to the proof-reader. He made a good many corrections - on it, which was unusual for him. Finally, about half-an-hour before the - paper went to press, he took his departure, saying briefly to Seth that he - would not return that day. - </p> - <p> - Two hours later the office boy summoned Seth to the counting-room below. - Mr. Workman sat alone at his desk, with the day’s <i>Chronicle</i> spread - out before him, and with the original proof-sheet of the leader in his - hand. He motioned Seth to close the doors, and to take a seat close beside - him. - </p> - <p> - “You have read this leader?” he asked, after a moment’s silence. - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “What do you think of it?” - </p> - <p> - “I shouldn’t like to say all that I think of it.” - </p> - <p> - “Neither should I,” replied Mr. Workman with an iron-clad smile. He was - very pale, and Seth scented a storm in the manner in which the grim smile - faded from his face after an instant of hovering, as a gleam of wintry - sunshine passes off the snow. “There’s a story—a very curious story—back - of this leader. I only know part of it; perhaps you can help me to get at - the rest.” - </p> - <p> - Not knowing what to say, Seth remained silent. The proprietor continued: - “When this leader left my hands this morning, it bolted the ticket, out - and out. There was no mistake about it. It was squarefooted. As it is now, - it’s neither fish, flesh nor fowl. It condemns the Convention and the - frauds, but it practically says that the result must be accepted. The - worst of it is I didn’t see the paper until the edition had been worked - off. The alterations in the proof here, which make all the difference - between white and black, are in Samboye’s hand. Did he say anything to you - about it? Was anybody up in the editorial room to see him?” - </p> - <p> - “No one came up to see him; he said nothing to me except that we were on - the fence. That disgusted me so much that I asked nothing further.” - </p> - <p> - “Did he say that when he came up from here—or later, after he had - gone over the proof?” - </p> - <p> - “He said it when—or no, hold on—he received a dispatch just - before;” and Seth recounted the episode of the telegram. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Workman was much impressed with this. He covered his blotter thick - with scrolls and geometrical figures while he pondered it. At last he - spoke. - </p> - <p> - “You don’t know where the telegram came from?—no, of course not. I - think I know about where, and I think I can guess about what it said. It - said that, in this matter of bolting tickets, one day’s delay might make - an immense amount of difference, and that it would be worth his while to - keep the <i>Chronicle</i> non-committal in its first issue by hook or by - crook. Take my word for it, that is what it said in substance. The fellows - who sent it were scared about the <i>Chronicle</i>. They knew what an - effect its course would have on the weeklies, most of which go to press - to-morrow. They couldn’t spend money better than in having us accept the - ticket, and not only commit ourselves but the country editors—and <i>they’ve - bought Samboye!</i>” - </p> - <p> - There was a long silence. The two men looked at each other. Finally - Workman said: - </p> - <p> - “The worst feature of it is, there is no way of getting at the thing—of - proving it. I suppose I could get an order compelling the Company to - produce the telegram, but I am not sure, and then it would be a big - scandal and a big expense.” He lapsed into pencil work again and sighed. - </p> - <p> - “But is Samboye that kind of man?” asked Seth. “Oh yes, I have no - illusions on that score. I very nearly caught him in a thing of this sort—on - a smaller scale, of course—three years ago.” - </p> - <p> - “But why then——” - </p> - <p> - “Why have I kept him? You were going to ask. Well, he is a good man in his - way. He is an immensely clever writer, if you don’t care much for solid - argument, and do care for decorative stuff, with a good deal of fun, and - epigram, and big words. People used to talk about his articles. I suppose - hundreds of people buy the <i>Chronicle</i> just to read them. Well, we - will have to lose those people, and all the others who will quarrel with - us for bolting the ticket. For she’s going to be bolted! So you better go - to bed early to-night, and eat raw meat for breakfast, for we want a - leader to-morrow that will make their hair curl.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean——” began Seth in a flutter of strange excitement. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, you will have to take hold. Samboye shall never show his face in - that room again. That’s settled! I may get somebody else, later—we’ll - see. But you can carry it along for a time, can’t you?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll try—but I am afraid——” - </p> - <p> - “You needn’t be afraid. In a campaign you simply want straightforward, - red-hot, to-the-point writing. It is the rest of the year, when one must - write general matter, that pulls on a man. Besides, Ansdell will help you - out, if you need him. Oh, yes, and that reminds me—your brother - Albert didn’t show to very good advantage in that Convention. He might - easily have made a better beginning in politics than that. From all - accounts he had the Dearborn County delegates in his pocket, and, although - these other scandals have diverted attention from it, I think the way they - ratted over was about the worst thing in the whole affair.” - </p> - <p> - “It wasn’t nice, for a fact,” said Seth. - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t had it mentioned in the paper, mostly on your account. But I am - not so clear about keeping silent next week, when the Congressional - Convention comes up. Your brother, I suppose, has Dearborn County solid - for his own candidacy. But here in Adams County the delegates are for - Ansdell—and of course he is our sort of man. I don’t think much of a - party paper interfering before the nomination is made, but this may be a - case where it will be necessary—especially if Abe Beekman, up in Jay - County, tries any of his funny work. However, it will be time enough to - cross that bridge when we get to it. Meanwhile, say not a word to anybody, - in the office or out of it, about what has happened. Just go ahead with - the work, and pay attention to no one.” - </p> - <p> - There was no scandal. Mr. Samboye took his punishment quietly, and left - Tecumseh shortly afterward, ostensibly on a long vacation. There was some - little gossip, but no whisper of the actual facts in the case. - </p> - <p> - Seth surprised himself by the excellence and evenness of his work in the - new position. Probably he will never do better or stronger writing than he - did in this his first campaign. For one thing, it is doubtful if any - political contest can ever again appeal to his enthusiasm, and stir all - his emotions to the glowing point of ardency, as this one did. In one - sense his new position was embarrassing, for a number of the old time - readers of the <i>Chronicle</i> refused to support it now against their - party, and some of them said very disagreeable things about the youngster - rattling about in Samboye’s shoes. But there was another class, a larger - class it seemed to him, who shared his enthusiasm, and, in their excited - admiration for the course of the paper, heaped praises upon him even - beyond his deserts. So he worked on, writing almost the entire page daily, - coming down early in the morning and staying long after the paper was out, - and giving scarcely a thought to the outside world. - </p> - <p> - He had barely seen Ansdell since his promotion. He felt an even greater - sense of loss in this than he would have done under ordinary - circumstances, for the tremendous mental outpouring to which he was daily - subjected made him almost famished, at times, for food in the form of - conversation with this man who, of all others, most sympathized with him. - </p> - <p> - But there was a difficulty in the way—of which Seth’s sensitiveness - made, no doubt, a great deal too much. The fight for the Congressional - nomination in the district was attracting attention all over the State, - and, as evil luck would have it, Seth’s brother was pitted against Seth’s - dearest friend. It was no ordinary contest, in which a man could with ease - maintain a friendly neutrality. Everywhere the struggle in the - Thirty-sixth District was regarded as a sample conflict, as embodying in - itself all the features of the larger issue between the machine and the - people. Albert Fairchild had identified himself so thoroughly with the - party organization, and had played so prominent a part in the scandals - which provoked the revolt, that his cause was distinctly that of the - politicians; while Ansdell was just as distinctively the representative of - the independent and rebellious element. In no other district of the State - were the lines so clearly drawn. - </p> - <p> - It was a fortnight or so after Seth’s assumption of the editorship that - the District Convention was held—at the little village of Tyre, some - dozen miles from Thessaly, up in Jay County. The <i>Chronicle</i> had - taken no part in the contest. No one doubted that its sympathies were with - Ansdell, but still it had not said so. The night before the Convention Mr. - Workman advised Seth to write to his brother, warning him that if he were - nominated the <i>Chronicle</i> could not support him. - </p> - <p> - “So long as we are in the bolting business, we might as well be hanged for - a sheep as a lamb,” said the proprietor. - </p> - <p> - It was not a pleasant task, but Seth performed it as graciously as he - could. - </p> - <p> - There was no news from Tyre next day save that Mr. Beekman of Jay was also - a candidate, and that the Convention was in a deadlock. The second day, - along with the news announcement that the Convention, after seventy-odd - fruitless ballots, had adjourned for a week, came a despatch from Albert - begging Seth to visit the farm for a couple of days, and talk the thing - over, before the <i>Chronicle</i> took action. Upon consultation with Mr. - Workman Seth replied that this was impossible, owing to the necessities of - his work. - </p> - <p> - Then there came a letter from Albert, brief, but very much to the point. - </p> - <p> - “<i>DEAR Brother: I am sorry if your work must suffer by your coming to - me, but I think I have a claim upon you superior to even that of the </i>Chronicle<i>. - If I have not, I ought to have. I decline to believe that, if you - represent the matter to him as really imperative, my former friend, Mr. - Workman, will place any obstacles in your way. But if he does I still - insist that your choice between him and me must be a final one. I do not - write a word to you about gratitude. I simply say, be here at the farm on - Sunday—or never again.</i> - </p> - <p> - “<i>Albert</i>.” - </p> - <p> - After this there was nothing to do but for Seth to telegraph that he would - come. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIX.—THE WELCOME. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Seth walked - over from the Thessaly station, Sunday forenoon, to the farm, he was not, - it may be imagined, in a placid frame of mind. There lay before him an - interview with his brother which could not, in the nature of things, be - pleasant, and which might very easily be distinctly unpleasant. It was his - duty to say sundry things to Albert which were not in themselves nice, and - if Albert was still in the mood shown forth by his peremptory letter, - these remarks would very likely produce a scene. Seth was in no sense - afraid of his brother, nor had the thrifty thought that this brother was a - rich, childless man, to offend whom would be a gratuitous economic - blunder, ever entered his head. The youngster had no faculty whatever for - financial prudence. But he was grateful—almost ridiculously grateful—by - nature. The trait is not a rare one, even in these days when a new - civilization has substituted for individual patronage and beneficence the - thanks-to-nobody trade-unionism of universal conceit and rivalry, but it - was abnormally developed in the youngest of the Fairchilds. - </p> - <p> - He said to himself, as he crossed the fields toward the white and red - land-mark of house and barns on the side hill, that he owed everything in - the world to this brother. Whatever there might be in his public attitude - to condemn, however pernicious his politics might be, still it was his - fraternal feeling and generosity which had created the vast gulf between - Seth the plow-yokel and Seth the editor. These reflections brought no - comfort to the young man. - </p> - <p> - Some perverse agency whispered to him, as he strode along over the - stubble, that after all he had never really liked Albert; and this - liberality of his, too, might it not be a mere cheap mess of pottage, - thrown to Seth to console him for the loss of his rights in the farm? John - had always been incredulous as to Albert’s true goodness in this matter; - might there not be something in these suspicions? Seth tried manfully to - combat these ungenerous doubts, but they forced themselves upon his mind. - </p> - <p> - Then there was Albert’s treatment of his wife! Seth had never been clear - as to the exact nature of Isabel’s grievance against her husband. No - specific allegation of cruelty or neglect, much less of infidelity, had - ever been laid by her at Albert’s door in his brother’s hearing. Indeed, - so far as Seth’s observation went, Albert had always appeared to be a - decent enough sort of husband, complaisant even if somewhat indifferent, - and acquiescent to the verge of weakness, in her whims. He seemed to - refuse her nothing, in the matter of having her own way, and if he most - often broke the ruling conjugal dumbness by satirical comments on her - actions and opinions, he at least never seriously attempted to fetter - either. This sounded like the description of a tolerable husband, as - husbands go. But up against it was to be set Isabel’s plaintive, pitiful, - persistent assertion of unhappiness with him. And clearly she ought to - know what her husband was like a good deal better than an outsider could. - </p> - <p> - So the arguments did battle in Seth’s mind, as he climbed the last fence, - and felt his feet on ancestral soil. He had now only to cross a short - stretch of pasture land to be at his journey’s end. - </p> - <p> - Perfect silence rested on the farm. The fat cows lay lazily about him, - comfortably chewing the cud of sweet aftermath; the cluster of bright, - neat buildings fell into picturesque lines of composition before him, in - the soft, hazy sunshine of Indian summer. The background of scarlet and - ochre and deep purple-browns in the woods beyond, of warm mauve hills and - pale, fluffy clouds above; the shaggy old horse, standing in tranquil - bliss, with his head over the fence; the aged shepherd-dog stretched - asleep on the kitchen door-stone in the sunny distance—all brought - to him a sense of content and beauty which warmed his heart and calmed his - thoughts. The spell of the peaceful, restful scene soothed him. Then, as - by magic, the whole picture seemed to take on the charm of Isabel’s - presence. “I am to see her!” he said aloud, almost exultantly. - </p> - <p> - There had been no special pleasure in this prospect, a few hours before. - Indeed, it had been months since he had been conscious of a genuine desire - to meet his sister-in-law. At times of late it had even seemed to him that - a meeting would be a source of embarrassment, just as the necessity of - keeping up the clandestine correspondence presented itself often to him in - the light of a bore. - </p> - <p> - But now—yes! she was walking forth swiftly to meet him—coming - over the grass with a gliding haste which had a wealth of welcome in every - motion. The very genius of the mellow, warm-hearted season she seemed to - his eyes as she advanced, clad in some soft, indefinite stuff, - loose-flowing, and that in tint under the red noon sun could be the shadow - on golden grain, or the light on dark puce grapes, or the dim, violet haze - over the distant valley. She was near him now, beaming with unaffected - delight, reaching out her hands in greeting—and his heart went to - meet her. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Seth! How good of you to come!” - </p> - <p> - She had almost thrown herself into his arms, and had stood upon tiptoe to - be kissed. He held himself back from the embrace, but he did kiss her, and - he swung her hands now in his, looking into her glowing eyes with tender, - responsive intentness, and smiling his joy. This reception did make him - very happy, but he had also a great uneasiness lest some of the folks - should be observing them from the windows of the house. - </p> - <p> - She divined his thoughts, and said, gayly: “They are all at church!” - </p> - <p> - “What? Albert too?” Seth knew that his brother was not of a religious - turn; but he swiftly bethought himself, and added “Oh, I forgot that - election is coming on.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” she chirruped, springing along by his side, her arm tight in his, - her walk reflecting exultantly her emotion, “he is in New York. He will be - back to-morrow. He has telegraphed me to have you wait.” She dropped into - a mock-serious tone: “That is, of course, if you would <i>like</i> to - wait?” She looked up archly: “Do you much mind waiting?” - </p> - <p> - “Do I <i>mind!</i>” He could only look his delight. His voice trembled. - </p> - <p> - She made a tiny skip, and lifted her face to him again, radiant with - happiness. “Do you know,” she said, “I could run and jump like any little - child, I am so wild with joy! It seems such an age since we were together - last! Only letters—but they were very nice, though. You dear boy, - who taught you to write such pretty letters—?” - </p> - <p> - He pressed her arm closer in his. “Who taught me everything that is - sweet?” he whispered. It was all very delicious, but still it troubled - him. - </p> - <p> - They entered the house, and he excused himself while he took his hand-bag - up to his old room, and made his toilet after the long hot walk. As he - occupied himself thus, and brushed his novel beard, his thoughts were much - perturbed. It was very far from his ideas to make love to his brother’s - wife. This bald statement of the situation which framed itself now in his - mind, almost for the first time, repelled and alarmed him. Yet it seemed - to sum up the state of affairs fairly. If there was not lovemaking in - every feature of that meeting out on the lawn, then his conceptions of the - tender passion were all at fault. - </p> - <p> - “By Jove, it mustn’t come to that!” he said to himself. “A fellow ought to - be able to be fond of his sister-in-law, and be pleasant to her, and - sympathize with her and all that, without going beyond the bounds, and - making a scoundrel of himself.” - </p> - <p> - And it was with a deep resolution to be careful, and watch all his words, - that he descended the stairs. He had taken out of his valise two front - pages of a Sunday newspaper, containing “Jeff Brigg’s Love Story,” which - he had saved a while before for Isabel, and he gave them now to her. - </p> - <p> - “Here is something I cut out for you, Isabel; it is a very pretty story, - and I know you will like it.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, how sweet of you! How well you know just what will please me most of - all! And you shall read it to me! The other stories you have sent me were - only moderately nice, because I had to read them by myself, but this—oh! - this will be enchanting!” - </p> - <p> - She arranged an easy chair—a low, capacious chair with light blue - the dominant color in its covering—close beside the window in the - parlor which overlooked the poplars, and seated herself in it. Seth - brought a hassock for her feet, and then put his own chair along side, - where he could see her, and still get a good light on the print. It was - not easy for him to begin the reading, so great was the fascination of - looking at his companion. The sunlight flared upon the white curtains - above her, and its reflections glowed back again from her crown of golden - braids, luminous against the azure of the chair, and tipped with soft - radiance her rounded profile, in cameo-relief against the deep olive of - the poplars. Isabel was an artist. - </p> - <p> - He made a beginning at last, and read until the democrat-wagon drove up in - the yard, with its load of church-goers. She made a little mouth at the - interruption. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose Sabrina will come in now, and dinner will be ready soon. But - afterwards we can be quiet again, for she always reads the Bible in her - own room Sunday afternoons.” - </p> - <p> - All through the cold dinner, despite the necessity of answering Aunt - Sabrina’s and Milton’s remarks, Seth found his mental vision fixed on that - beautiful profile against the leafy background; especially sweet was the - portrait when the eyes were closed, and the lovely fullness above the - lids, as in the face of a Madonna, was revealed in the wavering light. - </p> - <p> - The story was not to be finished that afternoon, for Elhanan Pratt and his - daughter dropped in almost before the meal was finished, and a little - later Annie Fairchild came. There was not even much consolation in the - pretty grimaces expressive of discontent which Isabel from time to time, - when the visitors were not looking, confided to Seth. It was a very dull - afternoon. - </p> - <p> - The venerable Mr. Pratt, a weazen, verbose little “gentleman-farmer,” who - wore a huge black satin stock over his high flaring collar opening behind, - and remained clean-shaven, in pious memory of Henry Clay and the coon - campaign, sat on the edge of his chair and droned commonplaces by the - hour. He evidently had an axe to grind by his visit, and he was much - disappointed by Albert’s absence. But if he could not see “the coming - Congressman,” as he called him once or twice, and sound that new political - magnate as to his own renomination for the Assembly, he could at least - enjoy the monopoly of a long conversation with the Editor of the Tecumseh - <i>Chronicle</i>, and impress that young man with the breadth and value of - his views. So Seth was forced to spend three dreary hours, answering as - briefly as might be, listening wearily, and stealing stray glances at the - three young women, who made a brighter group on the other side of the - parlor stove. Once or twice he tried tentatively to engraft himself upon - their conversation, and choke old Elhanan off, but the solemn little bore - relentlessly brought him back to the dry bones of politics. Thus it - happened that he had barely had an opportunity of exchanging a word with - his cousin Annie, when she stood up and said, “I must be going.” - </p> - <p> - He walked over to her now, and put his hand in a brotherly way on her - shoulder, as he helped her on with her cloak. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve scarcely had a word with you, Annie,” he said, smiling. “How is your - grandmother? I needn’t ask how <i>you</i> are. You grow prettier everyday. - And how do you get on with your school?”—for the girl was now - teaching in the district school house over the hill. - </p> - <p> - She answered, “Oh, grandmother is about the same; perhaps a little weaker, - but as bright mentally as ever. You are looking well, Seth, and quite the - man now. Your beard becomes you—doesn’t it, Isabel? We are so sorry - you can’t come to-morrow night. We see so little of you since you have - become a city man.” - </p> - <p> - “Sorry that I can’t come!” repeated Seth after her. - </p> - <p> - “Come where?” Isabel interposed with a ready explanation. “There is to be - a husking over at Crump’s to-morrow evening—the first of the season. - There will be a big party of young people, and Crump sent over by Annie an - invitation for us. But I have explained that you are here on business, - which may very likely occupy you to-morrow evening, and that in any case - you would have to write your leaders for the next day’s paper. We are ever - so sorry, Annie,” she added, turning to the school-teacher now, “but you - know this is a terribly busy time with Seth, and we mustn’t think of - letting our little country sociables interfere with his work. Some time, - soon, he will come for a real vacation, instead of a flying business trip, - and then we can monopolize him—and we will, too, won’t we, Annie?” - </p> - <p> - Annie smiled, a little faintly, as if her heart were not altogether in it, - and replied, “Yes, to be sure we will.” She added, to Seth, “I won’t say - goodbye. I suppose I shall see you again.” - </p> - <p> - He assented, and went to the door with her, and stood on the steps - watching her as she walked away in the autumn dusk. Decidedly she <i>was</i> - a pretty girl! - </p> - <p> - The Pratts, father and daughter, consented upon the shadowiest suggestion - of an invitation to stay and partake of the picked-up Sunday tea, and that - involved their spending the evening. Aunt Sabrina came in, and the talk - was dreary and general. So “Jeff Briggs” and his amatory affairs went over - to the morrow. - </p> - <p> - In the morning Seth walked over to Thessaly and saw John. The interview - depressed him. John had had some idea of following the <i>Chronicle’s</i> - lead, and bolting the State ticket, but the county politicians had bullied - him out of the thing by threatening the destruction of the job-printing - business connected with the <i>Banner of Liberty</i>, and the boycotting - of the paper itself. All his inclinations, too, were toward Ansdell in the - Congressional race; but Albert had loaned him some money, and, beside, he - couldn’t see his way clear to disregarding, openly at least, the fraternal - tie. He was consequently in a savage mood. - </p> - <p> - “I’m thinking of taking out the head-line of the paper this week,” he - growled, with a sardonic humor, “and putting in instead a cut of a runaway - slave, with a bundle over his shoulder, which is in the job-room here, - left over from the days when there was slavery in New York State, and - masters used to advertise in the old paper for fugitives. ‘<i>Banner of - Liberty</i> ’ indeed! By heaven, it ought to be ‘<i>Banner of - Bondage!</i>” - </p> - <p> - There was no comfort or profit in discussing the situation, either general - or local, with John. He neither knew nor cared, he swore, what Albert’s - chances were to dissolve the deadlock on the morrow. He might or he - mightn’t; it was all one to him, and apparently to the party, who were the——! - </p> - <p> - Seth left John to his bad temper and language, and returned to the farm in - the afternoon. A telegram from Albert awaited him. - </p> - <p> - <i>“New York, Oct. 19.—If possible conclude business, home to-night, - at latest to-morrow morning. Wait for me at all hazards.—Albert.”</i> - </p> - <p> - To provide against a possible delay over Tuesday, Seth devoted the - afternoon, and the earlier part of the evening, to writing matter for his - paper, which Dana was to convey to Thessaly for the early morning train, - when he went to the cheese-factory. If Albert was coming at all that - night, he would arrive about eight. - </p> - <p> - Nine o’clock came. Aunt Sabrina, after sitting in stem silence by the - living-room stove for an hour or two, looking at the wall-paper as her - brother Lemuel had been won’t to do, went up to bed with a frigid “good - night.” The farm people had all retired with the chickens, long before. - </p> - <p> - Scarcely raising his eyes from his writing, Seth remarked: - </p> - <p> - “How Aunt Sabrina has failed since I left the farm! She grows ever so much - like father. Poor old woman, she was so eager to have Albert come here, so - elated with the idea that the family was to be restored to social and - political dignity again—and now the apples seem to be all dead-sea - fruit to her. I can’t see that she takes the slightest interest in - Albert’s campaign. Odd, isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - Isabel was sitting near the stove, around the corner of the table from - him. The reddish radiance reflected down from the shaded lamp fell upon - her rounded chin and her smooth white neck, dainty in tint as the ruffle - in which it lost itself. Above this lace at the back, as she bent over her - embroidery, some stray curling wisps of hair gleamed like gold in the - light. She replied: - </p> - <p> - “It isn’t that at all. She’s interested enough in the Congress idea, or - would be if she hadn’t something else on her mind. The prying old piece - found out, by quizzing Dana, about our writing to each other. She has got - it into her ridiculous old head, I feel sure, that there is something - between us. Didn’t you notice the way she eyed us at the dinner table - yesterday?” - </p> - <p> - Seth did not answer. His article was unfinished, but he suddenly found - himself in doubt whether it was not already long enough. He reflected, or - tried to reflect, for a moment, while the soft tones of her voice murmured - in his ears, then added a sentence which might serve as a conclusion, and - scrawled a dash underneath. - </p> - <p> - “There! I’m through!” he said, and looked up. - </p> - <p> - Her eyes were fixed upon his face. They were in the shadow of the tinted - lamp-shade, but they had a light of their own—a languorous, alluring - glow. He had never looked into such eyes before; they fascinated him, and - he knew, in a delicious trembling, that his own were answering them in - kind. - </p> - <p> - “You can read to me now,” she said, the rapt, wistful gaze melting into a - smile. “He will not come to-night.” - </p> - <p> - Seth took the story, as she gave it to him from her workbox, and glanced - over it to pick up the thread of the narrative where it had been dropped. - As he was still thus engaged, he felt her hand laid upon his, and, as - their eyes met again, heard her low, soft voice murmur: - </p> - <p> - “Do you know why I declined our invitation for the husking?” - </p> - <p> - There was a silence, which the young man felt that his face made full of - acquiescent meaning. - </p> - <p> - She answered her own question: “I wanted you here, all for myself.” - </p> - <p> - Seth lost himself in an uplifting, floating sensation of ethereal - beatitude. Her hand was in his now, warm and palpitating, and he raised it - to his lips. It was difficult to breathe, but the oppression in his breast - was all delight. He rose to his feet, his arms outstretched, his heart - beating in exultant tumult. He heard her whisper—he could scarcely - see her for the magnetic waving before his eyes—the refrain of the - story: “So strong and yet so gentle!” His lips were formed for the - passionate utterance—already framed in his heart—“My darling!” - when there came the sound of footsteps on the path without, and of a hand - upon the latch. - </p> - <p> - Seth mechanically took up the manuscript of his article, and turned toward - the door. Beneath an impassive mien, far more composed than he dared to - hope, there was the sensation of being hurled down, down, through the air, - to unwelcome earth. - </p> - <p> - It was Albert. He looked at the two cursorily but closely, and only said, - as he tossed his bag into a chair: - </p> - <p> - “Train was late. You go to bed at once, Isabel. I have particular business - with Seth.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XX.—THE NIGHT: THE BROTHERS. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>lbert seemed in an - amiable mood as, divesting himself of his outer garments, he drew up a - chair by the fire, offered Seth a cigar from his case and lighted one - himself. He examined Seth’s face by the flame of the match, as the latter - lighted his cigar, and appeared to be satisfied with the inspection. - </p> - <p> - “Sit down here,” he said pleasantly. “I want a good long talk with you. It - was too bad to keep you waiting so long, but there was no help for it. I - couldn’t see the people in New York that I wanted to see until to-day, and - it was only by good fortune that I caught the train as it was. Then we - were delayed on the road, of course. If an engineer on this one-horse line - should ever get a train through on time I believe he’d have a fit, just - from the shock of the thing. And then I had to wake up the man at the - livery stable in Thessaly—fancy his being asleep at eight o’clock!—and - he would only bring me as far as the foot of the hill, because he had been - up to a dance all the previous night. But of course, in my position now, - running for office, I couldn’t complain. Beside, I ought to be used to all - these little delights of rural existence by this time.” - </p> - <p> - Albert stretched his feet out comfortably on the rail of the stove, and - leaned back in his chair with an air of enjoyment. He had been growing - very stout this past year, Seth noticed, and the bald spot on his crown - had visibly spread. He seemed unwontedly good-natured too—a natural - and proper accompaniment to increasing obesity. - </p> - <p> - “But all this has nothing to do with my asking you to come here, has it? - Did Workman raise any objections to your coming?” - </p> - <p> - “No, of course not, after he read your letter.” - </p> - <p> - The lawyer smiled complacently: “I thought that letter would fetch him. Of - course, my boy, the harshness of the letter was for effect on him, not on - you. It simply gave you a chance to say you had <i>got</i> to come.” - </p> - <p> - Seth did not find himself wholly clear on this point, but he nodded - assent. Albert looked at him, and seemed a trifle annoyed at having the - conversation all to himself, but he went on after a moment’s pause, - speaking now with good humored gravity: - </p> - <p> - “First of all, I ought to tell you how proud I have been of your fine - progress on the <i>Chronicle</i>. I doubt if there is another young man of - your age in the State who has done so much climbing in so short a time. I - take a real satisfaction in thinking that you are my brother. I can’t tell - you how often I say to myself: ‘Albert Fairchild, the best thing you ever - did in your life, or ever will do, was to give that boy a chance.’” - </p> - <p> - This was gall and wormwood to the young man. He had almost succeeded in - regaining the composure so abruptly scattered by Albert’s unexpected - arrival. The fluttering agitation came back now, and brought with it a - painful sense of shame and self-reproach as Albert’s words recalled the - scene which his entrance had interrupted. Seth did not look his brother in - the face, but murmured some commonplace of gratitude. He was glad that - there was a red shade on the lamp; it might conceal his flush of - humiliation. - </p> - <p> - Albert went on: “But you were not invited here so peremptorily just to - hear this. Brotherly pride and affection are things that don’t need words—that - can be taken for granted—are they not?” - </p> - <p> - Seth tried to smile, and said, “Yes, of course they are.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, youngster, I am taking them for granted in your case. Mind, as I - said in my letter, I am not saying a word about gratitude. I don’t want - the thing to be put on that footing at all. Brothers ought to be able to - help each other, and all that, without lugging in the question of - gratitude. I am talking to you as one man should to another who bears the - same name, and was of the same mother. By George! poetry, isn’t it? Well, - the point is this. The time has come when you can help me, help me - immensely. I am not in this fight for myself alone. Personally I care very - little about going to Congress. But I have got the family to consider, and - I am in a position now where I can make a ten-strike for it. A good deal - of it I have created myself. These countrymen up here in Dearborn County - fancy they are shrewd politicians, but it has taken me, almost a novice in - politics, less than two years to get the whole machinery right under my - thumb. It’s in the blood, I tell you! There wasn’t another manager in this - whole section that could hold a candle to the old Senator, in his day,—and - if he could keep track of things now I imagine he’d admit that his - grandson was no slouch.” - </p> - <p> - Albert chuckled quietly at the slang word, the expressiveness of which - pleased him, and at the vision of the satisfaction of the departed - ancestor which it suggested. He proceeded: - </p> - <p> - “I can’t tell you all my plans, but I am in a big combination. I have made - use of my large connections as a lawyer in New York to arrange some things - which would open your eyes if you knew them. It is all settled that I am - going on to a Committee which will be worth while, I can tell you. And - then, once started in the thing, with my grandfather’s name back of me, - there is no telling where I may not climb. A name that has figured in the - blue book as ours has is a tremendous power. The Republic derides - heredity, but the public believes in it. It is human nature, my boy. And - in this rehabilitation of the family name you have as much concern as I - have—in fact more than I have—for you will enjoy even more - than I shall the fame and wealth I am going to get out of this thing, for - the family.” - </p> - <p> - “Where does the wealth come in, Albert? There is no money honestly to be - made in politics.” Seth had forgotten his earlier embarrassment now, and - the spirit of dispute was rising within him. - </p> - <p> - “My dear fellow,” said the elder brother, comfortably contemplating the - rings of cigar smoke he was making, “to the wise there is money - everywhere. The word ‘honesty’ in politics is a purely relative term, just - as it is in your line, or in law, or in medicine. If we lawyers strictly - graded our charges by the net value of our services to our clients, if - doctors refused to make all calls upon patients that were not altogether - necessary, and based their bills rigidly upon the actual good they had - done—by George! the poor-houses would have to be enlarged. Take your - own business, for instance, or I ought to call it a profession, too, I - suppose. Are editors invariably candid with their readers, do you think? - Do they always tell the disagreeable truth about people they make their - money from? And don’t they have an open hand behind the back about the - same as other folks do? Occasionally, I admit, an ass like our brother - John does drift into the profession, and retains his childhood belief that - the moon is made of green cheese. But I have noticed that such fellows as - he, who run their papers on an exalted moral plane, generally come around - to borrow money from the ungodly, toward the close of the year, to make - their accounts balance. I am sorry to see that John and Ansdell have - filled your head with all this nonsense. A newspaper man tearing his shirt - in defense of financial fastidiousness in politics presents rather a - comical spectacle, if you only knew it.” - </p> - <p> - “You have no right at all to say that!” Seth answered hotly. “I believe - firmly that the newspaper men of this country, considering their influence - and the great temptation to make money out of it, are as honest a body of - men as you can find in America. This conventional talk about their - venality is the cruellest kind of libel, and if you knew them as I do you - wouldn’t lend yourself to circulating it.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am not entirely without acquaintance in this white-winged - profession of yours,” replied the lawyer, smilingly. “I know Mr. Mortimer - Samboye, for example. I could tell you too, you confiding youngster, just - his figure, and where the cheque, made payable to his wife, was cashed.” - </p> - <p> - “If you do know about Samboye, you know what I believe to be the one - exception to the rule in the State. I don’t for a moment believe that - there is another editor whom your people could have bought. It is an - odious exception, to be sure, but exceptions prove the rule. If - journalists and journals were in the market, as you and your machine - friends seem to imagine, there would be no such widespread bolt against - your machine ticket to-day.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you think so, do you?” - </p> - <p> - The lawyer was getting vexed. He stood up, thrust his hands deep into his - trowsers pockets, and spoke with more sharpness than before. - </p> - <p> - “You think so! Why, man alive, this same d——d <i>Chronicle</i> - of yours has been in the market since before you were born. I bet you - to-day that Workman would rather plank out five thousand dollars from his - own pocket than let me cross-examine him in the witness box on his - recollections of the <i>Chronicle’s</i> record. Why, that is the very last - paper in the State that has a title to throw stones! Do you want to know - when this new reforming zeal of Workman’s was born? I can tell you. It was - the day that another man (Dick Folts, if you wish names), was appointed to - the Territorial Governorship that Workman wanted for his brother. So you - thought it was only high morality and noble patriotic sentiments that - ailed the <i>Chronicle</i>, did you? You never suspected that it was - simply a bad case of brother—that it all happened because Samuel M. - Workman of Toboggan was compelled to continue to adorn a private station? - You think the world is run on kid-gloved, scriptural ethics? It reminds me - of a novel I read here awhile ago. It set out to describe An American - Politician—and in almost every scene in the book where he appeared, - he was drinking tea in some lady’s drawing room, declaiming to the fair - sex on how he was going to reform politics. He thought he was a deuce of a - fellow, and so did the women and the author too. This politician was a - good sample of all your reformers. I tell you, the men who go to afternoon - teas in America, exert no more influence on American politics than—than - a hen who was too refined to scratch in the barn-yard for worms would - exert on the question of female suffrage. Now <i>don’t</i> make a fool of - yourself, Seth. Your predecessor, Samboye, was in no way your equal—some - fellow at the club once, I remember, just hit him off in a phrase which he - had hunted up in the dictionary to sling at him: ‘a nugipolyloquous - numbskull ’—but he knew enough to feather his own nest, and - to take men as they are, and not as the Prophet Jeremiah might think they - ought to be. <i>Don’t</i> make me angry with this pharisaical nonsense! - You are very young yet. You will see things differently when you have - rubbed up against the world a while longer.” - </p> - <p> - Seth also stood up now, with his hands deep in his pockets—a trick - of all the Fairchilds when they were excited. - </p> - <p> - “I have no desire to make you angry,” he answered, beginning with an - effort at calmness, but soon raising his voice, “and I shouldn’t have - dreamed of inflicting my juvenile views on you if you hadn’t insisted, - even to the point of a threat, on my coming here. I would rather not argue - the thing at all. We regard politics from totally different standpoints. I - believe that your methods and aims—by ‘your’ I mean your wing of the - party—are scandalous, corrupting and ruinous. I believe that if some - check is not put upon the rule of the machine, if the drift of public - acquiescence in debased processes of government is not stopped, it will - soon be too late to save even the form of our institutions from the dry - rot of venality.” - </p> - <p> - “Seems to me I’ve read all this. Don’t work your old leaders off on me. - Talk sense!” said Albert. - </p> - <p> - Seth dropped rhetoric: “All this is very real, very big, to me. To you it - is impracticable and meaningless. You don’t at all believe in the dangers - which are so apparent to me. Perhaps if you did you wouldn’t care. That is - all right. I have no desire to convert you, or to debate the question with - you. I simply want to explain that there is no community of premises, - even, between us on this subject. As for your explanation of the motives - underlying the <i>Chronicle’s</i> attitude, I shan’t contradict you. So - far as I am concerned, the matter is not in argument. It is enough for me - that we bolt the State ticket, and occupy the ground we do. It is no - concern of mine by what path we got there.” - </p> - <p> - Albert had heard his brother through with contemptuous impatience. He said - now, with one foot on the stove hearth, and in a voice which, by its very - coldness of calm, ought to have warned Seth of the temper underlying it: - </p> - <p> - “You may bolt the State ticket as much as you d——d please. I - don’t like your doing it, and it will injure you more than any efforts of - mine can make good, but I can’t help it, and it wasn’t for that that I - wanted to see you. But if you bolt <i>me</i>, Mr. Seth, or put so much as - a straw in my path, by God! I’ll grind you, and your paper, and everybody - responsible for it, finer than tooth-powder! However—we will exhaust - the other side of the subject first. I’ve had it in mind for a long while, - in fact ever since I first procured you a place there, to buy you a share - in the <i>Chronicle</i>. Workman would be glad of the ready money—he - itches for it as much as any living man—and it would be a good thing - for you. Would you like that?” - </p> - <p> - “You haven’t told me yet what you dragged me up here, away from my work, - for,” said Seth. “You presumably had an object of some sort.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, you want to get down to business, do you? You shall have it, in a - nutshell. I want you to see Ansdell, and get him to promise that if I beat - him in the Convention he will support me squarely at the polls; I want you - to get a pledge from Workman that the <i>Chronicle</i> will come out for - me, solid, the day after I am nominated. <i>That’s</i> what I want, and it - is mighty little for <i>me</i> to ask of <i>you!</i> And you may tell - Workman for me that if he and his paper give me the smallest ground for - complaint, and waver in the least in backing me up, I’ll start a paper in - Tecumseh before Christmas that will crush the <i>Chronicle</i> out of - sight. The paper is no good, anyway. I know hundreds of good citizens who - would rejoice to have a decent substitute for it.” The pride of the editor - was wounded. “You seem to worry a good deal about this worthless paper, at - all events,” he said, bitterly. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t bandy words with me, youngster!” cried Albert, scowling and pacing - the floor. “I want your answer, or the answer of your employer—yes - or no! I’ll have none of your impudence!” - </p> - <p> - Seth held his temper down. He could not help feeling that his brother, - from the fraternal standpoint at least, had some pretty strong arguments - on his side. He made answer: - </p> - <p> - “I should have no influence with Ansdell, one way or the other, even if I - talked with him. He knows his own business best, and if he has made up his - mind to a certain course, nothing that I could say would move him. As for - the <i>Chronicle</i> we’ve kept our hands off, thus far, on your account, - and we’ve said nothing at all about your leading the Dearborn County - delegates into the machine camp at the State Convention, although the - whole rest of the State is ringing with it. But I am charged to say that - that is as much as we can do. If you are nominated, we can’t and won’t - support you. It is not a nice thing for me to have to say to you, but - there’s no good mincing matters. Besides, you know—there may be a - way out of it; you may not be nominated to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “All hell can’t prevent it!” The words came forth in an explosion of - wrath. Albert stamped his foot and clenched his fists as Seth had never - seen him do before. He tapped his breast three or four times, - significantly, as if there were something in the pocket to which he was - referring—Seth remembered the gesture long afterward—and - repeated that his nomination was assured. He seemed to dislike his - passion, and strive to restrain it, but the choleric vein between his - brows grew more swollen, and his black, keen eyes flashed more angrily - than ever, as he strode up and down before the stove. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, and I’ll be elected too! All the white-livered hounds in Adams - County, from my own brother up, shall not stop me! I’ll stump the district - every night and day till election. I’ll speak in Tecumseh—yes, in - Tecumseh, at the biggest meeting money and organisation can get together—and - I’ll handle this whole bolting business so’s to warm the hearts of honest - men all over the State. By God! I’ll shake Workman as a terrier shakes a - rat, in view and hearing of his whole community! Won’t he squirm though! - And won’t the crowd enjoy having him shown up! And <i>you</i>”—there - followed some savage personal abuse, profane in form—“after - to-morrow morning, never let me lay eyes on you again!” - </p> - <p> - “It is not for the pleasure of seeing you that I come here, ever,” Seth - retorted, the words coming quick and fierce. “Be sure I’d never trouble - you again, if you were the only one in this house!” - </p> - <p> - The lawyer’s eyes sparkled with a sardonic meaning, and Seth, as he saw - it, bit his tongue with impatience at the thoughtless form of his speech; - for he read in this cold, glancing light that nothing had been lost upon - his brother’s perception when he entered the room. - </p> - <p> - There was a full minute’s silence, in which the two men faced each other. - Albert was busy thinking how to put most effectively the things he was now - moved to say. At last he spoke, coolly, incisively once more, while Seth, - flushed and anxious, pretended to regulate the flame of the lamp. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I have no illusions about the motive of your visits to the farm. I - am not blind; even if I were, others about the house are not. I am not - going to say what you are doubtless expecting. I might point out to you - that a young man who comes to a brother’s house—I will say nothing - of the debt of gratitude he owes him—and steals chances to make love - to that brother’s wife, is a pitiful cur. Stop!”—for Seth had - straightened himself angrily at this epithet, despite his consciousness of - self-reproach. - </p> - <p> - “I repeat that I <i>might</i> say this—but I will not. I prefer to - view it in another light. I don’t think you are a knave. To be that - requires intelligence. You are a fool,—a conceited, presumptuous, - offensive fool. You set yourself up to judge <i>me</i>; you arrogate to - yourself airs of moral superiority, and assume to regulate affairs of - State by the light of your virtue and wisdom—and you have not brains - enough meanwhile to take care of yourself against the cheapest wiles of a - silly woman, who amuses herself with young simpletons just to kill time. - You take upon yourself to lay down the law to a great National party—and - you don’t know enough to see through even so transparent a game as this. - Get out of my sight! I have wasted too much time with you. It annoys me to - think that such an idiot belongs to the family.” - </p> - <p> - Albert had rightly calculated that he could thus most deeply and surely - wound Seth, but he was mistaken in his estimate of the nature of the - response. If Seth’s vanity was scalded by his brother’s words, he at least - didn’t show it. But he did advance upon Albert with clenched fists, and - gleaming eyes, and shout fiercely at him: - </p> - <p> - “A man who will speak that way of his wife is a coward and a scoundrel! - And if it is my cousin Isabel he means, he is a liar to boot! If you were - not my brother——” - </p> - <p> - “If I were not, what then?” - </p> - <p> - Albert waited a moment for the answer, which the conflict between Seth’s - rage and his half-guilty consciousness choked in the utterance, and then - calmly turned on his heel and left the room, by the same outside door at - which he had entered. - </p> - <p> - As Seth went upstairs, he heard Isabel’s door close softly. “I wonder how - much of it she heard?” he said to himself. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXI.—THE NIGHT: MASTER AND MAN. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>LBERT walked - across the yard toward the larger of the new stable buildings. It was a - dry, warm, luminous night, radiant overhead with the glory of a whole - studded heaven of stars. The moon, the full, shining-faced moon of - October, would rise in an hour or so, and then would come pale mists along - the valley bottom-lands, and perhaps clouds in the eastern sky. But one - could walk bareheaded in this soft starlight now, without a fear of cold. - </p> - <p> - The lawyer paid no sort of attention to the night, but strode across the - grass, swung himself over the stile, and pulled back the great stable - door, creaking shrilly on its rollers, with angry energy. He stopped upon - the threshold of the darkness, through which the shapes of carriages - covered with white sheets vaguely loomed, and called out: - </p> - <p> - “Milton!” - </p> - <p> - There was the answering sound of footsteps overhead. A door at the top of - the stairs was opened, and a flood of light illumined the staircase. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you’ve got back, ay?” said a voice from the top. - </p> - <p> - It had been Milton’s idea, when the new buildings were erected, to achieve - complete domestic autonomy by arranging for himself a residential room - above the carriage place. The chamber was high and commodious. It had been - lathed and plastered, and, in lieu of wall-paper, the sides were decorated - with coarsely-colored circus bills, or pictures from sporting weeklies, - all depicting women in tights. There was a good corded bed in one corner. - Two chairs, a stained pine table on which, beside the lamp, were some - newspapers, a little wood stove, and a mantel-shelf covered with tin-types - and cheap photographs, completed the scene. Milton enjoyed living here - greatly. It comported with his budding ideas of his own personal dignity, - and it freed him from the disagreeable supervision which the elder Miss - Fairchild was so prone to exercise over all who lived in the house. Only - the Lawton girl, Melissa, came across the yard each forenoon, to tidy up - the room, and chuckle over the pictures and the tastes which these, and - the few books Milton from time to time brought home from a - sporting-library at Thessaly, indicated. - </p> - <p> - “It’s lucky you hadn’t gone to bed,” said the lawyer, curtly, pulling his - hat over his eyes to shade them from the flaring light, and sitting down. - “I was going to wake you up. What’s your news?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve been over to Tyre twice to see Beekman, ’n’ no use. Once he - wouldn’t talk at all—jis’ kep his ole lantern-jaws tight shet, ’n’ - said ’Ef Albert Fairchild wants to see me, he knaows where I kin be - faound.’ Th’ other time he was more talkative—tried his best to fine - aout what I was drivin’ at, but I couldn’t git no satisfaction aout o’ - him. He wouldn’t bine himself to nothin’. He jis’ stood off et arm’s - lenth, ’n’ sized up what I was a sayin’ in that dum sly way o’ his. - I couldn’t make head nor tail of him. He wouldn’t say he would take money, - ’n’ he wouldn’t say he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t say yes or nao to th’ - post office scheme, or anythin’ else. He jis’ kep’ his big eyes on me, as - much as to say, ‘You ketch a weasel asleep!’ ’n’ listened. Naow yeh - knaow th’ hull of it. If yeh want anythin’ more done, yeh better do it - yerself.” - </p> - <p> - The lawyer looked attentively at his hired man, and drummed with his - fingers on the-table. “So that’s all, is it? You are no further ahead with - Beek-man than when the Convention adjourned? You’ve got no proposition - from him—no statement as to how he takes my proposals?” - </p> - <p> - “That’s it, Albert—jest it!” - </p> - <p> - Something in Milton’s tone seemed to annoy Albert even more than his - confession of failure had done. He rose to his feet abruptly. “Don’t - ‘Albert’ me!” he said, raising his voice out of its accustomed calm; “I - don’t like it! You take too much upon yourself. But—I am to blame - for it myself. I’ve let you run things with too free a hand, and trusted - affairs to you that I ought to have kept to myself. It is always my way,” - he went on, in petulant selfcriticism. “I never did trust anybody who was - worth the powder to blow him up. I ought to be used to it by this time. - But to encounter two such fools in one evening—and this evening of - all others, too—by George! it’s enough to make a man strike his - mother!” - </p> - <p> - “I ain’t no fool, Mister Fairchild”—the hired man was standing up - too, and his harsh tones gave the title an elaborate, almost ridiculous - emphasis—“’n’ I’ll thank yeh to keep yer tongue civil, tew! - Ef yeh don’t like my style, yeh kin git sum’un else to do yer dirty work - for yeh. I’ve no hankerin’ fer it. I’m hired to manage this farm, I am. - Nothin’ was said ’baout my hevin’ to run a Congresshn’l campaign - into th’ bargain. I ain’t sayin’ but what I kin do it’s well’s some other - folks. I ain’t sayin’ that it’s beyon’ me. P’raps I’ve got my pull ’n’ - this caounty, ’s well ’s some other people. P’raps ’f - I was amine to, I could knock somebuddy’s game skyhigh, jis’ by liftin’ my - little finger tomorrer. I ain’t sayin’ I’m goin’ to dew it. I ain’t - findin’ no fault with yeh. All I say is I ain’t goin’ to take one ioty o’ - slack from you, or anybody else, about this thing. You hear <i>me!</i>” - </p> - <p> - The hired man had spoken aggressively and loudly, with his thumbs in the - arm-holes of his vest, and his shaggy head well up in the air. He knew his - employer pretty well, and had estimated with some precision the amount of - impudence he would bear. This full measure he was not disposed to abate - one atom. He had failed to buy the Jay County boss, or even to - satisfactorily gauge his intentions, it was true, but that was no reason - why he should submit to being called a fool by Albert Fairchild, who - couldn’t run his farm, let alone his Congressional campaign, without him. - So the mean-figured, slouching countryman, with his cheap, ill-fitting - clothes, frowzy beard, and rough, red hands truculently spread palm - outward on his breast, stood his ground before the city lawyer and grinned - defiance at him. - </p> - <p> - The lawyer did not immediately reply. He was not ordinarily at a loss for - words or decisions in his dealings with men, but this rude, uncouth - rustic, with his confident air and his fund of primordial cunning, puzzled - him. There was some uneasiness in the feeling, too, for he could not - remember the exact limits of his confidences with Milton. Moreover he - could not afford, at any price, to quarrel with him now on the eve of the - Convention. “After the election we’ll clip your wings, my fine fellow,” he - thought to himself, but he gave the words upon which he finally decided a - kindlier turn. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I hear you. Almost anybody on the side-hill could, the way you are - talking. There is no reason why you should lose your temper. If you - couldn’t fix Beekman, why that’s all there is to it. We must go at it in a - different way. I can see through him. He’s standing out for a cash - payment. The old fox wants money down.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you’ve got it fur him, hain’t yeh? Go ’n’ give it to him, - straight aout!” - </p> - <p> - “But that’s it—I wanted you to bring back an idea of his figure.” - </p> - <p> - “His figger. How much hev yeh got?” - </p> - <p> - “Never mind that—it’s a d——d sight more than the office - is worth; but when a man gets into a fight of this sort, he’s got to force - his way through, cost or no cost.” - </p> - <p> - “Air yeh sure it can’t be traced? Wuz yeh careful to raise it so nobuddy - cud spot yeh, and give aout that yeh got so much money together for - purposes o’ bribery?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, it is perfectly safe. There is no record.” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ nobuddy on airth knaows yeh’ve got th’ money?” - </p> - <p> - “Not a living soul!” - </p> - <p> - The two men communed together as to the importance of immediate action. - The Convention was to reassemble at Tyre, fifteen miles away, at eleven - the following forenoon. The political master of Jay County, Abe Beekman, - who held in his hands the deciding power, lived near Tyre, but in the - valley some miles further on. The first train from Thessaly in the morning - would be too late, for Beekman would have already arrived on the ground at - Tyre, coming from the opposite direction, and would have begun work on his - own hook. He must be seen at his home, early in the morning. The question - was—how to encompass this. - </p> - <p> - “You might drive across to-night,” Albert suggested; “it can’t be more - than twenty miles. It’s a bad, up-hill road, but four or five hours ought - to do it, easily enough. By George—I believe I’ll go myself—start - at once, see Beekman about daybreak, and then come back to Tyre by - breakfast time; as if I had just driven over from here. No one will - suspect a thing.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, thet’s a fust-rate idee,” assented Milton; “only be keerful ’n’ - put yer money in a safe place.” - </p> - <p> - The lawyer again slapped his breast with a confident “Never fear about - that,” and went to the house to get some wraps for the night ride, leaving - Milton to harness the grays, and drag out the sidebar buggy with the pole. - The hired-man hummed to himself as he moved quietly, dextrously in the - semi-darkness in the performance of this task. - </p> - <p> - Albert returned, just as the hame straps were being buckled. - </p> - <p> - “Everybody seems to be asleep in the house,” he said. “If they ask any - questions in the morning, mind you know nothing whatever. That brother of - mine is no friend. Be careful what you say to him. Let him walk to the - depot in the morning. It’ll do him good. Oh yes, by the way, better let me - have one of those revolvers of yours—you have ’em upstairs, - haven’t you—give me the one that strikes fire every time.” - </p> - <p> - Milton came down and out presently, saying that he just remembered having - lent the weapon. “’Tother’s no good,” he added; “yeh don’t need no - pistol anyway. Th’ moon’ll be up direc’ly.” - </p> - <p> - Albert gathered up the lines, and drove out slowly toward the road. - </p> - <p> - “Yeh better save th’ beasts till after yeh git over Tallman’s hill, ’n’ - rest ’em there by th’ gulf!” Milton called after him, as a last - injunction. - </p> - <p> - The hired man stood at the stable door, and watched the buggy pass the - darkened, silent house, turn out on the high-road, and disappear beneath - the poplars. The moon was just coming up, beyond this line of trees, and - it made the gloom of their shadow deeper. His eyes, from following the - vehicle ranged back to the house, which reared itself black against the - whitening sky. There was there no sound, nor any sign of life. He took a - revolver out of his pocket, and examined it in the starlight, cocking it - again and again to make sure that there had been no mistake. Satisfied - with the inspection, he put it back in his side coat-pocket. He went - upstairs, changed his hat, took a drink out of a flat brown bottle in his - cupboard, and spent a minute or two looking at one of the tin-type - portraits on the mantel-shelf. He held the picture to the light, and - grinned as he gazed—then put it in his breast pocket, blew out the - lamp, and felt his way softly down stairs. - </p> - <p> - A few minutes later he came out from the stable, leading the swift black - mare. She was saddled and bridled, and seemed to understand, as he led her - over the grass, that he wanted no noise made. The man and beast, throwing - long, grotesque shadows on the lawn, in the light of the low moon, stole - past the house, and out upon the road. Milton here climbed into the - saddle, and with an exultant little cluck, started in the direction his - master had gone, still keeping the black mare on the grass. They, too, - disappeared under the poplars. - </p> - <p> - The moon mounted into the heavens, pushing aside the aspiring clouds which - sought to dispute her passage, then clothing them in her own livery of - light, and drawing them upward after her, in a glittering train of - attendance. All over the hill-side the calm radiance rested. The gay hues - with which autumn’s day brush painted the woods, the hedge rows, the long - stretches of orchard, stubble, and field, sought now to only hint at their - beauty, as they yielded new outlines, mystic suggestions of form and - color, in the soft gray picture of mezzotint. Thin films of vapor rose to - enwrap the feet of the dark firs, nearer to the sky, and in the valley - below the silver of the moonlight lost itself on the frost-like whiteness - of the gathering mist. It was a night for the young to walk together, and - read love’s purest, happiest thoughts in each other’s eyes—for the - old to drink in with thankful confession the faith that the world was - still gracious and good. - </p> - <p> - Milton was walking the mare now, still on the grass. He could hear the - sound of wheels, just ahead. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXII.—THE NIGHT: THE LOVERS. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>eth had gone up to - his room in a state of wretchedness which, seeming insupportable at the - outset, had grown steadily worse upon reflection. He said to himself that - he had never before in his whole life been so humiliated and unhappy, and - then smiled with pitying contempt for the inadequacy of such a statement - of the case. One’s career must have been titanic in its tragic experiences - to warrant such a comparison. “I have never known before what suffering - was,” he thought, as he paced up and down his little room, scourging - himself with the lash of bitter reflections. - </p> - <p> - To try to sleep did not enter his head. He sat for a long time on the side - of the bed, seeking to evolve something like order from the chaos of his - wits, but he could not think. Had he tried to write, to discuss the thing - in a letter, the simple familiar operation of the pen might have led him - out of the <i>cul de sac</i>. As it was, whichever turn his mind sought to - take, there rose an impassable barrier of shame, or rage or - self-recrimination. In whatever light he tried to view the situation, it - was all pain. He had been curtly, cruelly thrown off by his brother—the - man to whom he owed everything—and he had had to listen to the most - cutting, insulting language from this brother before they parted. Then, as - he clenched his fists and fumed with impotent anger at the recollection of - this language, there would come to divert this wrath, and turn it back - upon himself, the facts that he had interposed his own boyish vanity and - conceit to balk this brother’s purposes, and had been caught trembling on - the very brink of making love to this brother’s wife. Did he not richly - merit Albert’s scorn? He could remember—should he ever forget?—the - exact words of Albert’s contemptuous characterization: “A conceited, - presumptuous, offensive fool.” Did he not deserve them all? He owed this - brother everything: the honest boy insisted upon saying this to himself - over and over again, as the basis of all argument on the subject; the - opportunity came for him to repay something of this debt. How had he - improved it? By setting himself up to oppose this brother in the chief - object of his life, and, as if this were not enough, by yielding weakly to - the temptation to rob him of his domestic honor as well! “I must be a - villain as well as a fool, must I!” the youngster growled between his set - teeth, as he threw himself from the bed, and began the gloomy pacing up - and down again. - </p> - <p> - He had not lighted his lamp. The soft half-darkness of the starlight, - sufficing barely to render objects visible in the room, suited his mood. - He heard the sound of wheels now on the gravel below. Looking out, he - could see that the grays were being driven out; as they turned the corner - of the house, the full moonlight fell upon them and the carriage, and Seth - saw distinctly that it was his brother who was driving, and that he was - wrapped as for an all-night ride. - </p> - <p> - “He won’t even stay under the same roof with me!” he said half-aloud, with - a fresh bitterness of self-accusation—and then the torment of - reproaching voices began in his breast again. - </p> - <p> - As he turned from the window he heard a low rapping at his door; a minute - later, he heard Isabel’s voice, almost a whisper: - </p> - <p> - “Seth! Don’t open the door, but tell me, who was it that went out with the - carriage just now? I heard it, but from my window I could see nothing. Was - it <i>he?</i>” - </p> - <p> - Seth answered, as calmly as he could: “Yes, I am sure of it. I recognized - him.” He stood close to the door, and the thought that only the thin pine - panels divided him from her was uppermost in his mind. - </p> - <p> - There was a little pause. Once his hand involuntarily moved toward the - latch, but he drew it back. Then she spoke again: - </p> - <p> - “You had a terrible quarrel, didn’t you, and all for me! I heard your - answer, Seth, way up here. How nobly you spoke! It went straight to my - heart, to hear his brutality rebuked in that manly way. I shan’t forget - it.” - </p> - <p> - There was a moment’s silence; then she whispered with a lingering - softness, “Good night!” and he heard the faint rustling of her garments - down the hall. - </p> - <p> - Brief as the interruption was, it had changed the whole spirit of his - thoughts. The vindictive accusing demons had vanished, and left no more - than a numbing sense of past torture in his breast. The anguish of - self-condemnation, the crushing burden of self-humiliation, had passed - away. The moonlight, as it spread over the slope toward Thessaly village, - seemed to bring healing in its peaceful radiance. His own provocation grew - mountain high; his brother’s justification for his insults and barbarity - diminished. “I was doing only my duty in opposing him,” he said - confidently, and there was no voice of dissent now. “Still more was I - right in defending poor Isabel from his unmanly imputations. If a man is - incapable of appreciating such a wife——.” - </p> - <p> - He did not follow out his thought, but surrendered himself instead to - calling up, and enjoying in detail, the sweet scene which Albert’s coming - had so rudely broken into. How delicious it all was, as fancy now limned - its outlines—yet not all the dainty graces of imagination and memory - could reproduce in its full charm the original. He could think, and think, - until the whole room seemed instinct with her presence, but how poor a - counterfeit it all was, lacking the perfume of her hair and laces, the - deep, languorous glow of her eyes, the thrilling melody of her low voice. - The tender, caressing prolongation of syllables in that whispered “good - night” made soft soul-music still in his ears. The insane thought—he - did not dare ask himself if it were also a hope—that she might come - again, took possession of him, and he stood for a long time close by the - door, listening, waiting. - </p> - <p> - It was while Seth stood thus, seeing only with the eyes of the mind, that - Milton stole past on the grass below, with the black mare, on his mission - of murder. Had the young man been at the window instead, much that - followed might have been different. - </p> - <p> - Seth stood at the door for what seemed to him a long time, until gradually - the futility of the action became apparent to him. “Of course she would - not come!” he said, and resumed his pacing once more. - </p> - <p> - The Faust-like vision began to dance before his eyes again, but with a - witchery now which was uncanny. The calm of waiting had brought him enough - strength of control to feel the presence of the cloven hoof in it all. The - temptation was more urgent, strenuous than ever, but he was conscious of a - deeper, more dogged spirit of resistance within him than ever, as well. - There was no renewal of the savage, chaotic war of emotions under which he - had suffered at the outset, groaning in the self-infliction of purposeless - pain. This was a definite, almost scientific, struggle between two - distinct forces, and though they fought their battle with all manner of - sophistical weapons, and employed feints, pretended retreats and false - advances in highest strategical form, he was never deceived for a moment - as to which was the bad and which the good. - </p> - <p> - The issue forced itself upon him, finally, with a demand for decision - which was imperative. He could stay no longer in his room. There was - neither sleep nor rest of any kind there for him. - </p> - <p> - He went to the door, and opened it. Through the blackness he could see a - faint vertical line of light at the front end of the low hall, as of a - lamp burning, and a door left ajar. The yellow ray gleamed as he looked at - it, and seemed to wave itself in fascinating motions of enticement. He - stood for a moment undecided, all his impulses strongly swaying towards - the temptation, all his resisting reasons growing weaker in their - obstruction, and some even turning coward, and whispering, as they laid - down their arms, “After all, youth has its rights.” Then he squared his - shoulders, with the old gesture of resolution, and walked steadily away - from the line of light, down the stairs, and out of the door, bareheaded - under the stars. - </p> - <p> - He had walked for a long, long time, before he became conscious that he - had left his hat behind. The night air was exceptionally mild for the - season, but it grew cool enough to bring this fact to his notice. As he - put his hand to his head, and stopped short at the discovery, his whole - mind seemed to clarify itself. He had been walking aimlessly, almost - unconsciously—it must have been for much more than an hour. In a - vague way, he knew where his steps had led him. He had walked through the - orchard to his mother’s grave, and stood for some time by the brier-clad - wall and fence which surrounded it, thinking of his boyhood, and of her. - Then he had struck across through Sir Thomas’s pasture, to the main road; - thence by the way of the school-house, and skirting the hill, to the - Burfield road, at the farthermost end of the line of poplars. - </p> - <p> - As he stopped here now collecting his thoughts, awakening himself as it - were, the sound of chorussinging reached him, faint at first, then growing - more distinct. A wagon-load of young people were returning from Leander - Crump’s husking, enjoying themselves in the fair moonlight. From the - sounds, they must have been about in front of the Fairchild homestead, and - they were coming rapidly toward Seth. If he remained in the road, they - must pass and recognize him. - </p> - <p> - There was a division line of thorn hedge, long since grown into tall young - trees, coming to the road here, and a path beside it leading to a rude - stile in the turnpike fence. This path went straight to Mrs. Warren’s - house, as Seth had known from boyhood, but he gave this no thought as he - stepped over the stile, and moved along in the shadow of the thorns. He - walked a score of yards or so, and then stepped closer into the obscurity - of the hedge, to wait till the hay-wagon and its caroling crew had passed - by on the road outside. He was feeling very cold now, and tired to boot, - and said to himself that as soon as the road was clear he would go home - and go to bed. - </p> - <p> - To his surprise the singing came to an abrupt halt, just as the wagon - approached the end of the hedge. - </p> - <p> - There was a chorus of merry “whoas!” as the horses drew up, and through - the clear air Seth could hear a confused babel of voices, all jovially - discussing something. One male voice, louder than the rest, called out: - </p> - <p> - “You’d better let me come along with you!” - </p> - <p> - There was some giggling audible, out of which rose a clear, fresh girlish - voice which Seth knew: - </p> - <p> - “No, thanks! I can cut across by this path in less than no time. I’m not - afraid. The tramps are all abed and asleep by this time, like other honest - people.” - </p> - <p> - With more laughter, and a salvo of “good nights!” the wagon started off - again, and Annie Fairchild, singing lightly to herself the refrain of the - chorus, and holding her face up to catch the full radiance of the - moonlight, came walking briskly down the path. - </p> - <p> - Despite her valiant confidence the young woman gave a visible start of - alarm as Seth stepped out from the shadows to speak to her. She threw - herself forward as if to run, then looked again, stopped, and then gave a - little tremulous laugh, and cried: - </p> - <p> - “Why, Seth! is that you. Mercy! How you frightened me!” - </p> - <p> - He could think of nothing better than a feeble parody of her words: “Yes, - it is time all honest people were abed and asleep.” - </p> - <p> - He said this with a half-smile, but the girl’s face grew more serious - still as she looked at her cousin. She spoke eagerly:— - </p> - <p> - “Why, what’s the matter with you to-night? Where is your hat? You look as - white as a ghost! Oh—have you come from our house? Is it something - about grandmother?” - </p> - <p> - “No, it’s nothing about her. I haven’t been nearer your place than this. I - only stepped in here so as to avoid the wagon. I didn’t want them to see - me like this.” - </p> - <p> - “But why should you <i>be</i> like this? Now, Seth, I know something <i>has</i> - happened. What is it? Am I wanted? Can I do anything?” - </p> - <p> - “Let me walk with you to your house,” he said, and they turned together - down the path. “Something <i>has</i> happened. I don’t know that I can - tell you what it is, but only to be with you like this rests and comforts - me.” - </p> - <p> - He was walking in the shadow; the strong light, which only tipped his - shoulder occasionally, enveloped her. He watched her furtively as they - moved along, and, just in proportion as he found relief and solace in the - contemplation of her clear, frank, serene face, he shrank from confiding - his own weak woes to her. But, as he said, it was a comfort to be with - her. - </p> - <p> - They had walked almost to within sight of the Warren farmhouse before he - broke the silence. She had scarcely looked at him since they started, but - kept her gray eyes straight ahead, as if viewing some fixed, distant - object. Her lips were tightly pressed together—the only sign of - emotion on her face—and this proof that she was hard at work - thinking tended further to embarrass him. - </p> - <p> - “I truly don’t know how to tell you, Annie,” he said at last. “But Albert - and I have—have had words together; in fact—we’ve quarrelled.” - </p> - <p> - Her lips quivered a little. She did not turn her face toward him, but - said, nervously: “I have been expecting that.” - </p> - <p> - Seth did not ask himself the cause of his cousin’s anticipatory - confidence, but went on gloomily: “Well, it has come. We had it out, this - evening, to the very last word. And then, as if that were not enough, the - devil himself got hold of me afterward, and tugged and tore at me to—but - I can’t tell you <i>that</i>. I can scarcely realize myself what I’ve been - through this night. Why, I’ve been wandering about here on the hill-side - for hours, not knowing where I was going, or even what I was thinking of, - like a mad man. You can see how my hands are scratched, and my clothes - torn; that is from the berry-bushes, I suppose, up by mother’s grave. I - remember being there. I didn’t even know that my head was bare, until just - before the wagon came up.” Before this remarkable recital of insane - things, Annie was properly silent. - </p> - <p> - Seth added, after a pause, “But it is all over now. And I can’t tell you, - you can’t begin to guess, how it brings me to my senses, and soothes and - restores me to have met you like this.” - </p> - <p> - As he paused suddenly, they both turned to listen and look. From the knoll - to the east, where the turnpike ran through a cutting, there came a - curiously muffled sound, like yet unlike the first measured drumming of a - partridge. It swelled a second later into something more definite, as they - saw a dark horse, the rider crouching low over its neck, galloping like - the wind along the high-road toward Thessaly. The pace was something - prodigious—the horse had vanished like an apparition before they - could look twice. But there had been nothing like a commensurate volume of - sound. - </p> - <p> - “The horse was running on the grass beside the road,” Seth remarked. - </p> - <p> - “Probably going for a doctor,” was her comment. “I wonder who is ill!” - </p> - <p> - “It looked to me more like the headless horseman than a sick-messenger.” - </p> - <p> - As he said this, and they turned to walk again, his face lighted up once - more. The thought seemed to please him, and he smiled on her as he added: - </p> - <p> - “Let me be superstitious enough to fancy that the thing which just flashed - by, in a rumble of low thunder, was the demon that has been torturing me - all this while. We will say that he has been defeated, baffled, and has - fled in despair, and that”—he looked still more smilingly at her—“the - fiend has been beaten and driven away by you. Do you know, Annie, that - here in this lovely light you are the very picture of a good angel? - Perhaps angels don’t wear seal-skin cloaks, or have such red cheeks, but - if they knew how becoming they were, they would.” - </p> - <p> - Annie’s face, which had been immobile in thought, softened a little. She - was accustomed to her cousin’s hyperbole. - </p> - <p> - “I am delighted if you feel better,” she laughed back. “But it is no - credit specially to me. Contact with any other rational human being would - probably have had the same effect upon you. If I had helped you in any - way, or advised you, perhaps I might own the angelic impeachment. But I - don’t even know the first thing about your trouble, except that you’ve - quarrelled with Albert, and—and had a temptation.” - </p> - <p> - She had begun gayly enough, but she uttered the last words soberly, almost - gravely. Instinct and observation alike told her that Seth’s experiences - had been of a deeply serious nature. - </p> - <p> - He sighed heavily, and looked on the ground. How much could he tell her?—in - what words should he put it? Even as he sought in his mind for safe and - suitable phrases, an Idea—a great, luminous, magnificent Idea—unfolded - itself before his mental vision. It was not new to him—years ago he - had often entertained and even nourished it—yet it had been hidden, - dormant so long, and it burst forth now so grandly transformed and - altered, that for an instant he stopped abruptly, and put his hand to his - breast as if to catch his breath. Then he walked on again, still with his - eyes on the ground. He fancied that he was meditating; instead, he was - marvelling at the apotheosized aptness of the Providence which had sent - this Idea at just this time, and swearing grateful fealty to it with all - the earnestness of his being. - </p> - <p> - He looked up at last, and drew her arm through his. They were near the - house now. “I am going to make a clean breast of it, Annie,” he said. “If - I have not finished when we get to the bars, shall we turn back? I want - you to hear it all.” - </p> - <p> - “It is pretty late, Seth,” she said, but neither in tone, nor in the - manner in which she allowed her arm to be taken, was there the kind of - refusal which dismays. - </p> - <p> - There was no need now to seek words. They came fast, keeping pace with the - surge of his thoughts. - </p> - <p> - “Annie,” he began, “I have been as near the gates of hell to-night as it - is given to a man to go, and bring back his soul. I have fancied all this - while that I was strong because I was successful; that I was courageous - because I happened to be clever. I found myself put to the test to-night, - and I was weak as water. I am afraid of myself. More, I have been making a - fool of myself. I know now the measure of my weakness. I have the brains, - perhaps, but I have no balance-wheel. I fly off; I do insensate things; I - throw myself away. I need a strong, sweet, wise nature to lean upon, to - draw inspiration from. Oh if you could realize the peace, the happiness - your simple presence brought me this evening! I haven’t said it yet, - Annie, but you have guessed it—I want to pledge myself to you, to - swear that you are to be my wife.” - </p> - <p> - The girl had drawn her arm from his before the last sentence was finished, - and stood facing him. They were within call of the house, but she did not - offer to renew the walk. She answered him with no trace of excitement, - looking him candidly in the face: - </p> - <p> - “I am not sure just how to answer you, Seth. Hardly any girl would know, I - think, how to treat such a declaration as that. Wait a moment—let me - finish! In the first place, I am in doubt whether I ought to treat it - seriously at all. You are disturbed, excited, to-night; when we first met - you looked and acted like a madman. And then again—understand, I am - trying to talk to you as a friend of all your life, instead of a mere girl - acquaintance—I would not marry any man who I did not firmly believe - loved me. You have not even pretended that you love me. You have simply - complimented me on my disposition, and pledged yourself to a partnership - in which I was to be a balance-wheel.” - </p> - <p> - “You are laughing at me!” - </p> - <p> - “No, Seth, my dear cousin, not at all. I am only showing you the exact - situation. You are too excited, or too unpractical, to see it for - yourself. You talk now about being at the gates of hell and expressions - like that—wild words which signify only that you have had trouble - during the evening. I fancy that all men are apt to exaggerate such things—I - <i>know</i> you are. Why, do you even know what trouble is? Have <i>I</i> - had no trouble? Have I not lived a whole life of trial here with a - bed-ridden invalid? And there are other things that—that I might - speak of, if I chose to complain. For instance”—her face brightened - as she spoke, now, and a suggestion of archness twinkled in her eyes—“was - it not a terrible thing that I should have waded into the water, that day - of the fishing party, and got you out all by myself, and then heard the - credit coolly given to another—person, who never got so much as the - soles of her shoes wet?” - </p> - <p> - Annie had begun seriously enough, but the softness of her real mood toward - her cousin, together with the woman’s natural desire to have justice done - her in affairs of the heart, had led her into a halfplayful revelation of - pique. Seth would have answered here, but she held up her hand, and went - on: “Wait till I am through. You didn’t know the truth in that matter of - the log-jam. I understand that. There are a good many other things the - truth of which you don’t know. You don’t, for instance, know the real - facts about your own mind. You have had trouble to-night—for all - your talk about making a clean breast of it you haven’t told me yet what - it was—and your imagination makes a mountain out of what was - probably a molehill, and you straightway rush off bareheaded to wander - about like a ghost, and frighten people out of their wits; and then, - happening to meet a girl who, by the deceptive light of the moon, looks as - if she had some sense about her, you take without consideration the most - important step a man can take in his whole life. Isn’t that a fair - statement of the case? And, thinking it all over, don’t you agree with me - that you would better tie my handkerchief about your head and go home and - go to bed?” - </p> - <p> - Seth laughed—a reluctant, in-spite-of-himself laugh. “You always - would make fun of me when I tried to be serious. But if I ever <i>was</i> - serious in my life, it is now. Listen to me, Annie! It is not my fault if - I see you now, truly as you are, for the first time. I have been a fool. I - know it I said so at the start. But a man is the creature of - circumstances, you know. Things have happened tonight which have opened my - eyes. I realize now that you have been closest to my heart all the while, - that I have loved you all——” - </p> - <p> - Annie stopped him, with her hand upon his arm. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t want you to finish that to-night. Please don’t, Seth. It would - not be fair to me—or to yourself. Perhaps some other time when you - have thought it over calmly—we will talk about it—that is, if - you are of the same mind. If you are not, why, everything shall be just as - it was before. And more than that, Seth, you—you mustn’t feel in the - least bound by what has been said to-night. You know that I am older than - you—two whole months! That isn’t as much as four years”—the - meekest of her sex could scarcely have foregone that shaft—“but it - gives me some sort of authority over you. And I am going to use it for - your good. If it becomes necessary, I shall treat you like a perverse - little boy, who doesn’t in the least know what is good for him.” - </p> - <p> - There was no discouragement to Seth in the tones of her speech, however - non-committal its text might be. He put his arm about her and murmured: - </p> - <p> - “To think that I never <i>knew</i> until now! Ah, you make me very happy, - Annie. And shall you be happy, too, do you think, happier than if we - hadn’t met?” - </p> - <p> - She smiled as she disengaged herself, and gave him both hands to say that - they must separate: “Happier at least than on the night of the fishing - party. I cried myself to sleep that night.” - </p> - <p> - Seth found the house wholly dark, upon his return. He had no difficulty in - getting to sleep, and his heavy slumber lasted until long after the - breakfast hour the following forenoon. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXIII.—THE CONVENTION: THE BOSS. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>yre had seen - better days. In the noble old time of stage coaches it had been a - thriving, almost bustling place, with mills turning out wares celebrated - through all the section, with a starch factory which literally gave the - name of the town to its product as a standard of excellence, and with - taverns which were rarely left with a vacant room more than a day at a - time. In those days it had been a power in politics too. The old - court-house which frowned now upon the village green, elbowing the more - modern brick jail out of public sight, was supposed to have echoed in its - time about the tallest eloquence that any court-house in the State had - heard. From Tyre had come to Albany, and Washington as well, a whole - cluster of strong, shrewd, stalwart-tongued politicians, who forced their - way to speakerships, and judgeships, and even senatorships, like veritable - sons of Anak. It was a Tyre man who had beaten Aaron Burr in such and such - a memorable contest. It was another Tyre man who, by assuming lead of the - distracted Bucktails at a certain crucial period, had defeated sundry - machinations of the Clintonians, and sounded the death-knell of their - hopes. There was a Tyre man in the Regency, of course, and he is popularly - believed, at least in Jay County, to have held that storied syndicate up - by the tail, so to speak, years after it would otherwise have collapsed. - At every State Convention, in this fine old time, inferior politicians - from other sections dissembled their appetites until Tyre had been fed to - satiety. And in the sowing season of politics, when far-seeing candidates - began arranging for a share in the autumn harvest of offices, no aspirant - felt that his seed had a chance of sprouting until he had paid a - pilgrimage to Tyre, and invoked the mercy, if he could not have the - smiles, of the magnates there. - </p> - <p> - It was due doubtless to the traditions of these visits, when Judge Gould, - the hero of the great Biggs murder case, would be at the Nedahma House, - and Senator Yates, who unravelled and dragged to the pitiless light the - masonic plot to blow up Mount Vernon, was to be found at the turnpike - tavern, and both would keep pretty well in-doors toward evening because - Colonel De Lancey, who had shot four men before Hamilton’s death - discredited duelling, was in town on private business—it was no - doubt due to these memories that Tyre kept up its political tastes and, in - a faded way, its political prestige, long after its material importance - and interest had vanished. The mills were remembered now only by the - widened reaches in the stream where their dams had once been; the starch - factory was a dismantled ruin, from which what woodwork the lightning had - spared had long since been abstracted for fuel; one of the taverns was now - a private dwelling, and the other two neither profited themselves nor - pleased the wives of the village by their dependence upon local custom. - But the men of Tyre were still intense politicians. Indeed their known - virulence had given to their county sobriquet of Jayhawker an almost - national fame. Nowhere else in the State, proportionately, were so many - weekly partisan papers taken—not tame, dispassionate prints, but the - fire-eaters of both party presses, with incessant harrowing accounts of - peaceful and confiding negroes being massacred in the South, on the one - side, answered regularly on the other by long imposing tables of the money - stolen by notorious criminals in the public service. This was the meat - Tyre fed on, and contending editors could not serve it out too rank or - highly peppered for its taste. - </p> - <p> - The one excitement of Tyre too—far transcending the county fair, - which had only interested them casually, and which they had seen moved - over to Sidon, on the line of the newly-extended railroad, without a - protest—was a political convention. There would be such a crowd - about the Court House then as scarcely the spectacle of its being consumed - by flames could draw at another time. The freeholders of Tyre paid much - more than their fair share of county taxes; they knew it, and did not - grumble at the injustice. In fact it rather pleased them than otherwise to - see their town rated on the Supervisor’s assessment-rolls according to its - ancient wealth; the amercement was a testimonial to their dignity. Upstart - towns like Sidon might wrangle over a few hundred dollars, and cheapen - their valuation in the public eye by unworthy tricks; Tyre would have none - of such small doings; it would preserve a genteel exterior, even if it had - to eat pork grease on its buckwheat cakes in domestic seclusion. But if - there had been so much as a hint about holding a county convention - anywhere else than in the Tyre Court House—then, to use Abe - Beekman’s homely expression, you would have seen the fur fly! Other towns - might indulge their modern and mercenary tastes in county fairs, - railroads, gas, reservoirs and the like, to their hearts’ content, but - they must keep their hands off political conventions. He would be a brazen - Jayhawker indeed who should question Tyre’s monopoly of these! - </p> - <p> - So new generations of county politicians followed precedent without - thought of murmuring, and accepted the discomforts of jolting in crowded - democrat-wagons over the stony, bleak hills to Tyre, of eating cold, bad - dinners in the smoke-dried, draughty barracks which had once been hotels, - of drinking limed well-water with the unspeakable whiskey—as natural - consequences of being interested in the public affairs of the nation. This - resignation of other Jay County towns to the convention claims of Tyre - swelled into a spirit of truculent defence every two years, when the - question of a joint Congressional gathering for all three counties of the - district came up. Precisely what would have happened if the bigger shires - of Dearborn and Adams had combined in a refusal to come to Tyre, I am not - bold enough to guess. The general feeling would probably have been that a - crisis had arisen in which Jay County could do no less than dissolve her - relations with the Federal Union. - </p> - <p> - Fortunately no such menace of secession and civil war was ever suffered to - rise glowering on the horizon. Abe Beekman, the boss of Jay County, always - managed to have Tyre designated by the District Committee, and the - politicians from Dearborn and Adams amiably agreed to console themselves - for the nuisances of the trip by getting as much fun out of it as was - possible—which, reduced to details, meant bringing their own - whiskey, sternly avoiding the dangerous local well-water, and throwing at - each other during the dinner scramble such elements of the repast as - failed to attract their metropolitan tastes. This procedure was not - altogether to the liking of the Tyre landlords, who, however, compensated - themselves for the diminution of the bar traffic and the havoc wrought in - the dining room, by quadrupling their accustomed prices; and the invasion - of boisterous aliens had its seamy side for the women of the place, who - found it to the advantage of their dignity to stop indoors during the day - which their husbands and fathers consecrated to the service of the - Republic. But Tyre as a whole was proud and gratified. - </p> - <p> - On the morning when the adjourned District Convention was to reassemble, - political interest throbbed with feverish quickness in all the pulses of - Tyre. - </p> - <p> - The town could remember many a desperate and stirring combat on its - well-worn battle-field, but never such a resolute, prolonged, and - altogether delightful contest as this. The fight had its historic side, - too. Every voter in Tyre could remember, or had been taught in all its - details about, the famous struggle of the wet fall of ’34, when - Hiram Chesney, the Warwick of Jay County then, locked horns with the elder - Seth Fairchild of Dearborn, and, to pursue the local phraseology, they - pawed up more earth in their fierce encounter than would dam the Nedahma - creek. Poor Hiram had finally been worsted, falling ignobly on his native - stamping ground, before the eyes of his own people. He had long since - passed away, as Warwicks should when their king-making sinews have lost - their strength. But another boss, perhaps in some ways a greater boss, had - arisen in Jay County, in the person of Abram K. Beekman, and now, nearly - half a century later, he was to try conclusions with a second Fairchild of - Dearborn—a grandson of the hero of ’34. They had grappled - once, a fortnight before, and had had to separate again, after an all-day - tug, with a fall credited to neither. Now, in a few hours, they were to - confront each other once more. What wonder that Tyre was excited! - </p> - <p> - The two gladiators had been the observed of all observers during the - preliminary skirmish. Tyre was almost disposed to fancy the Dearborn man. - In his portly, black-clad figure, his round, close-shaven, aquiline face, - and his professional capacity for oratory, he had recalled pleasantly the - days when the Jay County bar was famous. The local magnate, Beekman, was - not a lawyer; he could not make a speech; he didn’t even look as if he - could make a speech. He had none of the affable, taking ways which Albert - Fairchild used to such purpose, but was brusque, self-contained, prone to - be dogmatic when he was not taciturn. Thus the balance turned enough in - Fairchild’s favor to about offset Beckman’s claims to local sympathy as a - Jayhawker, and put Tyre people in excellent mental trim to enjoy all the - points of the duel. - </p> - <p> - For in the minds of these practical politicians, it <i>was</i> a duel. - There was a third candidate, named Ansdell, it was true, supported by - nearly all the Adams delegation, but then he was a reformer, and had not - even come to the Convention, and Tyre had no use for him. A county boss - who had got a machine, and purposed doing certain definite things with it, - either to build up himself or crush somebody else, was natural and - comprehensible; but a man who set himself up as a candidate, without the - backing of any recognized political forces, who came supported by - delegates elected in a public and lawless manner without reference to the - wishes of leaders, and who pretended that his sole mission in politics was - to help purify it—who <i>could</i> make head or tail out of that? - </p> - <p> - Thus Tyreans talked with one another, as the village began to take on an - air of liveliness after breakfast, and groups slowly formed on the - sidewalks in front of the two hotels. There were many shades of diverging - opinion as to the merits and the prospects of the approaching contest, but - on one matter of belief there was a consensus of agreement. The fight lay - between Beekman and Fairchild, and the third man—it was interesting - to note that ignorance of his name was fashionable—wasn’t in the - race. Steve Chesney, whose right to speak oracularly on politics was his - sole inheritance from the departed Warwick, his father, summed up the - situation very clearly from the standpoint of Tyre when he said, leaning - comfortably against the post office hitching post, and pointing his - arguments in the right places with accurate tobacco juice shots at a crack - in the curb: - </p> - <p> - “The hull p’int’s this: Dearborn’s got seventeen votes, ain’t she?—solid - for Fairchild. Then he’s got two ’n’ Adams, ain’t he?—makin’ - nineteen ’n’ all. Th’ dude, he’s got what’s left of Adams, fifteen - ’n’ all. Jay County’s only got ten votes, ain’t she? Very well, - they’re solid for Abe. <i>Now!</i> Twenty-three’s a majority of the - convention. Git twenty-three ’n’ that settles it. Th’ reformer, he - needs eight votes. Kin he git ’em? Whair frum? Frum Dearborn? Not - much! Frum Jay? Well, not <i>this</i> evening! Count him out then. Of th’ - other two, Fairchild wants four votes, Abe needs thirteen. Thet looks kind - o’ sickly for Abe, mebbe yeh think. But bear in mine thet th’ Adams men - air pledged agin’ Fairchild by th’ same resolution which bines ’em - to th’ other chap. Abe wasn’t a candidate then ’n’ he didn’t git - barred out. But they made a dead set agin Fairchild all through Adams, on - ’count of his funny work at th’ State Convention. <i>So</i>, Adams - kin go to Abe, ’n’ she can’t go to Fairchild. I tell yeh, Jay can’t - be beat, ef she’s only a mine to think so—thet is, of course, ef - Dearborn fights fair. Ef she don’t, p’raps she may win to-day, but I tell - yeh, in thet case ther won’t be enough left of her candidate come ’lection - night to wad a hoss-pistol with.” - </p> - <p> - The Jay County delegates had begun to straggle into town, and percolate - aimlessly through the throngs in and about the bar-rooms, listening to the - discussions, and exchanging compliments and small talk with acquaintances. - Pending the appearance of their leader there was nothing else for them to - do. There was a rumor that Abe Beekman was in town, sending for men as he - wanted to see them, one by one, but nobody professed to be in the secret - of his hiding place, and nobody dreamed of attempting to find out what Abe - wished to keep dark. - </p> - <p> - The Adams County men, delegates and others, came over the hill from the - Spartacus station in a carryall, with four horses, and created a genuine - sensation as they drew up with a great clatter and splashing of mud in - front of the Nedahma House, and descended jauntily from the rear step to - the curb-stone. The natives eyed them all with deep interest, for upon - their action depended the issue of the day, but there was a special - excitement in watching the nine delegates with stove-pipe hats and gloves, - and tight rolled umbrellas, who came from Tecumseh itself. Tecumseh was - the only city in the district, or the whole section, for that matter, and - Jay County people timidly, wistfully dreamed of its gilded temptations, - its wild revels of sumptuous gayety, its dazzling luxuriance of life, as - shepherd boys on the plain of Dura might have dreamed of the mysteries and - marvels of Babylon. It was something, at least, to touch elbows with men - whose daily life was passed in Tecumseh. - </p> - <p> - Such of the younger Tyreans as had been introduced to these exalted - creatures on their previous visit crowded around them now, to - deferentially renew the acquaintance, and shine before their neighbors in - its reflected light. - </p> - <p> - Then the news filtered through the groups round about that Ansdell himself - had come up this time, and was the short, wiry little man with the drab - overcoat and the sharp black eyes. This aroused a fleeting interest, and - there was some standing on tip-toe to get a good view of him, but it could - not last long, for Ansdell as a politician was not a tangible thing on - which the tendrils of Tyre’s imagination could get a real grip. - </p> - <p> - It was of more importance to learn whether the views of the Adams - delegates had undergone any change—whether a new light had dawned - upon them in the interim. They submitted graciously to the preliminary - test of drinks at the bar, and pretended with easy affability to remember - distinctly the various Tyre men who came up and recalled their - acquaintance of a fortnight ago, but they had nothing to say that was to - the purpose. They were waiting; they would see what turned up; they would - certainly vote for Ansdell on the first ballot; further than that they - couldn’t say, but they saw no reason now why they shouldn’t keep on voting - for him; still, perhaps something might happen—this and nothing - more. - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile there was an uneasy whisper going the rounds to the effect that - the two Adams men who had previously voted for Fairchild were now for - Ansdell, having succumbed to local pressure during the fortnight. The - story could not be verified, for the two gentlemen in question had - secreted themselves upon their arrival, and the other Adams men only - grinned bland mystery when interrogated on the subject. This worried the - Tyre men a good deal more than they would have liked to admit, but there - was a certain element of pleasure in it, too, for it added piquancy to the - coming fight. - </p> - <p> - The wooden minute hand of the old clock on the court house cupola had - laboriously twitched along to the zenith of the dial once more, marking - ten o’clock; only half an hour remained now before the time for the - Convention to reassemble, and the Dearborn delegates were still absent. - People began to stroll toward the court house, and casually attach - themselves to the outskirts of the cluster of saturnine, clean-shaven, - thin-featured old villagers, in high black stocks and broad-brimmed soft - hats, who stood on the steps, behind the fluted columns of the building’s - ambitious Grecian front, and chewed tobacco voraciously while they set up - the rival claims of Martin Van Buren and Francis Granger, or mumblingly - wrangled over the life and works of De Witt Clinton. These old men, by - reason of the antiquity and single-heartedness of their devotion to their - country, had two inalienable and confirmed rights: to sit on the platform - close by the speakers when the Declaration of Independence was read each - Fourth of July and to have the first chance for seats when the doors were - opened at a political Convention. - </p> - <p> - At last the eyes of those who had lingered about the Turnpike Tavern were - gladdened by the sight of the Dearborn crowd, driving furiously up in - three or four vehicles. Milton Squires was in the foremost wagon, and he - was the first to alight. - </p> - <p> - He trembled and turned around swiftly as a man laid a hand on his - shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “What d’yeh want?” he demanded, with nervous alertness. - </p> - <p> - The man whispered in his ear: “Abe Beekman is over in the back settin’ - room at Blodgett’s, ’n’ he wants to see your man Fairchile right - off.” - </p> - <p> - Milton had regained his composure. “So do I want to see him. Whair abaouts - is he? I was to meet him here.” - </p> - <p> - “There ain’t been no sign of him here, this mornin’. Nobuddy ’n - Tyre’s laid eyes on him, so far’s I kin fine aout.” - </p> - <p> - “Thet’s cur’ous,” said Milton reflectively. “He started to drive over - early enough. We cum by train, expectin’ to fine him here. P’raps he’s - seen Beekman by this time, on th’ quiet.” - </p> - <p> - “No, he ain’t!” The messenger’s tone was highly positive. - </p> - <p> - “Then mebbe I’d better go ’n’ see Beekman myself. Whair is - Blodgett’s?” - </p> - <p> - The man led the way off the main street, to a big, clap-boarded, dingy - white house, fronting nowhere in particular, and stopped at the gate. - </p> - <p> - “Ain’t you comin’ in?” Milton asked him. - </p> - <p> - “I dasen’t.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXIV.—THE CONVENTION: THE NEWS. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here were two - strange men in the low-ceilinged, grimly-furnished “settin’ room,” as - Milton was ushered into the presence of the Boss, but at a gesture from - this magnate they went out; the Boss surveyed the new comer without a word - of greeting or comment. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Beekman was a tall, angular man, past the prime of life, as was shown - by the gray in his thick hair, curling at the ends, and in the stiff, - projecting ruff of beard under his chin. His face was thin, hungry, with a - plaintive effect of deep lines, and his great blue-black eyes were often - tearful, like a young robin’s, in their intent watchfulness. He was almost - wholly Dutch in parentage—of that silent, persistent, - quietly-masterful race which, despite all the odds, has still held more - than its own in Stuyvesant’s State—and the descent showed itself in - the dusky hue of his skin. He had never been a wealthy man, though he came - of a family decently supplied with substance, and of long settlement in - the county. He had climbed to his present eminence after a long career in - local politics, by that process of exhaustion which we call the survival - of the fittest. Having attained it, his rule was that of a just despot, - rewarding and binding still more closely to him the faithful, - remorselessly crushing all signs of rivalry, and putting the recalcitrant - without pity to fire and sword. He had an almost supernatural faculty of - organizing information, and getting at the motives of men. He sniffed - treachery as a deer in the breeze sniffs the dog, and he had an oriental - way of striking with cruel swiftness, before anybody but the guilty victim - suspected offence. Withal, he was a kindly man to those who deserved well - of him, an upright citizen according to his lights, and a profound - believer in his party. - </p> - <p> - He sat now chewing an unlighted cigar, with his feet on the hearth of the - stove, and contemplated Milton at his leisure. He did not like Milton at - all, and one of his chief reasons for doubting the real ability of Albert - Fairchild was his choice of such an agent and confidant. At last he said, - curtly: - </p> - <p> - “It’s you, is it? I’ve got no business with you! Where’s Fairchild?” - </p> - <p> - There was something in Beekman’s eager, searching way of looking at a man - with those big bright eyes of his which, coupled with the question, - embarrassed Milton, and he fumbled with his hat as he repeated the - explanation he had given to the messenger. He was annoyed with himself for - being thus disturbed. - </p> - <p> - The Boss looked his visitor out of countenance once more. Then he said: - “Sit daown! Well, what is it to be?” - </p> - <p> - ‘Milton grinned, and leaned forward familiarly in his chair. - </p> - <p> - “I sh’d ruther think that was fur you to say.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you think so, do yeh? You imagine you’ve got me on the hip, ay?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, p’raps we’re no jedge, but it sorts o’ looks that way, now, don’t - it?” Milton tipped back his chair, satisfiedly, and put one of his big - feet up on the hearth, to dispute possession with the Boss. - </p> - <p> - Beekman reflected for a minute: then he began, after glancing at the - clock: - </p> - <p> - “There’s no time to waste. I might as well talk up ’n’ daown with - yeh. Your man Fairchild makes me tired. Ef he’d set his heart on goin’ to - Congress, why on airth didn’t he come to me in the first place, ’n’ - say so? It could ’a’ been arranged, easy’s slidin’ off a log. But - no, instid of that, he must go ’n’ work up th’ thing his own way, - ’n’ then come ’n’ buck agin me in my own caounty, ’n’ - obleege me to fight back. D’yeh call that sense? He’s smart enough in his - way, I grant yeh. He’s fixed up a putty fair sort o’ organisation in - Dearborn, although it can’t last long, simply because it’s all built up on - money, ’n’ I don’t go a cent on that kind of organising. Still it’s - good enough in its way. <i>But</i>, he made his mistake in lettin’ the - idea run away with him that he could skeer me into a conniption fit with - his musharoon organisation. He didn’t knaow me. He never took the trouble - to find aout abaout me. He jest took it fur granted that I’d crawl daown - aout o’ my tree, like Davy Crockett’s coon, as soon’s he pinted his gun at - me. Well, I didn’t come worth a cent. Then, when he faound aout that he’d - struck a snag, ’n’ that Dearborn County wasn’t the hull deestrick, - he turns raoun’ ’n’ aouts with his wallet, ’n’ tries to hire - me to come daown. Fur that’s what you was here for last week, ’n’ - you knaow it’s well’s I do.” - </p> - <p> - Milton tried to get in some words here, of dissent or explanation, but the - Boss would not hear them. - </p> - <p> - “Lem me go on; ’s no use your lyin’. That was Fairchild’s second - mistake. He thought politics was all money. Ef I was poorer than Job’s - turkey, he couldn’t buy me to so much as wink an eye fur him. I’m not in - politics fur what I kin make aout of it. I’m in because I like it; because - it’s meat ’n’ drink to me; because I git solid, substantial comfort - aout of it. Ther’s satisfaction in carryin’ yer eend; there’s pretty nigh - as much in daownin’ them that’s agin yeh. Jest naow I’m a thinkin’ a good - deal what fun it ’d be to let the floor aout from under your man - altogether, ’n’ nominate this feller from Tecumsy.” - </p> - <p> - “But,” broke in Milton, “you’re a candidate yer-self, ’n’——” - </p> - <p> - “Wait till I’m threw, will yeh? I <i>said</i>, I’m leanin’ a good deal - jest naow to’rd this man from Tecumsy. I c’d beat him easy ’nough - at the polls, ef he turned cranky, but I daoubt ef it ’d be wuth - while. I ain’t seen him yet, but I’m told he’s here, ’n’ ef I like - his looks durn me ef I ain’t a mine to nominate him. He can’t do no harm, - even ef he tries. These reform spurts don’t winter well. They never last - till spring. The boys lose their breath for a few months. But then they - git daown to work agin, and baounce the reformers to the back seats where - they belong. But it ’d be one thing to elect a high-toned, - kid-gloved, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-maouth kind o’ man like - what’s-his-name, ’n’ a hoss o’ quite another color to ’lect - Fairchild. <i>He’d</i> make me trouble from the word ‘go!’ Understan’, I - ain’t afraid of his meddlin’ with me here in Jay caounty; not a bit of it. - But he’d use his position to cripple me in the deestrick. The present - Congressman tried that on— ’n’ you ain’t so much as heerd his - name mentioned fur a re-nomination. But it was bother ’nough to - squelch him. I ain’t goin’ to hev it to do all over agin.” - </p> - <p> - “Right you air, tew!” Milton responded. - </p> - <p> - The Boss held up his hand to forbid further interruption, while he looked - curiously at his visitor, as if puzzled by his acquiescence. He went on: - </p> - <p> - “Ef you was a man of any readin’ you’d hev heerd of a custom among - Europe-ian kentries, when one whips another, of makin’ the under dog in - the fight pull aout his front teeth, like. The beaten kentry has to tear - daown its forts, ’n’ blow up its men-o’-war, ’n’ so on, jest - as a guarantee not to make any more trouble. Well, ef I’d concluded to hev - any dealin’s at all with Fairchild, that’s what I’d hev done with him. I’d - ’a’ made him turn over the appintment of all Dearborn’s men on the - deestrick Committee; ’n’ I’d ’a had a written agreement that - half the Postmasters in Adams ’n’ Dearborn, as well as all in Jay, - should be o’ my namin’. My wife’s brother should hev hed the Thessaly post - office, tew, right under Fairchild’s nose, so’s to keep an eye on him. - It’s the duty of every man to purvide for his own fam’ly.” - </p> - <p> - “Nothin’ small about <i>you!</i> You only wanted the hull airth!” chuckled - Milton, ingratiatingly. - </p> - <p> - “No, it was Fairchild who wanted the airth ’n’ thought he’d got it, - ’n’ while he was deliberatin’ whether he’d have it braowned on both - sides or not, lo ’n’ behold I went in ’n’ took it away from - him slick ’n’ clean.” - </p> - <p> - The Boss rose as he was speaking, reached for his overcoat and put it on. - “Time’s up!” he said, sententiously. - </p> - <p> - Milton had risen too, and placed himself between Beekman and the door. - “There’s seven minutes yit,” he said eagerly, “I’ve got something yeh - can’t afford to miss. Don’t you want th’ nomination yer-self?” - </p> - <p> - “No. What good’d Washington be to me? New York State’s big enough for me. - If yeh don’t understand that I put my name before the Convention jest to - hold my caounty together, ’n’ block Dearborn, yer a dummed sight - bigger fool than even I took yeh to be.” - </p> - <p> - “But s’pose Dearborn’s votes cud be thrown to you! They’d nominate yeh! - What’d thet be wuth to yeh?” - </p> - <p> - “What ’d it be wuth?” mused the Boss, looking intently at Milton. - </p> - <p> - “Yes! in ready money, here! naow!” - </p> - <p> - The Boss took up his hat, meditatively, and gazed at his companion again. - “Did you knaow th’ man that brought yeh here?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “Yes—’twas Jim Bunner, wa’nt it?” - </p> - <p> - “That man ’d wade threw fire ’n’ water fer me. Yeh couldn’t - tempt him with a hundred thaousan’ dollars to so much as say an evil word - abaout me, let alone injure me. Yit he’s desprit poor, ’n’ th’ unly - thing I ever did fer him in my life, excep’ givin’ him a day’s work naow - ’n’ then, was to help him bury his child decently, ten years ago. - But <i>I</i> know my <i>men!</i> Here Fairchild has took you off a - dunghill, where all yer hull humly, sore-eyed, misrubble fam’ly belong, ’n’ - made a man of yeh, trusted his affairs to yeh, clothed yeh, fed yeh, yes, - ’n’ let yeh fatten yerself on the profits of his farm—and - naow yeh turn ’raound ’n’ offer to sell him aout. By gum! I - was right. Fairchild hain’t got no sense! ’N’ you, yeh skunk, git - aout! Don’t yeh walk on the same side of the street with me, or I’ll swat - the hull top of yer head off!” - </p> - <p> - “We’ll nominate Ansdell ’fore you git a chance!” snarled Milton. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - The Convention met, depressed by the evident feeling of disappointment - among the spectators, who swarmed on all the high, pewlike seats back of - the bar railing, while the delegates sat in rows of chairs inside the - space reserved in term time for the lawyers. There was ground enough for - this disappointment. Fairchild had not come, and the prospects of a good - speech, or even a bitter personal contest, were fading away. No one had an - explanation for his absence. The Dearborn delegates were more in the dark - than outsiders even, for they had been told to meet him in Tyre, before - the Convention, and that he would breakfast at the Turnpike Tavern. Milton - reassured them for a time by enlarging upon the bad condition of the - roads, but even he ended as they took their seats, by professing some fear - of an accident. “However, I’ll cast th’ solid vaote, th’ same as before, I - suppose?” he said, and the bondsmen nodded assent. - </p> - <p> - The proceedings opened tamely. The Chairman was a professor from the - Tecumseh Academy; the other counties each had a secretary. Two written - announcements were handed up to be read, one that Milton Squires was - authorized to cast seventeen votes for Dearborn County, the other naming a - man to perform a similar function for the ten votes of Jay. There was to - be no break yet awhile, apparently, in the two machine counties. But—what - would Adams do? - </p> - <p> - As this question flashed through the minds of the assemblage, one of the - Adams delegates rose, walked to the bench, gave a paper to the presiding - officer, and then joined the little throng of spectators to one side. Did - this mean that he left the Convention? What <i>did</i> it mean? - Experienced observers began to feel that something startling was coming. - </p> - <p> - The paper being read, turned out to be an announcement that Abram K. - Beekman had been substituted in the Adams County delegation for the - delegate who had just vacated his seat, and as the words died away the - Boss himself pushed his way down the aisle, threw his long leg over the - bar-rail, and took his seat. The master of Jay County getting substituted - for Adams County—here <i>was</i> a mystery! Did it portend that - Adams had been won for Beekman’s candidature? Yes, it must mean that—and - Tyre’s heart leapt for joy. Or no—it couldn’t mean that. The Boss - would hardly thrust himself forward in that brash way if he were sure of - winning—and Tyre’s heart sank again, sadly. - </p> - <p> - The Chairman announced that balloting would be resumed; that the counties - would be called in alphabetical order, and that, in the case of Adams - County, which did not signify a desire to vote as a unit, the names of the - delegates would also be called in that order. Before the words were fairly - out of his mouth a hundred shrewd brains had discovered that this meant - Beekman’s being the first name called. But what was his game? - </p> - <p> - So perplexed were the men of Tyre with this problem that they almost - forgot to cheer when their man rose to his feet, in response to his name. - It was rarely that one saw Abe Beekman in Conventions; he preferred to run - them from the outside; and no one in the hall had ever heard him make a - speech. Imagine how they listened now! - </p> - <p> - He spoke with an almost boyish nervousness, resting his hands on the table - before him, and clinging, as it were, with his eyes to the Chairman for - support. What he said was brief, to the point, and worth repeating here: - </p> - <p> - “I got substituted, ez p’raps some of yeh hev guessed, because I wanted a - word at the very start. I hev my reasons. I ain’t a’ goin’ to mention no - names—” he darted a swift, significant glance over toward the - Dearborn County men, singling out Milton for a second, then reverting his - troubled gaze to the Chairman—“but I kin feel it in my bones that - things ain’t on the square here. Ther’s a nigger in the fence. Mebbe it’s - no business of mine to yank him aout, but it’s only fair to my caounty - that we shouldn’t let anybody git ahead of us in doin’ what we want to - dew. It’s trew that D. comes ahead o’ J. in the alph’bet, but”—and - there was a momentary relaxation of his eager, sombre face as he - enunciated this undoubted fact—“its jest as trew that A. comes in - front o’ D. Ef any set o’ men—mind, I mention no names, but—ef - any set o’ delegates come here with the idee o’ sellin’ their man aout, or - o’ makin’ a combination which’ll put them solid with the next Congressman, - and leave Jay aout in the cold, perhaps ’fore I’m threw they’ll see - thet they bit off more’n their jaws could wag. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Cheerman, I don’t want to go to Congress. I never ’v’ hed the - least hankerin’ after it. This State of aours is good enough for me. I - wouldn’t feel like myself ef I had to stan’ ’raoun’ ’n’ see - chaps from Rhode Island or Floridy puttin’ on airs, and pretendin’ to cut - as big a swath as New York did. I’m too much of a State man fer thet. I’d - be itchin’ to jump on ’em all the while. So I want to say that I - withdraw my name——” - </p> - <p> - The Hon. Elhanan Pratt rose here, his weazen little figure coming up with - a spring like a jack-in-the-box, and squeaked out sharply: “I rise to a - point of order. The Abram K. Beekman whose name is before this Convention - is a Jay County man, nominated by Jay County, and voted for alone by Jay - County. No Adams County man”—there was an elaborate sarcasm in the - tone—“has any right to withdraw that name.” - </p> - <p> - “The point of order is well taken,” said the Chair. - </p> - <p> - “Well, in thet case I won’t ask to withdraw my name,” responded Beekman. - “But I don’t think it’ll make much differ’nce. A wink is as good as a nod - to a bline man. P’raps you kin git an idee by this time haow the Jay - caounty cat’s goin’ to jump; p’raps you can’t. I’m-goin’ to vaote fer Mr. - Richard Ansdell, ’n’ I wan’ to say——” - </p> - <p> - He was interrupted here by a stout, sharp burst of hand-clapping from the - Adams delegates, and the few Adams men in the audience. The Tyre crowd - were taken aback for an instant, and sat bewildered; then the fact that - their man had played his game, and was acting as if he had won, inspired - them to join tumultuously in the applause, though they were in total - darkness as to the nature of the stakes played for. - </p> - <p> - The Boss went on: “I wan’ to say that I’ve never laid eyes on him but - once, ’n’ never spoke a word with him in my life. But I ain’t lived - all this while ’thaout learnin’ to read somethin’ of a man’s natur’ - in his face. I believe he’s honest and straight-aout; I don’t believe - there’s a crookid hair in his head. P’raps he’s got some naotions that - we’d look on as finnickin’ up here in Jay, but I ain’t afeard o’ them. - It’s better to hev a man standin’ so upright thet he bends back’rd, then - to hev—— to hev—— the fact is, Mr. Cheerman, <i>I</i> - think I’ve said ’baout enough. Th’ other candidate hain’t showed up - today! P’raps it’s jest as well fur him that he hain’t. I guess he’ll - consider that he’s got abaout threw with deestrick politics—but I - don’t want to appear to be rubbin’ it in. The lawyers hev a Latin sayin’ - abaout speakin’ nothin’ but good o’ the dead——” - </p> - <p> - Beekman stopped short. The Chairman had risen to his feet. Half the - delegates had followed his example, and were gazing intently at one of the - tall, small-paned windows on the right side of the room. The three - reporters who were sitting in the clerk’s desk had begun climbing over the - rails and weaving their way between the chairs toward this same window. A - hum of rising murmurs was running through the audience. Beekman, finding - suddenly that he had no auditors, and disconcerted at the interruption, - looked about the room for a moment, in search of an explanation. Then he - followed the direction of the faces, and saw his retainer, Jim Bunner, - clambering in under the lifted sash, and making strenuous, almost frantic, - efforts meanwhile to attract his attention. - </p> - <p> - The man was breathless with excitement. He had climbed to the window from - the roof of a low adjoining shed, and he could be heard now, as he found a - footing on the back of a bench, in panting explanation of his conduct: “I - <i>hed</i> to come this way! It’d ’a taken me tew long to’ve got - threw the crowd at th’ door. I’ve got news for th’ Boss that won’t keep a - second!” - </p> - <p> - He had pushed his way roughly through the throng now, brushing the - reporters aside with especial impatience, and stood whispering, gasping - his tidings in Beekman’s ear. The assemblage, silent now as the midnight - watch, read in the deepening shadows and shocked severity of the Boss’s - face that something far out of the ordinary had happened. Beekman appeared - to be asking some questions, and pondering the whispered answers with - increasing emotion. - </p> - <p> - The waiting hundreds, all on their feet now, watched him in a tremor of - expectation. - </p> - <p> - At last he spoke, in a low, changed, yet extremely distinct voice: - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Cheerman, when I spoke abaout sayin’ nothin’ but good o’ th’ dead, I - spoke unbeknaown to myself like a prophet. My friend here brings some - awful news. Mr. Fairchild o’ Dearborn has jest been faound, stark ’n’ - cold, crunched under his hosses ’n’ carriage, at the bottom of - Tallman’s ravine!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXV.—“YOU THOUGHT I DID IT!” - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HEN Seth awoke - next morning, the position of the shadow cast by the thick green-paper - curtain which covered the upper half of his window, told his practised - faculties that it was very late, and impelled him to get out of bed, - before he began at all to remember the several momentous events of the - previous evening. As he dressed he strove to get these arranged in their - proper order in his mind. Curiously enough there were certain inchoate - recollections of feminine screams, of bursts of hysterical sobbing, of low - but rough and strange male voices, doleful and haunting, which confusedly - struggled for place in his sleepy thoughts, and seemed now to be a part of - the evening’s occurrences, now to belong to this present morning, and to - have come to him while he was nearing the end of his sleep. - </p> - <p> - As he passed his Aunt Sabrina’s door on his way to the stairs, he heard - from within this same sound of suppressed weeping. This much at least of - the unlocated recollections must have belonged to the first stages of his - waking. “Another quarrel with Isabel!” he thought, as he descended the - stairs. “Why is it that women must always be rowing it with each other!” - Then his own dispute with Albert came fresh and overpowering in - distinctness of impression across his mind, and the grounds of his - grievance against the temper of the other sex faded away. - </p> - <p> - The living-room was vacant—the breakfast table still standing in the - disorder of a meal just finished, and the shades down as though the day - had not yet begun, although the clock showed it to be past ten. One of the - folding doors of the parlor was open and he heard Isabel’s voice—it - struck him as being strangely altered toward harshness of fibre—calling - him to enter. - </p> - <p> - She stood, as he remembered her once before, in front of the piano. In the - dusk of the drawn curtains—how gloomy and distrait everything about - the house was this morning!—her figure was not very clearly visible, - but her face was so pale that it seemed to be independent of any light. - Her eyes had the effect of slight distention, and, in the shadow, were - singularly dark of tint. They were gazing at him with a strange, intent, - troubled look, and the expression of the pallid face went with this to - disturb him vaguely. He said to himself, in the moment of waiting for her - to speak, that he must keep his troth with Annie resolutely in mind, and, - if needs be, not shrink from avowing and standing by it. - </p> - <p> - Isabel did not offer him her hand, or tender him any greeting whatever; - only looked him through and through with that searching, unaccustomed - gaze. - </p> - <p> - “I wouldn’t let them call you,” she said at last, speaking slowly, as if - with an effort to both form these words, and repress others. “I knew that - you needed the sleep.” - </p> - <p> - “I am sorry if I put anybody out by my laziness. But it is such a relief - to be able to sleep like that once in a while, instead of having to get - down to the office by eight.” - </p> - <p> - “I heard you go out last night. I heard you come in this morning. But not - another soul in the house suspects that you were out; not one!” - </p> - <p> - The tone was unmistakably solemn, and weighted with deep feeling of some - sort. Seth uneasily felt that a scene was impending, though he could not - foresee its form. He felt, too, that the part he must play in it would of - necessity be an awkward one. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” he answered, “the night seemed too fine to stay in doors. Besides, - I was nervous, and it did me good to walk it off. You can’t imagine how - light-hearted I was when I returned, or—for that matter—how - heavy-hearted when I went out.” - </p> - <p> - “Seth!” - </p> - <p> - The word came forth like the red flash from clouds which can no longer - retain their pent-up, warring, swelling forces—an interjection of - passion, of dread, of infinite troubling, of doubt wreathed in struggle - with pain. She swayed slightly toward him, her hands clasped and stretched - down and forward with a gesture of excessive perturbation, her great eyes - lustrous with the excitement of this battle of emotions. Seth fancied that - the dominant meaning of the look was reproach. He could not in the least - see his way through the dilemma, or even understand it. He could only say - to himself that the enchantment was ended, and that, come what might, he - would not forget Annie. - </p> - <p> - The woman glided a step nearer to him. She put one hand to her brow with a - sudden movement, and rested the other upon the piano, as if all at once - conscious of needing support. With a painful little laugh, hysterically - incongruous, she said: - </p> - <p> - “I am almost beside myself, am I not? I can not speak to you, it seems! - And yet there is so much to say—or no! isn’t silence better still?” - Her voice trembled as she went on: “For what <i>could</i> we say? How - meaningless all our words would be in the face of—— of——-.” - </p> - <p> - She swept both hands to her eyes, with an impetuous gesture. Her form - seemed to totter for a moment, so that Seth instinctively moved toward - her. Then with a wild outburst of sobs she threw herself upon his breast, - convulsed with incessant paroxysms of passionate weeping. - </p> - <p> - They stood thus together for some minutes. The young man, moved to great - tenderness by her evident suffering, the cause of which he vaguely - referred to the previous evening’s events, put his arm about her, - whispered gently to her to be comforted, and stroked her hair with a soft, - caressing touch. His hand touched her cheek, and she shuddered at the - contact; then swiftly took the hand in hers, and raised it to her lips, - murmuring between the sobs: - </p> - <p> - “Ungrateful! was it not done for me? Ah, dear, I shall not shudder again.” - </p> - <p> - She kissed the hand repeatedly, and pressed it to her bosom, as she spoke. - She was still trembling like a leaf in his arms. - </p> - <p> - What could it all mean? he asked himself—and found no answer. - </p> - <p> - “We must be brave, dear,” she whispered now. “We must be on our guard - every instant! Oh—h! they shall tear my heart out before they learn - anything—so much as a syllable! We must keep our nerves.” She looked - up into his astonished face, with almost a smile in her effort to - strengthen his courage. “We <i>will</i> be brave, won’t we, mine? The test - will come soon now. Perhaps in an hour they will bring—<i>it!</i>” - </p> - <p> - The trembling seized her frame, and shook it with cruel force. She buried - her face in his breast with along, low cry of anguish, and sobbed there - piteously, clinging to his hand still. Once she bent as if to kiss it - again, but stopped, then turned her head aside, groaning “Oh how terrible! - how terrible!” - </p> - <p> - The mystification now demanded light of some sort. - </p> - <p> - “What is it that is so terrible, my poor girl?” he asked. “What are they - going to bring in an hour? Tell me, Isabel—my sweet sister—what - does it all mean?” - </p> - <p> - She looked up into his face, with flickering suggestions of a mechanical - smile at the comers of her pale lips, and with soft reproach in her eyes: - </p> - <p> - “Are you going to pretend to <i>me</i>, too, dear one? As if it were not - all here in my heart—all, all! Ah, they shan’t get it! They shan’t - get the shadow of a hint. You were home here all the while! You were - asleep, sound asleep! If it be necessary, I could swear that I <i>knew</i> - you were asleep, that—but no, there might be suspicion then. That we - mustn’t have! Don’t fear for me, dear one! I shall be so discreet, so - circumspect, watching, weighing every word! But oh—h—shall we - dream of <i>it?</i> What if we should, and should cry out in our sleep—Oh-h, - my God! my God!” - </p> - <p> - She sank again, convulsively clutching his hand, and quivering with - feverish sobs upon his breast. - </p> - <p> - “Upon my soul, I don’t in the least know what you are talking about, - Isabel! Do try and be calm, and tell me what it is!” - </p> - <p> - “<i>He</i> asks <i>me!</i>” she cried, with the same jarring, painful - half-laugh he had heard before. - </p> - <p> - He held her from him, so that he might look into her face. - </p> - <p> - “Come, come! You are acting like a tragedy-queen on the stage. Do be - sensible, and tell me what the matter is. You make me out of patience with - you!” - </p> - <p> - He spoke in the vexed tone of a man needlessly perplexed with foolish - mysteries. To her strained senses the simple expression of impatience was - cruel mockery. She drew herself still further back from him, and dropped - his hand. She was able to speak collectedly now: - </p> - <p> - “It is <i>you</i> who are the actor. You persist in playing the part—to - <i>me!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Still in riddles! <i>What</i> part, Isabel?” - </p> - <p> - “You <i>will</i> have me tell you? You want to hear the thing—in - words?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, by all means.” - </p> - <p> - She had never once taken her frightened, fascinated gaze from his face. - “You insist on hearing from my lips that while you were out last night - your brother was murdered——” - </p> - <p> - “What!” - </p> - <p> - “Murdered not four miles from here, as he was driving on the road, and his - body thrown down into a ravine. Some boys found it. Fortunately, everybody - thinks it was an accident. The men who brought the news thought so.” - </p> - <p> - She had spoken the words coldly, as if they were commonplaces and had been - learnt by rote; but all the passion of her being was flaming in her eyes, - which transfixed him with their stare. - </p> - <p> - “Mur-dered!” the young man stammered, feeling his senses reeling. “Albert - murdered! Oh-h this must be nonsense! It is too terrible to think of even! - You are out of your mind, Isabel!” - </p> - <p> - Her lips quivered: “It would be no wonder if I were, after <i>this!</i>” - </p> - <p> - The darkened rooms, the sobbing of his Aunt upstairs, the sounds of - anguish that he knew now had partially awakened him, the crazed demeanor - of Isabel—all these rose around him, like a black fog, to choke and - confound his mind. Her fixed gaze burned him. - </p> - <p> - “Tell me what you know!” he cried, wildly. - </p> - <p> - “Wouldn’t it be easier to tell me what <i>you</i> know?” The chilling tone - of the words startled him, as might a sudden contact of warm flesh with - ice, before his bewildered brain had grasped their meaning. Then, like the - crimson, all-pervading outburst of a conflagration, the thing dawned upon - him, and his thoughts seemed blood-red in its hideous light. He pushed her - from him fiercely, returning her piteous look of fright with a glare, and - biting his tongue for words that should be great enough to fairly - overwhelm her. As she cowered, he strode toward her: “You thought I did - it!” he shouted at her. - </p> - <p> - Her only answer was to bury her face in her hands, and sink weakly at his - knees. - </p> - <p> - He stood relentlessly glowering down upon her. The bitter, brutal words - that might be heaped upon her, nay, that ought to be, crowded upon his - tongue. It was too great a task to restrain them, to keep silence. - </p> - <p> - “<i>You</i> thought <i>I</i> did it,” he repeated. “And you didn’t object—you - didn’t shrink from me! Why, I remember—my God!—you kissed my - hand! You said: ‘it was done for me! ’ Oh-h!” - </p> - <p> - The woman at his feet, her face hidden, had been sobbing violently. She - lifted her eyes now, and strove appealingly to conquer him with their - power. She rose, unaided, to her feet, and confronted him. Terror and - tenderness visibly struggled for the mastery of her facial expression, as - for the mood behind it. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t, Seth, don’t! Can’t you see how I am suffering? Have you no pity? - How <i>can</i> you have the heart to speak to me like this?” - </p> - <p> - “<i>You</i> talk about pity—about hearts!” - </p> - <p> - “How long ago was it that they were on your tongue—that you had your - arms stretched open for me?” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t recall it!” - </p> - <p> - “If I were to die this day, this hour, it would be the one thing I should - want to remember, the one thing of my life that I should hug to my heart. - What is changed since then? A man dead?—a man dies every minute of - the day somewhere in the world! Suppose I was wrong! Suppose it <i>was</i> - an accident—yes, we’ll say it was! <i>Don’t</i> you see—how - little that is, how unimportant, compared with—with——” - </p> - <p> - She finished the sentence by a faltering step toward him, her arms - outstretched, her lips parted, her form offering itself for his embrace - with a sinuous seduction of moving outlines. - </p> - <p> - The old witchery flamed up for a second in his pulses; then it was - emberless ashes. - </p> - <p> - Without a word he turned and left her. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Aunt Sabrina opened the door of her room in response to his strenuous - rapping, and wiped her tear-stained face with the end of her - shoulder-shawl as her nephew entered. At his behest, she told all the - tidings that had come to the farm. Its master had been found at the bottom - of Tallman’s ravine, by some boys who had climbed down to see if the - beech-nuts were turning. The whole equipage had pitched off the narrow - road which crossed the gulf at this point, high above. The buggy was - smashed. One of the horses was dead; the other had two of its legs broken. - Half hidden under the carriage and one of the beasts was Albert, quite - lifeless and cold. The men who brought the news believed every bone in his - body must have been broken. - </p> - <p> - As she concluded the bare recital of facts, the poor old maid began her - sobbing afresh. - </p> - <p> - “I might uv knaowd it’d ’a’ come to this,” she groaned; “‘pride - goeth before a fall,’ ez Solomon says. I hed my heart tew much sot on his - goin’ to Congress; I was exaltin’ my horn tew high. I was settin’ by the - window, that very minute, watchin’ Sarah Andrews go by perked up in their - democrat wagon, with her injy shawl ’n all her fine feathers on, ’n’ - never so much’s turnin’ her head this way, ’n’ I was sayin’ to - myself, ‘M’ lady, you’ll come daown a peg ’r two off ’n your - high hoss when Albert goes to Congress’—’n’ there the men was - comin’ in the gate, thet identical minute, with the news. I tell you!” she - roused herself into indignant declamation here, “men like Zeke Tallman - ought to be hung, who ’re tew shiftless or penurious to fix up - their fences on pieces o’ raoad like thet, sao’s to keep folks from - drivin’ off in the dark, ’n’ killin’ themselves! That’s what they - ought!” - </p> - <p> - “But it wasn’t dark, Aunt Sabrina,” said Seth; “the moon was so bright all - last night, you could have seen to read by it.” - </p> - <p> - The old lady was too occupied with her own thoughts to even think of - inquiring as to her nephew’s source of information. She only rocked to and - fro, desolately, and said, as if talking to herself: - </p> - <p> - “Sao much the wuss, Seth. It <i>was</i> to be! Nothin’ could a’ stopped - it. Thet old witch, M’tildy Warren, is right. There’s a cuss on aour - fam’ly. Here, almost inside tew years, Sissly’s gone, ’n’ Lemuel’s - gone, ’n’ naow its poor Albert! ’N’ he was gittin’ so like - his grandfather, the Senator, tew, gittin’ to look like him, ’n’ - ack like him; I kin remember my father——” - </p> - <p> - Seth had left the room, with soft footsteps. He would go at once to the - scene of his brother’s death. - </p> - <p> - At the outside door, as he opened it, he stood face to face with Annie. - She gave him her hand silently. Her face was paler than he had ever seen - it before, and she looked on the ground, after the first little start of - surprise at the meeting, instead of into his face. - </p> - <p> - “You have heard?” he whispered. - </p> - <p> - “Yes. Isn’t it awful?” - </p> - <p> - “Will you go upstairs and see Aunt Sabrina? She is in her room. I think - the sight of you would do her good.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes. What a terrible shock it must be to her. And——?” - </p> - <p> - “The widow? You’ll find her in the parlor. Strange enough, she was weeping - her eyes out when I last saw her.” He could not keep the bitterness out of - his tone. - </p> - <p> - “Poor woman!” was all that Annie could find it in her heart to murmur, as - Seth passed her on his gloomy errand, and she entered the house of - mourning. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXVI.—THE CORONER. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HERE was a short - cut by which, using a rough back road across the hill, and then a - dimly-marked bridle path down the bed of the creek, one could get to - Tallman’s ravine in less than an hour on foot. Seth saddled the black - mare, and brought her up on the meadow plateau overlooking the gulf, - panting and white on breast and barrel with foam, inside fifteen minutes. - He had galloped furiously, unable to think save in impatient flashes, and - reckless alike of his own neck and the beast’s wind and limbs. He reined - up the plunging mare at the very edge of the ravine, where some score of - farmers and boys were standing clustered under the trees, watching his - excited approach. - </p> - <p> - As he threw himself from the saddle among them, and looked swiftly from - face to face for the right one to speak to first, the attention of the - elder bystanders concentrated itself upon the mare. They would have given - their foremost thoughts to her anyway, for they were owners of livestock - even before they were neighbors, and her splashed and heated condition - appealed in protest to their deepest feeling—reverential care for - good horseflesh. But there was something more: the mare was strangely, - visibly agitated at the sight of the glen before her, and reared back with - outstretched trembling forelegs, lifted ears, and distended, frightened - eyes. - </p> - <p> - “By Cracky!” cried Zeke Tallman himself, “don’t it beat natur’! This ’ere - mare knaows what’s happened! Look at her! She senses what’s layin’ down - there at the bottom!” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ it they say dawgs has got more instinck than a hoss!” said a - younger yokel. He kicked a mongrel pup which was lounging around among the - men’s legs, with a fierce “Git aout! yeh whelp, yeh! What d’<i>you</i> - knaow abaout it!” to illustrate his contempt for this canine theory. - </p> - <p> - A third farmer, more practically considerate, took the shivering, - affrighted beast by the bridle, and led it away from the gulf’s edge, - patting its wet neck compassionately as they went. - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile Seth had found his way through the group to his brother John, - who stood with his back against a beech tree, springing from the very - brink of the gulf, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the trampled - grass at his feet. A half circle of boys, with one or two girls of the - school age, stretched about him at some distance, like the outer line of - an open fan, mutely eyeing him as the second most important figure in the - tragedy. They separated for Seth to make his way, and made signs to each - other that the interest was doubled by his arrival. The brothers shook - hands silently and scarcely looked at each other. - </p> - <p> - There came the sound of a pistol shot from the glen below; somebody said: - “There! they’ve killed th’ off-hoss. Ther’ goes th’ best matched team o’ - grays in Dearborn Caounty!” - </p> - <p> - “Have you been down yet, John?” Seth asked softly, as the low buzz of - conversation began about them once more. - </p> - <p> - “No, not yet. I suppose I could if I had insisted on it, but when I got - here, twenty minutes or so ago, they told me here that Timms had got his - jury together down there, and forbidden anybody coming down till they were - through. So I’ve stayed here. Not that I care about Timms, but—I can - wait.” - </p> - <p> - “Let’s go down!” As he spoke, Seth swung himself around the beech, and - began the descent, letting himself swiftly down the steep, mossy declivity - by saplings and roots. His brother followed. One or two boys started also, - but were roughly restrained by their elders, with a whispered “Stay back, - can’t yeh! H’ain’t yeh got no sense. Them’s the brothers!” - </p> - <p> - The scene at the bottom was not unlike what Seth’s fancy had painted it, - adding the terrible novelties of the night to a spot he had known from - boyhood. Half-shaded even in the noon sunlight by overhanging branches - from the towering, perpendicular sides of the glen, the miniature valley - lay, a narrow stretch of poor, close-cropped grass, with the spiral, faded - mullein stalks, the soft brown clumps of brake, the straggling, bloomless - thistles, and even some tufts of glowing golden-rod, which push their way - into unfrequented pasture-lands and encompass their sterility. The stream, - which once had been a piscatorial glory of the section, but now, robbed of - its water and its life by distant clearings, mills and reservoirs, - wandered sadly and shallowly on an unnoted course, divided itself here to - skirt each side of the gulf with a contemptible rivulet—the two - coming together abruptly at the mouth of the low stone culvert, and - vanishing into its dark recesses, above which rose, sloping steeply, the - high embankment of the road traversing the ravine. - </p> - <p> - It was over this embankment that horses, carriage and owner had - precipitately pitched; it was at its base, on the swail and gravel of the - stream’s edge, that the wreck lay, surrounded by a little knot of men. - Vertical gashes in the earth down the bank, with broken branches and tom - roots, marked the awful track of the descent; the waters of the brook to - the right, dammed by the body of the horse killed in the fall, had - overflowed the sands and made muddy rivulets across to the culvert. - </p> - <p> - The Coroner turned with obvious vexation at the sound of the brothers’ - approach. “I thought I give word—” he began; then, recognizing the - newcomers, added, without altering his peremptory, officious tone: “It’s - all right; you can come now, if you want to. The gentlemen of the jury - have completed their labors for the present. I was on the pint of - adjourning the ink-west.” - </p> - <p> - The brothers joined the jurors, and dumbly surveyed the spectacle at their - feet. One of the grays lay across the rivulet; the other, more recently - dead, was piled awkwardly upon its mate’s neck and shoulders, in an - unnatural heap. The front portions of the buggy, scratched but not - smashed, were curiously reared in the air, by reason of the pole being - driven deep into the soft earth, between the horses; the rear wheels and - the seat, broken off and riven by the violence of the shock, were imbedded - in the marsh underneath. On the higher ground, close in front of the - brothers, lay something decorously covered with horse-blankets, which they - comprehended with a sinking of the heart. - </p> - <p> - “He lay in theer, part under the hind wheels ’n’ part under the - nigh hoss,” explained the Coroner, with dignity. “The fall was enough to - brek his neck twenty times over, let alone the hosses may’ve kicked him on - the way down. We hev viewed the remains, ’n’ we’ve decided— - </p> - <p> - “We ain’t decided nothin’!” broke in one of the jurors, a serious, almost - grim-faced farmer, with a bushy collar of gray whiskers framing his brown - square jaw. “How kin we decide till we’ve heerd some evidence, ’n’ - before the ink-west is threw with?” - </p> - <p> - “There’s some men’d kick if they was goin’ to be hung. Did I <i>say</i> - we’d arrived at a verdict? What I mean is we’ve agreed to adjourn the - ink-west now till arter the funeral.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, why daon’t yeh say what yeh mean, then?” rejoined the objecting - juror. “They can’t no cor’ner make up my verdict fur me, ’n’ you’ll - fine it aout, tew.” - </p> - <p> - “The more fool me fur panelin’ yeh!” was the Coroner’s comment. - </p> - <p> - The brothers insensibly edged away from this painful altercation. A little - elderly man, in shabby broadcloth which seemed strangely out of place - among the rough tweeds and homespuns of the farmers, detached himself from - the group of jurors, and came over to them, with a subdued halfsmile of - recognition. It was the Thessaly undertaker. - </p> - <p> - “Tew bad, ain’t it?” he said glibly, “allus some such scrimmage as thet, - on every one of Timms’ juries. He ain’t got no exec’tive ability, <i>I</i> - say. I’d like to see <i>him</i> run a funer’l with eight bearers—all - green han’s! I told him thet once, right to his face! But then of course - yeh knaow <i>I</i> can’t say much. He’s techy, ’n’ ’twouldn’t - do fur me to rile him. We hev a kind o’ ’rangement, you see. I hev - to be on hand any-way, ’n’ he allus puts me on the jury; it helps - him ’n’ it helps me. I kin always sort o’ smooth over things, if - any o’ th’ jurors feels cranky, yeh knaow. They’ll listen to me, cuz they - reelize I’ve hed experience, ’n’ then there’s a good deal in - knaowin’ haow to manage men, in hevin’ what <i>I</i> call exec’tive - ability. Of course, this case is peculiar. They ain’t no question abaout - th’ death bein’ accidental. But this man you heerd kickin’, this Cyrus - Ballou, he’s makin’ a dead set to hev’ Zeke Tallman condemned fur hevin’ - his fence up there in bad repair. He ’n’ Tallman’s a lawin’ of it - abaout some o’ his steers thet got into Tallman’s cabbages, ’n’ - thet’s why——-” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose we can leave this to you!” John broke in, impatience mastering - the solemnity of the scene. “Have you made any arrangements? You know what - ought to be done.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, my boy ought to be here by this time with my covered wagon, what I - call my ambulance.” - </p> - <p> - The brothers turned away from him. The little man remembered something and - hurrying after them laid his hand on John’s arm. - </p> - <p> - “When I spoke abaout allus bein’ on the jury, you knaow, p’raps I ought - to’ve explained.” He proceeded with an uneasy, deprecating gesture. “You - see, a juror gits a dollar a day, ’n’ sometimes friends of the - remains think I ought to deduck thet f’m my bill, but ef you’ll jest - consider——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh for God’s sake! leave us alone!” - </p> - <p> - It was Seth who spoke, and the undertaker joined his fellow-jurors at the - foot of the hill forthwith. The brothers went back, and stood again in - oppressed silence over the blanketed form. - </p> - <p> - Dr. William Henry Timms meanwhile conversed apart with his panel. He was a - middle-aged, shrewdfaced man, who, like so many thousands of other Whig - babes born in the forties, had been named after the hero of Tippecanoe. He - was more politician than coroner, more coroner than doctor. He hung by a - rather dubious diploma upon the outskirts of his profession, snubbed by - the County Society, contemned by most sensible Thessaly families as “not - fit to doctor a sick cat.” But he had a powerful “pull” in the politics of - the county, and the office could not, apparently, be wrested from him, no - matter how capable his opponent. - </p> - <p> - In the earlier years of his official service he had been over zealous in - suspecting mysteries, and had twice been reprimanded by the Supreme Court - Judge, and much oftener by the District Attorney, for enveloping in - criminal suspicion cases which, when intelligently examined, were palpable - and blameless casualties. These experiences had sensibly modified his - zeal. He had put the detective habit of mind far away behind him, and, - like a wise official, bent all his energies now to the more practical - labor of dividing each inquest into as many sessions as possible. Had he - been a Federal Deputy Marshal, he could not have been more skilled in this - delicate art of getting eight days’ pay out of a three hours’ case. A bare - suggestion of mystery at the start, to be almost cleared up, then revived, - then exploited carefully, then finally dissipated, and all so deftly that - the District Attorney, who lived at Octavius, would not be inspired to - come over and interfere—this was Dr. Timms’ conception of a - satisfactory inquest. Occasionally there would be the added zest of an - opportunity to formally inflict censure upon somebody, and if this - involved some wealthy or potential person, so much the better: to withhold - the censure meant tangible profit, to sternly mete it (failing a fair - arrangement) meant public credit as a bold, vigilant official. - </p> - <p> - Dr. Timms was still turning over in his mind the professional - possibilities involved in Tallman’s bad fence-building, and casually - sounding his jurors as to their private feelings toward the delinquent; - the brothers had followed the jury up to the meadow plateau, and were - standing aloof from yet among their neighbors, answering in monosyllables, - and following mentally the work of the undertakers’ squad down in the - bottom; the farmers were beginning to straggle off reluctantly, the - demands of neglected work and long-waiting dinners conquering their - inclination to remain—when a big carry-all from Tyre drove up on the - road outside, and a score of men clambered out and over the fence to join - the group. They had driven post-haste from the Convention, and among them - were Ansdell, Beekman, and Milton Squires. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Ansdell came straight to the two brothers, giving a hand to each with - a gesture full of tender comprehension. While they talked in low tones of - the tragedy, they were joined by Abe Beekman; upon the normal eagerness - and wistful solemnity of his gaunt face there was engrafted now a curious - suggestion of consuming interest in some masked feature of the affair. He - was so intent upon this, whatever it might be, that to the sensitive - feelings of the other three he seemed to dash into the subject with wanton - brusqueness. - </p> - <p> - “How air yeh, Fairchild?” he nodded to John, “I want somebody to tell me - this hull thing, while it’s fresh. Who knaows th’ most ’baout it? - Where’s th’ Cor’ner? What’s he done so far?” - </p> - <p> - Obedient to a word from John, the Coroner dignifiedly came over to the - beech tree, where our little group stood, and listened coldly to a series - of searching questions put by the Jay County magnate. When they were - finished he made lofty answer: - </p> - <p> - “I ain’t institooted no inquiries yit. That’ll be arranged fur later, to - convenience the family ’n’ the officers of the law. It ain’t - customary, in cases of accident like this, to rush around like a hen with - her head cut off, right at the start. The law takes these things ca’mly, - sir—ca’mly ’n’ quietly.” - </p> - <p> - “But have you made an examination?—you are a doctor, I think,” - interposed Ansdell. “Have you satisfied yourself when the death occurred? - Have you learned any of the circumstances of it? Were there any - witnesses?” - </p> - <p> - The Coroner looked at the questioner, then at the brothers, as if - including them in his pained censure, then back again at Ansdell: - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know ez it’s any o’ <i>your</i> business,” he said. “Who <i>air</i> - yeh, any way?” - </p> - <p> - Before anyone else could answer, Beekman spoke: “He’s the next Congressman - from this deestrick—nominated by acclamation over at Tyre to-day—that’s - who <i>he</i> is. But never mind that, what I want to knaow is—air - yeh sure he died from an accident? Kin yeh swear to thet ez a doctor?” - </p> - <p> - “Toe be sure I kin!” responded the official, in a friendlier tone. “He was - simply mashed out o’ shape by the fall. He come down forty feet, ef it was - an inch, plum under the horses. They jest rolled over each other, all the - way down.—And so this is Mr. Ansdell, I presewm. I’m proud to make - yer acquaintance, sir. Only by the merest accident I wasn’t at the - Convention to-day, sir.” - </p> - <p> - The undertaker came up now to announce that the first stage of his labors - was completed and that the ambulance wagon was on the road outside, ready - to start for the Fairchild homestead. - </p> - <p> - “We went up by t’other side, lower daown the gulf,” he explained; “’twas - easier, ’n’ then there was no shock to yer feelin’s. Ef I might be - ’lowed to s’jest, it ’ud look kine o’ respectful to hev all - these friends of the remains walk two by two, behine the wagon, daown to - the haouse. Yeh might let the carry-all come along arterwards, empty, yeh - knaow, ez a sort o’ token of grief.” - </p> - <p> - The suggestion was passively accepted as the proper thing under the - circumstances, and the little procession began to shape itself on the road - outside. Seth was moving toward the fence with the others, when the - thought of the black mare he had ridden to the scene occurred to him. A - farm-boy was holding the animal a little way off, near some bars opening - from the meadow to the road. Seth saw Milton getting over the rails—he - had been busy on the outskirts of the assemblage gathering accounts from - those earlier on the ground—and said to him: “Won’t you get the - mare, and ride her home, along with the carry-all. I shall walk—with - the rest.” - </p> - <p> - The cortege had formed just beyond the fateful narrowing of the road, - where it crossed the gulf, and the men who were to follow Albert to the - homestead, including all the late comers from Tyre and a few neighbors, - had looked down the steep declivity, and noted the new breaking away of - earth on the road’s edge, before they passed on to fall in line behind the - black, shrouded vehicle. The procession had moved some rods when there - came sounds of excitement from the rear; at these some of the walkers - turned, then others, and even the driver of the ambulance drew up his - horses and joined the retrospective gaze. - </p> - <p> - The black mare was balking again, on the road directly over the gulf, and - was crowding back with her haunches tight against the fencing on the side - opposite to that over which her late master had fallen. It was a moment of - cruel tension to every eye, for the fence was visibly yielding under the - animal’s weight, and another tragedy seemed a matter of seconds. Milton - appeared to have lost all sense, and was simply clinging to the mare’s - neck, in dumb affright. Luckily a farmer ran forward at this juncture, and - contrived to lead the beast forward diagonally away from the spot. Milton - sat up in the saddle again, turned the mare away from the gulf, and - galloped off. - </p> - <p> - “Dummed cur’ous thet!” whispered Beekman to Seth; “does thet mare ack thet - way often?” - </p> - <p> - “I never knew her to balk before to-day. She acted like that when I first - brought her up to the ravine. It <i>is</i> curious, as you say. But animal - instinct is a strange, unaccountable thing any way.” - </p> - <p> - “Hm-m!” answered the Boss of Jay County, knitting his brows in thought, as - the procession moved again. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXVII.—ANNIE AND ISABEL. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>nnie found the - living room of the Fairchild homestead unoccupied. She could hear Alvira - talking with the Lawton girl out in the kitchen, and from the parlor on - the other side there came a murmuring sound which she did not comprehend - at once. As she laid her hand upon the stair door, with the purpose of - ascending to Sabrina’s room, this sound rose to a distinguishable pitch. - It was a woman’s weeping. Annie hesitated, listening for a moment; then - she turned, rolled one of the parlor doors back, and entered. - </p> - <p> - Isabel lay buried in the blue easy-chair, her face, encircled by one arm, - hidden against its back. The great braids of her yellow hair were - dishevelled and loosened, without being in graceful disorder. Her whole - form trembled with the force of her hysterical sobbing. - </p> - <p> - At Annie’s touch upon her shoulder she raised her face quickly. It was - tear-stained, haggard, and looked soft with that flabbiness of outline - which trouble may give to the fairest woman’s beauty when it is not built - upon youth; over this face passed a quick look of disappointment at - recognition of Annie. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it is you!” - </p> - <p> - The almost petulant words escaped before Isabel could collect herself. She - sat up now, wiping her eyes, and striving with all her might for control - of her thoughts and tongue. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, Isabel. I <i>was</i> going up to Sabrina’s room, but I heard you - sobbing here, and I felt that I must come to you. It is all so terrible—and - I do so feel for you!” - </p> - <p> - “Terrible—yes, it <i>is</i> terrible! It was kind of you to come—very - kind. I—I scarcely realize it all, yet. It was such a shock!” - </p> - <p> - “I know, poor dear.” Annie laid her hand caressingly on the other’s brow. - She had not come with over-tenderness in her heart, but this unexpected - depth of suffering, so palpably real, touched her keenly. “I know. Don’t - try to talk to me—don’t feel that it is necessary. Only let me be of - use to you. It will be a dreadful time for you all—and perhaps I can - spare you some. I shan’t go to the school to-day. Oughtn’t you to go up to - your room now, Isabel, and lie down, and leave me here to—to arrange - things?” - </p> - <p> - “No, not yet! Perhaps soon I will. My impulse is to stay down, to spare - myself nothing, to force myself to suffer everything that there is to be - suffered. I’ll see; perhaps that may not be best. But not now! not now! No—don’t - go! Stay with me. I dread to be left alone; my own thoughts murder me!” - She rose to her feet, and began pacing to and from the piano. “Let me walk—and - you talk to me—anything, it doesn’t matter what—it will help - occupy my mind. Oh, yes—were you at Crump’s last night? I heard them - come by, late, singing.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Isabel, how <i>can</i> we talk of such trivial things? Yes, I was - there; I was in the singing party, too. It makes me shudder to think that - at that very minute, perhaps——” The girl paused for a moment, - with parted lips and troubled face, as if pondering some sudden thought; - then exclaimed, “<i>Oh-h!</i> the horse! Could it have been!” - </p> - <p> - “Could what have been!” Isabel stopped in her caged-panther-like pacing, - and looked deep inquiry. - </p> - <p> - “But no, of course not! What connection <i>could</i> there have been! You - see, after I left the wagon, to cut across by the path at the end of the - poplars, a horse came galloping like the wind up the road, with some - figure lying low on its back. We were too far away to see distinctly, - though the night was so light”—she had insensibly drifted into the - use of the plural pronoun—“but the thing went by so like a flash - that it seemed an apparition. And come to think of it, there was an effort - to avoid noise. I know I wondered at there being such a muffled sound, and - Seth explained——” - </p> - <p> - She stopped short, conscious of having said more than she intended. - </p> - <p> - “Seth was with <i>you</i>, then?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—he met me, quite unexpectedly, by the thorns. He had been out - walking, he said; the night was too fine to sleep.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I heard him go out, an hour and a half at least before the singers - came by. Did he say anything to you about what had happened, here in the - house, during the evening?” Isabel’s azure eyes took on their darkest hue - now, in the intentness of her gaze into her companion’s face. - </p> - <p> - “Only that he had had words with Albert—poor boy! how like a knife - the memory of them must be to him now!” - </p> - <p> - “Did he tell you what the words were about?” - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - “Did he say anything else to you?” - </p> - <p> - Annie grew restive under this persistent interrogation. The habit of - deference to the older, wiser, more beautiful woman was very strong with - her, but this did seem like an undue strain upon it. - </p> - <p> - “Why yes, no doubt he did. We talked of a number of things.” - </p> - <p> - “What were they? What did he say?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, really, Isabel, I——” - </p> - <p> - The elder woman gave a little click with her teeth and, after a searching - glance into the other’s face, resumed her walk up and down, her hands - clenched rather than clasped before her, and her movement more feline than - ever. “Well, really you—what?” she said with the faintest suggestion - of a mocking snarl in the intonation. - </p> - <p> - The girl drew herself up. It was not in human nature to keep her tone from - chilling. “Really, I think I would better go up to Sabrina. I fancied I - might be of some service to you.” - </p> - <p> - “Annie! Are you going to speak like that to me?—<i>now</i> of all - times!” The tone was outwardly appealing. Annie’s sense was not skilled - enough to detect the vibration of menace in it. - </p> - <p> - “No, Isabel, not at all. But you make it hard for me. Can you wonder? I - think to comfort a desolate, stricken woman in her hour of sorrow, and she - responds by peremptory cross-examination as to what a young man may have - said to me, in the moonlight. Is it strange that I am puzzled?” - </p> - <p> - “Strange! Is not everything strange around and about me! That I should - have married as I did; that I, loathing farm life, should have come here - to live; that I should be waiting here now for them to bring my husband’s - corpse home to me—is it not all strange, unreal? The conversation - ought to be to match, oughtn’t it?”—she spoke with an unnatural, - tremulous vivacity which pained and frightened the girl—“and so, - while we wait, I talk to you about young men, and the moonlight, and all - that. <i>Can’t</i> you see that my mind is tearing itself to pieces, like - a machine in motion with some big rod or other loose, pounding, crushing, - right and left like a flail! We <i>must</i> talk! Tell me what he said, - anything—everything.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, that isn’t so easy,” Annie replied dubiously, much mistrusting the - sanity of all this conversation, but pushed along with it in spite of - herself. “He said something about a misunderstanding with his poor - brother, and then—then something that I didn’t at all understand - about a temptation, a great temptation leading him to the gates of hell he - called it—but you know how Seth is given to exaggerate everything—and - then——” - </p> - <p> - “He told you all this, did he. How confiding! How sweet! Go on—what - <i>else</i> did he say to you—in the moonlight.” - </p> - <p> - Annie felt vaguely that the tone was cruel and hostile. As she paused in - bewildered self-inquiry, Isabel glided forward and confronted her, with - gleaming eyes and a white, drawn face. - </p> - <p> - “Why do you stop there?” she demanded in a swift, bitter whisper. - </p> - <p> - “There <i>are</i> things which—a girl doesn’t like to—have - dragged from her in this——” - </p> - <p> - Even as Annie was forming this halting halfsentence, a change came over - the elder woman. She dropped the hand which had been raised as if to - clutch Annie’s shoulder. The flashing light passed from her eyes, and - something of color, or at least of calm, came back into her face. - </p> - <p> - “I understand!” she said, simply. - </p> - <p> - “You can see, Isabel, that this is not a time I should have chosen to - speak of such things to you, if you had not insisted. It seems almost - barbarous to bring my joy forward, at such a time, and appear to contrast - it with your affliction. You <i>won’t</i> think I wanted to do it, will - you?” - </p> - <p> - The widow of a day was looking contemplatively at her companion; she had - effaced from both expression and voice every trace of her recent - agitation. “Are you sure it is all joy?” she asked calmly. - </p> - <p> - “I wouldn’t admit it to him. And at first I was not altogether clear about - it in my own mind. Indeed, with this other and terrible thing, I can - scarcely think soberly about it, as it ought to be thought of. But still—you - know, Isabel, we were little children together—and I have never so - much as thought of anybody else.” Annie spoke more confidently, as she - went on; the notion that there had been malevolence in Isabel’s tone had - faded into a foolish fancy: there seemed almost encouragement, sympathy, - in her present expression. “I should have lived and died an old maid if he - had not come to me. And it comforts me, dear, too, to think that in your - great trouble I shall have almost a sister’s right to be with you, and - help you bear it.” - </p> - <p> - Isabel did not respond to this tender proffer of solace. She still stood - eying her companion reflectively. “You are very certain of being happy, - then?” she mused. - </p> - <p> - A sense of discordance touched the girl’s heart again—a something in - the restrained, calm tone which seemed to sting. She looked more - searchingly into the speaker’s eyes, and read in their blue depths a - mystery of meaning which froze and silenced her. While Annie looked, in - growing paralysis of thought, Isabel spoke again, slowly: - </p> - <p> - “Your married life at least won’t be deadly dull, as mine was. There must - be great possibilities of excitement in living with a man who can propose - marriage to a girl—in the moonlight—<i>on his way home from - having murdered his brother!</i>” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Young Samantha Lawton, the member of the tribe who served as - maid-of-all-work at the Warren homestead, had a mind at once imaginative - and curious. From an upper window she had caught sight of the mournful - procession from Tallman’s ravine, winding its way down the hill, in the - distance. She stole out from the house, whose bedridden occupant could at - best only yell herself hoarse in calling if she chanced to need anything - during her absence, and walked up the path by the thorns to the main road, - over which the cortege would presently pass. Inside the sharp angle of - shade made at this corner, where the thorns aspiringly joined the poplars, - there was an old board seat between two trees, the relic of some past and - forgotten habit of rendezvous, perhaps whole generations old. Samantha - knew of this seat, and stood on it now; from it, she had a clear view of - the road in front and, through the tangled thorns, of the meadow-path to - the left, while there were branches enough about her to render her - practically invisible. From this coign of vantage Samantha saw some things - which she had not expected to witness. - </p> - <p> - Annie Fairchild came suddenly across the line of vision, from the - direction of the dead man’s house, and walked straight to the stile at the - edge of the thorn row. There was something so curious in the expression of - her face, as she advanced, that Samantha scented discovery, and prepared - on the instant an exculpatory lie. But Annie passed the one place where - discovery was probable, and the hidden girl saw now that the strange look - had some other explanation. She crossed the stile, and clung to the fence - post, as if for support; glanced up the road, where now the black front of - the nearing procession could be discerned; then with a shudder turned her - face in profile toward her unsuspected observer, and looked vacantly, - piteously up into the afternoon sky. - </p> - <p> - Annie’s face, with its straight, firm outlines, was not one which lent - itself to the small facial play of evanescent emotions. Its regular - features habitually expressed an intelligent, self-reliant composure, not - easily responsive to shades of feeling. To see this calm countenance - transfixed now with a helpless stare of anguish was to comprehend that - something terrible had happened. - </p> - <p> - She stood at the stile, desperately clinging to the rail at first, then - edging into the thorns to be more out of sight, as the ambulance and the - little file of friends moved slowly by. She noted nothing of the - peculiarities of the procession—that most of the silent followers - were strange men, in city dress—but only gazed at Seth, walking - along gravely behind the vehicle, beside his brother John. She saw him - with eyes distended, fixed—as of one following the unfolding of a - hideous nightmare. So long as the party remained in sight, these set, - affrighted eyes followed him. Then they closed, and the sufferer reeled as - if in a swoon. - </p> - <p> - Samantha’s first and best impulse was to get down and go to the agonized - woman’s aid; her second, and controlling, thought, was to stop where she - was, and see and hear all that was going. - </p> - <p> - Annie seemed to recover her strength, if not her composure. She wrung her - hands wildly and talked with strange incoherence aloud to herself. Once - she started, as if to cross the stile again and return to the house of - mourning, but drew back. At last, walking straight ahead, like one in a - dream, she moved toward her home. - </p> - <p> - Samantha followed at a safe distance, marvelling deeply. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXVIII.—BETWEEN THE BREAD-PAN AND THE CHURN. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ELL, I don’ knaow - ’s I go’s fur’s Sabriny, ’n’ say ther’s a cuss on th’ - fam’ly, ’n’ thet M’tildy Warren put it there, fur after all, three - deaths hand-runnin’ in tew years ain’t an onheerd-of thing, but I don’t - blame her fur gittin’ daown-hearted over it. Poor ole creetur, she’s be’n - a carryin’ the hull load o’ grief on her shoulders sence Sissly died. I - shouldn’t wonder if it’d be tew much for her naow.” - </p> - <p> - Alvira sighed, and let her eyes wander compassionately from the kneading - board and its batch of dough to the old, cushioned arm chair by the - kitchen stove where Aunt Sabrina customarily sat. This last bereavement - had rendered the hired-girl almost sentimental in her attitude toward the - stricken old maid—so much so that when young Samantha Lawton dropped - in, toward evening, and offered to sit down in this chair, Alvira had - sharply warned her to take another. - </p> - <p> - The girl had brought a note over from Annie to Seth, and was not a little - vexed that Alvira should have taken it from her, and gone upstairs to - deliver it herself, instead of allowing the messenger to complete her - errand. She declined, therefore, to display any interest in the subject of - the aged aunt, and warmed her hands over the glowing stove-griddles in - silence. The elder Lawton girl, Melissa, resting for a moment from her - churning, turned the talk into a more personal channel. - </p> - <p> - “Fur <i>my</i> part, I think it’s a pesky shame, where there’s three big - strappin’ men ’raoun’ th’ haouse, to make a girl wag this old - chum-dash till her arms are ready to drop off. ’N’ I’ll tell ’em - sao, tew.” - </p> - <p> - “I sh’d thought Dany’d done it fur yeh” said her younger sister, with a - grin. “He allus seemed to me to be soft enough to do all yer work fur yeh, - ef you’d let him.” - </p> - <p> - “Not he! Both he ’n’ Leander ain’t so much’s lifted a finger ’raoun’ - th’ haouse to-day. They’re off daown to th’ corners, hangin’ raoun’ th’ - store, ’n’ swoppin’ yarns ’baout th’ accident. <i>They</i> - wouldn’t keer ’f I churned away here till I spit blood. In th’ - mornin’ he’ll be awful sorry, of course, ’n’ swear he furgot all ’baout - Wednesday’s bein’ churnin’ day. Thet’s th’ man of it!” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ I s’pose Milton never does nothin’ ’baout th’ haouse - naowadays,” remarked Samantha, interrogatively. - </p> - <p> - “No, siree!” snapped Alvira. “You bet he daon’t! He’s tew high ’n’ - mighty fur thet! Prob’ly he’s furgot so much as th’ name of a churn, even. - He might git his broadcloth suit spotted, tew. I wouldn’t dream o’ askin’ - <i>him</i>. I’d ruther ask Seth any day then I hed Milton. <i>He</i> don’t - put on half so many airs, even if he does git thirty dollars a week in - Tecumseh, ’n’ live ’mong ladies ’n’ gentlemen ev’ry - day ’f his life.” - </p> - <p> - Melissa rested from her labors again, to say sneeringly: “Pritty ladies ’n’ - gentlemen he <i>use’t</i> to travel with, there in Tecumsy, accordin’ to - all accaounts!” Alvira paused in turn, with her arms to the elbow in the - floury mixing, and an angry glitter in her little black eyes. “Ef I was <i>some</i> - folks, ’n’ hed <i>some</i> folk’s relations in Tecumsy, ’pears - to me I’d keep my maouth pritty blamed shut ’baout what goes on - there!” - </p> - <p> - The retort was ample. There was no answering sound, save the muffled - splash and thud of Melissa’s vigorously-resumed churning. - </p> - <p> - The lull in conversation was beginning to grow oppressive when the young - visitor asked: “Haow does th’ fine lady take it?” - </p> - <p> - “She seems more opset than anyone’d given her credit fur,” Alvira - answered, sententiously. - </p> - <p> - Melissa interposed to expand this comment, and rest her arms: “Yes, she <i>seems</i> - opset enough. P’raps she <i>is</i>. But then agin, p’raps ef you was young - ’n’ good lookin’, with blew eyes ’n’ a lot o’ yalleh hair - thet was all yer own, ’n’ you hed a hus-ban’ twice as old as you - was, ’n’ he sh’d fall daown ’n’ break his neck, ’n’ - leave you a rich young widder, p’raps you’d cry yer eyes aout—when - people was lookin’—speshly if thet husban’ o’ yours left a likely - young brother who was soft on yeh. When you git as old ’s I be, - S’manthy, you’ll learn ther’s a good deal in appear’nces.” - </p> - <p> - “When she gits as old as you air,” broke in Alvira, sharply, “I hope - she’ll learn better ’n’ to blab everythin’ thet comes into her - head! You’ll let that cream break, ef yeh don’t look aout!” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t b’lieve its within an ’aour o’ comin’” said Melissa, - wearily resuming her task. - </p> - <p> - “No, but—reelly,” began Samantha, “<i>is</i> Seth——?” - </p> - <p> - “Never you mind whether Seth is or whether he isn’t,” answered Alvira. “A - young tadpole of a girl like you’s got no business pryin’ ’raoun’ - older folks’ affairs. You better go home! M’tildy may need yeh. Yer - sister’s got her work to dew, ’n’ so ’ve I.” - </p> - <p> - This plain intimation produced no effect upon Samantha. She continued to - warm her hands, which were already the hue of a red apple with the heat, - and remarked: “No, she don’ want me. Annie said I might stay ’s - long ’s I wanted to. She said she wanted to be left alone. She’s - abaout the wuss broke up girl <i>I</i> ever sot eyes on. You ought to see - the way <i>she</i> takes on, though. I bet the widder ain’t a succumstance - to her. Ef you’d seen what <i>I</i> saw, ’n’ heern what <i>I</i> - heerd this afternoon, I guess you’d think so tew.” - </p> - <p> - The girl spoke calmly, with a satisfied conviction that nobody would tell - her to go home again in a hurry. - </p> - <p> - “What was it?” came simultaneously from the kneading-board and the churn. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I dunnao,—I ain’t much of a han’ to blab everythin’. A young - tadpole of a girl like me, yeh knaow, ain’t got no business——” - </p> - <p> - “Come naow! <i>Don’t</i> be a <i>fool</i>, S’manthy! Ef you’ve got - anythin’ to say, spit it aout!” - </p> - <p> - Thus adjured by the commanding tones of Alvira, the girl trifled no more, - but related what she had seen, while hidden behind the thorns. She had a - talent for description, and made so much of Annie’s stony face and strange - behavior, that she succeeded in producing an effect of mystification upon - her listeners scarcely second to that under which she, as an involuntary - spectator, had labored. The success of her recital was not lost upon - Samantha, as she went on: - </p> - <p> - “Et was after th’ undertaker’s waggin ’n’ th’ men—some gallus - lookin’ young fellers, f’m Tecumsey I guess, was amongst ’em—et - was after these’d all gone by, thet I heerd her talk. She kind o’ hid - herself in th’ bushes while they was a goin’ by, ’n’ stared at ’em - like mad, ez fur’s she c’d folly ’em. Then she bust aout—not - a-cryin’ mind yeh, fur she never shed a tear—but wringin’ her han’s - ’n’ groanin’ ’n’ actin’ ’s ef she was goin’ to faint. I c’d - see her jest ez plain ’s I kin see you stan’in’ there naow, ’n’ - heer her, tew. All to onc’t she up ’n’ said——” - </p> - <p> - The young girl stopped here in the narrative abruptly, with a fine - disregard for the consuming interest with which her companions were - regarding her; she lifted her nose, and drew two or three leisured sniffs. - Then she bent down at the side of the stove and repeated them. - </p> - <p> - “Ther’s somethin’ burnin’ in thet oven,” she said at last, confidently. - </p> - <p> - “Et’s th’ barley. I knowed S’briny’d traipse off ’n’ leave it. She - allus does;” said Alvira, flinging open the oven door, and dragging out - with her apron a smoking pan of scorched grain. - </p> - <p> - Through the dense, pungent smudge which temporarily filled the room, - Samantha was heard to remark with offensive emphasis: “We allus drink - genu-wine coffee over to M’tildy’s. She’s mean enough ’baout some - things, but she wouldn’t make us swell ourselves aout with no - barley-wash.” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ sao do we here, tew—all but S’briny!” retorted Alvira, - indignantly. “She got use’ to drinkin’ it in war-times, when yeh couldn’t - git reel coffee fur love n’r money, jes’ ez all th’ other farm-folks did. - On’y she’s more contrary ’n’ th’ rest, ’n’ she wouldn’t - drink nothin’ else naow, not ef yeh poured it into her maouth with a - funnel. But go on ’th yer yarn!” - </p> - <p> - Samantha had to cough a little, on account of the smoke, and then it took - her some moments to collect the thread of her narrative. But at last even - the spirit of Tantalus could invent no further delay, and she proceeded: - </p> - <p> - “Well, she didn’t say much, fer a fact, but they was business in ev’ry - word she did say. Fust she hollered aout—right aout, I tell yeh: ‘<i>Et’s - a wicked lie! She’s a bad, wicked woman!</i> ’ Then she stopped fer - awhile ’n’ put her han’s up to her for’id—like this. Then she - shuk herself, ’n’ commenced to climb back over th’ stile, but she - seemed to think better of it, ’n’ started fer her own haouse, - like’s ef she was a walkin’ in her sleep, ’n’ a groanin’ to - herself: ‘<i>Seth a murd’rer! Seth a murd’rer!</i>’ Thet’s what I heerd!” - </p> - <p> - The girl put both feet up on the stove hearth, and tilted her chair back - in conscious triumph. “Got ’n’ apple handy?” she inquired of - Alvira, carelessly, in the tone of one whose position in life was assured. - </p> - <p> - To this strange recital, involving such terrible suggestions, there - succeeded a full minute of silence in the kitchen, broken only by the - ponderous clucking of the high wooden clock. Alvira and Melissa looked at - each other dumbly—each for once willing to forego the first word. - </p> - <p> - “Well, what d’yeh say to <i>thet?</i>” finally asked Melissa. - </p> - <p> - After some reflection, Alvira answered, “I sh’d say S’manthy was a lyin’.” - </p> - <p> - “S’elp me die, crisscross, I ain’t!” protested the girl at the stove: - “I’ve told it all, jest’s it happened, straight’s a string. Where’s yer - apples?” - </p> - <p> - Alvira meditated again for a moment. Then she said to her subordinate: “Go - down ’n’ git that sister o’ yourn a Spitzenberg—’n’ - bring up some cider, yeh might’s well, too.” - </p> - <p> - When Melissa had gone, Alvira went over to the ‘younger girl, and gripped - her sharply by the shoulder: “Look here, you, is what you’ve be’n tellin’ - us here honest? Don’t lie to <i>me!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Honest Injun? Alviry! ev’ry word!” - </p> - <p> - Alvira returned to her dough, and slapped it savagely into a huge, - unnatural pancake. She maintained silence until Melissa had returned, and - not only supplied her sister’s wants, but poured out a cupful of the new - cider for herself, as a proof of her appreciation of the Lawton family’s - supremacy over the existing crisis. Then Alvira spoke: - </p> - <p> - “I don’t ’tach th’ least ’mportance in th’ world to what - S’manthy heerd. Annie’s a school-teacher, ’n’ she’s be’n workin’ - pritty hard, ’n’ this thing’s kind o’ opset her—what with - tendin’ to her gran’mother, ’n’ then this teachin’, which is - narvous, wearin’ kine o’ work. Thet’s th’ trewth o’ th’ matter. <i>I</i> - kin un-derstan’ it. She was jest aout of her senses. But other folks won’t - understan’ it as I dew. Once a hint gits flyin’ amongst outsiders, who - knaows where it’ll stop? Naow, girl ’n’ woman, I’ve be’n in this - haouse twenty year ’n’ more. I’m more a Fairchild than I’m anythin’ - else. I remember th’ man in there—layin’ dead in th’ parlor—when - he was a youngster, comin’ home f’m college; I remember Seth when he was a - baby. I ain’t got no folks of my own thet I keer a thaousandth part ‘s - much abaout, nur owe a thaousandth part ’s much tew, ez I dew this - Fairchile fam’ly. <i>Well!</i> They’ve hed trouble enough, this las’ tew - year, ‘thout havin’ any added onto it by th’ tattlin’, gossipin’ tongues - of outsiders. I ain’t goin’ to <i>hev</i> it! D’yeh understan’! Ef I heer - s’ much’s a whisper of this yere crazy school-teacher’s nonsense reported - ‘raound, by th’ Lord above, I’ll skin yeh both alive!” - </p> - <p> - “Who’s <i>b’en</i> a gossipin’?” asked Samantha, reproachfully. “I - shouldn’t never said a word, ef you hadn’t insisted, ’n’ called me - a fool fur holdin’ my tongue.” - </p> - <p> - “I dunnao where you’ll gao to when you die, S’manthy,” said Alvira, - reflectively. “But nao, girls, trewly naow, this mustn’t be mentioned. Yeh - kin see with half ’n eye what a raow it’d stir up. Naow prommus me, - both o’ yeh, thet not a word of it shell pass yer lips. Yeh can see fer - yerself haow foolish it is! Ev’rybody knaows he driv off th’ raoad, ’n’ - killed himself ’n’ th’ hosses by th’ fall. It’s ez plain ‘s th’ - nose on yer face. Still it’s jest sech cases as this thet people git - talkin’ abaout, once they’re sot goin’—so yeh <i>will</i> promise - me, won’t yeh?” - </p> - <p> - They promised. - </p> - <p> - “Hon’r bright, ye’ll never say a word to nao livin’ soul?” - </p> - <p> - They asseverated solemnly, honor bright, and Samantha had a doughnut as - well as another cup of cider. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - The tiresome butter came at last, and the dough passed into a higher form - of existence through the fiery ordeal of the oven; supper was laid and - silently eaten; two neighbors, volunteers for the night-watch with the - dead, came, and were ushered into the gloomy parlor; while apples, cheese, - doughnuts and a pitcher of cider were placed on the table outside, for - their refreshment in the small hours. Night fell upon the farm. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Melissa Lawton stole out-doors as soon as Alvira retired to her room, and - made her way through the darkness to the barns. As Albert had done on the - fatal previous evening, she opened the sliding door of the big stable, and - called up the stairs to Milton. There was no response, and investigation - showed that he was not in his room, although the lamp was burning dimly. - The girl stopped long enough to look over the familiar coarse pictures on - the walls and the shelf, and then crept down the steep stairs again. - </p> - <p> - As she groped her way through the blackness to the stable door she came - suddenly in contact with a person entering, and felt herself rudely seized - and pushed back at arms’ length. - </p> - <p> - “Who’s here? What d’yeh want?” demanded a harsh voice, which seemed - despite its gruffness to betray great trepidation. - </p> - <p> - “It’s me—M’lissy!” - </p> - <p> - “Come along aout here into the light, so I kin see yeh. What a’ yeh doin’ - here, praowlin’ ’raoun’ ’n th’ dark, skeerin’ people fur?” - </p> - <p> - The Lawton girl’s native assurance all came back to her as she confronted - Milton in the dim starlight outside—which was radiance by contrast - with the stable’s total darkness—and she grinned satirically at him. - </p> - <p> - “You’ve got a nerve on you like a maouse, I swaow! You trembled all over - when yeh tuk holt o’ me, in there. What was yeh skeert abaout? I wouldn’t - hurt yeh!” - </p> - <p> - “I wa’n’t skeert,” the man replied, sullenly. “What was yeh after - in there?” - </p> - <p> - “I was lookin’ fur you.” - </p> - <p> - “What fur?” The tone was still uneasily suspicious. - </p> - <p> - “I got somethin’ to tell yeh.” - </p> - <p> - “Well?” - </p> - <p> - “D’yeh knaow, I more’n half b’lieve this thing wa’n’t an accident - at all. What’d yeh say ’f it sh’d turn aout to be a murder?” - </p> - <p> - Even in this faint light Melissa could see that Milton was much taken - aback by the suggestion. He thrust his hands into his pockets, pulled them - out again, shuffled his feet, stammered, and betrayed by other signs - general among rustics his surprise. - </p> - <p> - “Pshaw—git aout!” he said at last; “what nonsense! Of caourse ’t - was ’n accident. Didn’t th’ Cor’ner say sao? Daon’t ev’rybody knaow - it?” - </p> - <p> - “Annie Fairchile don’t say sao. <i>She</i> don’t knaow it.” - </p> - <p> - The girl went on to relate the substance of Samantha’s revelations, adding - unconsciously sundry embellishments which tended to throw a clearer light - upon Seth as the chief figure in the mystery. - </p> - <p> - Milton listened with deep attentiveness. His slow, inefficient brain - worked hard to keep up with the recital, and assimilate its chief points. - When the girl had finished he still thought steadily on this strange - story, with its unforeseen, startling suggestions. Gradually two items - took shape in his mind as most important: that Annie believed Seth to be - the criminal, and hence would be estranged from him; and that if by any - unexpected means people came to suspect foul play, here were the elements - of a ready-made suspicion against Seth. The first of these was very - welcome; it would be time enough to think of the other if a discovery were - made. - </p> - <p> - “What dew I think?” he said at last, in response to the girl’s repeated - inquiries. “I think thet sister o’ yourn lied, ’n’ I think yeh - better keep yer maouth, ’n’ her’n tew, pritty dum shet, ef yeh - don’t want to git into trouble.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXIX.—THE BOSS LOOKS INTO THE MATTER. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>OUSIN Seth—<i>There - are reasons why I cannot come to the house again, even to the funeral; and - why I shall not see you again during your stay. I think you will - understand them. If you explain to Aunt Sabrina that I am ill, it will not - be a falsehood. I have been and am suffering—terribly. But nobody - can help me, save by leaving me to myself. I am trying to forget, too, - everything that was said when we last talked together, and I shall - succeed. Never fear, I shall succeed. A.</i> - </p> - <p> - It was this note, scrawled in a hand very unlike Miss Annie’s customary - prim, school-teacher’s writing, which Samantha had borne over from the - Warren house. Seth had studied it, perplexedly, for a long time on the - evening of its arrival. He ruminated now again upon it, as he walked along - the road toward Thessaly, the following forenoon. The temptation to - confide the thing to John, who had stayed over night with him at the - homestead, and now was walking silently by his side toward the village, - wavered in his mind. Perhaps John could assist him to comprehend it; but - then, it would be necessary to explain so much to him first. Finally the - arguments in favor of confession triumphed, and with a “Here, old man; - this is a letter from Annie. I want you to help me guess what it means,” - he made the plunge. - </p> - <p> - John read the note carefully. “What was it you talked about on this - occasion she refers to, and when was it?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “It was night before last, <i>the</i> night, and I asked her to marry me.” - </p> - <p> - “And what was her answer?—I’ll tell you afterward how glad I am to - hear what you’ve just told me.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, it wasn’t decisive—but she admitted that it made her very - happy.” - </p> - <p> - “And you haven’t seen her since?” - </p> - <p> - “No—or yes! I did. I met her just for a moment yesterday forenoon, - as I was starting out from the house after hearing—the <i>news</i>. - We only exchanged a word or two, though.” - </p> - <p> - “Did she seem angry with you then?” - </p> - <p> - “Not at all!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, what can have happened since? Try and think! She has reasons, she - says, which she thinks you will understand. When a woman says she has - ‘reasons’ she means that some mischief-maker has told her something - disagreeable. Now——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my God! I see it now!” Seth stopped short in the road, and clenched - his fists. - </p> - <p> - “Well, what is it?” - </p> - <p> - “She went into the house, and saw Isabel!” Seth continued, as if talking - to himself. - </p> - <p> - “What has that got to do with it?” - </p> - <p> - Seth looked up at his brother with a blanching face, in which fright and - amazement blended. “What is that line of Congreve’s about Hell having no - fury like a woman scorned?” he asked mechanically. - </p> - <p> - It was John’s turn to stare. Gradually a light began to spread in his - mind, and make things visible whose existence he had not suspected before. - “Well, you <i>are</i> a simpleton!” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t I know it?” was the pained, contrite response. - </p> - <p> - The brothers walked on a few yards in silence. Then John said “Of course, - you needn’t tell me any more of this than you want to—but at least I - can ask you—how <i>much</i> of a fool have you made of yourself up - at the farm?” - </p> - <p> - “That’s hard to say. Just now I’m inclined to think that I am the champion - ass of the world.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you’re displaying some sense <i>now</i>, anyway. What have you - done?” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t done anything. That’s the foolish part of it all.” - </p> - <p> - John stopped in turn, and looked his brother’s face attentively over. “Go - on, now,” he said, “and tell me what there is of it. There’s no use in my - butting my brains out against a stone wall, guessing at such an - inscrutable mess as this seems to be.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s hard to tell—there isn’t anything specially <i>to</i> tell. I - simply got sort of sentimental about Isabel, you know—she was lonely - and disappointed in life, and my coming to the farm was about the only - chance for company she got, and all that—and then I found the thing - might go too far and so I stopped it—and to clinch the thing, asked - Annie to marry me. That’s what there is of it.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s good as far as it goes. Go on, youngster; out with the rest of - it!” - </p> - <p> - “I tell you that <i>is</i> all.” - </p> - <p> - “Humbug! Annie never wrote this letter on the strength of such - philandering nonsense as that. You say Isabel must have told her - something. What <i>was</i> that something? Do you know?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes!” The answer was so full of despondent pain, that John’s sympathy - rose above his fraternal censariousness. - </p> - <p> - “Come, my boy,” he said, “you’d better make a clean breast of it. It won’t - seem half so bad, once you’ve told me. And if I can help you, you know I - will.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I <i>will</i> tell you, John. Night before last, Monday night, I - had hard words with Albert, up at the house. You know how he sent for me, - insisted on my coming, and what he wanted. Of course I could only say no, - and we quarreled. Toward the end we raised our voices, and Isabel, who was - upstairs, overheard us. Just then he began about me and her—it seems - he had noticed or heard something—and she, hearing her name, took it - for granted the whole quarrel was about her. I went upstairs, and - presently he drove out of the yard with the grays. I couldn’t sleep, I was - so agitated by the idea of our rupture, and I went out to walk it off. It - was while I was out that I met Annie and had the talk I have told you - about. Then I came home, went to bed, and slept till after ten—long - after everybody else had heard the news. I heard of it first from Isabel, - and she—she——” - </p> - <p> - He came to an abrupt halt. The duty of saying nothing which should - incriminate the woman rose before him, and fettered his tongue. - </p> - <p> - “And she—what?” asked John. - </p> - <p> - “Well, she somehow got the idea that I had followed Albert out and—and—was - responsible for his death! <i>Now</i>. you have it all!” - </p> - <p> - There was a long silence. They were nearing the four corners, and walking - slowly. Finally John, with his eyes on the ground, said: “And so that’s - what she has told Annie, you think?” - </p> - <p> - “That’s the only way I can explain the note.” - </p> - <p> - “But Annie couldn’t possibly believe such a thing as that!” - </p> - <p> - “No—but there’s an explanation for that too. Come to think of it, I - must have said a lot of things to her, that night, which seem now to her - to fit in with this awful theory. Poor girl! I don’t blame her.” - </p> - <p> - John answered, after a pause, “There’s no use of my saying anything to - show you what a situation you are in, or to scold you for it. I suppose - you realize it fully enough. What’s more to the purpose, we must consider - what is to be done. It is safe enough to assume that if Isabel thinks this - and has said it to one person, either some one else will think it, or she - will hint about it to another. The thing is too terrible to have even one - person, even if she were silent as the grave, think about it. The obvious - thing, I should think, would be to have a postmortem examination.” - </p> - <p> - “I thought they always had them at inquests.” - </p> - <p> - “No, the Coroner can dispense with one if he and the jury agree that it - isn’t necessary. Timms sent me word that he had decided to dispense with - one, in this case, ‘out of consideration for the feelings of the family.’ - That means, of course, that he wants the <i>Banner</i> to help re-elect - him next year. But now out of ‘consideration for the family’ we’ll have to - have one. Don’t be so down in the mouth about it, boy; it will all come - right, never fear!” - </p> - <p> - The brothers had reached the solitary building at the corners—a low, - dingy store, with its sloping roof turned to the road, and a broad - platform and steps stretching along its entire front. A horse and vacant - buggy stood at the hitching-post. John proposed to go in and get some - cigars, if Turner had any fit to smoke. - </p> - <p> - Their surprise was great at meeting on the steps Mr. Beekman of Jay - County, who was coming out. After terse salutations had been exchanged, - Beekman said: - </p> - <p> - “Lucky you fellows come daown jest ez yeh did. I come over this mornin’ - a-purpose to see yeh, ’n’ yit I didn’t quite like to go up to th’ - farm. I’ve got ever so many things I want to ask yeh, ’n’ say to - yeh.” He led the way over to the farther end of the steps, and, following - his example of sitting down on the platform, they waited curiously for him - to proceed: - </p> - <p> - “Fust of all, I was daown to Tecumsy last night, ’n’ saw Workman. - He said you”—turning to Seth—“needn’t worry yerself ’baout - comin’ back till yeh was ready. They kin keep th’ paper runnin’ for a week - or sao, while you stay up here ’n’ dew yer duty like a Christian.” - </p> - <p> - Seth said he was much obliged, and then asked how it happened that Beekman - had posted off to Tecumseh—over seventy miles—and returned so - soon. - </p> - <p> - “Well, there was some things I wanted to see abaout daown there, ’n’ - more thet I’m interested in keepin’ an eye on up here. So I kind o’ humped - myself.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m glad to see you taking such an interest in Ansdell’s campaign,” said - John. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Beekman’s gaunt visage relaxed for a second: “So yeh calc’late <i>thet’s</i> - what I’m buzzin’ ’raoun’ th’ State fur, do yeh? Yeh never’s more - mistaken in yer life. I’ve heerd reports circ’latin’ ’raoun’ thet - ther’d be an election a fortni’t or so from naow, ’n’ thet Ansdell - ’n’ I was concerned in it, but yeh can’t prove it by <i>us</i>. We - ain’t s’ much as give a thought to politics sence th’ Convention ended. <i>We’ve</i> - got somethin’ else to occupy aour minds with b’sides politics. I got a - telegraph dispatch from him, sent from New York this mornin’, thet I want - to talk to yeh ’baout presently, but fust——” - </p> - <p> - “Ansdell in New York?” asked Seth, all curiosity-now. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, he went on daown, while I got off at Te-cumsy, ’n’ I sh’d - jedge from his telegraph thet he’d be’n on the go some sence he got there. - But what I want to ask yeh ’baout is this: Do yeh knaow haow much - money yer brother hed on him night ‘fore last, when he was—when he - met his death?” - </p> - <p> - The brothers looked at each other, then at, the speaker, “No,” answered - Seth, finally. “We haven’t the least idea. Why do you ask?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll come to that bimeby. Naow next, do you knaow where he was th’ day - b’fore th’ Convention?—thet is, Monday.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I can tell you that. He was in New York. He only got back Monday - evening.” - </p> - <p> - “Pre-cisely. Well, naow, do yeh knaow what he went there for?” - </p> - <p> - “No. Something connected with politics, I suppose, but I can’t say for - certain. He had business there very often, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I knaow. But he hed very special business this last time. Naow look - at this telegram.” - </p> - <p> - The two took the oblong sheet, and read: - </p> - <p> - “<i>New York—Oct. 21. 942 A.M. Unexpectedly easy sailing. Found clue - to money almost without looking. Fancy now must been sixteen instead ten. - Hope return to-night. Ansdell</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, still I am in the dark,” John said, after reading and re-reading - the dispatch. “What is it all about? I suppose you understand it.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m beginnin’ to see a leetle ways threw th’ millstone, I think, myself,” - replied Beekman. “But it’s all so uncert’n yit, I don’t want to say - nothin’ thet I can’t back up later on.” - </p> - <p> - Seth too had been busily pondering the dispatch, and he said now, with a - flushing face: “<i>I</i> know what you think! You and Ansdell have got an - idea there was foul play!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, yes, it ain’t much more’n an idee, <i>yit</i>;” assented Beekman. - </p> - <p> - “What do you base your idea on?” demanded John, full of a nameless, - growing fright lest there <i>might</i> be something further which Seth’s - confession had not revealed. - </p> - <p> - “Jest you wait one day more,” said the Boss of Jay County, grimly, “one - day more ’ll dew. Then I miss my guess ef we ain’t in shape to tell - yeh. Fust of all, there’s got to be a post-mortem.” - </p> - <p> - John’s impulse was to say that he and Seth had already agreed upon this, - but a second thought checked his tongue. - </p> - <p> - “’N’ it’ll hev to be on th’ quiet. Everything depends on thet—on - keepin’ it dark. There’s some folks might get skeered, ’n’ - complicate things, ef it ain’t kep’ mum. ’N’ thet’s what I wanted - to ask yeh ’baout. I’ve thought of Dr. Bacon, over at Thessaly, ’n’ - Dr. Pierce daown at the Springs. They’re both good men, ’n’ got - level heads on ’em. What d’yeh say to them?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve no objection to them in the world, but the Coroner——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I know ’bout him. He’s th’ blamedest fool in th’ caounty. Over - in Jay we wouldn’t elect sech a dumb-head to be hog-reeve. But you ’n’ - Ansdell kin fix it with him to-morrow, ’n’ I’ll drive to-day ’n’ - see both doctors, ’n’ put ’em straight. ’N’ naow yeh - must prommus me, both of yeh, thet yeh won’t breathe a word of this to any - livin’ soul.” - </p> - <p> - They promised, and he climbed into his buggy, and gathered up the reins. - “Oh, there’s one thing more,” he said, on reflection. “P’raps you wonder - why I’m takin’ so much on myself. I’ll tell yeh bimeby. I’ve got my - reasons. I’m mixed up in it, more’n you’d think.” - </p> - <p> - He turned about, and drove off briskly toward Thessaly. The brothers stood - in perplexed silence by the roadside for some minutes. There was surely - enough to think about. - </p> - <p> - At last, with a frank gesture, John stretched his hand out to Seth: - </p> - <p> - “Old boy,” he said, “I don’t know how this thing is coming out, but we’ll - see it through together. You go down to the office and wait for me. You - might do some things to fill up the paper this week if you’ve got nerve - enough. I’m going back to the farm.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXX.—JOHN’S DELICATE MISSION. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hile Seth tried to - divert his thoughts at the <i>Banner</i> office by going over the - freshly-arrived batch of morning dailies, and fastening his attention upon - their political editorials and reports of speeches instead of their - displayed and minute reports of the sensational tragedy in Tallman’s - ravine—John Fairchild retraced his steps toward the farm. He had a - definite purpose in his mind—to confront and silence Isabel—and - he strove hard as he went along to plan how this should be done, and what - he should say. - </p> - <p> - He felt that his dominant emotion was wrath against this sister-in-law of - his, and he said to himself as he strode along that he had never liked - her. He could recall the summer a dozen years before when she came to the - farm as a visiting cousin. He had been civil to her then, even - companionable, for she was bright, spirited, in a word good company, but - it seemed to him now that even then he had suspected the treachery - ingrained in her nature—that he had been instinctively repelled by - those hateful qualities, dormant in her girlhood, which were later to plot - infidelity to one of his brothers, and lure into trouble, shame, perhaps - even crime, the other. - </p> - <p> - This latter phase of her work was peculiarly abominable in John’s eyes. He - was not going to get up any special indignation on the first count of the - indictment; a bachelor of nearly forty who marries a sentimental young - girl does it at his own risk, John felt, and Albert had invited just this - sort of thing by exiling her to a farm, and forcing her romantic mind to - feed on itself. But that she should have selected Seth—her own - husband’s brother, the Benjamin of the flock, a veritable child in such - matters—to practise her arts upon, was grievously unpardonable. To - be sure, Seth ought to have had more sense. But then John, habitually - thinking of him as “the youngster,” thought he could see how he had been - led on, step by step, never realizing the vicious tendency of it all, - until he had all at once found himself on the brink of a swift descent. - Then, to do the boy justice, he seemed to have stopped short, turned his - back upon the siren, and for the sake of further security, irrevocably - committed himself to Annie. He had been sadly weak in the earlier stages - of the affair, no doubt; but this last course appeared manly and sensible—and - wholly incompatible, too, with any idea of malice or crime on Seth’s part. - What fault there was belonged-to the woman, and she should be told so, - too, straight and sharp. - </p> - <p> - Thus John’s thoughts ran as he entered the house, and bade the Lawton girl - tell her mistress he wished to speak with her. He had not seen Isabel - since her husband’s death—she having kept her room constantly—nor - for a long time previous. They had, indeed, scarcely met more than - half-a-dozen times since she came to live at the homestead, and then with - considerable formality on both sides. As he stood by the stove in the - living-room, awaiting her coming, he knitted his brows and framed some - curt, terse words of address. - </p> - <p> - She entered, clad in the same black and dark-gray wrapper which his memory - associated with his mother’s funeral, and which gave the effect of height - and slender dignity to her figure. Her face was pale and pathetic in - expression, and the ghost of a smile which flitted in greeting over it for - a second accentuated its stamp of suffering. She offered him her hand, and - said, in a low mournful voice: - </p> - <p> - “It was good of you to come to me, John. I have been expecting, hoping you - would. Won’t you take off your coat and sit down?” - </p> - <p> - He had shaken hands with her, loosened his overcoat and taken a seat - before he had time to reflect that he ought to have ignored her greeting - and her proffered hand. The sharp words, too, that he had arranged in his - mind seemed too brusque now to utter to a weak, lone woman who was so - evidently suffering. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” he said, “I thought I ought to talk things over with you. You’ve - got nobody else.” - </p> - <p> - “No—not a soul! I couldn’t be more wholly alone if I were at the - North Pole, it has seemed to me this last day. I have eaten nothing; I - haven’t slept an hour. So you must make allowances for me,” she said, with - a weak shadow of a smile, “if I seem nervous or incoherent. My mind goes - all astray, sometimes now, and I seem unequal to the task of controlling - it.” - </p> - <p> - He had thought at last of a question which might introduce the desired - subject without wounding her feelings. “Do you happen to know,” he asked, - gently, “whether Albert brought a large sum of money with him from New - York Monday?” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t the least idea, I am sure. In fact, I only saw him for a moment - after his return. And besides, you know, he never told me a syllable about - his business arrangements. No one could be in more complete ignorance of - his affairs than I have always been.” There was the tone of resigned - regret in her voice which a wife might rightly use. “I do indeed—there - is one exception—know about his will. He told me that, not by way of - confidence, but because it came out—in some words we once had about - property of mine in New York. I might as well tell you. The will gives - everything except my third to you and your aunt and—your brother. <i>He</i> - has the lion’s share. Don’t think I am complaining, John. I wouldn’t have - had it altered if I could. I am more than independent, you know, apart - from right of dower. If I had had the making of the will, it would have - been just the same. It is only right that his money should go to his - family.” - </p> - <p> - John reflected for some moments before he answered. “I am almost sorry you - told me,” he said then. “It makes me wretched and ashamed to think of the - injustice I have done him in my mind. It sounds brutal, in the light of - what you have told me,—but I am going to confess it to you—I - suspected all along that he intended to come some game over us about the - farm; and now, instead——. Oh, it’s <i>too</i> bad. I wish he - could hear me!” John continued, with a glance toward the folding doors of - the parlor, once more the chamber of death. “I wish he could know how I - despise myself for having wronged him in my mind.” - </p> - <p> - Isabel said nothing, but her responsive eyes seemed to express - appreciation and sympathy. John lost all sense of wrath toward her as he - went on: - </p> - <p> - “Yes, from the very start we wronged him. We didn’t understand him. He was - different from us—he was a man of the world, and we were countrymen, - and we thought all the while that he held himself outside the family. I - never gave him credit for good motives when he came to the farm; neither - did Seth. We both thought he was playing his own game, for himself, and - nobody else. And here, by George! he turns out to have had more brotherly - feeling, more family feeling, than we ever had. It makes me miserable to - think of it. It’ll break Seth’s heart, too; he’ll always torture himself - with the thought that the last time he ever saw Albert alive they parted - in anger.” - </p> - <p> - The words were out before he realized their significance. He stopped - short, and felt himself changing color as he looked at her to see whether - she too was thinking about that terrible night. - </p> - <p> - She made a motion as if to rise from her chair; then dropped back again - and returned his inquiring glance with a fixed, intent look. - </p> - <p> - “So you know something about <i>that</i>,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Did Seth tell you?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes!” he answered, falteringly. “Seth told me. We had a long talk this - forenoon. I think he told me about every thing there was to tell. In fact, - that is mostly why I’ve come back now to see you.” - </p> - <p> - She was silent, but her eyes seemed to John to be saying disagreeable - things. - </p> - <p> - He began again to realize that it was his duty to be indignant in attitude - and peremptory in tone, but he was also conscious of feeling very sorry - for Isabel. The village editor often described himself, and was uniformly - characterized by others, as being “no hand for women.” His own brief - career as a married man—it seemed almost a dream now, and a very - painful dream, with a short period of great happiness, then a slightly - longer season of illness, poverty, debt, despair, and then the rayless - gloom of death in his scarcely established home—had taught him next - to nothing of the sex, and inclined him against learning more. The - impressions of womankind which clustered about the memories of his - girl-wife were, however, all in the direction of gentleness and softness. - As he reflected, it grew increasingly difficult for him to put on a harsh - demeanor toward his sister-in-law. She might deserve it well enough, but - it was not in his heart to speak ugly words to a pretty and troubled woman - at such a time. He stumbled on: - </p> - <p> - “Yes, the youngster is fearfully cut up about the whole thing, and he <i>had</i> - to talk to somebody. He’s always been used to telling me everything. He is - not a tattler, though, and I’m bound to say he only told me because I - questioned him, and insisted on his making a clean breast of it. Then I - sent him down to the office, and I came back here, thinking it might be - best for all concerned to have a frank talk with you about it.” - </p> - <p> - She had a course mapped out now in her mind. “I am sure that your motives - are good, John,” she said, “and that you will be fair and candid. I - confess I don’t see what there is to be gained, specially, but you no - doubt know best. What is it you wanted to talk over?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, it isn’t easy to state it, off hand. Perhaps I might as well begin - by speaking of motives, as you did. I own that when I came in I wasn’t so - sure that your motives were good, as you say you are about mine.” - </p> - <p> - “That is candid, at all events.” - </p> - <p> - “I want to be perfectly open and above-board with you, Isabel. You seem to - have got into your head yesterday—I won’t say you have it now—some - horrible and ridiculously wild suspicion of Seth——” - </p> - <p> - “I know what you mean,” she interposed, with nervous haste. “You mustn’t - think of that at all! You mustn’t blame me for it! I was simply distracted—mad—out - of my senses. I don’t know <i>what</i> awful thing my fancy didn’t conjure - up. Don’t pay any attention to that!” - </p> - <p> - “But the mischief of it is that you seem to have spoken of this to—to - somebody else. It would have been unimportant otherwise. <i>This</i> - complicates it badly. Don’t you see it does?” - </p> - <p> - She made no answer, and kept her eyes on the figures in the carpet. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you see it does?” he repeated. - </p> - <p> - “How do you know that I spoke of it to anybody?” she asked, after a pause, - and still with downcast eyes. - </p> - <p> - “That has nothing to do with it, Isabel. It’s true, isn’t it, that you did - speak of it?” - </p> - <p> - To his surprise and embarrassment she began weeping, and hid her face in - her handkerchief. He sat mutely watching her, wishing that she would stop, - and perplexed at encountering on the very threshold of his inquiries and - argument this un-meetable demonstration of a woman’s resources. - </p> - <p> - She presently sobbed out, from behind the perfumed cambric: “You <i>can’t</i> - hold me accountable for what I did yesterday, or what I said! I was beside - myself! I scarcely know what I thought, or what I said! I acted like a - crazy woman—and felt like one, too! It is easy enough for you to be - cool and collected about the thing. You are a <i>man!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I know, Isabel,” he said, kindly, “I understand all that, and I can - make all the allowances in the world for you, in your position. But still - that doesn’t alter the fact that the thing has been said, and the harm - done. To be sure, I suppose, the harm will be only temporary, but as it - stands it affects the prospects of more than one person—of two - persons, in fact, near to us—very materially. You know what I mean?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, what can be done to remedy it? That is the question. I am not going - to blame you, but still the fault <i>was</i> yours, and the steps to set - it right ought to be yours, too, oughtn’t they?” - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean?” She looked up now, forgetting her tears. - </p> - <p> - “I am not quite sure what I do mean. I haven’t thought over details. There - is simply a given situation, with the question how to get out of it, and - the onus of action on you. I want you to help me think what the best way - will be.” - </p> - <p> - “How logically you state it! Suppose I disavowed the whole thing, ignored - it, refused to do anything or say anything. What then?” - </p> - <p> - “I won’t consider that at all. You couldn’t be so unfair as that—so - ungenerous.” - </p> - <p> - “Unfair! Ungenerous!” Isabel rose to her full height, and frowned down at - her brother-in-law, without a trace of tears in her eyes. “Fine fairness, - distinguished generosity, have been shown to <i>me</i>, haven’t they! - There has been so much delicacy in regarding <i>my</i> feelings! I ought - to leap at the opportunity of smoothing over matters between Mr. Seth and - his lady-love. My husband’s awful death, my position here, alone in the - world, the shock and suffering of it all—these are mere trifles - compared with the importance of seeing that their love affairs are - uninterrupted! Perhaps I might get a chance at the funeral to have them - kiss and make up—or would you prefer me to leave my dead now and go——” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Your</i> dead!” - </p> - <p> - The brother had risen also, and taken his hat. The exclamation carried in - its tone all the bitterness with which his mind had stored itself on his - walk back to the farm. Pity for the woman, perhaps something too of innate - susceptibility to beauty and grace, had restrained and covered up this - bitterness, so that he had supposed it gone. It flamed forth now, in - wrathful satire. - </p> - <p> - As she put her handkerchief up again to her eyes, as a token of more - tears, he went on, in a cold kind of excitement: - </p> - <p> - “You talk very cleverly—more so than any other woman I ever knew. - But you should pick your strong phrases with more discrimination. For - instance, when you want to produce a really striking effect upon me, it is - unwise to use an expression which recalls to me at once things that you - would rather I didn’t think about. I wouldn’t say ‘<i>my</i> dead ’ - if I were you, especially when you are talking to his brother. It may do - for outsiders, but here in the family it is a bad waste of words.” - </p> - <p> - Her only answer was a gust of sobs. They failed to move him and he went - on: - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know that I have any means of forcing you to do anything, or say - anything, against your will. If you take that position, perhaps it won’t - be necessary. The wicked, ridiculous thing you thought, or pretended to - think, and said to that poor girl, can be straightened out very easily. We - can’t prevent the pain it has already caused, but we can stop its causing - more. But if you lisp it to another human being—well, I don’t know - what to threaten you with. It isn’t easy to guess what considerations will - weigh with a woman who has your ideas of wifely duty, and of her - responsibilities towards young and foolish members of her husband’s - family, and——” - </p> - <p> - “How <i>can</i> you be so cruel, so mean, John? What right have you to - talk to me like that? Everybody attacks me like an enemy. You never have - been decent to me since I was married. Your whole family has treated me - like an outsider, almost a criminal, since I came here. Your old cat of an - aunt never looked at me except to wish me evil. Your brother—yes, if - he could hear me now, from where he lies, I would say it!—never was - fond of me, never tried to make a companion of me, never treated me as a - wife should be treated, or even as his intellectual equal. <i>You</i> - avoided me as if I were poison. The neighborhood disliked me, gossiped - about me, and I hated them. Only one there was of you all who was pleasant - with me, and good to me—and now that you have turned him against me, - too, you come and insult me because I was pleased and grateful for his - friendship. That is <i>manly</i> isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - John had listened to the beginning of this impassioned speech with a - callous heart. But he was a just man, and he had in almost unmeted degree - that habit of mind which welcomes statements of both sides of a - controversy. He might have been a wealthier man, and the owner of a more - thriving paper, if he had had more of the partisan spirit. But to be - strictly fair was the rule of his being. He would not criticise political - opponents for doing things which in his heart he approved, and, on the - same principle he would not condemn unheard even this woman, if she had - any justification. As she went on, he began to feel that there was - considerable force in her argument. She certainly had been most - disagreeably situated, connubially and socially, and her definition of the - Seth episode was plausible, if that were all there was of it. He softened - perceptibly in tone as he answered: - </p> - <p> - “No, I am sorry if you think I wanted to insult you. Perhaps I did speak - too strongly. I apologize for it. But I feel very earnestly on this - subject. I’ve always been a sort of father and big brother combined to - Seth, and the idea of his getting into a mess, or doing foolish or - discreditable things, cuts me to the quick. You can see my position in the - matter. I am anxious not to hurt your feelings, but my first duty is to - him. Perhaps the two need not come into conflict. After all, no real harm - has been done, I fancy, except in this one case of repeating your - hysterical suspicion of him. <i>That</i> was inexcusable; can’t you <i>see</i> - that it was? I’m sure that if you’ll think it over calmly, you’ll be - disposed to do what is fair and right. I’m not blaming you particularly - for the other thing. You might have remembered that you were older than - Seth, to be sure, but then I realize that you were not at all pleasantly - placed——” - </p> - <p> - “Never mind what you realize! We won’t discuss that at all. There is - nothing to discuss. You and your aunt seem bound to make yourselves - ridiculous about me. I won’t demean myself by answering—or no! I <i>will</i> - say this much to you. There has never a word passed between Seth and me - that every soul of you might not have heard, and welcome. He was simply - pleasant and friendly to me—and I was grateful to him and fond of - him, as I might be of a brother. Where was the harm? In no decent state of - society would any one ever have dreamed of suspecting wrong. But <i>here</i>—why, - people live and breathe suspicion! It is the breath of their nostrils.” - </p> - <p> - “I thought you used to correspond,” John said, tentatively. - </p> - <p> - “Correspond! There it is again! What of it, I should like to know? Why - shouldn’t my cousin, my brother, write to me? I have all the letters;—you - may see them every one. They gave me a great deal of pleasure. They - represented my sole point of contact with civilization, with fine feelings - and pretty thoughts. But you can go over them all, if you like. You won’t - find a single whisper of proof of your aunt’s mean suspicion. I am almost - ashamed of myself for having stooped to defend myself—but it is just - as well to let you know the truth.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes!” John breathed a sigh which was not altogether of relief, but - carried a fair admixture of bewilderment. This ingenious explanation did - not at all points tally with the inferences drawn from Seth’s confession. - Perhaps it was true enough in the letter, but he felt that as a revelation - of the spirit it left much to be desired. He added: - </p> - <p> - “Well, I am sorry if I misjudged you. Probably I did. However, even if - Seth had come near getting into a scrape, he’s safe out of it now.” - </p> - <p> - This complaisant conclusion nettled-the woman. She went on, as if her - explanation had not been interrupted: - </p> - <p> - “Of course, we had what you might call a community of grievance to talk - about, and draw us together. It wouldn’t be fitting in me to say more now - than that my life here was not congenial: you won’t mind my saying <i>that</i> - much? I had dreamed of a very different kind of married existence. Seth, - too, had his trouble. In his boyhood, when it seemed assured that he was - to remain the farmer of the family, his mother had planned a marriage for - him. It isn’t for me to say a word against Annie. She is a good enough - girl, in her way. But when Seth got out of his chrysalis, and learned what - there really was in him, the thought that he was committed in a sense to - marrying a farm girl made him very gloomy. He used to talk with me about - it, not saying anything against Annie, mind you, but——” - </p> - <p> - “That’ll do!” said John, curtly. “We won’t go into that. Evidently there - was no limit to Seth’s asininity. Let that pass. Whatever he said, or - didn’t say, during his vealy period, he’s going to marry Annie now. There - never was a time, and I fear there never will be one, when I would not - call her his superior. The question is: Are you going to retract before - her the false, cruel things you have said?” - </p> - <p> - “I am going upstairs again,” she said. “I think I will lie down awhile,” - and moved towards the stair-door. - </p> - <p> - The brother looked at her, amazed, pained, indignant. She had her hand on - the latch by the time his emotions found words: - </p> - <p> - “I’ve wasted my time in pitying you. God forbid that any of our family, - young or old, should ever fall in with such a woman as you are again!” He - pulled on his hat and left the house. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXXI.—MILTON’S ASPIRATIONS. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he lamps were - lighted in the little partitioned-off square which served as the editorial - room of the <i>Banner</i> when John returned. He found Seth weakly - striving to write something for the editorial page, and in substance laid - the situation before him. He was not feeling very amiably toward his young - brother at the moment, and he spoke with cold distinctness. The tone was - lost upon Seth, who said wearily: - </p> - <p> - “I don’t see that it makes much difference—her refusing. What good - would it have done, if she <i>had</i> gone to Annie? She could only tell - her that she had abandoned such and such ideas. That isn’t what counts. - The fact of importance is that she ever entertained them, that they ever - existed. To my notion, there’s nothing to do but to wait and see what - comes of Beekman’s suspicions. What do you think of them, anyway? I have - been trying to imagine what he is aiming at, but it puzzles me? What do - you think?” - </p> - <p> - “To tell the truth, I haven’t been thinking of that. My mind has been - occupied with the female aspects of the thing. I’m not impatient. - Evidently Beekman and Ansdell think they have got hold of something. They - are not the men to go off on a wild-goose chase. Very good: I can wait - until they are ready to explain. But what I can’t wait for—or bear - to think about—is poor Annie, suffering as she must be suffering to - have written that letter.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I’ve thought of that, too, but I’m helpless. I can’t think of - anything: I can’t do anything.” - </p> - <p> - “You don’t seem to be of much use, for a fact,” mused the brother. “I’ll - tell you what I’ll do, if you think best. To-morrow afternoon, after I’ve - seen Ansdell, or before that if he doesn’t come, I will go over and see - Annie myself. I can go over to the school-house by the back road, and walk - home with her. Perhaps by that time, too, I shall have something tangible - to explain to her. Until then, I suppose she must continue in suspense. It - is the penance she ought to do, I dare say—” the brother added this - in mildly sarcastic rebuke—“for the luxury of being in love with - such a transcendant genius as you are.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Something like an hour before this, Annie had dismissed her classes and - locked up the school-house for the night. As she did so, she mentally - wondered if she should ever have the strength to walk home. - </p> - <p> - The day had been one long-drawn out torture from its first waking moments—indeed - there seemed to have been nothing but anguish since her interview with - Isabel the previous day, not even the oblivion of sleep. Her impulse, and - her grandmother’s advice, had been to remain at home; but she had already - left the school unopened on the fatal Tuesday, in the shock of the news of - Albert’s death: to absent herself a second day might prejudice the - trustees against her. Besides, the occupation might serve to divert her - thoughts. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps the trustees were satisfied, she said to herself now, locking the - door, but there certainly had been no relief in the day’s labor. The - little children had been unwontedly stupid and trying; the older boys, - some of them almost of her own age, had never before seemed so unruly and - loutishly impertinent. Even these experiences alone would have availed to - discourage her; as it was they added the stinging of insects to her great - heartache. With some organizations, the lesser pain nullifies the other. - She seemed to have a capacity for suffering, now, which took in, and made - the most of, every element of agony, great and small. She turned from the - rusty, squat little old building and began her journey homeward, with - hanging head and a deadly sense of weakness, physical and spiritual, - crushing her whole being. - </p> - <p> - Milton Squires had been watching for her appearance for some time, from a - sheltering ridge of berry-bushes and wall beyond the school, and he - hurried now to overtake her, clumsily professing surprise at the meeting. - </p> - <p> - “I jes happened up this way,” he said, “Dunnao <i>when</i> I be’n up here - on this road b’fore. Never dreampt o’ seein’ yeou.” - </p> - <p> - She made answer of some sort, as unintelligible and meaningless to herself - as to him. She did not know whether it was a relief or otherwise that he - was evidently going to walk home with her. Perhaps, if she let him do all - the talking, the companionship would help her to get over the ordeal of - the return less miserably. But she could not, and she would not, talk. - </p> - <p> - “I kind o’ thought mebbe you’d shet up schewl fer a week ’r sao,” - he proceeded, ingratiatingly, “but then agin I said to m’self ‘no siree, - she ain’t thet kine of a gal. Ef she’s got any work to dew, she jes’ does - it, rain ’r shine’. Thet’s what I said. Pooty bad business, wa’n’t - it, this death of yer cousin?” - </p> - <p> - “Dreadful!” she murmured, wishing he would talk of something else. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir, it’s about’s bad’s they make ’em. Some queer things ’baout - it tew. I s’pose yeh ain’t heerd no gossup ’baout it, hev yeh?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” she whispered with a sinking heart; a real effort was needed to - speak the other words: “What gossip? Is there gossip?” - </p> - <p> - “Dunnao’s yeh kin call it real gossup. P’raps nobuddy else won’t ’spicion - nothin’. But to me they’s some things ’baout it thet looks darned - cur’ous. Of caourse, it ain’t none o’ my business to blab ’baout - the thing.” - </p> - <p> - “No, of course.” - </p> - <p> - These little words, spoken falteringly, confirmed all that Milton had - wished to learn the truth about. Over night a stupendous scheme had - budded, unfolded, blossomed in his mind. Originally his primitive - intellect had gone no further than the simple idea of committing homicide - under circumstances which would inevitably point to an accident. The plan - was clever in its very nakedness. But through some row among the women, - probably out of jealousy, the hint of murder had been raised, and coupled - with Seth’s name. If this hint ripened into a suspicion and an inquiry, a - new situation would be created, but Milton could not see any peril in it - for him, for Seth would obviously be involved. But it would be better if - no questions of murder were raised at all, and matters were allowed to - stand. This would not only place Milton’s security beyond peradventure, - but it would give him a tremendous grip upon Annie. It was in this - direction that his mind had been working steadily since he heard of - Annie’s suspicions. The opportunity seemed to have come for placing the - cap-stone of acquisition upon the edifice of desire he had so long and - patiently been rearing. - </p> - <p> - As for the poor girl, she had reasoned herself out of the suspicion of - Seth’s guilt a thousand times, only to find herself hopelessly relapsing - into the quagmire. Milton’s hints came with cruel force to drag her back - now, this time lower than ever. Even he seemed to know of it, but he - proposed to maintain silence. Of course, he <i>must</i> be induced to keep - silent. Oh! the agony of her thoughts! - </p> - <p> - “You’n’ Seth was allus kine o’ frenly,” he proceeded. “Way back f’m - th’ time yeh was boys ’n’ gals.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, we always were.” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ they used to say, daown to th’ corners, that yeou two was - baoun’ to make a match of it.” - </p> - <p> - “There wasn’t anything in that at all!” She spoke decisively, almost - peremptorily. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, they wa’n’t, ay?” There was evident jubilation in his tone. - “Never was nothin’ in that talk, ay?” - </p> - <p> - “No, nothing.” - </p> - <p> - The pair walked along on the side of the descending road silently for some - moments. A farmer passed them, hauling a load of pumpkins up the hill, and - exchanged a nod of salutation with Milton. This farmer remarked at his - supper-table an hour later, to his wife: “I’d bet a yoke o’ oxen thet - Milton Squires is a’makin’ up to the schewl-teacher. I seed ’em - walkin’ togither daown th’ hill to-night, ’n’ he was a lookin’ at - her like a bear at a sap-trough. It fairly made me grit my teeth to see - him, with his broadcloth cloze, ’n’ his watch-chain, ’n’ his - on-gainly ways.” To which his helpmeet acidulously responded: “Well, I - dunnao’s she c’d dew much better. She’s gittin’ pooty well along, ’n’ - fer all his ongainly ways, I don’t see but what he comes on, ‘baout’s - well’s some o’ them thet runs him daown. A gal can’t jedge much by a man’s - ways haow he’ll turn aout afterwards. <i>I</i> thought <i>I’d</i> got a - prize.” Whereupon the honest yeoman chose silence as the better part. - </p> - <p> - The red sun was hanging in a purplish haze over the edge of the hill as - the two descended, and the leaves from Farmer Perkins’s maples rustled - softly under their feet. Milton drew near his subject: - </p> - <p> - “I’ve be’n gittin’ on in th’ world sence yeou fust knew me, hain’t I?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, everybody says so.” - </p> - <p> - “’N’ yit everybody don’t knaow half of it. I ain’t no han’ to tell - all I knaow. Ef some folks c’d guess th’ speckle-ations I be’n in, ‘n’ th’ - cash I’ve got aout in mor’giges ’n’ sao on, it’d make ’em - open their eyes. It’s th’ still saow thet gits th’ swill, as my mother - use’ to say, ’n’ I’ve be’n still enough abaout it, I guess.” - </p> - <p> - His coarse chuckle jarred on the girl’s nerves, but the importance of - placating him was uppermost in her mind, and she answered, as pleasantly - as she could: - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure I’m glad, Milton. You have worked hard all your life, and you - deserve it.” - </p> - <p> - “Yeh <i>air</i> glad, reely naow?” - </p> - <p> - “Why yes! Why shouldn’t I be? It always pleases me to hear of people’s - prosperity.” - </p> - <p> - “But me purtic’ly?” he persisted, earnestly. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes,” she replied, absent-mindedly. Then the odd nature of the - question occurred to her, but she was too distrait to think consecutively, - and she added no comment to her answer. - </p> - <p> - “Well, it eases me to hear yeh say thet,” he went on, with awkward - deliberation, “fer they’s somethin’ I’ve be’n wantin’ to say to yeh fer a - long time. I don’t s’paose you reelize haow well off I am?” She did not - answer. Her mind seemed to refuse to act, and she heard only the sound of - his words. He took her reply for granted and continued: - </p> - <p> - “I c’d eena’most buy up thet farm there”—pointing over to the - Fairchild acres on the slope, now within sight—“’n’ I ain’t - so all-fired sure yit thet I won’t, nuther! But what’s th’ good o’ money, - on-less yeh kin git what yeh want with it, ay?” - </p> - <p> - The impulse of her soul-weariness was to let this aimless question pass - like the other, without reply. But she was reminded of the importance of - being pleasant to this tedious man, and so answered, entirely at random: - </p> - <p> - “What is it you want, Milton?” - </p> - <p> - “I dunnao—I’m kind o’ feared o’ puttin’ my foot in it; yeh won’t be - mad ef I tell yeh?” - </p> - <p> - “Why no, of course not. What is it?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, then,” he blurted out, “I want <i>yeou!</i>” The girl looked dumbly - at him, at first not realizing at all the meaning of his words, then held - as in a vise between the disposition to reply to him as he deserved and - the danger, the terrible danger, of angering him. There fluttered through - her senses, too, a mad kind of yearning to shriek with laughter—born - of the hysterical state of her long-oppressed nerves. She eventually - neither rebuked nor laughed, but said vacuously: - </p> - <p> - “Want <i>me?</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Ef yeou’ll marry me, I’ll make one o’ th’ fust ladies o’ Dearb’rn Caounty - aout o’ yeh. Yeh need never lay yer finger to a stitch o’ work agin, no - more’n Is’bel did, daown yander.” He spoke eagerly, with more emotion in - his strident voice than she had ever heard there before. - </p> - <p> - The difficulty of her position crushed her courage. Of course she must say - no, but how do it without affronting him? The idea of reasoning him gently - out of the preposterous wish came to her. - </p> - <p> - “This is some flying notion in your head, Milton,” she said, civilly. “You - will have forgotten it by next week.” - </p> - <p> - “Forgott’n it, ay! Yeh think sao? What ’f I told yeh I hain’t - thought o’ nothin’ else fur nigh onto ten year?” - </p> - <p> - His tone was too earnest and excited to render further trifling safe. He - pulled out of an inner pocket and held up before her a little, irregularly - squared tin-type—which she recognized as having been made in - whimsical burlesque of her lineaments by an itinerant photographer years - before. - </p> - <p> - “How did you come by that?” she asked, to gain time. - </p> - <p> - “I got it fr’m th’ man thet made it, ’n’ I paid a dollar bill fer - it, tew,” he answered triumphantly, “’n’ I’ve kep it by me ever - sence!” - </p> - <p> - After a pause she said, as calmly as she could: “I never dreamed that such - a thought had entered your head. Of course, it—it can’t be.” - </p> - <p> - “Why not, I’d like to knaow?” he demanded. “Don’t yeh b’lieve what I’ve - told yeh ’baout my bein’ well off?” - </p> - <p> - “That hasn’t anything to do with it. There are other reasons—a good - many other reasons.” - </p> - <p> - “What air they?” His tone was peremptory. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know that I can explain them to you. But truly there are so many - of them—and your words took me so wholly by surprise, that—that——” - </p> - <p> - “Yeh needn’t mince matters! I <i>knaow!</i> Yeh hev sot yer idees on Seth! - Yeh needn’t tell me yeh hain’t!” - </p> - <p> - “I won’t talk with you at all if you shout at me in that way, and - contradict me flat when I assure you to the contrary.” - </p> - <p> - Milton paused for a moment, to consider the situation. They were - approaching the poplars now, along the lonely turnpike, and the - conversation could not be much protracted. What he had to say must be said - without delay. But what was it that he wished to say? A dozen inchoate - plans rose amorphously to the surface of his mind—to cajole her, to - strive further to impress her with his wealth, to entreat her, to attempt - to bully her. This last resource ran best with his mood, but there were - difficulties. Annie was the reverse of a cowardly girl; there was nothing - timid or tremulous about her; if he attempted to intimidate her, the - enterprise would most probably be a ridiculous failure, for he stood too - much in awe of her self-reliance and intelligence to have confidence in - his own mastery. - </p> - <p> - But stay—she was fearful about Seth. Whether it was true or not that - she had no idea of marrying her cousin, she was evidently solicitous for - his safety. An idea born of this conclusion swiftly engrafted itself upon - the hired man’s general strategy. He lifted his light, shifty eyes from - the grass of the roadside path to her face, once more, and said: - </p> - <p> - “Well, ef you’re a mine to be mean, I kin be mean tew—meaner ’n’ - pussly. Ef yeh think I’m goin’ to stan’ still, ’n’ let yeou ’n’ - Seth hev it all yer aown way, yer mistaken. I’ve only got to open my - maouth to th’ Cor’ner, ’n’ whair’d <i>he</i> be, ’n’ yeou - tew?” - </p> - <p> - There was a certain indefinable suggestion of bravado in his tone which - caught Annie’s attention. It was the barest, most meagre of shadows, but - she grasped at the chance of substance behind it. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t believe you could say anything, or do anything, which would - injure him,” she said, with more confidence in her words than she felt in - her heart. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yeh daon’t, ay!” he growled. “Ef yeh knaowed what I knaow, p’raps - yeh’d change yer teune.” - </p> - <p> - “What do you know, then? Come now, let us hear it!” She grew defiant, with - an instinctive sense that the inferior being beside her was ready to - retreat, if only she could keep up her boldness of front. - </p> - <p> - “Never yeou mind what I knaow!” he answered, evasively. “It’ll be enough, - I guess, to cook <i>his</i> geuse, when th’ time comes.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, I thought so!” she exclaimed. “You were simply talking to hear - yourself talk—to scare me. Well, you see now that you wasted your - breath.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, <i>did</i> I! Well, I won’t waste any more of it, then, till I talk - to th’ Cor’ner. I kin tell him some things ’baout who rid th’ black - mare aout thet night, after Albert’d gone. Guess thet’ll kind ’o’ - fix things!” - </p> - <p> - His slow imagination, working clumsily in the mazes of falsehood, had - carried Milton a step too far; his simple plan of substituting Seth for - himself in the events of the fatal night miscarried in a way he could not - suspect. - </p> - <p> - Annie did not answer. An exclamation had risen to her lips, but something - akin to presence of mind checked it there. Her brain seemed to be working - with lightning flashes. The black mare had played a part in the tragedy, - then; Seth had certainly not had the animal out that evening; the rushing, - almost noiseless apparition which had startled them in the moonlight must - have been the mare; it was coming from the direction of Tallman’s; it had - a rider; who could that rider have been? and how did Milton know about it?—so - the swift thoughts ran, in a chain which seemed luminous in the relief it - brought to her. These two questions she could not answer—in her joy - at the apparent exculpation of Seth it did not seem specially important - that they should be answered—and she had self-possession enough to - ask nothing about them. - </p> - <p> - It was a nice question what she should say to her companion, who was now, - without any distinct suspicions on her part, growing luridly loathsome and - repugnant in her eyes. The fear of angering him had died away, but a vague - sense that mischief might be done by arousing his curiosity or - apprehensions had come to take its place. She spoke cautiously: - </p> - <p> - “I hope you won’t do anything rash, that you would regret afterwards.” - </p> - <p> - “They ain’t nao need o’ my doin’ nothin’, ef yeou’d only hev some sense. - But if yeou’re goin’ to be agin me, ther’s nao tellin’ what I won’t dew,” - he answered with sullen terseness. - </p> - <p> - They had come to the poplars, and Annie stopped at the stile under the - thorns. - </p> - <p> - “I shall have to leave you here,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Then yeh won’t hev me, ay? Yeh better think twice ’fore yeh say - nao! Yeh won’t git another sich a chance—to live like a lady, ’n’ - hev ev’rything yeh want. ’N’ ef yeh dew say nao, yeh kin rest ’sured - yeh ain’t heerd th’ last of it, ner him nuther.” Milton’s little - green-gray eyes watched her face intently, and he fingered his flaring - plated watch-chain with nervous preoccupation. “What d’yeh say, yes’ ’r - nao?” - </p> - <p> - “I can’t say anything more than I have said—<i>now</i>,” she - answered, and, stepping over the stile, left him. - </p> - <p> - For a long time afterward Annie’s conscience debated the justification of - that final word, the last one she ever addressed to Milton, and which was - obviously intended to keep alive a hope that she knew to be absurdly - without ground or reason. Sometimes even now she has momentary doubts - about it—but she silences cavil by whispering to herself in - unanswerable defence: “I thought then that possibly it might be needed to - help Seth—perhaps even to save him.” - </p> - <p> - She had little leisure just then, however, to devote to moral - introspection, for Samantha met her, half-way down the thorn-walk, to - excitedly tell her that her grandmother, Mrs. Warren, was very much worse - than usual. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXXII.—“A WICKED WOMAN!” - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Isabel looked - into her mirror next morning, the image shown back fairly startled her. - Day by day during this eventful week the glass had helped her to grow - familiar with reddened eyes, with harsh, ageing lines, and with a pallor - which no devices of the toilet could efface. It was not so much an added - accentuation of these which riveted her gaze, now, upon the mirror, as the - suggestion of a new face—of a stranger’s countenance, reflecting - meanings and thoughts of the uncommon kind. - </p> - <p> - She studied the face at first with an almost impersonal interest; then as - the brain associated these lineaments with her own, and made their - expression a part of her own spiritual state, she said to this other self - in the glass, audibly: - </p> - <p> - “Another week of this will make you an old woman.” She added, after a - pause of fascinated yet critical scrutiny: “Yes, and a wicked woman, too!” - There has been what one can only hope is an intelligible reluctance, from - the beginning of this recital, to essay analysis or portrayal of Isabel’s - thoughts and motives. A complex, contradictory character like hers, - striving now to assimilate, now to sway the simple, straightforward, - one-stringed natures with which it is environed, may be illustrated; it is - too great a task to dissect it. Yet for the once we may venture to look - into this troubled mind. - </p> - <p> - A wicked woman! The phrase which she had addressed aloud to the mocking - image in the glass, in mingled doubt and irony, clung to her meditations. - Had she ever meant to be wicked—ever deliberately, or even - consciously, chosen evil instead of good? No! There was no dubious - reservation in her answer. Yet within the week—oh, the horrible - week!—she had come to occupy a moral position for which hell could - not hold too relentless or fierce a punishment. She had hugged to her - heart thoughts which, when they are linked with acts, go to expiation on - the gallows. She shuddered now at the recollection of them; she could - recall that she had shuddered then, too. Yet all the same these thoughts - were a part of her—belonged to her. She had not repelled them as - alien, or as unwelcome. Even while in terror at their mien, she had - embraced them. Was this not all wickedness? - </p> - <p> - The reply came, in sophistical self-defense, that no one act or emotion of - a life could be judged by itself. The antecedent circumstances, leading up - to it, must be taken into account. She had been borne along on the current - of a career shaped for her by others. She was not responsible—she - had never fought with her destiny—she had done nothing but seek to - bring some flowers and light and color into the desolate voyage of life. - Was it fair to say that these little innocent, womanish efforts to soften - a sterile existence were the cause of the shipwreck—that it was - these which had brought her so suddenly, dazed and terrified, into the - very breakers on the sinister rocks of crime? No, the answer came again; - surely it could not be fair. - </p> - <p> - Yet she had hated her husband; she had been overjoyed, even while she was - affrighted, by the news of his death—or at least there was a - tremulous sensation very like joy; she had hailed as her deliverer the - young man whom her wild fancy made responsible for that death—yes, - had even in her frenzy kissed his hand, the hand which she then believed - to have blood upon it, his brother’s blood! her husband’s blood! Were not - these the thoughts and actions of a wicked woman? What difference was - there between her and the vilest murderess confined for life in a - penitentiary? - </p> - <p> - Or no! What nonsense this was! What single thing had she said or done to - bring on the catastrophe? It was an accident—everybody knew that - now. But even if it had not been an accident, how would she have been to - blame? Was it her fault that she was pleasing in men’s eyes, or that Seth - had been attracted by her, and had been sympathetic to her? How could she - have helped it? Was there any reason why she should have tried to help it? - Was it wrong for her, exiled as she was to this miserable farm life, to - make a friend of her cousin—her husband’s brother? And if they had - grown to be attached to each other, could it be wondered at? - </p> - <p> - And it had all been so innocent, too! What single compromising word, even, - had ever been spoken! Might not the most blameless of women have had just - such a pretty little romantic friendship, without dream of harm? - </p> - <p> - As for the frantic things she had thought and said on that awful forenoon - after the discovery, she strove to put them away from her memory, as born - of a hysterical, wholly irresponsible state. - </p> - <p> - But they would come back, no matter how often banished. - </p> - <p> - Then, too—perhaps worst of all, for honest John seemed to lay - particular stress upon it—was the terrible declaration she had made - to Annie. About this there could be no self-deception. She would not - pretend to herself that this had been done through any but revengeful? - spiteful motives—pure cruelty, in fact. But was she to be thus - coolly pushed aside, her romance shattered, her dear day-dream dissipated—and - not to be justified in striking back? - </p> - <p> - This conceited boy—she was able thus to think of Seth now, in his - absence, and in the light of the affront she felt he had put upon her—and - this country school-teacher, to come billing and cooing in the very hour - of her supreme excitement—did they not deserve just what they had - received? After all, her words had done no permanent harm.. Doubtless by - this time they had all been cleared up. And if Miss Annie <i>did</i> - suffer a little, what better was she than other people, to be free all her - life from heartaches? - </p> - <p> - But then came a mental picture of Annie’s calm, sweet, lightful face - transfixed with speechless horror at the brutal words—and after it, - close and searching, the question: “Why should I have stabbed Annie? She - was always kindness itself to me. Was it not heartless to make that poor - girl suffer?” And there followed in her mind, as an echo of her first - exclamation to the mirror—that had gathered reverberating force from - all the thoughts we have striven to trace—the haunting cry: “A - wicked woman!” - </p> - <p> - Afternoon came, and the battle still went on. Bitter condemnation of her - own conduct struggled with angry pleas of grievance against others, and - the conflict wearied her into what threatened to be a sick headache. The - idea of getting out into the open air and seeking relief in a walk, which - had been dormantly in her mind all day, finally took form, and led her - outside the homestead for the first time since her husband’s death. - </p> - <p> - Once outside, she walked aimlessly through the orchard—in preference - to the high road, where she might meet neighbors—toward the little - family graveyard. It was not until she had nearly reached this spot that - she recalled having heard that Seth, too, came here on that terrible - night. The recollection brought an added sense of all the wrongs she held - to have been done her. She stood for a long time by the old board fence, - with its coating of dry, mildew-like moss on the weather-beaten surfaces - turned to the north, and its inhospitable hedging of brown, half-bare - briars, and looked in reverie upon the tombs within the enclosure. - </p> - <p> - Three generations of the Fairchilds lay here under the straggling mat of - withered strawberry vines. She saw the low blue-slate slabs, nearly - covered now by aspiring weeds and brambles, which modestly pleaded in - antique letters that the original shoemaker, Roger, and his lowly spouse - might not be altogether forgotten. Rising ostentatiously above these - timid, ancient memorials, as if with intent to divert attention from their - humility, was the marble obelisk marking the resting-place of the family’s - greatest man, the Hon. Seth Fairchild. The monument was not so white or so - imposing now as it once had been, and the proud inscription setting forth - how its subject had been “twice Senator of the State of New York,” was - almost illegible from the storm-stains and mould on its venerable front. - There were some other stones, gray and small, tipping humbly toward the - central monolith, as if mutely begging at least a little share of the - Senator’s greatness for his wife and sisters, and nearer were two plain - modern slabs recounting the sole interesting facts of the colorless lives - of Lemuel and Cicely Fair-child—that they had been alive, and now - were dead. - </p> - <p> - Here still nearer her, almost at her feet, the widow saw some pegs driven - in the ground, with string stretched around them to form a long rectangle. - The sight brought no thrill to her. She was conscious of all its meaning, - but felt herself scarcely interested. In life she had owed nothing but - dislike to the man whose last coming these signs of preparation betokened. - His death had shocked her at first by its fearful suddenness; it did not - especially disturb her now, save at times with a furtive elation at the - accompanying thought that at last she was free. Her thoughts were with the - living—and their relation to those long since dead. - </p> - <p> - If these rambling thoughts could have been summarized in words they would - have run in this fashion: - </p> - <p> - “What has all your family pride brought you, all your planning and - manoeuvring, you dull countrymen? <i>I</i> wasn’t good enough for you, eh? - Your breed must conspire against me, eh? and treat me like an interloper, - an outsider, eh? You thought I was to be brought here too, did you, when - my time arrived, and be snubbed and bullied into some back corner like the - rest of your wives, while my husband, ‘the Congressman,’ had a big - monument like this of your old humbug, the Senator? And you expected to - patronize me, or cut me dead, as the living dolts here on the turnpike - have done, did you? Well, you are fooled! I’ve escaped you! I shall never - come here but once again—to bring you your ‘Congressman.’ You can - have him and welcome. And that old cat of an aunt of his, she will come - presently, too, and I wish you much joy of <i>her!</i> And perhaps you - will give up your idea, then, that you amount to anything, or ever will - amount to anything. The farm is going to a young man who will sell it, and - who doesn’t care a cent for the whole crowd of you, and who will live in a - city, and eat with his fork, and forget that there ever were such people - as you. And he will forget, too, that——” - </p> - <p> - She came to a full stop in her meditations. Yes, Seth would forget her, - too. She had no illusions on this point. Perhaps this was too kindly a - view of it, even—he might be compelled to remember her by sheer - force of his bitterness toward her. There could be no doubt, after his - cruel words on the eventful forenoon—their last meeting—that - he scorned and despised her. What an idiot she had been to disclose to him - her thoughts—those mad fancies and beliefs of that frantic morning! - She might have known that the idea of his fighting his brother, on <i>her</i> - account, was preposterous. What did he care about her? He had been nice - with her, had written her pretty, graceful letters when she asked him to - do so, and had sent her books to read—that was all. There was - nothing else. She had been a fool to dream that there was anything else. - He would sell the farm, and go back to Tecumseh, and marry Annie—yes, - marry Annie! And they, too, would refer to her now and then, and comment - on her wickedness, and hope that they might never have a daughter like - her. That would be all. - </p> - <p> - She turned from the little enclosure of graves, without giving them - another thought. The mental picture which she conjured up of the young - couple, contented by a fireside of their own, perhaps with a child, tore - at her heart-strings. - </p> - <p> - In the farm-yard she was met by Mr. Ansdell, who was evidently watching - for her, and who introduced himself courteously. - </p> - <p> - “The Coroner is here,” he said, “with some medical gentlemen, and there - are also your late husband’s partner, Mr. Hubbard, who accompanied me from - New York last night, and the District Attorney and some others. In a - couple of hours or so we expect to be able to tell you what brought us. - Meanwhile, we are anxious to spare you any possible intrusion—and - also a possible scene. It is for this that I have waited outside for you. - If you could prolong your walk for that length of time, going to some - friend’s house near by, for instance, without saying that anything unusual - was transpiring here——” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I will go,” she answered. “Will two hours be long enough?” - </p> - <p> - “I hope so,” he said, bowing his thanks. - </p> - <p> - She walked out through the great swing-gate to the turnpike, and idly - chose the westward turning, along under the poplars. The curious incident - of all these visitors at the house did not excite her attention. Her mind - was too busy torturing itself with that marriage which was already spoken - of as assured. - </p> - <p> - At the stile by the thorns, the idea of going to the Warren house suddenly - occurred to her. It was a bold, purposeless, almost crazy thought; perhaps - for those very reasons it commended itself to her mood. She felt herself - impelled alike by good and malignant impulses to cross the stile; she - walked down the thorn path, scarcely knowing whether her purpose was to - bless or to curse. - </p> - <p> - The door was opened by Samantha, whose scared face took on an added - expression of anxiety on recognizing the visitor. - </p> - <p> - “Go into the parlor, ’n’ I’ll light the stove fer yeh,” she - whispered. “Th’ old lady’s very laow. Soon’s she comes hum from schewl - I’ll send Annie in to see yeh.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXXIII.—THE SHERIFF ASSISTS. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hile Isabel sat - over the stove in the cold, austere parlor of the Warren house, with its - ancient furniture, the never failing photograph album, and those huge pink - shells on the mantle-shelf without which no rural home used to be complete—waiting - for she scarcely knew what—strange things were going forward in the - home of the Fairchilds. - </p> - <p> - On the forenoon of this same day, Thursday, there had been a gathering in - the office of the Thessaly <i>Banner of Liberty</i>. It was the - publication day of the paper, but for once it went to press without - enlisting even the most careless scrutiny, let alone the solicitude, of - its editor-proprietor. He had more serious business on hand. Closeted with - him in the little editorial room, whose limited space had rarely before - been so taxed, were Beekman, Ansdell, the District Attorney, the Sheriff, - and the younger of the dead man’s two New York partners, a shrewd, silent, - long-faced man. Seth had desired to be of the party but his brother had - sent him off, to return after dinner. - </p> - <p> - These men gravely discussed some subjects with which our readers are - familiar, and some now first brought to light. John had a letter from - Annie, sent by hand the previous evening, detailing the strange things - Milton had said to her about the black mare. Ansdell and Mr. Hubbard, the - partner, recited how they had discovered that Albert Fairchild, on the - preceding Monday, sold $16,000 worth of government bonds, and the abortive - effort he made to so arrange the transfer that it would not be traced. - Beekman recalled how the black mare had balked on the edge of the gulf the - day after the murder—for they all thus characterized it now. Later, - the Coroner came in by appointment, and in the presence of the dreaded - District Attorney was meekness itself. He even heard that two physicians - were to go out with the party, and make an examination, without taking - offence. - </p> - <p> - After the noon-day dinner the gathering was reinforced by the two doctors - and by Seth, the latter devoured by curiosity and vexed at being kept so - long in the dark. Soon after, all of the party save the Sheriff made their - way to the Fairchild house, driving by twos or threes, and at intervals, - to avoid exciting suspicion. It was after the arrival of the last division - that Ansdell met Isabel, and advised her to stay away from the house for a - time. - </p> - <p> - The two surgeons and the Coroner went silently into the parlor, and closed - the door behind them. In the living-room Ansdell, Hubbard, John, and the - District Attorney took chairs around the stove, having given word that - Milton, who was off on the other side of the hill, arranging the sale of - some apples, should be sent in to them when he arrived, which could not be - very long now. In the kitchen, opening back from the living-room as this - in turn did from the parlor, Seth and Beekman sat with the three women of - the household. - </p> - <p> - These latter had been told that something was going on, or rather had - inferred it from being forbidden to leave the room, and were agog with - puzzled excitement. They had no clue, save a vague understanding that - important personages were in the front portions of the house, but Alvira - and Melissa stole unhappy glances toward Seth, in uneasy fear that the - worst suspicions born of Samantha’s recital were to be realized in fact. - Aunt Sabrina, sitting with her shawl wrapped about her gaunt shoulders, - and with her feet on a piece of wood in the oven, did not know of this - story which gave point to the other women’s anxiety, but was in misery - between a deep yearning to learn what had happened, and a pessimistic - conviction that it must be another addition to the Fairchilds’ load of - calamities. - </p> - <p> - They heard Milton drive up presently, and hail Dana with instructions to - put the horse out, and a query concerning the several strange vehicles - under the shed. Then he came into the kitchen, stamping his feet with the - cold, and walking straight to the stove to warm his hands. It was growing - dark in the low room, and he did not recognize Beekman. - </p> - <p> - Seth delivered his errand, saying that his brother John wished to see - Milton, as soon as he returned, in the living-room. The hired man gave the - speaker a curious glance, and, after a moment or two of hand warming, went - in to learn what was wanted. - </p> - <p> - Almost as he closed the door behind him, the Sheriff entered the kitchen - from the outside, and after an interrogative glance toward Beekman, which - the latter answered by a nod, drew up a chair leisurely by the stove. - </p> - <p> - “Who’d a thought it ’d a turned out so cold, ‘fore the moon - changed?” he asked of the company collectively. “Hev yeh got any cider - abaout handy? ’N’ a daoughnut, tew, ef yeh don’t mine.” - </p> - <p> - While Melissa was in the cellar, the Sheriff, who was a Spartacus man and - a stranger to both Seth and the females, asked of Beekman: “What did yeh - agree on fer a sign?” - </p> - <p> - “Th’ shakin’ of th’ stove.” - </p> - <p> - Seth had been annoyed all day at the pains taken by John to keep the facts - of the enterprise now in hand from him, and he displayed so much of this - pique in the glance he now cast from the Sheriff to Beekman, that the - latter felt impelled to speak: - </p> - <p> - “P’raps you disremember my askin’ yeh ’t’ other day ’baout - whether yer brother had much money on him that night. Well, we’ve settled - thet point. He did hev’—’n’ ’twas a considerable sum - tew—‘baout sixteen thaousan’ dollars.” - </p> - <p> - “No!” Seth’s exclamation was of incredulous surprise. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sixteen thaousan’. We knaow it.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh! I remember now,” said Seth, searching his impressions of the night. - “I remember that when I said he might fail to be nominated, he slapped his - breast two or three times as if he had something in the pocket. By George! - I wonder——” - </p> - <p> - “Yeh needn’t waste no more time wond’rin’. Thet was it! ’N’ d’yeh - knaow what he was goin’ to dew with thet money? No, yeh daon’t! He was - agoin’ to buy me! I wouldn’t say this afore aoutsiders; I dunnao’s I’d say - it to yeou ef your paper wa’n’t so dum fond o’ pitchin’ into me fer - a boss, ’n’ a machine man ez yeh call it, ’n’ thet kine o’ - thing. Yer brother hed th’ same idee o’ me thet your paper’s got. He was - wrong. They tell me ther air’ some country caounties in th’ State where - money makes th’ mare gao. But Jay ain’t one of ’em. Yer brother - wanted to git into Congress. Ther was nao chance fer him in New York City. - He come up here ’n’ he worked things pooty fine, I’m baoun’ to say, - but he slipped up on me. Bribes may dew in yer big cities, but they won’t - go daown in Jay. I don’t b’lieve they’s ez much of it done anywhere ez - folks think, nuther.” - </p> - <p> - “But this money, then, was——” - </p> - <p> - “Lemme go on! P’raps this ’d never be’n faound aout, ef yer brother - hadn’t made mistake number tew in pickin’ aout the wust ’n’ meanest - cuss in th’ caounty to be his gao-between. I kin tell mean cusses when I - see ’em, ’n’ this feller he had was jest <i>the</i> dirtiest - scalawag I ever did see. I kin stan’ a scoundrel in a way ef he’s bright - abaout it, but this was a reg’lar, natchul born fool. Somehaow in th’ - kentry, these men don’t seem to hev no sense. Ef they’re goin’ to rob a - man, or set his barns afire, or kill him, they dew it in the darnedest, - clumsiest saort o’ way, so they’re sure to git faound aout the minute - anybody looks an inch beyond his nose into th’ thing. It makes a man - ashamed to be a kentry-man to see th’ foolish way these here blockheads - git caught, ev’ry time.” - </p> - <p> - The women had been listening intently to this monologue. They looked at - one another now, with the light of a strange new suspicion in their eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Who is this man? Who are you talking about?” Seth asked eagerly. - </p> - <p> - At that moment the sound of a stove being shaken vigorously came from the - living-room. The Sheriff rose to his feet, and strode toward the door of - this room. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll shaow him to yeh in th’ jerk of a lamb’s tail,” he said. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - The conversation in the living-room, after Milton entered, had been - trivial for a time, then all at once very interesting. He had been - disagreeably surprised at finding three men with John, but had taken a - seat, his big hands hanging awkwardly over his knees, and had been - reassured somewhat by the explanation that Mr. Hubbard, the dead man’s - partner, was anxious to hear all he could about the sad occurrence. The - District Attorney he did not know by sight, and he did not recognize - Ansdell, who stood looking out of the window, softly drumming on the - panes. - </p> - <p> - Milton told a lot of details, about Albert’s return, about hitching up the - grays for him, about how the news was received at the Convention and the - like, all recited with verbose indirectness, and at great length. Once he - stopped, his attention being directed to a slight sound in the parlor, and - looked inquiry. John promptly explained that it was the undertaker, and - the hired man went on. - </p> - <p> - At last the District Attorney, who had hitherto been silent, asked - quietly: - </p> - <p> - “You went back to the stable—to your own room—after Mr. - Fairchild drove away?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, ’n’ went to bed.” - </p> - <p> - “Did you hear any one enter the stables afterward?” - </p> - <p> - “No, nary a soul.” - </p> - <p> - “There is a black mare in the stables, used under the saddle. Was she - taken out that night?” - </p> - <p> - “Not thet I knaow of. Why?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, there seems to be a pretty positive story that she was. She was - seen on the road, in fact, late that night, coming from the ravine. The - rider was not recognized, but the mare was. How do you account for that?” - </p> - <p> - “Tain’t none o’ my business to ’caount for it.” Milton did not like - the tendency of the conversation. - </p> - <p> - “No, I know that, but we are interested in finding out. I don’t think you - know me—I am the District Attorney—and I shall take particular - pains to find out.” - </p> - <p> - A gulf suddenly yawned before Milton’s feet, and he made a prompt, bold - attempt to leap it. “I didn’t like to say nothin’ ’baout it, bein’ - as it’s in th’ fam’ly”—he cast an uneasy glance at John here—“but - Seth Fairchild rides th’ mare a good deal. I did hear somebody saddlin’ - th’ mare, but I took it fer granted it was him, ’n’ sao I didn’t - git up. It’d be jes like him, I said to myself, to go ridin’ in th’ - moonshine. He’s thet sort of a feller, naow ain’t he, John?” - </p> - <p> - The sound of his own voice frightened Milton as he went on, and his - closing appeal to the brother for corroboration carried the nervous accent - of fear. John did not answer, but rose and walked over to join Ansdell at - the window. - </p> - <p> - “Of caourse,” Milton began, in a lower voice, to which he sought to give a - confidential tone, “I don’t wan’ to say nothin’ agin Seth. Of caourse, - he’s John’s brother, ‘n’——” - </p> - <p> - The words were cut short by the rolling back of one of the parlor doors, - and the entrance of the three doctors. The Coroner, who came last, pulled - the door shut again. The older of the other two came to the District - Attorney and said, with deliberate distinctness: - </p> - <p> - “We are both prepared to swear that Mr. Fairchild’s death was caused by a - gunshot wound in the head.” - </p> - <p> - It was then that John sprang to the stove, and shook its grate vehemently. - </p> - <p> - At sight of the Sheriff, who advanced upon him with a directness which - left no ambiguity as to his purpose, Milton rose excitedly from his chair, - cast a swift scared glance around the company, and then, while the - handcuffs were being snapped upon his wrists, began to whimper. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t do it! It’s a put-up job! It’s them brothers o’ his thet allus - hankered after his money, ’n’ naow they got it they’re tryin’ to - put the thing on me. ’N’ his wife, tew, thet stuck-up city gal, she——” - </p> - <p> - “Come naow, yeou better shut up,” said the Sheriff sententiously. “Th’ - more yeh say th’ wuss it’ll be fer yeh.” - </p> - <p> - Most of the men present averted their gaze during the brief period of - alternate threats and cringing, of rough curses and frenzied fawning on - the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and even the Coroner, which ensued; - but Mr. Hubbard watched it all carefully with evident interest. - </p> - <p> - “That is a very curious type of criminal,” he said, as the Sheriff and his - prisoner left the room; “very curious indeed! I never saw a murderer - before who had so little nerve, and funked so absolutely when he was - confronted with detection. Why, I’ve seen men, guilty as guilty could be, - who would deceive even their own lawyers. But such a simpleton as that—he’s - not worth his rope.” - </p> - <p> - “That is because you are a city man,” explained the District Attorney. - “You don’t know the kind of murderers we raise here in the country. The - chances are that your city assassin would be tortured by remorse, if he - escaped discovery, and that he committed the deed in a moment of passion. - But the rural murderer (I am speaking of native Americans, now) plans the - thing in cold blood, and goes at it systematically, with nerves like - steel. He generally even mutilates the body, or does some other horrible - thing, which it makes everybody’s blood boil to think of. And so long as - he isn’t found out, he never dreams of remorse. He has no more moral - perspective than a woodchuck. But when detection does come, it knocks him - all in a heap. He blubbers, and tries to lay it on somebody else, and - altogether acts like a cur—just as this fellow ’s doing now, - for instance.” - </p> - <p> - A hubbub of shrieks and sobs rose from the kitchen as he finished this - sentence, and they with one accord moved toward the door. - </p> - <p> - The Sheriff, with an eye to his promise to the two men in the kitchen, had - led the livid and slinking wretch out to the centre of the room, where the - dim candles had now been lighted, and, forcing him to hold up his hands so - that the manacles might be fully visible, said to Seth: - </p> - <p> - “Here yeh air! I said I’d shaow him to yeh! Here is the whelp thet did th’ - mischief. Look at him!” - </p> - <p> - There was a second of dead silence, as the several listeners took in the - significance of his words, and of the spectacle. - </p> - <p> - The silence was broken by an inarticulate, indescribable cry from Aunt - Sabrina. Then came with startling swiftness a confusion of moving bodies, - of screams, and the rattling of the handcuffs’ chain, which no one could - follow. When the intervention of the Sheriff and Beekman had restored - quiet, it was discovered that the old lady, with an agility of which none - could have supposed her capable, had snatched a potato knife from the - table, and made a savage attempt to wreak the family’s vengeance upon - Milton. She had not succeeded in inflicting any injury, save a slight cut - on one of his pinioned hands, and Seth now with some difficulty persuaded - her to leave the room. - </p> - <p> - It fell to Alvira’s lot to bind up the bleeding hand—for Melissa, - undertaking the task, was too nervous and trembling to perform it. - </p> - <p> - A little dialogue, in hushed whispers, which only imperfectly reached even - the sentinel Sheriff, ensued: - </p> - <p> - “Sao this is what yeh’ve come tew!” - </p> - <p> - “It’s all a lie!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, don’t tell <i>me!</i> Ef you’d be’n contented with yer lot in life, - ’n’ hadn’t tried to swell yerself up like a toad in a puddle, this - wouldn’t a happen’d. But nao, yeh poor fewl, yeh must set yerself up to <i>be</i> - somebody! ’N’ naow where air yeh?” - </p> - <p> - Words with which to answer rose to Milton’s bloodless lips, but he could - not give them utterance. He could not even look at her, but in a dazed way - stared at the hand, which he held so that she could wind the bandage in - spite of the gyves. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t use to think yeh was aout-’n-aout bad,” she continued, more - slowly; “they was a time when yeh might a made a decent man o’ yerself—ef - yeh’d kep’ yer word to me.” - </p> - <p> - This time he did not make an effort to answer. - </p> - <p> - The task of sustaining the talk alone was too great for her. The tears - came into her eyes, and blinded the last touches to the bandage. As it was - completed, the Sheriff put his hand roughly on the prisoner’s shoulder. - The meaning of this movement spread over her mind, and appalled her. With - a gesture of decision she stood on tiptoe, lifted her face up to Milton’s, - and kissed him. Then, as he was led away, she turned to the onlookers, and - said defiantly, between incipient sobs: - </p> - <p> - “I daon’t keer! Ef t’ was th’ last thing I ever done in my life, I’d dew - it. We was—engaged—once’t on a time!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXXIV.—AT “M’TILDY’S” BEDSIDE AGAIN. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>o you clip over - and tell Annie,” John had said to Seth, when the first excitement of the - scene had passed off, and they stood at the kitchen window, watching the - Sheriff’s buggy fade off in the dusk down the hill toward Thessaly jail. - “It’s the thing for you to do—the quicker the better!” - </p> - <p> - Annie had been home from her day’s task some minutes, and sat by her - grandmother’s bedside. The patient was in a semi-comatose state, breathing - with unnatural heaviness, and Samantha had been dispatched with all haste - to bring a doctor from Thessaly. It seemed terribly probable that Mrs. - Warren’s last day had come. - </p> - <p> - Yet as she sat by the curtained recess, holding in her’s the withered hand - which lay inanimate on the high edge of the bed, Annie still thought very - little of the great change impending over her home; she had faced this - death in life so long that its climax did not startle her, or wear the - garb of strangeness. Instead, she was pondering the unaccountable, - unwelcome fact with which Samantha had greeted her on her return—that - Isabel was in the adjoining room, and had asked to see her. - </p> - <p> - What could it mean? What could Isabel’s purpose be in coming? And ought - she to sacrifice her own feelings to the dictates of politeness, and go in - to see this wicked, cruel woman? Perhaps she had come to retract and - apologize for the fearful words of Tuesday. Perhaps her intention was to - reiterate them, or worse, to recount that now the whole world would know - of them—and gloat over her pain. No, that could scarcely be, for - since her interview with Milton Annie felt satisfied at least of Seth’s - innocence. But still something new might have been disclosed—Isabel - might have evil tidings of some sort with which to overwhelm her afresh. - What should she do? - </p> - <p> - The parlor door was ajar, and though she could not see her visitor, she - could plainly hear the snapping of the wood fire within, which Samantha - had kindled. Isabel must be perfectly aware of her return, and of her - presence in this sick chamber. Every minute that she hesitated would only - augment the widow’s anger at being thus inhospitably neglected. Even if - she had relented, and had come with kindly intent, this reception might - alter her impulses. - </p> - <p> - She rose to enter the parlor, but still stood irresolute, holding her - grandmother’s hand, when there came the sound of footsteps in the front - hall—then of a hasty knock on the door opening from the hall into - this room in which she was. She opened the door, and before her, excited - and jubilant, stood her cousin Seth. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve come to tell you!” he burst out, “It’s all cleared up. There <i>was</i> - a murder. Milton did it! He’s just been arrested! I tried to ring your - bell, but it didn’t seem to work. So I <i>had</i> to come in! And now——” - </p> - <p> - He opened his arms with an unmistakable gesture, and they closed fondly - upon an overjoyed maiden, who sobbed upon his breast for very relief. - </p> - <p> - When she found breath and words, it was to say: - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you can’t guess what I have suffered these last two days; I thought I - should never live through them! And now it seems as if I should go wild - with joy—as if I couldn’t keep my feet down on the floor!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, yes, I know, my darling. But we shall be all the happier for this - spell of wretchedness. Dry your eyes, pet. There shall be no more thought - or talk of tears—much less of dying.” - </p> - <p> - “O Seth!—I forgot!—my grandmother!” - </p> - <p> - She lowered her voice, and told him her fears. - </p> - <p> - Hand in hand, and with his arm about her shoulder, they moved softly to - the bedside of the dying woman. The noise of the talking, or some less - apparent influence, had aroused her from her lethargy. Her pale eyes were - brilliant still, with an unearthly light, it seemed to the awed young man, - and she rested their gaze fixedly upon the couple. - </p> - <p> - “Who is that?” she asked in a querulous whisper. - </p> - <p> - “It is Seth, Granny,” the girl answered, relapsing unconsciously into the - familiar form she had not used since childhood. - </p> - <p> - The aged woman restlessly moved her head, and her eyes snapped with - impatience at her inability to raise herself from the pillow. - </p> - <p> - “I won’t have him here! Tell him to take his arm away. What’s he doin’ - here, anyway? He desarted yeh! His own father told me so! Tell him to go - away! I hate the sight of the hull breed!” - </p> - <p> - “But he’s come back to me, Granny,” the girl pleaded, while Seth shrank - backward in the shadow of the curtain. “Truly he has, and he’s not to - blame. And I love him very dearly”—a pressure from the young man’s - hand answered the sweetness of this avowal—“and he will be all I - shall have left when—when—” she stopped, unwilling to conclude - her thought in words. - </p> - <p> - “An’ will he take yeh away, an’ do by yeh ez a husban’ ought to do, or - will he take yeh onto that Fairchild farm, an’ break yer heart out ez his - father did his mother’s, an’ ez his uncle did yer mother’s, an’ ez his - brother, so they tell me, is doin’ with his wife?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, mercy!” the girl exclaimed, involuntarily; then she whispered to - Seth, back of the curtains: “What shall I do! I forgot all about it—Isabel - is there in the parlor and she has heard every word we’ve said.” - </p> - <p> - The quick ears of the invalid caught the whispered explanation. . - </p> - <p> - “Isabel!” she said, sharply. “That’s Albert Fairchild’s wife ain’t it?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes!” the girl answered. She tried in dumb show to convey to Seth that - her grandmother was ignorant of his brother’s death. - </p> - <p> - “Go an’ fetch her in here,” said Mrs. Warren, with more animation in her - voice than it had shown before. “I want to see her—to talk with - her.” - </p> - <p> - “But, Granny, you ought’nt to see strangers; you know, the doctor——” - </p> - <p> - “I guess she ain’t much more of a stranger than this young man you’ve got - here. Go an’ fetch her, I say! I won’t hurt her, an’ she won’t hurt me.” - </p> - <p> - There was nothing for Annie to do, but go into the parlor, and bow - shamefacedly to Isabel, and say, with embarrassment in every syllable: - “Excuse me for not coming before, but I think my grandmother is dying. She - wants very much to see you. Won’t you come, please?” - </p> - <p> - Isabel had risen to her feet upon Annie’s entrance. To the latter’s - surprise and increased confusion she held forth her hand with a friendly - gesture. “Yes, I will come with you,” she said, as Annie doubtingly took - the proffered hand, and the two women entered the sick-room. - </p> - <p> - Isabel did not seem to see Seth, who stood at the head of the bed, among - the drawn curtains, but walked to the bedside and said softly: “I am - Isabel, Mrs. Warren; I am sorry that our first meeting should find you so - low.” - </p> - <p> - “So you’re Albert’s wife, eh?” The old woman eyed her keenly, for what - seemed a long time. “I’ve heered tell o’ you. Would you mind gettin’ that - candle there, on the mantle-piece, an’ holdin’ it, so’t I kin see yer - face?” - </p> - <p> - Isabel gravely complied with the request, and stood before the invalid - again, with the yellow light glowing upon her throat and lower chin and - nostrils and full, Madonna-like brows. Her face was at its best with this - illumination from below. She would have been a rare beauty close before - the footlights. - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said Mrs. Warren, after a long inspection, “P’raps it’ll sound - ridiculous to yeh, but yeh don’t look unlike what I did when I was your - age. The farm ain’t had time to tell on yeh yit. But it will! It made me - the skeercrow that you see; it’ll do the same for you. When I was a girl, - I was a Thayer, the best fam’ly in Norton, Massachusetts. We held our - heads high, I kin tell yeh. Why, when I brought my side-saddle here, - stitched with silk, ’twas the fust one they’d ever seen in these - parts. But I married beneath me, an’ I come up here into York State to - live, on this very farm. With us, farmin’ don’t mean a livin’ death. - P’raps we don’t hev sech fine big barns ez yeh build here, but our houses - are better. We don’t git such good crops, but we pay more heed to - education and godly livin’. It’s th’ diff’rence ’twixt folks who - b’lieve there’s somethin’ else in life b’sides eatin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ - makin’ money, an’ folks that don’t. Well, I left a good home, an’ I come - here, an’ here I am. Look at me! Look at Lemuel Fairchild’s wife, Cicely—she - was a relation of yours, wasn’t she?—see how the farm made an ole - woman o’ her, an’ broke her down, an’ killed her! You’re young, an’ you’re - good lookin’ yit, but it’ll break yeh, sure’s yer born. Husban’s on these - farms ain’t what they air in the cities, nor even in the country in New - England. I’m told your husban’ don’t treat you right.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t let us talk about that—please!” said Isabel: she stole a - swift, momentary glance toward Seth as she spoke. - </p> - <p> - The keen eyes in the recess followed this look. “Well, no,” the husky, - whispering voice went on, “p’raps it ain’t none o’ my business. But tell - me about this young man here—yer husband’s brother. I want to know - about him.” - </p> - <p> - “What about him?” asked Isabel slowly, after a pause. - </p> - <p> - “Why, is he a likely man? Air his habits good? Could he take this girl o’ - mine—an’ she’s a good girl, Annie is—could he take her to - Tecumsy, an’ make a fit home fer her? An’ <i>would</i> he do it? Would he - make her a good husban’—ez good ez she desarves? I ask you, ’cause - you know him. I leave it to you—would you yerself marry him ef yeh - was free, an’ feel safe about him? Come, now, tell me that!” - </p> - <p> - Isabel hesitated so long that the old woman, seemingly wandering a little - after her long, laborious concentration of thought, broke in again: - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I know ’em! I know ’em! Of all the Fair-childses, there - never was one decent one. They stole my daughter, an’ let her die ’mongst - strangers, an’ they made a broken ole woman o’ me, an’ they slaved - Cicely’s life out o’ her, an’ now they want my Annie——” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Isabel here, speaking softly, and putting her hand on the - wasted arm which lay above the coverlet. “I think you wrong Seth. Whatever - the rest may have done, I think he will be a good husband to Annie. I am - <i>sure</i> he will.” - </p> - <p> - No answer, save a low, incoherent murmuring, came from the recess. The - invalid had lapsed into the lethargy of exhausted nature. As the trio - stood by the bedside even this sound ceased. Nothing was to be heard but - the labored, unnatural breathing. - </p> - <p> - Isabel placed the candle again upon the shelf. She had not removed her - bonnet and wrap, and she turned now irresolutely toward the door. - </p> - <p> - Annie went to her, and silently took her hand. “I forgive you,” she - whispered. “Was there anything else? Did you want to speak to me?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know what I wanted when I came. Let me go now. Perhaps if I said - any more, I should hate myself afterward.” - </p> - <p> - And thus, without a glance at Seth, she went. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXXV.—“SUCH WOMEN ARE!” - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE story, such as - it is, is told. - </p> - <p> - Before the daily press of the State, which had given great attention to - the tragedy in Dearborn County, became fairly aware that a mystery - attached to it, the wretched Milton had confessed his crime. He had - followed and come up with his employer, who stopped at his call. There was - a conversation—then the killing. The prisoner made a weak effort to - pretend that there was a quarrel first, and that his deed was in - self-defence, but he deceived no one. He had with much difficulty led the - grays off the side of the ravine, the murdered man being first thrown - over, and the horses and buggy purposely hurled down upon him. There was - some angry criticism when it became known that the District Attorney had - agreed to accept a plea of murder in the second degree, and the popular - explanation—that it was done from motives of consideration for the - family—provoked not a few jibes from people who wanted to know why - the Fairchilds were any better than other folk. But the course of the law - was not affected by this comment, nor did the District Attorney suffer - appreciably from it when he came up the succeeding autumn for re-election. - The money was all recovered—and, if you have the influence requisite - to obtain a visiting pass to New York’s forest-girt prison on the Eastern - watershed of the Adirondacks—that terrible subterranean place of woe - from which even Siberian gaolers might get some hints of new things in - anguish—you may still see a thin, bent, evil-faced wretch dragging - out existence in the mines, who once was reckoned a likely man in Dearborn - County, and who cast its united vote at the most famous of all Tyre’s - Conventions. - </p> - <p> - The funeral of Albert Fairchild will long be remembered in all the section - round. More than one State official attended, and there was a vast - concourse of lesser political lights, who kept a shrewd eye upon - opportunities for profitable discourse with each other, before and after - the services, while they put themselves dignifiedly in evidence before the - public by getting their names in the local papers. - </p> - <p> - There were no surprises to the inner circle of the family when the will - came to be read. Subject to the widow’s third, the farm was devised in - equal parts to the two brothers, but the major share of the other property - went to Seth. The partner from New York remained at the homestead long - enough to arrange the details by which the widow’s portion was bought by - the brothers, and her leave-taking accomplished. - </p> - <p> - John Fairchild lives in high contentment on the ancestral farm. He grows - stout now, in the accustomed Fairchild fashion, and though his light ruddy - face and brown beard are hostile to the suggestion, people profess to see - the family likeness in him as he grows older. Aunt Sabrina especially - cherishes this fancy with fondness. She has come to regard this nephew, - whom once she so deeply disliked, with some affection and vast esteem, and - she devotes her hours to dreaming of the great things he may accomplish as - the Fairchild of Dearborn—what time she is not joining Alvira in - prayer that he may not be moved to marry a city woman. Thus far there are - no indications that he thinks of marrying any one, and his ambitions seem - to take no higher form than the re-invigoration of the <i>Banner of - Liberty</i>, which he drives over to Thessaly three times a week to - superintend, and which, they say, promises soon to blossom into a daily. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - One closing scene we may glance at—a pretty room, with modern - furniture, and wide, flower-clad windows looking upon one of the best of - Tecum-seh’s residential streets. Annie, grown brighter-faced and yet no - older in looks, despite the nearly four years of married life which have - gone by, stands at the window with a baby in her arms, and laughs as she - tosses the infant forward toward the panes, in greeting to the paternal - parent, who is coming up the front steps. The wife is in gay spirits, not - only because the head of the house has come home to dinner instead of - stopping at the Club, but for another reason, compared with which all - dinners were trivial. - </p> - <p> - “O Seth, her first tooth has come through!” - </p> - <p> - “That so? It’s about time, I should-think.” - </p> - <p> - His reception of the great tidings is so calm, not to say indifferent, - that the beaming wife looks at him in mock surprise. Seth has not aged - specially either, but he wears this evening an unwontedly serious - expression of face, and gets into his dressing-gown and slippers with an - almost moody air. - </p> - <p> - Baby is brought up in frowning, blinking proximity to her sire and made by - proxy to demand an explanation of this untoward gloom, on an occasion - which ought to be given over to rejoicing. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I’m tired,” Seth answers; “and then—then I have a letter which - puzzles and annoys me a little.” - </p> - <p> - “Is it anything that I know about?” Annie has seated herself beside him - now, and looks sweet inquiry. - </p> - <p> - “Well, yes. It is a letter from Dent—you know I’ve let him go down - to Washington to get an idea of the place and the men while the session is - on—and along with a letter to the paper, pretty good stuff, too, he - sends me this personal note. Read it for yourself.” - </p> - <p> - Annie took the letter, and reads steadily along through its neat - chirography: - </p> - <p> - “Washington, March 7th. - </p> - <p> - “Dear Fairchild: - </p> - <p> - “I send a letter going into the Silver question from the standpoint of - some of the Western men I have talked with. They impress me as being more - sincere than sensible on the subject. I think the trip will be of vast - service to me—and also, I trust, to the paper. - </p> - <p> - “Last evening, I met for the second time since I have been here, an - elderly gentleman from your part of the State, named Beekman. Like myself, - he is down here to look around, and get an idea of things. It is the first - time, I should judge, that he has been so far away from home, and his - comments are extremely droll—often very clever, too. He seems to - know you very well, and asked me to remember him kindly to you, and - express his congratulations upon your purchase of a controlling interest - in the paper. He wanted me to be sure and say to you that while the - experiment of electing Ansdell had worked very well—he seems to - admire Ansdell greatly—you mustn’t allow that to lead you into the - habit of thinking that all bolters are saints and all straight-party men - devils. It seems that since he has been here he has encountered some - foolish and exceptional Southern Congressman who provoked him by saying ‘<i>Your</i> - Government’ and <i>your</i> laws’ instead of using the pronoun and that - has made him a great Stalwart again—for the time-being.” - </p> - <p> - Annie looked up from the sheet. “I must say I don’t see anything in all - this to particularly disturb anybody. This seems just the harmless sort of - letter I should expect your innocuous Mr. Dent to write.” - </p> - <p> - “Read the rest of it,” was Seth’s reply. - </p> - <p> - She went on:— - </p> - <p> - “By the way, I met your sister-in-law among the guests at a reception the - other evening, to which Mr. Ansdell kindly secured me an invitation. Her - residence on K street—she gave me the number, which I have somewhere—is - said to be one of the most charming homes in Washington. She is - very-popular in society here, and I am told that you meet her at every - fashionable gathering. She was certainly very pleasant with me, when Mr. - Ansdell presented me and explained who I was. She especially asked me if I - knew what you had named your baby-girl, but I could not tell her. - </p> - <p> - “<i>I</i> could tell her if she asked <i>me!</i>” remarked the young wife, - grimly. “The very idea!” - </p> - <p> - “Go on,” said Seth—“or I shall feel that we ought to have named her - Proscrastinatia instead of Annie; get to the end of the thing.” - </p> - <p> - Annie got to the end with a single sentence: - </p> - <p> - “By the way, it may interest you—and I hope you won’t be annoyed at - my mentioning it, and indeed you may very possibly have heard it already—to - learn that everybody here seems to understand that Mr. Ansdell is shortly - to marry your sister-inlaw, and he himself, speaking to me, referred to - her in a way which amounted to a declaration of the fact.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, there you have it!” said Seth slowly, after a long pause in which - husband and wife looked at each other. “That <i>is</i> news, isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - “I should think so!” Annie spoke deliberately, too, turning the letter - over with a meditative air. “I should think so!” - </p> - <p> - The gravity of his wife’s tone seemed to Seth to be more profound than the - circumstances altogether demanded. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know after all,” he said, in half-apology for his own earlier - confession of gloom, “but that it would be a tolerable match. I don’t say - that they would be happy in the sense that we are happy, my girl; but she - has a great many qualities which would make her a helpful wife to an - ambitious, successful, masterful sort of public man like Ansdell. Come, - now, let’s be fair to her. Dent says that she is very popular in - Washington.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” replied Annie thoughtfully, drawing her daughter closer to her - breast, “she always will be popular with people who are not married to - her. Such women are!” - </p> - <h3> - THE END. - </h3> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Seth's Brother's Wife, by Harold Frederic - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SETH'S BROTHER'S WIFE *** - -***** This file should be named 54987-h.htm or 54987-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/8/54987/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - - - -</pre> - - </body> -</html> diff --git a/old/54987-h/images/0007.jpg b/old/54987-h/images/0007.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index a5fa796..0000000 --- a/old/54987-h/images/0007.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/54987-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/54987-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index a5fa796..0000000 --- a/old/54987-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old/54987-h.htm.2018-08-20 b/old/old/54987-h.htm.2018-08-20 deleted file mode 100644 index c1470dc..0000000 --- a/old/old/54987-h.htm.2018-08-20 +++ /dev/null @@ -1,13054 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
-
-<!DOCTYPE html
- PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
- "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
-
-<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
- <head>
- <title>Seth's Brother's Wife, by Harold Frederic</title>
- <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" />
- <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
- <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
-
- body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
- P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; }
- H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
- hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
- .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;}
- blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
- .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
- .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
- .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;}
- .xx-small {font-size: 60%;}
- .x-small {font-size: 75%;}
- .small {font-size: 85%;}
- .large {font-size: 115%;}
- .x-large {font-size: 130%;}
- .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;}
- .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;}
- .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;}
- .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;}
- .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;}
- .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;}
- div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
- div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
- .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
- .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
- .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em;
- font-variant: normal; font-style: normal;
- text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD;
- border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;}
- .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em;
- border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
- text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
- font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
- .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em;
- border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center;
- text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
- font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
- p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
- span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 }
- pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
-
-</style>
- </head>
- <body>
-
-
-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Seth's Brother's Wife, by Harold Frederic
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Seth's Brother's Wife
- A Study of Life in The Greater New York
-
-Author: Harold Frederic
-
-Release Date: June 26, 2017 [EBook #54987]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SETH'S BROTHER'S WIFE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- SETH’S BROTHER’S WIFE
- </h1>
- <h2>
- A Study Of Life In The Greater New York
- </h2>
- <h2>
- By Harold Frederic
- </h2>
- <h4>
- New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons
- </h4>
- <h3>
- 1887
- </h3>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0007.jpg" alt="0007 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- TO
- </h3>
- <h3>
- MY MOTHER
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <b>CONTENTS</b>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>SETH’S BROTHER’S WIFE.</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I.—THE HIRED FOLK. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II.—THE STORY OF LEMUEL. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III.—AUNT SABRINA. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV.—THE TWO YOUNG WOMEN. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V.—THE FUNERAL. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI.—IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII.—THE THREE BROTHERS. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII.—ALBERT’S PLANS. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX.—AT “M’TILDY’s” BEDSIDE. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X.—THE FISHING PARTY. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI.—ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE WORLD.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII.—THE SANCTUM. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII.—THIRTEEN MONTHS OF IT. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV.—BACK ON THE FARM. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV.—MR. RICHARD ANSDELL. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI.—DEAR ISABEL. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII.—AN UPWARD LEAP. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII.—BOLTING THE TICKET. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX.—THE WELCOME. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX.—THE NIGHT: THE BROTHERS. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI.—THE NIGHT: MASTER AND MAN.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII.—THE NIGHT: THE LOVERS. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII.—THE CONVENTION: THE BOSS.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV.—THE CONVENTION: THE NEWS.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV.—“YOU THOUGHT I DID IT!” </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI.—THE CORONER. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII.—ANNIE AND ISABEL. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII.—BETWEEN THE BREAD-PAN AND
- THE CHURN. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX.—THE BOSS LOOKS INTO THE
- MATTER. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX.—JOHN’S DELICATE MISSION. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI.—MILTON’S ASPIRATIONS. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII.—“A WICKED WOMAN!” </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII.—THE SHERIFF ASSISTS. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER XXXIV.—AT “M’TILDY’S” BEDSIDE
- AGAIN. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XXXV.—“SUCH WOMEN ARE!” </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- SETH’S BROTHER’S WIFE.
- </h1>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER I.—THE HIRED FOLK.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>f ther’ ain’t a
- flare-up in <i>this</i> haouse ’fore long, I miss <i>my</i> guess,”
- said Alvira, as she kneaded the pie-crust, and pulled it out between her
- floury fingers to measure its consistency. “Ole Sabriny’s got her back up
- this time to stay.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, let ’em flare, says I. ’Taint none o’ aour business,
- Alviry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knaow, Milton; but still it seems to me she might wait at least till
- th’ corpse was aout o’ th’ haouse.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s thet got to dew with it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The callousness of the question must have grated upon the hired-girl, for
- she made no reply, and slapped the dough over on the board with an
- impatient gesture.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was near the close of a fair day, late in May, and the reddened
- sunlight from the West would have helped to glorify any human being less
- hopelessly commonplace than Milton Squires as he sat in its full radiance
- on the doorstep, peeling and quartering apples over a pan which he held
- between his knees. This sunlight, to reach him, painted with warm tints
- many objects near at hand which it could not make picturesque. The three
- great barns, standing in the shadow to the south, were ricketty and
- ancient without being comely, and the glare only made their awkward
- outlines and patched, paintless surfaces the meaner; the score of lean
- cows, standing idly fetlock-deep in the black mire of the barnyard, or
- nipping the scant tufts of rank grass near the trough, seemed all the
- dingier and scrawnier for the brilliancy of the light which covered them;
- the broken gate, the bars eked out with a hop-pole, the wheelbarrow turned
- shiftlessly against a break in the wall, the mildewed wellcurb, with its
- antiquated reach—all seemed in this glow of dying day to be
- conscious of exhibiting at its worse their squalid side. The sunset could
- not well have illumined, during that hour at least, a less inspiring scene
- than this which Alvira, looking out as she talked, or the hired man,
- raising his head from over the apples, could see from the kitchen door of
- Lemuel Fairchild’s farm-house. But any student of his species would have
- agreed that, in all the uninviting view, Milton was the least attractive
- object.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he rose to empty his pan within, and start afresh, he could be seen
- more fully. He was clumsily cased from neck to ankles in brown over-alls,
- threadbare, discolored, patched, with mud about the knees and ragged edges
- lower down. He wore rubber boots, over the bulging legs of which the
- trousers came reluctantly, and the huge feet of these were slit down the
- instep. His hat had been soft and black once; now it seemed stiffened with
- dirt, to which the afternoon milking had lent a new contribution of short
- reddish hair, and was shapeless and colorless from age. His back was
- narrow and bent, and his long arms terminated in hands which it seemed
- sinful to have touch anything thereafter to be eaten. Viewed from behind,
- Milton appeared to be at least fifty. But his face showed a somewhat
- younger man, despite its sun-baked lines and the frowzy beard which might
- be either the yellow of unkempt youth or the gray of untidy age. In
- reality he was not yet thirty-six.
- </p>
- <p>
- He slouched out now with a fresh lot of apples, and, squatting on the
- door-stone, resumed the conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I s’pose naow Sissly’s gone, ther’ won’t be no livin’ under th’ same roof
- with Sabriny fer any of us. Ther’ ain’t nobuddy lef’ fer her to rassle
- with ’cep’ us. Ole Lemuel’s so broken-up, he won’t dare say his
- soul’s his own; ’n John—well, Lize Wilkins says she heerd him
- say he didn’t know’s he’d come to th’ funer’l ’t all, after th’ way
- him ’n’ Sabriny hed it aout las’ time he was here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wasn’t talkin’ o’ <i>them!</i>” said Alvira, slapping the flour from
- her hands’ and beginning with the roller; “it’d be nothin’ new, her tryin’
- to boss <i>them</i>. But she’s got her dander up naow agin somebuddy that
- beats them all holler. They won’t no Richardsons come puttin’ on airs ’raoun’
- here, an’ takin’ th’ parlor bedroom ’thaout askin’, not ef th’ ole
- lady knaows herself—’n’ I guess she does.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What Richardsons?” asked Milton. “Thought Sissly was th’ last of ’em—thet
- they wa’n’t no more Richardsons.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, man alive, ain’t Albert’s wife a Richardson, th’ daughter of
- Sissly’s cousin—you remember, that pock-pitted man who kep’ th’ fast
- hoss here one summer. Of course she’s a Richardson—full-blooded!
- When she come up from th’ train here this mornin’, with Albert, I see by
- th’ ole lady’s eye ’t she meant misch’f. I didn’t want to see no
- raow, here with a corpse in th’ haouse, ’n’ so I tried to smooth
- matters over, ’n’ kind o’ quiet Sabriny daown, tellin’ her thet
- they had to come to th’ fu-ner’l, ’n’ they’d go ’way soon’s
- it was through with, ’n’ that Albert, bein’ the oldest son, hed a
- right to th’ comp’ny bed-room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ what’d she say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She didn’t say much, ’cep’ thet th’ Richardsons hed never brung
- nothin’ but bad luck to this haouse, ’n’ they never would, nuther.
- ’N’ then she flaounced upstairs to her room, jis’s she allus does
- when she’s riled, ’n’ she give Albert’s wife sech a look, I said to
- m’self, ‘Milady, I wouldn’t be in <i>your</i> shoes fer all yer fine
- fixin’s.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, she’s a dum likely lookin’ woman, ef she <i>is</i> a Richardson,”
- said Milton, with something like enthusiasm. “Wonder ef she wears one o’
- them low-necked gaowns when she’s to hum, like th’ picters in th’ <i>Ledger</i>.
- They say they all dew, in New York.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Haow sh’d I knaow!” Alvira sharply responded. “I got enough things to
- think of, ’thaout both’rin’ my head abaout city women’s dresses. ’N’
- you ought to hev, tew. Ef you’n’ Leander’d pay more heed to yer
- work, ’n’ dew yer chores up ship-shape, ’n’ spen’ less time
- porin’ over them good-fer-nothin’ story-papers, th’ farm wouldn’t look so
- run-daown ’n’ slaouchy. Did yeh hear what Albert said this mornin’,
- when he looked ’raoun’? ‘I swan! ’ he said, ‘I b’lieve this
- is th’ seediest lookin’ place ’n all Northern New York.’ Nice thing
- fer him to hev to say, wa’n’t it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What d’ I keer what <i>he</i> says? He ain’t th’ boss here, by a
- jug-full!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ more’s th’ pity, tew. He’d make yeh toe th’ mark!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, ’n’ Sabriny’d make it lively fer his wife, tew. Th’ ole fight
- ’baout th’ Fairchileses ’n’ th’ Richardsons wouldn’t be a
- succumstance to thet. Sissly’d thank her stars thet she was dead ’n’
- buried aout o’ th’ way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- These two hired people, who discussed their employer and his family with
- that easy familiarity of Christian names to be found only in Russia and
- rural America, knew very well what portended to the house when the
- Richardson subject came up. Alvira Roberts had spent more than twenty
- years of her life in the thick of the gaseous strife between Fairchild and
- Richardson. She was a mere slip of a girl, barely thirteen, when she had
- first hired out at the homestead, and now, black-browed, sallow from much
- tea-drinking, and with a sharp, deep wrinkle vertically dividing her high
- forehead, she looked every year of her thirty-five. Compared with her,
- Milton Squires was a new comer on the farm, but still there were lean old
- cows over yonder in the barnyard, lazily waiting for the night-march to
- the pastures, that had been ravenous calves in their gruel-bucket stage
- when he came.
- </p>
- <p>
- What these two did not know about the Fairchild family was hardly worth
- the knowing. Something of what they knew, the reader ought here to be
- told.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER II.—THE STORY OF LEMUEL.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>emuel Fairchild,
- the bowed, gray-haired, lumpish man who at this time sat in the main
- living room within, feebly rocking himself by the huge wood-stove, and
- trying vaguely as he had been for thirty-six hours past, to realize that
- his wife lay in her final sleep in the adjoining chamber, had forty-odd
- years before been as likely a young farmer as Dearborn County knew. He was
- fine-looking and popular in those days, and old Seth Fairchild, dying
- unexpectedly, had left to this elder son his whole possessions—six
- hundred acres of dairy and hop land, free and clear, a residence much
- above the average farm-house of these parts, and a tidy sum of money in
- the bank.
- </p>
- <p>
- The contrast now was sweeping. The Fairchild’s house was still the largest
- residential structure on the Burfield road, which led from Thessaly across
- the hills to remote and barbarous latitudes, but respect had long since
- ceased to accrue to it upon the score of its size. To the local eye, it
- was the badge and synonym of “rack and ruin;” while sometimes strangers of
- artistic tastes, chancing to travel by this unfrequented road, would voice
- regrets that such a prospect as opened to the vision just here, with the
- noble range of hills behind for the first time looming in their true
- proportions, should be spoiled by such a gaunt, unsightly edifice, with
- its tumble-down surroundings, its staring windows cheaply curtained with
- green paper, and its cheerless, shabby color—that indescribable gray
- with which rain and frost and Father Time supplant unrenewed white. The
- garden, comprising a quarter-acre to the east of the house, was a tangled
- confusion of flowers and weeds and berry-bushes run wild, yet the effect
- somehow was mean rather than picturesque. The very grass in the yard to
- the west did not grow healthfully, but revealed patches of sandy
- barrenness, created by feet too indifferent or unruly to keep the path to
- the barns.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet the neighbors said, and Lemuel had come himself to feel, that the
- blame of this sad falling off was not fairly his. There had been a fatal
- defect in the legacy.
- </p>
- <p>
- The one needful thing which the Hon. Seth Fairchild did <i>not</i> leave
- his elder son was the brains by means of which he himself, in one way or
- another, had gathered together a substantial competency, won two elections
- to the State Senate, and established and held for himself the position of
- leading citizen in his town—that most valued and intangible of
- American local distinctions. But while Lemuel’s brown hair curled so
- prettily, and his eyes shone with the modest light of wealthy and
- well-behaved youth, nobody missed the brains. If there was any change in
- the management of the farm, it passed unnoticed, for all attention was
- centred on the great problem, interesting enough always when means seeks a
- help-meet, but indescribably absorbing in rural communities, where
- everybody knows everybody and casual gallants never come for those
- luckless damsels neglected by native swains—Whom will he marry?
- </p>
- <p>
- It boots not now to recall the heart-burnings, the sad convictions that
- life would henceforth be a blank, the angry repinings at fate, which
- desolated the village of Thessaly and vicinity when Lemuel, returning from
- a mid-winter visit to Albany, brought a bride in the person of a bright
- eyed, handsome and clever young lady who had been Miss Cicely Richardson.
- He had known her, so they learned, for some years—not only during
- his school-days at the Academy there, but later, in what was mysteriously
- known in Thessaly as “society,” in whose giddy mazes he had mingled while
- on a visit to his legislative sire at the Capital City. No, it is not
- worth while to dwell upon the village hopes rudely destroyed by this shock—for
- they are dim memories of the far, far past.
- </p>
- <p>
- But to one the blow was a disappointment not to be forgotten, or to grow
- dim in recollection. Miss Sabrina Fairchild was two years younger than her
- brother in age—a score of years his senior in firmness and will. She
- had only a small jointure in her father’s estate, because she had great
- expectations from an aunt in Ohio, in perpetual memory of whose
- anticipated bounty she bore her scriptural name, but she was a charge on
- her brother in that she was to have a home with him until she chose to
- leave it for one of her own. I doubt not that her sagacious father
- foresaw, from his knowledge of his daughter, the improbability that this
- second home would ever be offered her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Sabrina, even at this tender age, was clearly not of the marrying
- kind, and she grew less so with great steadiness. She was at this early
- date, when she was twenty-four, a woman of markedly strong character, of
- which perhaps the most distinct trait was family pride.
- </p>
- <p>
- There has been a considerable army of State Senators since New York first
- took on the honors of a Commonwealth, and unto them a great troop of
- daughters have been born, but surely no other of all these girls ever
- exulted so fondly, nay, fiercely, in the paternal dignity as did Sabrina.
- She knew nothing of politics, and little of the outside world; her
- conceptions of social possibilities were of the most primitive sort; one
- winter, when she went to Albany with her father, and was passed in a
- bewildered way through sundry experiences said to be of a highly
- fashionable nature, it had been temporarily apparent to her own
- consciousness that she was an awkward, ignorant, red-armed country-girl—but
- this only for one wretched hour or so. Every mile-post passed on her
- homeward ride, as she looked through the stage window, brought restored
- self-confidence, and long before the tedious journey ended she was more
- the Senator’s daughter than ever.
- </p>
- <p>
- Through this very rebound from mortification she queened it over the
- simpler souls of the village with renewed severity and pomp. The itinerant
- singing master who thought to get her for the asking into his class in the
- school-house Wednesday evenings, was frozen by the amazed disdain of her
- refusal. When young Smith Thurber, the kiln-keeper’s son, in the flippant
- spirit of fine buttons and a resplendent fob, asked her to dance a measure
- with him at the Wallaces’ party, the iciness of her stare fairly took away
- his breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- Something can be guessed of her emotions when the brother brought home his
- bride. With a halfcowardly, half-kindly idea of postponing the trouble
- certain to ensue, he had given Sabrina no warning of his intention, and,
- through the slow mails of that date, only a day’s advance notice of his
- return with Mrs. Lemuel. The storm did not burst at once. Indeed it may be
- said never to have really burst. Sabrina was not a bad woman, according to
- her lights, and she did nothing consciously to make her sister-in-law
- unhappy. The young wife had a light heart, a sensible mind and the faculty
- of being cheerful about many things which might be expected to annoy. But
- she had some pride, too, and although at the outset it was the very simple
- and praiseworthy pride of a well-meaning individual, incessant vaunting of
- the Fairchilds quite naturally gave a family twist to it, and she soon was
- able to resent slights in the name of all the Richardsons.
- </p>
- <p>
- After all, was she not in the right? for while the grass was scarcely
- green on the grave of the first Fairchild who had amounted to anything,
- there were six generations of Richardsons in Albany chronicles alone who
- had married into the best Dutch families of that ancient, aristocratic
- town, to say nothing of the New England record antedating that period.
- Thus the case appeared to her, and came gradually to have more prominence
- in her mind than, in her maiden days, she could have thought possible.
- </p>
- <p>
- So this great Forty Years’ War began, in which there was to be no single
- grand, decisive engagement, but a thousand petty skirmishes and little
- raids, infinitely more vexatious and exhausting, and was waged until the
- weaker of the combatants, literally worn out in the fray, had laid down
- her arms and her life together, and was at peace at last, under the sheet
- in the darkened parlor.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other veteran party to the feud, her thin, iron-gray hair half
- concealed under a black knit cap, her bold, sharp face red as with stains
- of tears, sat at the window of her own upper room, reading her Bible. If
- Milton and Alvira had known that she was reading in Judges, they might
- have been even more confident of a coming “flare-up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER III.—AUNT SABRINA.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>EIGHBORING
- philosophers who cared, from curiosity or a loftier motive, to study the
- Fairchild domestic problem, in all its social and historic ramifications,
- generally emerged from the inquiry with some personal bias against Miss
- Sabrina, tempered by the conclusion that, after all, there was a good deal
- to be said on the old lady’s side.
- </p>
- <p>
- Certainly, as the grim old maid in the rusty bombazine gown and cap, which
- gave a funereal air even to the red plaid shawl over her shoulders, sat at
- her upper window, and tried through a pained and resentful chaos of
- secular thoughts to follow the Scriptural lines, there was an extremely
- vivid conviction uppermost in her mind that justice had been meted out
- neither to her nor to the Fairchilds. She would have repelled indignantly,
- and honestly enough too, the charge that there was any bitterness in her
- heart toward the sister-in-law whose burial was appointed for the morrow.
- She had liked poor Cicely, in her iron-clad way, and had wept genuine
- tears more than once since her death. Indeed, her thoughts—and they
- were persistent, self-asserting thoughts which not even her favorite
- recital of Gideon’s sanguinary triumph could keep back—ran more upon
- the living than upon the dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- And what gloomy, melancholy thoughts they were! They swept over two score
- of years, the whole gamut of emotion, from the pride and hope of youth to
- the anguish of disappointed, wrathful, hopeless old age, as her hand might
- cover all there was of sound in music by a run down her mother’s ancient
- spinet which stood, mute and forgotten, in the corner of the room. Her
- brother, this brother whom satirical fate had made a Lemuel instead of a
- Lucy or a Lucretia, a man instead of a woman as befitted his weakness of
- mind and spirit—had begun life with a noble heritage. Where was it
- now? He had been the heir to a leading position among the men of his
- county. What was he now? The Fairchilds had been as rich, as respected, as
- influential as any Dearborn family. Who did them honor now?
- </p>
- <p>
- The mental answers to these questions blurred Miss Sabrina’s spectacles
- with tears, and Gideon’s performance with the lamps seemed a tiresome
- thing. She laid the Book aside, and went softly down stairs to her
- brother, who sat, still rocking in his late wife’s high, cushioned
- arm-chair, disconsolate by the stove.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were also in the room his oldest son and this son’s wife, sitting
- dumbly, each at a window, making a seemly pretence of not being bored by
- the meagre prospect without. They looked at their aunt in that far-off
- impassive manner with which participants in a high pageant or solemn
- observance always regard one another. There was no call for a greeting,
- since they had already exchanged whispered salutations, earlier in the
- day. Miss Sabrina glanced at the young wife for an instant—it was
- not a kindly glance. Then her eyes turned to the husband, and while
- surveying him seemed suddenly to light up with some new thought. She
- almost smiled, and her tight pressed lips parted. Had they followed the
- prompting of the brain and spoken, the words would have been:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank God, there is still Albert!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert Fairchild would have been known in any company, and in any guise, I
- think, for a lawyer. The profession had its badge in every line and aspect
- of his face, in every movement of his head, and, so it seemed, in the way
- he held his hands, in the very tone of his voice. His face was round, and
- would have been pleasant, so far as conformation and expression went, had
- it not been for the eyes, which were unsympathetic, almost cold. Often the
- rest of his countenance was wreathed in amiable smiles; but the eyes
- smiled never. He had looked a middle-aged man for a decade back, and
- casual acquaintances who met him from year to year complimented him on not
- growing old, because they saw no change. In fact he had been old from the
- beginning, and even now looked more than his age, which lacked some few
- months of forty. He was growing bald above the temples, and, like all the
- Fairchilds, was taking on flesh with increasing years. Nothing could have
- better shown the extremity of poor Sabrina’s woe than this clutching at
- the relief afforded by the sight of Albert, for she was not on good terms
- with him. Albert had been born and reared through boyhood at a time when
- the farm was still prosperous and money plenty. He had been educated far
- beyond the traditions of his sires, and was the first University man of
- his family, so far as was known. He had been given his own bent in all
- things, before he settled down to a choice of profession, and then, at
- considerable expense, had been secured a place with one of the greatest
- legal firms in New York City. For years the first fruits of the soil, the
- cream off all the milk—so the Aunt’s mingled scriptural and dairy
- metaphors ran—had been his. And what return had they had for it? He
- had become a sound, successful lawyer, with a handsome income, and he had
- married wealth as well. Yet year after year, as the fortunes of the
- Fairchild homestead declined, he had never interfered to prevent the fresh
- mortgage being placed—nay, had more than once explicitly declined to
- help save it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Agriculture is out of date in this State,” she had heard him say once,
- with her own ears, “Better let the old people live on their capital, as
- they go along. It’s no use throwing good money after bad. Farm land here
- in the East is bound to decrease in value, steadily.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This about the homestead—about the cradle of his ancestors! Poor old
- lady, had the Fairchilds been sending baronial roots down through all this
- soil for a thousand years, she couldn’t have been more pained or mortified
- over Albert’s callous view of the farm which her grandfather, a revolted
- cobbler from Rhode Island, had cleared and paid for at ten cents an acre.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then there was his marriage, too. In all the years of armed neutrality or
- tacit warfare which she and Cicely had passed together under one roof,
- they had never before or since come so near an open and palpable rupture
- as they did over a city-bred cousin of Cicely’s—a forward,
- impertinent, ill-behaved girl from New York, who had come to the farm on a
- visit some ten years before, and whose father was summoned at last to take
- her away because otherwise she, Sabrina, threatened to herself leave the
- house. There had been a desperate scene before this conclusion was
- reached. Sabrina had stormed and threatened to shake the dust of the
- homestead from off her outraged sandals. Cicely for the once had stood her
- ground, and said she fancied even worse things than that might happen
- without producing a universal cataclysm. Lemuel had almost wept with
- despair over the tumult. The two older boys, particularly John, had not
- concealed their exuberant hope that their maiden Aunt might be taken at
- her word, and allowed to leave. And the girl herself, this impudent huzzy
- of a Richardson, actually put her spoke in too, and said things about old
- cats and false teeth, which it made Sabrina’s blood still boil to recall.
- </p>
- <p>
- And it was this girl, of all others in the world, whom Albert must go and
- marry!
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet Sabrina, in her present despondent mood, felt herself able to rise
- above mere personal piques and dislikes, if there really was a hope for
- the family’s revival. She was not very sanguine about even Albert, but
- beyond him there was no chance at all.
- </p>
- <p>
- John, the second brother, had talent enough, she supposed. People said he
- was smart, and he must be, else he could scarcely have come in his
- twenty-eighth year to be owner and editor of the Thessaly <i>Banner of
- Liberty</i>, and put in all those political pieces written in the first
- person plural, as if he had the power of attorney for all Dearborn county.
- But then he was mortally shiftless about money matters, and they did say
- that since his wife’s death—a mere school-teacher she had been—he
- had become quite dissipated and played billiards. Besides she was at open
- feud with him, and never, never would speak to him again, the longest day
- <i>he</i> lived! So that settled John.
- </p>
- <p>
- As for Seth, the youngest of the brothers, it is to be doubted if she
- would have thought of him at all, had he not come in at the moment. He had
- been down to the village to get some black clothes which the tailor had
- constructed on short notice for him, and he, too, passed through the
- sitting room to the stairs with the serious look and the dead silence
- which the awful presence imposes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then she did think of him for a moment, as she stood warming her fingers
- over the bald, flat top of the stove—for though bright and warm
- enough outside, the air was still chilly in these great barns of rooms.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth was indisputably the handsomest of all the Fairchilds, even handsomer
- than she remembered his father to have been—a tall, straight,
- broadshouldered youth, who held his head well up and looked everybody in
- the face with honest hazel eyes. He had the Richardson complexion, a dusky
- tint gained doubtless from all those Dutch intermarriages of which poor
- Cicely used to make so much, but his brown hair curled much as Lemuel’s
- used to curl, only not so effeminately, and his temper was as even as his
- father’s had been, though not so submissive or weak. His hands were rough
- and coarse from the farm work, and his walk showed familiarity with
- ploughed ground, but still he had, in his way, a more distinguished air
- than either Albert or John had ever had.
- </p>
- <p>
- Looking him over, a stranger would have been surprised that his aunt
- should have left him out of her thoughts of the family’s future—or
- that, once pausing to consider him, she should have dropped the idea so
- swiftly. But so it was. Miss Sabrina felt cold and aggrieved toward
- Albert, and she came as near hating John as a deeply devout woman safely
- could. She simply took no account of Seth at all, as she would have
- expressed it. To her he was a quiet, harmless sort of youngster, who
- worked prettily steadily on the farm, and got on civilly with people. She
- understood that he was very fond of reading, but that made no special
- impression on her.
- </p>
- <p>
- If she had been asked, she would undoubtedly have said that Seth was her
- favorite nephew—but she had never dreamed of regarding him as a
- possible restorer of the family glories.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is yer oven hot enough?” she asked Alvira in the kitchen, a minute later.
- “If they’s anything I <i>dew</i> hate, it’s a soggy undercrust.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I guess I kin manage a batch o’ pies by this time,” returned the
- hired-girl with a sniff. Through some unexplained process of reasoning,
- Alvira was with the Fairchilds as against the Richardsons, but she was
- first of all for herself, against the whole human race.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Milton gone aout with the caows?” asked the old lady, ignoring for the
- once the domestic’s challenge. “When he comes back, he ’n’ Leander
- better go over to Wilkinses, and get what chairs they kin spare. I s’pose
- there’ll be a big craowd, ef only to git in and see if there’s any holes
- in our body-Brussels yit, ’n’ haow that sofy-backed set in the
- parlor’s holdin’ out. Poor Cicely! I think they better bring over the
- chairs tonight, after dusk. What people don’t see they can’t talk abaout.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heard Milton say he was goin’ to borrer some over at Warren’s,” remarked
- Alvira, in a casual way, but looking around to see how the idea affected
- Miss Sabrina.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well he jis’ won’t!” came the answer, very promptly and spiritedly. “If
- every mortal soul of ’em hes to stan’ up, he won’t! I guess Lemuel
- Fairchild’s wife can be buried ’thaout asking any help from Matildy
- Warren. I wouldn’t ask her if ’twas th’ las’ thing I ever did.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But Annie sent word she was comin’ over fus’ thing in th’ mornin’, so’s
- to help clear up th’ breakfast things. If she’s good enough fer that, I
- don’t see why you need be afeered o’ borryin’ her chairs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They ain’t her chairs, and you knaow it, Alviry. I ain’t got a word to
- say agin’ Annie Fairchild, but when it comes to her gran’ mother, I kin
- ride a high horse as well’s she kin. After all the trouble she made my
- family, the sight of a single stick of her furnitur’ here’d be enough to
- bring the rafters of this haouse daown over my head, I do believe!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, of course, ‘tain’t none o’ my business, but seems to me there’ll be
- a plaguey slim fun’r’l when <i>your</i> turn comes if you’re goin’ to keep
- up all these old-woman’s fights with everybody ’raound abaout.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Naow Alviry!” began Miss Sabrina, in her shrillest and angriest tone;
- then with a visible effort, as if remembering something, she paused and
- then went on in a subdued, almost submissive voice, “You knaow jis’ haow
- Matildy Warren’s used us. From the very day my poor brother William ran
- off with her Jenny—and goodness knaows whatever possessed him to dew
- it—thet old woman’s never missed a chance to run us all daown—ez
- ef she oughtn’t to been praoud o’ th’ day a Fairchild took up with a
- Warren.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Guess you ain’t had none the wu’st of it,” put in Alvira, with sarcasm.
- “Guess your tongue’s ’baout as sharp as her’n ever was. B’sides
- she’s bed-ridden naow, ’n’ everybody thought she wouldn’t get threw
- th’ spring. ’N’ ef Seth’s goin’ to make up to Annie, you ought to
- begin to smooth things over ’fore she dies. There’s no tellin’ but
- what she mightn’t leave the farm away f’m th’ girl at th’ last minute,
- jis’ to spite you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yeh needn’t talk as if <i>I</i> wanted her pesky farm!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, well now, you knaow what I mean’s well’s I dew. What’s th’ use o’
- harpin’ on what yer brother William did, or what ole Matildy said, ’fore
- I was born, when you knaow th’ tew farms jine, and yer heart’s sot on
- havin’ ’em in one—Yes, ’fore I was born,” repeated the
- domestic, as if pleased with the implication of juvenility.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Sabrina hesitated, and looked at Alvira meditatively through her
- spectacles, in momentary doubt about the propriety of saying a sharp thing
- under all the circumstances; but the temptation was not to be resisted. “’N’
- you ain’t percisely a chicken yourself, Alviry,” she said and left the
- kitchen.
- </p>
- <p>
- Later, when Milton had returned from the pasture, and hung about the
- kitchen, mending the harness that went with the democrat-wagon while
- waiting for Leander to return from the cheese factory, Alvira remarked:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Seems ’if Sabriny’d lost all her sper’t this last day or tew.
- Never see sech a change. She don’t answer up wuth a cent. I shouldn’t be
- s’prised if she didn’t tackle Albert’s wife after all. Oh yes, ’n’
- you ain’t to go to Warren’s for them chairs. Sa-briny’s dead-set agin
- that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s up?” asked Milton, “Hez Seth broke off with Annie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t knaow’s they ever was anything particular to break off. No, ’t
- ’aint that; it’s the same raow ‘tween the two ole women. Goodness
- knaows, I’m sick ’n’ tired of hearin’ ’baout it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, but ain’t Seth ’n’ Annie fixed it up?” persisted Milton;
- “Daown’t th’ corners they say it’s all settled.” Then he mutteringly
- added, as he slouched out to meet Leander, who drove up now with a great
- rattle of empty milk-cans. “I wish’t <i>I</i> was in Seth’s shoes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you <i>dew</i>, dew yeh!” said Alvira, thus left to herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER IV.—THE TWO YOUNG WOMEN.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he young girl
- whose future had been settled down at the corners, came along the road
- next morning toward the Fairchild house, all unconscious of her destiny.
- She lived in a small, old-fashioned farm-dwelling back in the fields,
- alone with her grandmother, and although there was a bitter feud between
- the heads of the two houses, it had not stopped her from being a familiar
- and helpful figure in her uncle’s homestead.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie Fairchild was a country girl in some senses of the term, calm-faced,
- clear-eyed, self-reliant among her friends, but with a curious disposition
- toward timidity in the presence of strangers. She was held to be too
- serious and “school-ma’am-ish” for pleasant company by most rural maidens
- of her acquaintance, and the few attempts of young farmers of the
- country-side to establish friendly relations with her had not been crowned
- with conspicuous success. It could scarcely be said that she was haughty
- or cold; no one could demonstrate in detail that her term of schooling in
- a far-off citified seminary had made her proud or uncivil; but still she
- had no intimates.
- </p>
- <p>
- This was the more marked from the fact that she was a pretty girl—or
- if not precisely pretty, very attractive and winning in face. No other
- girl of the neighborhood had so fine and regular a profile, or such
- expressive, dark eyes, or so serenely intelligent an expression. It had
- been whispered at one time that Reuben Tracy, the school-master, was
- likely to make a match of it with her, but this had faded away again as a
- rootless rumor; by this time everybody on the Burfield road tacitly
- understood that eventually she was to be the wife of her cousin Seth, when
- it “came time for the two farms to join.” And she had grown accustomed
- long since to the furtive, half-awed, half-covetous look which men cast
- upon her, without suspecting the spirit of reluctant renunciation
- underlying it.
- </p>
- <p>
- She met Milton Squires on the road, close in front of the Fairchild’s
- house, this morning, and, nodding to him, passed on. She did not
- particularly note the gaze he bent upon her as she went by, and which
- followed her afterward, almost to the Fairchild gate. If she had done so,
- and could have read all its meaning, she would not have gone on with so
- unruffled a face, for it was a look to frighten an honest young woman—an
- intent, hungry, almost wolfish look, unrelieved by so much as a glimmer of
- the light of manliness.
- </p>
- <p>
- But she was alike unconscious of his thoughts and of the gossip he had
- heard at the corners. Certainly no listener who followed her to the gate,
- where she encountered Seth at work screwing on a new hinge, would have
- gathered from the tone or words of the greeting on either side any
- testimony to confirm the common supposition that they were destined for
- each other.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good morning, Seth,” she said, halting while he dragged the great gate
- open for her, “you’re all through breakfast, I suppose?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I think Albert and his wife are at the table still. We didn’t call
- them when the rest got up, you know. They’re not used to country ways.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anybody else here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, except John.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I’m so glad he came. That Lize Wilkins has been telling everybody he
- wouldn’t come on Sabrina’s account. And it would have looked <i>so</i>
- bad.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, Lize Wilkins talks too much. All John ever said was that he wouldn’t
- stay here in the house any more than he could help. It’s too bad he can’t
- get along better with Aunt; it would make things so much pleasanter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How’s your father, Seth? He seemed at first to take it pretty hard.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He appeared a little brighter yesterday, after Albert came, but he’s very
- poorly this morning. Poor old man, it makes a sad difference with him—more
- I suppose than with us boys, even with me, who never have been away from
- her hardly for a day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, Seth, a boy outgrows his mother, I suppose, but for an old couple
- who have lived together forty years a separation like this must be awful.
- I shall go up to the house now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth followed her with his eyes as she walked up the road, past the
- old-fashioned latticed front door with its heavy fold of crape hanging on
- the knocker, and turned from sight at the corner of the house; and the
- look in his face was soft and admiring, even if it was hardly loverlike.
- In his trouble—and he felt the bereavement most keenly—it
- seemed restful and good to have such a girl as Annie about, Indeed, a
- vague thought that she had never before seemed so sweet and likeable came
- to him, as he turned again to the hinge, and lightened his heart
- perceptibly, for almost the last words his mother had spoken to him had
- been of his future with Annie as his wife.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will have the farm before long, Seth,” she said, smiling faintly as
- he stroked her pale hair—somehow to the last it never grew grey—and
- looked at her through boyish tears, “and Annie will bring you the Warren
- farm. Her grandmother and I have talked it over many a time. Annie’s a
- good girl, there’s no better, and she’ll make my boy a good, true wife.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For a year or two back Seth had understood in a nebulous way that his
- parents had an idea of his eventually marrying Annie, but his mother’s
- words still came to him in the form of a surprise. First, it had been far
- from his thoughts that old Mrs. Warren, Annie’s invalid grandmother, would
- listen to such a thing, much less plan it. There was a bitterness of long
- standing between the two families, he knew. His father’s younger brother—a
- halfbrother—named William Fairchild, had married Mrs. Warren’s only
- daughter under circumstances which he had never heard detailed, but which
- at least had enraged the mother. Both William and his wife had died, out
- West he believed, years and years ago, leaving only this girl, Annie
- Fairchild, who came an orphan to the grandmother she had never seen
- before, and was reared by her. In this Mrs. Warren and his aunt Sabrina
- had found sufficient occasion for a quarrel, lasting ever since he could
- remember, and as he had always understood from his aunt that her battle
- was in defense of the whole family, he had taken it for granted that he
- not less than the other Fairchilds was included in Mrs. Warren’s disfavor.
- He recalled, now, indeed, having heard Annie say once or twice that her
- grandmother liked him; but this he had taken in a negative way, as if the
- grandmother of the Capulets had remarked that of all the loathed Montagus
- perhaps young Romeo was personally the least offensive to her sight.
- </p>
- <p>
- And second, he was far from being in a Romeo’s condition of heart and
- mind. He was not in love with Annie for herself—much less for the
- Warren farm. To state plainly what Seth had not yet mustered courage to
- say in entire frankness even to himself, he hated farming, and rebelled
- against the idea of following in his father’s footsteps. And the dreams of
- a career elsewhere which occupied the mutinous thoughts Seth concealed
- under so passive an exterior had carried him far away from the plan of an
- alliance with the nice sort of country cousin who would eventually own the
- adjoining farm. So in this sense, too, his mothers dying words were a
- surprise—converting into a definite and almost sacred desire what he
- had supposed to be merely a shapeless fancy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Not all this crossed his mind, as he watched Annie till she disappeared,
- and then turned back to his work. But the sight of her had been pleasant
- to him, and her voice had sounded very gentle and yet full of the
- substance of womanliness—and perhaps his poor, dear mother’s plan
- for him, after all, was the best.
- </p>
- <p>
- The gate swinging properly at last, there was an end to Seth’s out-door
- tasks, and he started toward the house. The thought that he would see
- Annie within was distinct enough in his mind, almost, to constitute a
- motive for his going. At the very door he encountered his brother Albert’s
- wife, coming out, and stopped.
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel Fairchild was far from deserving, at least as a woman, the epithets
- with which Aunt Sabrina mentally coupled her girlhood. There was nothing
- impertinent or ill-behaved about her appearance, certainly, as she stood
- before Seth, and with a faint smile bade him good-morning.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was above the medium height, as woman’s stature goes, and almost
- plump; her hair, much of which was shown in front by the pretty Parisian
- form of straw hat she wore, was very light in color; her eyes were blue, a
- light, noticeable blue. She wore some loose kind of black and gray morning
- dress, with an extra fold falling in graceful lines from her shoulders to
- her train, like a toga, and she carried a dainty parasol, also of black
- and gray, like the ribbons on her dark hat. To Seth’s eyes she had seemed
- yesterday, when he saw her for the first time, a very embodiment of the
- luxury, beauty, refinement of city life—and how much more so now,
- when her dingy traveling raiment had given place to this most engaging
- garb, so subdued, yet so lovely. It seemed to him that his sister-in-law
- was quite the most attractive woman he had ever seen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought of going for a little stroll,” she said, again with the faint,
- half-smile. “It is so charming outside, and so blue and depressing in the
- house. Can I walk along there through the orchard now?—I used to
- when I was here as a girl, I know—and won’t you come with me? I’ve
- scarcely had a chance for a word with you since we came.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The invitation was pleasant enough to Seth, but he looked down
- deprecatingly at his rough chore clothes, and wondered whether he ought to
- accept it or not.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, Seth, the <i>idea</i> of standing on ceremony with <i>me!</i> As if
- we hadn’t played together here as children—to say nothing of my
- being your sister now!”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had started now toward the orchard, and she continued:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know, it seems as if I didn’t know anybody here but you—and
- even you almost make a stranger out of me. Poor Uncle Lemuel, he is so
- broken-down that he scarcely remembers me, and of course your Aunt and I
- couldn’t be expected to get very intimate—you remember our dispute?
- Then John, he’s very pleasant, and all that, but he isn’t at all like the
- John I used to look up to so, the summer I was here. But you—you
- have hardly changed a bit. Of course,” she made haste to add, for Seth’s
- face did not reflect unalloyed gratification at this, “you have grown
- manly and big, and all that, but you haven’t changed in your expression or
- manner. It’s almost ten years—and I should have known you anywhere.
- But John <i>has</i> changed—he’s more like a city man, or rather a
- villager, a compromise between city and country.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I’m a countryman through and through, I suppose,” said Seth, with
- something very like a sigh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “John has seen a good deal of the world they tell me, and been on papers
- in large cities. I wonder how he can content himself with that little
- weekly in Thessaly after that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t think John has much ambition,” answered Seth, meditatively. “He
- doesn’t seem to care much how things go, if he only has the chance to say
- what he wants to say in print. It doesn’t make any difference to him,
- apparently, whether all New York State reads what he writes, or only
- thirty or forty fellows in Dearborn County—he’s just as well
- satisfied. And yet he’s a very bright man, too. He might have gone to the
- Assembly last fall, if he could have bid against Elhanan Pratt. He <i>will</i>
- go sometime, probably.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, do you have an auction here for the Assembly?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no, but the man who’s willing to pay a big assessment into the
- campaign fund can generally shut a poor candidate out John didn’t seem to
- mind much about being frozen out though—not half so much as I did,
- for him. Everybody in Thessaly knows him and likes him and calls him
- ‘John,’ and that seems to be the height of his ambition. I can’t imagine a
- man of his abilities being satisfied with so limited a horizon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And, you, Seth, what is your horizon like?” asked Isabel.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had entered the orchard path, now, and the apple blossoms close above
- them filled the May morning air with that sweet spring perfume which seems
- to tell of growth, harvest, the fruition of hope.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I’m picked out to be a countryman all the days of my life I suppose.”
- There was the sigh again, and a tinge of bitterness in his tone, as well.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I hope not—that is, if you don’t want to be. Oh, it must be
- such a dreary life! The very thought of it sets my teeth on edge. The
- dreadful people you have to know: men without an idea beyond crops and
- calves and the cheese-factory; women slaving their lives out doing bad
- cooking, mending for a houseful of men, devoting their scarce
- opportunities for intercourse with other women to the weakest and most
- wretched gossip; coarse servants who eat at the table with their employers
- and call them by their Christian names; boys whose only theory about
- education is thrashing the school teacher, if it is a man, or breaking her
- heart by their mean insolence if it is a woman; and girls brought up to be
- awkward gawks, without a chance in life, since the brighter and nicer they
- are the more they will suffer from marriage with men mentally beneath them—that
- is, if they don’t become sour old maids. I don’t wonder you hate it all,
- Seth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You talk like a book,” said Seth, in tones of unmistakable admiration. “I
- didn’t suppose any woman could talk like that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I talk as I feel always, when I come into contact with country life, and
- I get, angry with people who maunder about its romantic and picturesque
- side. Where is it, I should, like to know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it isn’t all so bad as you paint it, perhaps, Isabel. Of course——“—here
- he hesitated a little—“you don’t quife see it at its best here, you
- know. Father hasn’t been a first-rate manager, and things have kin all so
- bad as you paint it, perhaps, Isabel. Of course——” here he
- hesitated a little—“you don’t quife see it at its best here, you
- know. Father hasn’t been a first-rate manager, and things have kind o’ run
- down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, Seth, it isn’t that; the trail of the serpent is over it all—rich
- and poor, big and little. The Nineteenth century is a century of cities;
- they have given their own twist to the progress of the age—and the
- farmer is almost as far out of it as if he lived in Alaska. Perhaps there
- may have been a time when a man could live in what the poet calls daily
- communion with Nature and not starve his mind and dwarf his soul, but this
- isn’t the century.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But Webster was a farm boy, and so was Lincoln and Garfield and Jackson—almost
- all our great men. Hardly any of them are born in cities, you will find.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, the country is just splendid to be born in, no doubt of that; but
- after you are born, get out of it as soon as you can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know as I can leave Father very well,” said Seth slowly, and as
- if in deep thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- They walked to the end of the pasture beyond the orchard, to within view
- of the spot where all the Fairchilds for three generations had been laid,
- and where, among the clustering sweet-briars and wild-strawberry vines
- Milton had only yesterday dug a new grave. The sight recalled to both
- another subject, and no more was said of country life as they returned to
- the house. Indeed, little was said of any sort, for Seth had a thinking
- mood on. Nothing was very clear in his mind perhaps, but more distinctly
- than anything else he felt that existence on the farm had all at once
- become intolerable.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER V.—THE FUNERAL.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he American
- farm-house funeral is surely, of all the observances with which civilized
- man marks the ending of this earthly pilgrimage, the most pathetic. The
- rural life itself is a sad and sterile enough thing, with its unrelieved
- physical strain, its enervating and destructive diet, its mental
- barrenness, its sternly narrowed groove of toil and thought and
- companionship—but death on the farm brings a desolating gloom, a
- cruel sense of the hopelessness of existence, which one realizes nowhere
- else. The grim, fatalist habit of seizing upon the grotesque side, which a
- century of farm life has crystallized into what the world knows as
- American humor, is not wanting even in this hour; and the comforting
- conviction of immortality, of the shining reward to follow travail and
- sorrow, is nowhere more firmly insisted upon than among our country
- people. But the bleak environment of the closed life, the absence of real
- fellowship among the living, the melancholy isolation and vanity of it
- all, oppress the soul here with an intolerable weight which neither fund
- of sardonic spirits nor honest faith can lighten.
- </p>
- <p>
- Something of this Isabel felt, as the mid-day meal was hurried through, on
- Alvira’s sharp intimation that the room couldn’t be cleared any too soon,
- for the crowd would begin coming now, right along. There were three
- strangers at the table—though they seemed to be scarcely more
- strangers than the members of her husband’s family—of whom two were
- clergymen.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of these, who sat next to her, was the Episcopalian minister at
- Thessaly, a middle-aged, soft sort of man, with short hair so smooth and
- furry that she was conscious of an impulse to stroke it like a seal-skin,
- and little side-whiskers which reminded her of a baby brush. He impressed
- her as a stupid man, but in that she was mistaken. He was nervous and ill
- at ease, first because he could not successfully or gracefully use the
- narrow three-tined steel fork with a bone handle that had been given him,
- and second, because he did not understand the presence of the Rev. Stephen
- Bunce, who sat opposite him, offensively smacking his lips, and devoting
- to loud discourse periods which it seemed might better have been employed
- in mastication.
- </p>
- <p>
- If quiet Mr. Turner was ill at ease, the Rev. Stephen was certainly not.
- He bestrode the situation like a modern Colossus. The shape of his fork
- did not worry him, since he used it only as a humble and lowly adjunct to
- his knife. The presence of Mr. Turner too, neither puzzled nor pained him.
- In fact, he was rather pleased than otherwise to have him there, where he
- could talk to him before sympathetic witnesses, and make him realise how
- the man of the people who had a genuine call towered innately superior to
- mere beneficed gentility. “Beneficed gentility”—that was a good
- phrase, and he made a mental note of it for future use; then—the
- temptation was too strong—he bundled it neck and crop into the
- florid sentence with which he was addressing Albert—and looked at
- the Episcopalian to watch its effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Turner was occupied with his javelin-shaped fork, and did not seem to
- hear it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Bunce suspected artifice in this, and watched the rector’s meek face
- for a sign of secret confusion. After a moment he said, with his full,
- pompous voice at its loudest and most artificial pitch:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, Mr. Turner, this is a sad occasion!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The rector glanced up with some surprise, for he had not expected this
- overture, and answered “Yes, truly it is; extremely sad.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yet it is consoling to feel that even so sad an occasion can be converted
- into a means of grace, a season of spiritual solace as it were.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Turner only nodded assent to this; he felt that the whole company
- around the table, hired people and all, were eagerly watching him and the
- burly, bold-faced preacher opposite, as if they were about to engage in
- gladiatorial combat.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Mr. Bunce would not permit the challenge to be declined. He stroked
- his ochre-hued chin whisker, looked complacently around the board, and
- asked:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I s’pose you’ve brought your white and black riggins’ along, eh? Or don’t
- you wear ’em except in Church?”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a pained look in Mr. Turner’s face; he made a little gesture
- toward the folding doors leading to the parlor, beyond which lay the dead,
- and murmured:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It will be better, will it not, to speak of these matters together, after
- dinner?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Again the Rev. Stephen glanced around the table, looking especially toward
- Miss Sabrina for approval, and remarked loftily:
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is no need of concealment here, sir. It is all in the family here.
- We all know that the Mother in Israel who has departed was formerly of
- your communion, and if she wanted to have you here, sir, at her funeral,
- why well and good. But the rest of this sorrowin’ family, sir, this
- stricken household, air Baptists—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I declare! there’s the Burrells drivin’ into the yard, a’ready!” said
- Alvira, rising from her chair abruptly. “If you’re threw we better hustle
- these things aout, naow; you women won’t more’n have time to dress ’fore
- they’ll all be here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The interruption seemed a welcome one to everybody, for there was a
- general movement on both sides of Mr. Bunce, which he, with his sentence
- unfinished, was constrained to join.
- </p>
- <p>
- The third stranger, a small, elderly man with a mobile countenance and
- rusty black clothes, drew himself up, put on a modifiedly doleful
- expression, and, speaking for the first time, assumed control of
- everything:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Naow, Milton, you ’n’ Leander git the table aout, ’n’ bring
- in all the extry chairs, ’n’ set ’em ’raound in rows.
- Squeeze ’em pooty well together in back, but the front ones kind o’
- spread aout. You, Miss Sabriny, ’n’ the lady”—indicating
- Isabel with his thumb—“’n’ Annie’d better go upstairs ’n’
- git yer bonnets on, ’n’ things, ’n’ go ’n’ set in the
- room at the head o’ the stairs. You men, tew, git your gloves on, ’n’
- naow be sure ’n’ have your hankch’fs in some pocket where you can
- git at ’em with your gloves on—’n’ have your hats in
- your hands, ‘n’ then go ’n’ set with the ladies. Miss Sabriny,
- you’ll come daown arm-in-arm with yer brother, <i>when</i> I call, ’n’
- then Albert ’n’ his wife, ’n’ John with Annie, ’n’
- Seth with—pshaw, there’s odd numbers. Well, Seth can come alone. And
- dew keep step comin’ daown stairs!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ naow, gents,” turning to the Rev. Mr. Turner, “your gaown’s in
- the fust room to the right on the landin’, and if you”—addressing
- Mr. Bunce—“will go up with him, and arrange ’baout the
- services, so’s to come daown together—it’ll look pootier than to
- straggle in by yourselves,—’n’ you, Milton, ain’t you got
- somethin’ besides overalls to put on?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus the autocrat cleared the living room. Then, going around through the
- front hall, he entered the parlor to receive, with solemn dignity and a
- fine eye to their relative social merit, the first comers.
- </p>
- <p>
- These were almost exclusively women, dressed in Sunday garb. As each buggy
- or democrat wagon drove up inside the gate, and discharged its burden, the
- men would lead the horses further on, to be hitched under or near the
- shed, and then saunter around to the kitchen side of the house, where
- cider was on tap, and other men were standing in the sunshine, chewing
- tobacco and conversing in low tones, while the women from each conveyance
- went straight to the front door, and got seats in the parlor as close to
- the coffin as possible. The separation of the sexes could hardly have been
- more rigorous in a synagogue. There were, indeed two or three meek,
- well-brushed men among the women, sitting, uncomfortable but resigned, in
- the geranium-scented gloom of the curtained parlor, but, as the more
- virile brethren outside would have said, they were men who didn’t count.
- </p>
- <p>
- The task of the undertaker was neither light nor altogether smooth. There
- were some dozen chairs reserved, nearest the pall, for the mourners, the
- clergymen and the mixed quartette expected from Thessaly. Every woman on
- entering made for these chairs, and the more unimportant and “low-down”
- she was in the rural scale of social values, the more confidently she
- essayed to get one of them. With all of these more or less argument was
- necessary—conducted in a buzzing whisper from which some squeak or
- guttural exclamation would now and again emerge. With some, the undertaker
- was compelled to be quite peremptory; while one woman—Susan Jane
- Squires, a slatternly, weak-eyed creature who presumed upon her position
- as sister-in-law of Milton, the hired man—had actually to be pushed
- away by sheer force.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then there was the further labor of inducing all these disappointed ones
- to take the seats furthest back, so that late comers might not have to
- push by and over them, but efforts in this direction were only fitful at
- the best, and soon were practically abandoned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fust come, fust sarved!” said old Mrs. Wimple. “I’m jes ez good ez them
- that’ll come bimeby, ’n’ ef I don’ mind their climbin’ over me, <i>you</i>
- needn’t!” and against this the undertaker could urge nothing satisfactory.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the intervals of that functionary’s activity, conversation was quite
- general, carried on in whispers which, in the aggregate, sounded like the
- rustle of a smart breeze through the dry leaves of a beach tree. Many
- women were there who had never been in the house before—could
- indeed, have had no other chance of getting in. These had some fleeting
- interest in the funeral appointments, and the expense incident thereto,
- but their chief concern was the furnishing of the house. They furtively
- scraped the carpet with their feet to test its quality, they felt of the
- furniture to see if it had been re-varnished, they estimated the value of
- the curtains, speculated on the cost of the melodeon and its age, wondered
- when the ceiling had last been whitewashed. Some, who knew the family
- better, discussed the lamentable decline of the Fairchilds in substance
- and standing within their recollection, and exchanged hints about the
- endemic mortgage stretching its sinister hand even to the very chairs they
- were sitting on. Others, still more intimate, rehearsed the details of the
- last and fatal illness, commented on the character of individuals in the
- family, and guessed how long old Lemuel would last, now that Cicely was
- gone.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the centre of these circling waves of gossip lay the embodiment of the
- eternal silence. Listening, one might fain envy such an end to that living
- death of mental starvation which was the lot of all there, and which
- forced them, out of their womanhood, to chatter in the presence of death.
- </p>
- <p>
- The singers came. They were from the village, belonging to the
- Congregational church there, and it was understood that they came out of
- liking for John Fairchild. None of the gathering knew them personally, but
- it was said that the contralto—the woman with the bird on her
- bonnet, who took her seat at the melodeon—had had trouble with her
- husband. A fresh buzz of whispering ran round. Some stray word must have
- reached the contralto, for she colored and pretended to study the music
- before her intently, and, later, when “Pleyel’s Hymn” was being sung, she
- played so nervously that there was an utter collapse in the sharps and
- flats of the third line, which nearly threw the singers out.
- </p>
- <p>
- The undertaker now stalked in, and stood on tiptoe to see if the back room
- was also filled. He had been out with the men at the kitchen door, fixing
- crape on the arms of six of the best dressed and most respectable looking
- farmers in an almost jocular mood, and drilling them affably in their
- duties; drinking cider, exchanging gossip with one or two acquaintances,
- and conducting himself generally like an ordinary mortal. He had now
- resumed his dictatorship.
- </p>
- <p>
- Most of the men had followed him around to the front of the house, and
- clustered now in the hall, or in a group about the outer door, holding
- their hats on a level with their shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- A rustle on the stairs told that the mourners were descending. Then came
- the strains of the melodeon, and the singing, very low, solemn and sweet.
- </p>
- <p>
- A little pause, and the full voice of the Baptist preacher was heard in
- prayer—then in some eulogistic remarks. What he said was largely
- nonsense, from any point of view, but the voice was that of the born
- exhorter, deep, clear-toned, melodious; there seemed to be a stop in it,
- as in an organ, which at pathetic parts gave forth a tremulous, weeping
- sound, and when this came not a dry eye could be found. He was over-fond
- of using this effect, as are most men possessing the trick, but no one
- noticed it, not even Isabel, who from sitting sternly intolerant of the
- whispering women around her, and indignant at Mr. Bunce for his dinner
- performance, found herself sobbing with all the rest when the tremulo stop
- was touched.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was more singing, this time fine, simple old “St. Denis” and then
- the bearers were summoned in.
- </p>
- <p>
- The men asked one another in murmurs outside if the Episcopal clargyman
- was to take no part in the services. Within, Mrs. Wimple went straighter
- to the point. She plucked him by the sleeve of his robe and leaning over
- with some difficulty, for she was a corpulent body, whispered to the
- hearing of a score of her neighbours:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What air you here fer, mister, if you ain’t goin’ to say nor dew
- nothin’?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I officiate at the grave,” he had said, and then regretted all the
- remainder of the day having answered her at all.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- On the return of the procession from the little knoll where the slate and
- marble tomb-stones of long dead Fairchilds bent over the new brown mound,
- Annie and Seth walked together. There was silence between them for a time,
- which he broke suddenly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s <i>all</i> very hard, Annie, for you know how much mother and I
- loved each other. But, truly, the hardest thing of all is to think of
- staying here among these narrow dolts. While she was here I could stand
- it. But I can’t any more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie said nothing. She felt his arm trembling against hers, and his voice
- was strained and excited. What <i>could</i> she say?
- </p>
- <p>
- “They’re not like me,” he went on; “I have nothing in common with them. I
- hate the sight of the whole of them. I never realised till to-day how big
- a gulf there was between them and me. Didn’t <i>you</i> see it—what
- a mean, narrow-contracted lot they all were?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who do you mean, Seth?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why all of them. The Burrells, the Wimples, old Elhanan Pratt, old Lyman
- Tenney, that fellow Bunce—the whole lot of them. And the women too!
- Did you watch them—or, what’s worse, did you hear them? I wonder you
- can bear them yourself, Annie, any more than I can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sometimes it <i>is</i> hard, Seth, I admit; when I first came back to
- grandma from school it was awfully hard. But then I’ve got to live here,
- and reconcile myself to what the place offers,—and, after all, Seth,
- they are well-meaning people, and some of them are smart, too, in their
- way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, well-meaning—in their way,—yes! But I haven’t got to live
- here, Annie, and I haven’t got to reconcile myself, and I <i>won’t</i>
- That’s the long and short of it. I can make my living elsewhere—perhaps
- more than my living—and be among people who don’t make me angry
- every time I set eyes on them. And I can find friends, too, who feel as I
- do, and look at things as I do, instead of these country louts who only
- know abominable stories, and these foolish girls—who—who—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nobody can blame you to-day, Seth, for feeling blue and sore, but you
- ought not to talk so, even now. They’re not all like what you say. Reuben
- Tracy, now, he’s been a good friend and a useful friend to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, Rube’s a grand, good fellow, of course. I know all that. But then
- just take his case. He’s a poor schoolmaster now, just as he was five
- years ago, and will be twenty years from now. What kind of a life is that
- for a man?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And maybe the girls <i>are</i>—foolish, as you started to say, but—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, Annie, don’t think I m’eant anything by that, <i>please!</i> I know
- you’re the dearest girl and the best friend in the world. Truly, now, you
- won’t think I meant anything, will you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, Seth, I won’t” said Annie softly. It was her arm that trembled now.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VI.—IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>ISS Sabrina sat by
- her accustomed window an hour after the return from the grave, waiting for
- Albert. The mourning dress, borrowed for the occasion from a neighbor, was
- cut in so modern a fashion, contrasted with the venerable maiden’s
- habitual garments, that it gave her spare figure almost a fantastic air.
- The bonnet, with its yard of dense, coarse ribbed crape, lay on the table
- at her elbow, beside her spectacles and the unnoticed Bible. Miss Sabrina
- was ostensibly looking out of the window, but she really saw nothing. She
- was thinking very steadily about the coming interview with her nephew, and
- what she would say to him, and wondering, desponding, hoping about his
- answers.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door opened, and Albert entered. “You wanted to see me, Aunt, so Annie
- said,” he remarked! gravely, in a subdued tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- She motioned him to a chair and answered, in a solemn voice curiously like
- his own: “Yes, there’s some things I want to say to you, all by yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They sat for some moments in silence, the lawyer watching his aunt with
- amiable forbearance, as if conscious that his time was being wasted, and
- she, poor woman, groping in a novel mental fog for some suitable phrases
- with which to present her views. Under Albert’s calm, uninspiring gaze
- those views seemed to lose form, and diminish in intelligence as much as
- in distinctness. It had all been so clear to her mind—and now she
- suddenly found it fading off into a misty jumble of speculations, mere
- castles in the air. She had expected to present an unanswerable case
- lucidly and forcibly to her lawyer nephew; instead, it seemed increasingly
- probable that he would scout the thing as ridiculous—and, what was
- worse, be justified in so doing. So it was that she finally made her
- beginning doubtingly, almost dolefully:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course I dunno haow you feel abaout it, Albert, but I can’t help
- thinking something ought to be settled abaout th’ farm, while yer here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Settled? How settled?’’ asked Albert. There was a dry, dispassionate
- fibre in his voice which further chilled her enthusiasm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why—well—you knaow—what I mean, Albert,” she said,
- almost pathetically. It was so hard to know just how to say things to
- Albert.
- </p>
- <p>
- “On the contrary, I don’t in the least know what you mean. What do you
- want settled about the farm? What is there to settle about it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, nothin’, ef yeh don’t choose to understand” said Miss Sabrina.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another period of silence ensued. Albert made a movement as if to rise,
- and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “If there is’nt anything more, I think I’ll go down again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was an artificial nicety of enunciation about this speech, which
- grated on the old lady’s nerves. She squared her shoulders and turned upon
- her nephew.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Naow what’s the use of bein’ mean, Albert? Yeh dew knaow what I’m
- thinking of, jis’ ez well ez I dew! Yeh unly want to make it ez hard fer
- me to tell yeh as yeh possibly kin. I s’pose thet’s the lawyer of it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert smiled with all his face but the eyes, and slightly lifting his
- hands from his fat knees, turned them palms up, in mute deprecation of his
- aunt’s unreasonableness. The gesture was as near the shoulder-shrug as the
- self-contained lawyer ever permitted himself to go. It was a trifle, but
- it angered the old maid enough to remove the last vestige of hesitation
- from her tongue:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, ef yeh <i>don’t</i> knaow what I mean, then I’ll tell yeh! I mean
- that ef th’ Fairchilds are goin’ to be a Dearborn caounty fam’ly, ’n’
- hole their heads up amongst folks, ther’s got to be a change o’ some sort
- right away. Your father’s let everything slide year after year, till
- there’s pesky little lef’ naow to slide on. He’s behine hand agin in money
- matters, even with th’ Pratt mortgage on top of t’others. What’s wuss,
- it’s in everybody’s maouth. They’ve left him off th’ board at th’
- cheese-factory this year, even; of course they say, it’s cuz he never ’tended
- th’ meetin’s—but I knaow better! It’s jis cuz Lemuel Fairchild’s
- goin’ deown hill, ’n’ the farm’s goin’ to rack ’n’ ruin, ’n’
- ev’rybuddy knaows it. Jis’ think of it? Why, ’twas th’ Fairchilds
- made that cheese-factory, ’n’ it’s allus gone by aour name, ’n’
- we used to sen’ th’ milk of a hundred ’n’ thirty caows there—almost
- as much as all th’ rest of ’em put togither—’n’ ez I
- said to Leander Crump, when he was squirmin’ raound tryin’ to make me
- b’lieve they didn’t mean nothin’ by droppin’ Lemuel aout o’ th’ board,
- says I—‘nobuddy ever ’spected a table spoonful o’ water in
- aour milk!’—’n’ he colored up, <i>I</i> tell yeh!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No doubt” said Albert, impassively.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Sabrina paused to mentally retrace her argument, and see if this
- remark had any special bearing. She could discover none, and grew a little
- angrier.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, then, th’ question’s right here. My father, your grand father, made
- a name fer hisself, and a place for his fam’ly, here in Dearborn caounty,
- second to nobuddy. Fer years ’n’ years I kin remember thet th’ one
- question people ast, when it was proposed to dew anything, was ‘what does
- Seth Fairchild think ’baout it?’ He went to th’ Senate twice; he
- could ’a gone to Congress from this dees-trick time ’n’ time
- agin, if he’d be’n a mine to. Ev’rybuddy looked up to him. When he died,
- all of a suddent, he lef’ Lemuel th’ bes’ farm, th’ bes’ stock, th’ bes’
- farm haouse, fer miles raound. Well, thet’s forty year ago. I’ve lived
- here threw it all. I’ve swallered my pride every day in th’ week, all thet
- time. I’ve tried to learn myself a humble spirit—but I’ve hed to see
- this place, and the fam’ly, going daown, daown, daown!”
- </p>
- <p>
- There were tears in the old maid’s eyes now, as she spoke, tears of
- mortification and revolt against her helplessness, for she seemed to read
- the failure of her appeal in the placid face of her nephew, with its only
- decent pretence of interest. She went on, with a rising voice:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You knaow a little of haow things hev’ gone, though you’ve allus took
- precious good pains to knaow ez little ez yeh could. You knaow that when
- you were a boy you were a rich man’s son, with yer pony, ’n’ yer
- dancin’ lessons, ’n’ yer college eddica-tion; ’n’ yer mother
- dressed well, ’n’ had a kerridge, ’n’ visited with th’ bes’
- people of Albany, people who were <i>my</i> friends tew when I used to go
- to Albany with yer grandfather. ’N’ what hev we come to? Yer mother
- slaved her life aout, lost all her ambition, lost all her pride, saw
- things goin’ to th’ dogs and didn’t knaow haow to stop ’em—sakes
- forbid thet I should say anything agin Sissly; she did all she could;
- p’raps ’twould ’ev gone different if she’d be’n a different
- kine o’ woman, p’raps not; there’s no use talkin’ ’baout thet. ’N’
- ef I’d hed <i>my</i> say, tew, maybe things’d be’n different; but its ez
- it is, ’n’ it’s no use cryin’ over spilt milk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Father never meant to be hard with me. When he lef’ me nothin’ but a
- living aout o’ th’ farm, he expected, everybuddy expected, my Aunt
- Sabrina’d leave me a clean sixty thaousand dollars when she died. She was
- an ole woman, ’n’ a widow, ’n’ she hed no childern. She’d
- allus promised my father thet if I was named after her—confaound her
- name!—I shaould be her heir. ’N’ then, Iess’n a year after
- his death, what does the old huzzy up ’n’ do but marry some fortune
- hunter young enough to be her son, ’n’ give him every cent she hed
- in the world. He led her a fine dance of it, tew, ’n’ serve her
- right! But there I was, lef ’thaout a thing ’cep a roof over
- my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ then Lemuel, nothin’ ud do but he must go to Californy when
- the gold cry riz, ’n’ no sooner’d he git there than he was homesick
- ’n’ hed to come back; ’n’ when he got back, ’n’ begun
- to hear what fortunes them who’d gone aout with him were a making, than he
- must start aout again. But where it’d be’n wilderness a few months b’fore,
- he faound cities naow, ’n’ ev’ry chance took up; then he got robbed
- o’ all his money, ’n’ hed to borrer, ’n’ then he took chills
- ’n’ fever off th’ isthmus, n’ hed to lay in quarantine fer weeks,
- on ’caount o’ th’ yellah fever; it’d be’n a poor year on the farm,
- ’n’ when he got back, it took ev’ry cent of his ready-money to set
- himself right.
- </p>
- <p>
- “From thet day to this, his Californy luck hez stuck to him like death to
- a nigger, tell here, to-day, the Fitches don’t think it wuth while to come
- to your poor mother’s fun’ral—I kin remember Lije Fitch when he was
- glad enough to beg beans o’ my father fer seed—’n’ I’m
- wearing borrered mournin’ of Sarah Andrewses, <i>a mile tew big for me!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It seems to me I’ve been told all this a good many times, Aunt Sabrina,”
- said Albert, as his aunt stopped and glared at him trembling with the
- excitement of her peroration. “There’s nothing very-pleasant in it, for
- either of us, to listen to or talk about; but I don’t see that there’s
- anything more than I’ve heard over and over again, except about your
- having on another woman’s dress, and I don’t assume that I am expected to
- interfere about <i>that!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Poor Miss Sabrina was too deeply moved, and too much in earnest, to note
- the sarcastic levity underlying the lawyer’s conclusion. She caught only
- the general sense of a negative response, and looked at her nephew
- steadily with a gaze half-indignant, half appealing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you won’t dew anything, ay?” she asked at last.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am very far from saying that. <i>That’s</i> another thing. You send
- for me, saying that you have an important communication to make to me—at
- least, I assume that it is important, from the circumstances surrounding
- the request. I come, and you first insist that I know as well as you do
- what you mean, and then, when I demur, you rehearse all the unfortunate
- details of my father’s failure in life. I suggest that these are already
- tolerably familiar to me, and <i>this</i> mild statement you construe as a
- definite refusal on my part to do something—what, I don’t know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I declare, Albert, you better send in a bill fer givin’ me this
- consultation. <i>I</i> never knew a son who could take his father’s ruin
- ’n’ his fam’ly’s disgrace so cool, before. I s’pose <i>that’s</i>
- th’ lawyer of it, tew!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it’s an advantage that some one of the family should keep cool,
- Aunt, and look at things one by one, in their true relation. Now, if you
- have any proposition to make to me, any plan to present for my
- consideration, I should like to hear it—because really this other
- style of conversation is profitless beyond description. In a word, what do
- you want me to do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do I want yeh to do?” The old maid leaned forward and put a thin,
- mitted hand on Albert’s knee, looking eagerly into his face, and speaking
- almost shrilly. “I want yeh to take this farm, to come here to live, to
- make it a rich gentleman’s home agin! to put the Fairchilds up once more
- where my father left ’em.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes?” was the provokingly unenthusiastic response.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Sabrina felt that she had failed. She put her spectacles on, and took
- the Bible into her lap, as if to say that she washed her hands of all
- mundane matters. But it did not suit Albert to regard the interview as
- closed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is one thing you don’t seem to see at all, Aunt,” he said. “That
- is, that Dearborn County is relatively not altogether the most important
- section of the Republic, and that it is quite possible for a man to win
- public recognition or attain professional distinction in other communities
- which might reconcile him to a loss of prestige here. It may sound like
- heresy to you, but I am free to admit that the good opinion of the
- business men of New York City, where I am regarded as a successful sort of
- man, seems to me to outweigh all possible questions as to how I am
- regarded by Elhanan Pratt and Le-ander Crump and—and that Baptist
- gentleman, for instance, whom you had here to-day. The world has grown so
- large, my dear aunt, since your day, that there are thousands upon
- thousands of Americans now who go all their lives without ever once
- thinking about Dearborn County’s opinion. Of course I can understand how
- deeply you must feel what you regard as a social decline in the eyes of
- your neighbours. But truly, it does not specially affect me. They are not
- my neighbours; if I seem to them to be of less importance than I was in my
- boyhood, when I had a pony, I can’t help it, and I am sure I don’t want
- to. Frankly, to use my mother’s old phrase, I don’t care a cotton hat for
- their opinion good, bad, or indifferent. It is this, I think, which you
- leave out of your calculation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Sabrina had listened, with the Book opened only by a finger’s width.
- The elaborate irony of her nephew’s words had escaped her, but she saw a
- gleam of hope in his willingness to discuss the matter at all.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But then this is the home o’ the Fairchilds; the fam’ly belongs to
- Dearborn Caounty; father was allus spoken of ez Seth Fairchild o’
- Dearborn, jis’ as much ez—ez Silas Wright o’ Dutchess.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course that last is a powerful argument,” said Albert with a furtive
- smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “But, after all, the county
- family idea doesn’t seem to attract me much. Why, aunt, do you know that
- your grandfather Roger was a journeyman shoemaker, who walked all the way
- here from Providence. There was nothing incongruous in his son becoming a
- Senator. Very well; if you have a state of society where sudden elevations
- of this sort occur, there will inevitably be corresponding descents—just
- as lean streaks alternate with fat in the bacon of commerce. The
- Fairchilds went up—they, come down. They have exhausted the soil. Do
- you see?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nao! I don’t see a bit! ’N’ I b’lieve at heart you’re jis’ ez
- praoud ez I be!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Proud? Yes! Proud of myself, proud of my practice, proud of my position.
- But proud because three or four hundred dull countrymen, seeing my cows
- sleek, my harness glossy, my farm well in order, and knowing that my
- grandfather had been a State Senator, would consider me a ‘likely ’
- man—no, not at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert rose at this to go, and added, as he turned the door-knob:
- </p>
- <p>
- “As soon as he’s equal to it, Aunt Sabrina, I’ll get father to go over his
- affairs with me, and I’ll try and straighten them out a trifle. I dare say
- we can find some way out of the muddle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But yeh won’t take up the thing yerself? Yeh won’t dew what I wanted yeh
- tew?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer smiled, and said: “What really? Come here and be a farmer?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Sabrina had risen, too, and came toward her nephew. “No” she said,
- “not a farmer. Be a country gentleman, ’n’—’n’—a
- Congressman!” Albert smiled again, and left the room. He smiled to himself
- going down the stairs, and narrowly escaped forgetting to change his
- expression of countenance when he entered the living room, where were
- sitting people who had not entirely forgotten the fact that it was a house
- of mourning.
- </p>
- <p>
- For Albert had a highly interesting idea in his mind, both interesting and
- diverting. Curiously enough, he had begun developing it from the moment
- when his aunt first disclosed her ambition for him. At the last moment, in
- a blind way she had suggested the first political office that entered her
- mind as an added bribe. She could not know that her astute nephew had,
- from the first suggestion of her plan, been trying to remember whether it
- was Jay and Adams Counties, or Jay and Morgan, that were associated with
- Dearborn in the Congressional district; or that, when she finally in
- despair said “Be a country gentleman and a Congressman,” his brain had
- already turned over a dozen projects in as many seconds, every one
- Congressional.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VII.—THE THREE BROTHERS.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>fter the early
- supper of stale bread, saltless butter, dark dried apple sauce, and chippy
- cake had been disposed of, Lemuel returned to his rocking chair by the
- stove, Aunt Sabrina and Isabel took seats, each at a window, and read by
- the fading light, and Albert put on his hat, lighted a cigar, and went
- out. His brother John stood smoking a pipe in the yard, leaning against
- the high well-curb, his hands deep in his pantaloons pocket, and his feet
- planted far to the front and wide apart. Seth was coming from the barns
- toward the well, with a bucket in his hand. Albert walked across to the
- curb, and the three brothers were alone together for the first time in
- years.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It does one good to be out of doors such an evening as this,” said
- Albert. “It seems to me it would be better if father would get out in the
- open air more, instead of sitting cooped up over that stove all the
- while.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When a man’s been out in the open air, rain or shine, snow or blow, for
- fifty years, he ought to have earned the right to stay inside, if he wants
- to. | That’s about the only reward there is at the end of a farmer’s
- life,” answered Seth, turning the calfbucket upside down beside John, and
- sitting on it. Seth had his old clothes on once more, and perhaps there
- was some consciousness of the contrast between his apparel and that of his
- black-clad brethren in the truculent tone of his reply.
- </p>
- <p>
- John had nodded at Albert on his approach, and thrust his feet a trifle
- further forward. He still stood silent, looking meditatively at the row of
- poplars on the other side of the road through rings of pipe smoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you don’t think much of farm work, eh?” said Albert.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who does?” replied Seth, sententiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- A considerable period of silence ensued. Albert had never had a very high
- idea of his younger brothers’ conversational qualities, and had rarely
- known how to talk easily with them, but to-night it seemed a greater task
- than ever. He offered them cigars, in a propitiatory way. Seth accepted
- and lit one; John said “Thanks, I prefer a pipe,” and silence reigned
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was twilight now, and in the gathering dusk there was no sign of motion
- about, nor any sound save the tinkle of a sheep-bell in the pasture
- opposite.
- </p>
- <p>
- John’s pipe burned out, and Albert pressed a cigar upon him again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I <i>want</i> you to try them,” he said, almost pleadingly, “I’m sure
- you’ll like them. They are a special brand the steward at the Union League
- gets for me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This time John consented, and he seemed to feel that the act involved a
- responsibility to talk, for he said, with an effort at amiability as he
- struck a match:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your wife seems to be looking very well.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, Isabel’s health is perfect, and it always benefits her to get out in
- the country. That’s a kind of Irishism isn’t it? I mean it makes her good
- health more obvious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good health is a great thing,” John answered.
- </p>
- <p>
- The conversation was running emptings again, almost at the start. Albert
- made a heroic effort to strengthen it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, this is a regular quakers’ meeting,” he said, briskly. “We see each
- other so seldom, we are almost strangers when we do meet. I want to be
- frank with you, come now, and you should be frank with me. You have
- something on your minds, I can see. Isn’t it something I ought to know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth spoke again: “Perhaps on the evening of one’s mother’s funeral it
- isn’t to be expected that even brothers should feel chatty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The village journalist felt the injustice of this comment from the
- youngster.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, Seth,” he said, “Don’t snap Albert up in that fashion. I dare say he
- feels the thing, in his own way, as much as the rest of us. You are right,
- Albert; there <i>is</i> something, and I’ll tell you plainly what it is.
- Do you see those poplars over there? In the morning their shadows Come
- almost to our front door. Father planted them with his own hands. When I
- was a boy, I used to play over there, and climb up on to the bolls, and
- pretend I was to build houses there, like in Swiss Family Robinson. Well,
- that land passed out of our hands so long ago—it’s been an old story
- for years. Do you see the roof of the red school-house over back of the
- hill?” turning toward the South. “Or no, the light is too poor now, but
- you know where it is. When I used to cut ’cross lots to school
- there, I went the whole way over father’s land. Now, if I wanted to go
- there, how many people would I trespass on, Seth?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ferguson owns the clover meadow, and Pratt has the timothy meadow, and
- what we used to call the berry patch belongs to Sile Thomas; he’s begun to
- build a house on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Precisely. Why even the fence close to where mother’s grave is, divides
- ours from another man’s land now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sabrina spoke to me about all this this afternoon,” said Albert
- hesitatingly, “and I tried, as I often have before, to make her understand
- that that must be the natural course of affairs, so long as the East tries
- to compete with the West in farming.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well that may be all right, but Elhanan Pratt seems to manage to compete
- with the West, as you call it, and so do the Fergusons and all the rest of
- them. We are the only ones who appear to get left, every time. Of course,
- it’s somebody’s fault. Father’s been a poor manager, no use of denying
- that. But that doesn’t make it any the easier to bear. Father hardly knows
- which way to turn for ours from another man’s now. Money; he might have
- scraped through the year if hops had had a good season, but at nine cents
- a pound it was hardly worth while to take them to the depot. You can’t
- clear expenses at less than eleven cents. And then if he does have a
- fairly decent year, his hop-pickers are always the most drunken, idle gang
- of them all, who eat their heads off, and steal more fruit and chickens
- than they pick boxes, and if anybody’s hops are spoiled in the kiln, you
- can bet on their being Fairchild’s, every time. And three years ago, it
- was the hop merchant who failed, just at the opportune moment, and let
- Father in for a whole years’ profit and labor. Of course, it’s all bad
- luck, mismanagement, whatever you like to call it, and it can’t be helped,
- I suppose. But it makes a man sour, and it broke poor mother’s heart. And
- then here’s Seth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, never mind me, I can stand it, I guess, if the rest can. I’m not
- complaining” came from the figure on the bucket—only dimly to be
- seen now, in the shadow of the curb, and the increasing darkness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here’s Seth,” continued John, without noting the disclaimer. “You and I
- had <i>some</i> advantages—of course, mine were not to be compared
- with yours, but still I was given a chance, such as it was and I don’t
- know that I would trade what I learned at work during college years for a
- college education—but this poor boy, who’s thought about him, who’s
- given him a chance to show what’s in him? He’s been allowed to come up as
- he could, almost like any farm laborer. His mother tried to do her little,
- but what spirit did she have for it, and what time did the drudgery here
- give him? Thank God! He’s had the stuff in him to work at education
- himself, and he’s got the making of the best man of us three. But it’s no
- thanks to you. And <i>that’s</i> why we feel hard, Albert. Nobody supposes
- you could make a good farmer and manager out of father; nobody blames you
- for a bad hop season, or the dishonesty of Biggs. But I do say that of us
- three brothers there’s one who frets and worries over the thing, and
- though he’s a poor man, does all he can afford to do, and more too, to
- help make it better; and there’s another, young, ambitious, capable, whose
- nose is held down to the grindstone, and the best years of whose life are
- being miserably spent in a hopeless wrestling with debt and disaster; and
- there’s a third brother, the oldest brother, rich, easy, enjoying all the
- luxuries of life, who don’t give a damn about it all! <i>That’s</i> what I
- say, and if you don’t like it, you needn’t!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The silence which ensued was of the kind that can be felt. The two cigars
- at the corners of the old curb glowed intermittently in the darkness.
- John’s had gone out during his speech, and as he re-lighted it, the glare
- of the match showed an excited, indignant face. There was no room for
- doubt, after the momentary exhibit which the red light made, that John was
- very much in earnest.
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert was thinking laboriously on his answer. Meantime, he said, to fill
- the interval “Do you like the cigar?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes; a fifteen center, isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert had it in his mind to say truthfully that he paid $180 per
- thousand, but the fear of invidious comparisons rose before him in time,
- and he said “About that, I think.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He waited a moment, still meditating, and threw out another stop-gap:
- “It’s curious how the rhetorical habit grows on a man who writes leading
- articles. I noticed that you used three adjectives every time, the regular
- cumulative thing, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Maybe so; it would be more to the purpose to hear what you think about
- the spirit of my oration; the form doesn’t matter so much.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I will tell you, John,” said Albert, slowly, still feeling his way,
- “to speak frankly, no doubt there’s a good deal in what you say. I feel
- that there is. But you ought to consider that it isn’t easy for a man
- living in a great city, immersed in business cares, and engrossed in the
- labors of his profession, to realise all these things, and see them as
- you, who are here on the ground, see them. It’s hardly fair to attack me
- as heartless, when you present these facts to me for the first time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For the first time! You ought to have seen them for yourself without
- presenting. And then you said Sabrina had often discussed the subject with
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, but her point of view is always family dignity, the keeping up of the
- Fairchilds’ homestead in baronial state, and that sort of thing. You
- should have heard her this afternoon, telling me how her fathers name used
- to be coupled with Dearborn County, just as Silas Wright’s was with
- Dutchess—either Dutchess or Delaware, I forget which she said—but
- it was very funny.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sabrina and I haven’t spoken for I don’t know how long, and we’re not
- likely to again in a hurry, but for all that I’m bound to say I wish some
- others of the family had as much pride as she’s got,” said John. “Whatever
- else she may be, she’s as loyal and as faithful to the family idea, as
- jealous of the family’s name, as any old Spanish grandee. And I confess
- the Silas Wright thing doesn’t seem funny to me at all—any fellow
- with the right kind of a heart in him would feel that it was deucedly
- pathetic—the poor old maid clinging through the shipwreck to that
- one spar of support—the recollection of a time when her father was
- bigger than his county. Such things oughtn’t to be laughed at.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert lost his patience. “Confound it, man, do you want to force me into
- a quarrel—this night of all others! By George, was there ever such a
- brace of brothers! I come out here to get you by yourselves, to talk over
- with you some plans that have occurred to me for setting things right here—and
- I haven’t had a civil answer yet from either of you. First it’s the
- youngster who scowls and snarls at me, and then you read me lofty lectures
- on my behavior, and then both together in concerted condemnation. No
- wonder I come rarely to the farm! It’s enough to sicken any man of family
- ties, to be bullyragged in this way. I’ve a good mind to tell you you can
- all go to the devil, and be hanged to you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The figure on the bucket rose to its feet with a spring, so energetically
- that there seemed a menace in the action. The village editor restrained
- this movement with a quiet hand, and a whispered “Keep cool, Seth.” Then
- he said with exaggerated calmness of voice:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Personally, perhaps I shouldn’t mind much if you did. But there are
- others to look after, and so, before you do, it might be worth while to
- learn what the fine alternative was to have been. It would be a great pity
- to not even to hear these noble plans with which you were primed, you say,
- when you came out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you must admit, John, that you and Seth tonight have been enough to
- try the patience of a saint.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes, we admit that. Go on!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you’ve made it a little difficult for me to develop my plans—they
- were scarcely formed in my mind. In a general way, I wanted to consult you
- about freeing the farm, perhaps buying back some of the original land that
- has gone, putting the house in shape again, improving the stock, placing
- Father and Sabrina beyond the chance of ever being embarrassed again—and—and—doing
- something for Seth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nobody wants you—” began the impatient Seth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Youngster, <i>you</i> shut up!” said John, again using the quieting hand.
- “Do you really mean all this, Albert?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should scarcely have spoken in detail as I have, otherwise,” answered
- the lawyer loftily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, this—” said John, “this takes a fellow’s breath away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you hadn’t been in such haste to impute bad motives and convict me
- without judge or jury, perhaps the effect of my plans might not have been
- so overpowering.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, we did you an injustice, Albert, clearly we did. We were full of the
- idea that all these troubles rolled off you like water off a duck’s back.
- It seems that was our mistake. But—what’s your scheme?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Definitely, I have none, except to do all I can, in the way we may decide
- will be best all around. I have been thinking some of coming to live here
- myself, say from May to November of each year, and taking the farm into my
- own hands.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “H’m—m! That might have its advantages, perhaps—<i>but</i>——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I know what you mean. If I do, everybody’s rights shall be respected.
- We’ll fix that beyond question, to your satisfaction, before a thing is
- done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t care about myself, particularly; you know that: but then there’s
- Seth, you know—we’ve always figured on the farm as his. It’s true he
- don’t want to be a farmer, that he hates the whole thing, but still that
- represents all his capital, so to speak, and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear John, that shall all be arranged. I am a childless man—probably
- always shall be. As long as Father lives the farm shall remain in his
- name. Either his will can be in my favor, or I can manage the farm as a
- trustee for all three of us, after he’s gone. In either case, you shall
- both be protected in turn by my will—absolutely protected. Meantime,
- what do you want me to do for Seth? What does he want to do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing needs to be done for me,” began Seth, “I can—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, youngster, <i>will</i> you be quiet!” said John, in mock despair.
- “I’ll tell you what you can do for Seth, and do easily. Get him a place on
- some decent newspaper, in New York or one of the larger cities of the
- State, and let him have money enough to eke out a small salary at first,
- so that he can begin at editorial work instead of tramping up through the
- reporter’s treadmill, as I had to. That’s all Seth’ll ask, and it will be
- the making of him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Begin at editorial work—Seth? Nonsense!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No nonsense about it. For two years back Seth has been doing some of the
- best work on my paper—work that’s been copied all over the State.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bless my soul, what a literary family we are!” said the lawyer. “Does
- Aunt Sabrina write, too? Perhaps those love poems you have on the last
- page are hers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- John continued without noticing the interjection. “Do you remember that
- long article on Civil Service Reform we had in the <i>Banner</i> last
- January?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t think I do, John. To be frank, although we enjoy having you send
- us the <i>Banner</i> immensely, occasionally it happens that the stress of
- professional duties compels me to miss reading a number.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well that article was reprinted in all the big papers, from Boston to
- Chicago. I never knew any other thing from a little village paper to
- travel so far, or attract so much attention. I had lots of letters about
- it, too. That article was Seth’s—all his own. I didn’t change a word
- in it. And he’s hardly seen any thing of the world yet, either.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer was heard chuckling, when John’s voice died away in the
- darkness. The cigars had long since burned out, and the men could with
- difficulty see one another. The two younger brothers waited, the one
- surprised, the other increasingly indignant, to learn the cause of
- Albert’s hilarity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you realise, John,” he said at last, with merriment still in his
- voice, “what a delightful commentary on Civil Service Reform your words
- make. The best article on that doctrine is written by a youngster who has
- never left the farm, who doesn’t know the difference between a Custom
- House and a letter-box on a lamp-post! Ho, ho, I must tell that to
- Chauncey when I see him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An hour later, John and Seth still leaned against the mossy curb, smoking
- and talking over the words of their elder brother, who sometime before had
- gone in to avoid the dew-fall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wonder if we <i>have</i> misjudged him, after all,” said Seth. “I’m
- almost ashamed to accept his favors, after the way I pitched into him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wonder what his scheme really is,” mused the more experienced village
- editor.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VIII.—ALBERT’S PLANS.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t became generally
- known, before Sunday came again, that Albert was to take the farm, and
- that Seth was to go to the city—known not only along the rough,
- lonesome road leading over the Burfield hills, which had once been a proud
- turnpike, with hospitable taverns at every league, and the rumbling of
- great coaches and the horn of the Postboy as echoes of its daily life of
- bustle and profit, and now was a solitary thoroughfare to no place in
- particular, with three or four gaunt old farmhouses, scowling in
- isolation, to the mile—not only on this road, and at the four
- corners below, but even at Thessaly people learned of the coming change as
- if by magic, and discussed it as a prime sensation. It need not be added
- that the story grew greatly in telling—grew too ponderous to remain
- an entity, and divided itself into several varying and, ultimately,
- fiercely conflicting sections.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Misses Cheesborough had the best authority for saying that Albert had
- acted in the most malignant and shameful manner, seizing the farm, and
- turning poor Seth out of doors, and it was more than a suspicion in their
- minds that the feeble old father would soon be railroaded off to an
- asylum.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the other hand, Miss Tabitha Wilcox, who by superior vigor and resource
- held her own very well against the combined Misses Cheesbrough, knew,
- absolutely <i>knew</i>, that Albert had behaved most handsomely, paying
- off all the mortgages, making a will in favor of John and Seth, and
- agreeing to send Seth to College, and what was more, Miss Tabitha would
- not be surprised, though some others might be, if the public-spirited
- Albert erected a new library building in Thessaly as a donation to the
- village.
- </p>
- <p>
- Between these two bold extremes there was room for many shades of
- variation in the story, and many original bents of speculation. Down at
- the cheese factory they even professed to have heard that a grand coal
- deposit had been surreptitiously discovered on the Fairchild farm, and
- that Albert was merely the agent of a syndicate of city speculators who
- would presently begin buying all the land roundabout. Old Elhanan Pratt
- did not credit this, but he did write to his son in Albany, a clerk in one
- of the departments, to find out if a charter for a railroad near Thessaly
- had been applied for. The worst of it was, neither John nor Seth would
- talk, and as for Albert, he had gone back to New York, leaving his wife
- behind.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the farm the fortnight following the funeral passed without event. In
- the lull of field labor which precedes haying time, there was not much for
- Seth to do. He went down to the river several times on solitary fishing
- trips; it seemed to him now that he was saying farewell not only to the
- one pastime which never failed him in interest or delight, but to the
- valley itself, and the river. How fond he was of the stream, and all its
- belongings!
- </p>
- <p>
- More like home than even the old farmhouse on the hill seemed some of
- these haunts to which he now said good-bye—the shadowed pool under
- the butternut tree, with its high steep bank of bare clay where, just
- under the overhanging cornice of sod, the gypsy swallows had made holes
- for their nests, and at the black base of which silly rock bass lay
- waiting for worms and hooks; the place further up where the river grew
- sharply narrow, and deep dark water sped swiftly under an ancient jam of
- rotting logs, and where by creeping cautiously through the alders, and
- gaining a foothold on the birch which was the key to the obstructing pile,
- there were pike to be had for the throwing, and sometimes exciting
- struggles with angry black bass, who made the pole bend like a whip, and
- had an evil trick of cutting the line back under the logs; and then the
- broader stretch of water below the ruined paper mill’s dam, where the
- wading in the thigh-deep rifts was so pleasant, and where the white fish
- would bite in the swift water almost as gamely as trout, if one had only
- the knack of playing his line rightly in the eddies.
- </p>
- <p>
- A score of these spots Seth had known and loved from the boyhood of twine
- and pin hooks; they seemed almost sacredly familiar now, as he wandered up
- and down the stream, dividing his attention between the lures and wiles of
- the angler’s art and musings on the vast change of scene which was so
- close before him. Ah, how fair were the day dreams he had idly, fondly
- built for himself here in these old haunts, with kingfishers and water
- rats for sympathizers, and the ceaseless murmur of the water, the buzz of
- the locusts in the sun, the croak of the frogs among the reeds, for a soft
- inspiring chorus of accompaniment to his thoughts!
- </p>
- <p>
- Now these dreams were really to come true; he was actually going to the
- city, to wear decent clothes, to mingle as much as he chose with men of
- wisdom and refinement, to attain that one aim and vision of his life, a
- place on a great paper!
- </p>
- <p>
- It was only here by the river, rod in hand, that he seemed able to fully
- realize the beatitude of the vista. So as often as he could he came, and
- if there was a ground note of sorrow at leaving these nooks, this dear old
- river, there was also a triumphant song of exaltation in the air, the
- water, the sunshine, which he could not hear on the farm.
- </p>
- <p>
- Partly because these excursions generally led him from the house before
- she made her appearance mornings, partly because he felt vaguely that his
- own victory over fate involved disappointment for her, Seth did not see
- much of Isabel during her husband’s absence. So far as he knew, she had
- taken the news of Albert’s determination to move into the country quietly
- enough. Neither by word or sign had she discovered to Seth any distaste
- for the prospect. But none the less he had a half-guilty conviction that
- she did not like it, and that she must blame him, or at least have some
- feeling against him, for it. She had spoken so earnestly to him about the
- curse of existence in the country; it was not conceivable to him that she
- should suddenly accept for herself without protests or repining, the very
- life she had thus commiserated with him about.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet it seemed after all that he was mistaken. It was the evening after
- Albert’s return, and Annie had come over after supper, ostensibly to
- borrow a wrapper-pattern from Isabel, but really, it need not be doubted,
- to hear the news.
- </p>
- <p>
- What news there was to be given out the eldest brother dispensed to the
- family circle, after Alvira had cleared away the “tea-things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That domestic had a clear idea of making one in the circle, and, hastening
- in from the kitchen without her apron, drew up a chair to sit with the
- others, and enjoy the revelations which, from Albert’s manner during
- supper, all felt to be impending. But the invasion of city manners, which
- she and Milton had deplored and ridiculed for a fortnight back, had an
- unsuspected bitterness in its train for her. The lawyer looked at her
- coolly, as he struck a match on the under side of the mantel-piece, and
- asked: “Hadn’t you better go out, Alvira, and see that the chickens don’t
- get into the kitchen?”—and she flounced out again, with nose in air,
- and black eyes flashing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert lighted his cigar, put an arm chair down near the old rocker in
- which his father sat and took his seat. Near the open door, overlooking
- the farmyard and the barns, and full in the light from the west, sat Miss
- Sabrina, knitting, and Isabel, with a paper. At the latter’s feet, on a
- hassock, was Annie, and Seth sat on the doorstep.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Father,” said Albert, “things have been arranged in New York so that I
- can speak, now, about the plans which I hinted of ten days ago.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old man nodded his head, and said plaintively, “Whatever yew think
- best, Albert, s’long as the boys git a fair shaow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You needn’t worry about that. My business is settled now, I think, so
- that I can live here six or eight months in the year, say from March till
- October, running down occasionally, perhaps, but making this my residence.
- I will take up all the mortgages—perhaps buy back some of the old
- farm, may be all of it. There are three or four ways in which this can be
- equitably arranged—we’ll talk of those in detail later on, some day
- when John can come up. I will have the carpenters here in a few days, to
- look over the house, and figure on putting it in first-class repair. The
- barns will have to be new throughout. There must be new machinery, new
- fences, and a pretty thorough weeding out of the cattle. We shall want a
- carriage house—but then its no use of enumerating, there is so much
- to be done. We will put some money into horseflesh down on Long Island,
- and see if something can’t be done in the way of a stock-farm. I’m
- thinking of a trout pond, up beyond the orchard, in the ravine there,
- too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Albert, this is what I’ve be’n prayin’ for this thirty year!” It was
- Sabrina who spoke. There were tears of joy in her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lemuel Fairchild seemed rather dazed, not to say dismayed, at the prospect
- thus bewilderingly unfolded. “It’ll cost a heap o’ money, Albert,” he said
- at last, rather dubiously, “an’ I dunnao’ ’baout yer gittin’ it
- back agin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That will be <i>my</i> look out,” said the lawyer, confidently. “At any
- rate, Isabel and I will make a good home for you and Aunt Sabrina, as long
- as you both live. It will be a pleasant change for us both. As for Seth—”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a pause, and Annie nestled closer to Isabel, with a soft “Oh
- yes, about Seth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “As for Seth, it’s time he saw something of life besides grubbing here
- like a farm-hand. We will try and get along without him here. I’ve talked
- the matter over with a friend of mine, the proprietor of the Tecumseh <i>Chronicle</i>
- and he is willing to give him a start there, under the most favorable
- conditions. The salary will be small at first, of course, but I will
- supplement it with enough to give him a decent living, if he is frugal.
- After that of course it all depends on himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth stood up, as these last words were spoken, and replied, stammeringly.
- “You needn’t be afraid of my not trying hard, Albert. I’m sure I’m very
- grateful to you. It’s more than I dared expect you would do for me.” He
- pushed his way past the women to shake hands with his brother, and say
- again “It’s so good of you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert received these expressions of gratitude benevolently, adding some
- words of advice, and concluding with “You had better get ready to start as
- early next week as you can. One of the <i>Chronicle</i> men is going on a
- vacation, and its Workman’s idea that you would be handy in his absence.
- You could go, say, Wednesday, couldn’t you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So far as getting ready is concerned, I don’t know that there is anything
- to do which couldn’t be done in a day. But—but—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course you will need some things. I’ll talk with you about that in the
- morning. We’ll drive down to Thessaly day after to-morrow together.”
- Albert rose with this to go out and see Milton, and the family interview
- was at an end.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Sabrina hurried out to the kitchen, impatient to begin discussing
- with Alvira, as had been her wont for years, this new development in the
- affairs of the household.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER IX.—AT “M’TILDY’s” BEDSIDE.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>emuel Fairchild
- sat still, smoking his wooden pipe, and looking absently, straight ahead,
- into the papered wall. This habit of gazing at nothing was familiar to
- them all, and when, at Isabel’s suggestion, the three young people started
- for a stroll through the orchard path, they left him entirely without
- ceremony. This was growing to be the rule; no one in the family now
- consulted him, or took the trouble to be polite to him. He seemed to have
- become in his own house merely an article of animated furniture, of not
- much more importance than the rough-furred sickly old cat who dozed his
- life away back of the stove.
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat thus in solitude for some time, blankly studying the grotesque
- patterns in the old-fashioned wall-paper, and drawing mechanically at the
- pipe in his mouth, unconscious that no smoke came. Thus Miss Sabrina found
- him when, after a more than ordinarily sharp passage at arms with Alvira,
- she returned from the Kitchen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I swaow! thet girl gits wuss tempered ’n’ more presumin’ ev’ry day
- o’ her life,” she exclaimed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who—Annie?” asked her brother, rousing himself as if from a nap.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Annie! nao! who’s talkin’ abaout <i>her?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh nothin’, unly I was thinkin’ ’baout Annie—‘baout her ’n’
- Seth, yeh knaow,” answered Lemuel, apologetically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what abaout ’em?” The query was distinctly aggressive in
- tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, nothin’ much. I was sort o’ thinkin’—well, <i>you</i> knaow
- S’briny, haow Sissly used to lot on their makin’ a match of it—’n’
- I was kine o’ wond’rin’ ef this here notion o’ Seth’s goin’ away wouldn’t
- knock it all in th’ head.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?” Miss Sabrina’s monosyllabic comment had so little of sympathy or
- acquiescence in it, that Lemuel continued in an injured tone and with more
- animation, not to say resolution:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I’ve hed kine of an idea o’ goin’ over ’n’ talkin’ it over
- with M’tildy. Mebbe that’ll be the best thing to dew.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh <i>you</i> think so, dew yeh? Thet’s all th’ pride <i>you’ve</i> got
- lef’, is it? I think I see <i>my</i>self goin’ hangin’ raound Matildy
- Warren, beggin’ her to let her granddaughter marry a Fairchild! I’m
- ashamed of yeh, Lemuel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’ see, much, what ther’ is to be ashamed on.” He added, with the
- faintest shadow of a grin on his face. “’N’ b’twixt you ’n’
- me, I don’t see ’s there’s so blamed much fur me to be praoud
- abaout, nuther. ‘Tain’t’s if I was goin’ to ask a favor o’ M’tildy, at
- all. She ’n’ Sissly used to talk ‘baout the thing’s if ’twas
- settled. ’N’ now’t she’s gone, ’n’ Seth’s talkin’ o’
- quittin’ th’ farm, seems to me it’d be the sensible thing to kind o’ fine
- aout ef M’tildy wouldn’t offer th’ young folks her farm, ef they’d stay.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Very</i> well, sir. Hev’ yer own way,” answered Miss Sabrina, with
- stern formality. “You allus <i>would</i> hev yer own way—and yeh kin
- go muddle things up to yer heart’s content, for all o’ me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lemuel watched his sister march to the stairs door and close it decisively
- behind her. He was accustomed of old to this proof of her wrath; as far
- back as he could remember it had been Sabrina’s habit to figuratively wash
- her hands of unpleasant complications on the ground-floor by slamming this
- self-same door, and going up to sulk in her own room. She did it as a
- young girl, in the first months of her disagreements with his young wife;
- it seemed to him a most natural proceeding now, when they were both old,
- gray-headed people.
- </p>
- <p>
- Just now, it was a relief to him that she had gone, for if she had stayed
- he might not have had the courage to put his thoughts into actions. As it
- was he took his hat from its nail back of the kitchen door, and started
- across-lots for the Warren homestead.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no danger of not finding Mrs. Warren at home. For seven or eight
- years she had scarcely stirred beyond her own door, and for the past
- eighteen months she had been bed-ridden. The front door was opened to Mr.
- Fairchild by a young slip of a girl, one of the brood of daughters with
- which a neighboring poor family was weighted down, and all of whom had
- been driven to seek work at any price among the farmers of the vicinity.
- It seemed as if there was a Lawton girl in every other farmhouse the whole
- length of the Burfield road.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl ushered him into the gloomy hall, gloomier than ever now in the
- gathering twilight, and unceremoniously left him there, while she went to
- announce his presence. He heard through a door ajar at the end of the hall
- a thin, querulous voice ask, “Which one of the Fairchilds is it?” and the
- girl’s reply “The old man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the servant returned to him and with a curt “Come ahead,” led him to
- the mistress of the house, who lay in her bed-home, in a recess off the
- living room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Matilda Warren had never been what might be called a popular woman in
- the neighborhood. She and her husband, the latter dead now for many years,
- had come from Massachusetts. They were educated people in a sense, and had
- not mingled easily with their rougher neighbors. The widow Warren had,
- after her daughter’s escapade, carried this exclusiveness to a point which
- the neighborhood found disagreeable. Gradually she had grown into the
- recluse habit, and younger generations on the hillside, eking out the
- gossip of their elders with fancies of their own, born of stray glimpses
- of her tall, gaunt figure and pale face, came to regard her with much that
- same awe which, two centuries before, reputed witches had for children,
- young and old.
- </p>
- <p>
- Something of this feeling Lemuel himself was conscious of, as he stood
- before her. The coverlet came up close under her arms. She wore a
- wrapper-dress of red flannel. As he entered she raised herself, with an
- evidently cruel effort, upon her elbow, dragging the pillow down to aid in
- supporting her shoulder. She panted with this exertion as she confronted
- him. Her scanty white hair was combed tightly back from her forehead, and
- bound in place with a black-velvet band; a natural parting on the side of
- the hair gave the withered face a suggestion of juvenile jauntiness, in
- grotesque, jarring contrast with the pale blue eyes which glittered from
- caverns of dark wrinkles, and the sunken, distorted mouth. She had changed
- so vastly since their last meeting that Lemuel stood bewildered and
- silent, staring at her.
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke first. “I’m trying to think—it must be twenty year since
- we’ve met, Lemuel Fairchild.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nigh onto that, M’tildy,” he replied, turning his hat in his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t expect ever to lay eyes on you again, I couldn’t come to you,
- and wouldn’t if I could, and I didn’t dream you would ever show your face
- here.” The aged woman said this in a high, sharp voice, speaking rapidly
- and with an ungracious tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lemuel fidgetted with his hat and moved his feet uneasily on the dog-skin
- rug. “Yeh needn’t be afeered, M’tildy, I wouldn’t hev come naow ef it
- hadn’t been somethin’ partikler ’baout Annie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The invalid raised her shoulder from the pillow with a sudden movement,
- and bent her head forward. “What’s happened to her? Is she hurt? Tell me,
- quick!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh nao, they ain’t nothin’ th’ matter with her. It’s unly ’baout
- her ’n’ Seth. I kine o’ thought we ought to talk it over ’n’
- see haow the land lay. That’s all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh that’s it, is it? <i>Samantha!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Betrayed out of her shrewdness by the suddenness of the summons the
- servant girl made her immediate appearance through the hall door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I knew you were listening, you huzzy,” said Mrs. Warren grimly. “You
- get along up stairs, go into Annie’s room, an’ make a noise of some sort
- on the melodeon till I call you. Not too much noise, mind; jest enough so
- I can know you’re up there.” As the girl left the room, the invalid
- explained: “What she don’t hear, the rest of the Lawtons won’t know. That
- family’s as good as a detective force for the whole county.” Then, in a
- less amiable tone: “You might as well set down. What is it about my girl
- an’ Seth?”
- </p>
- <p>
- As Lemuel awkwardly seated himself near the bedside and prepared to
- answer, a wailing, discordant series of sounds came from the floor above.
- The knowledge that the girl was creating this melancholy noise to order,
- and on his account, confused his thought and he found himself stating the
- case much more baldly than he had intended. “The fact is,” he said,
- stroking his hat over his knee, “Seth’s thinkin’ o’ goin’ away to Tecumsy—Albert’s
- got him a place there—’n’ so I s’pose it’ll be all up b’twixt
- him ’n’ Annie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The grandmother never took those light, searching eyes off her visitor’s
- face. He felt himself turning uncomfortably red under their malevolent
- gaze, I and wished she would speak. But she said nothing. At last he
- explained, deferentially:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought it’d only be right to tell yeh. I know Sissly ’n’ you
- use to talk abaout th’ thing. Th’ way she use to talk, speshly jis’ ’fore
- she died, it ’peared ‘s if you tew hed it all settled. But Albert’s
- goin’ to take th’ farm, it seems, ’n’ Seth, he’s fig’rin’ on goin’
- away to be a neditor, ’n’ it looks to me’s if th’ hull plan’d fell
- threw.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Still no reply from the bed. He added, helplessly “Don’t it kind o’ seem
- so to you, M’tildy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The wretched discords from the chamber above mocked him. The witch-like
- eyes from the shadows of the recess began to burn him. It was growing into
- the dusk, but the eyes had a light of their own, a cold, steely, fierce
- light. Would she never speak? How he regretted having come!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll tell you what seems to me, Lemuel Fairchild,” she said at last, not
- speaking so rapidly now, and putting a sharp, finishing edge on each of
- her words. “It seems to me that there’s never been but one decent,
- honorable, likely human bein’ in your whole family an’ she came into it by
- the mistake of marrying you. I blame myself for not remembering the blood
- that was in you all, an’ for thinking that this youngest son of yours was
- different from the rest. I forgot that he was a Fairchild like the others,
- an’ I forgot what I owed that family of men, so mean and cowardly and
- selfish that they have to watch each other like so many hyenas. An’ so
- you’ve come to tell me that Seth has turned out like his father, like his
- uncle, like all of his name, eh? The more fool I, to need to be told it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lemuel’s impulse was to rise from his chair, and bear himself with
- offended dignity, but the glitter in the old woman’s eyes warned him that
- the attempt would be a failure. He scowled, put his hat on the other knee,
- crossed his legs, pretended to be interested in the antics of a kitten
- which was working havoc with a ball of yarn at his feet. Finally he said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You ain’t fair to Seth. He’s a good boy. He ain’t said nothin’ nor done
- nothin’ fer yeh to git mad at. Fer that matter, you never was fair to any
- of us, ’cept Sissly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fair! <i>Fair!</i>” came the answer promptly, and in a swifter measure.
- “Hear the man! Why, Lemuel Fairchild, you know that you cheated your own
- brother out of the share in that farm that was his by all rights as much
- as yours. You <i>know</i> that your father intended you both to share
- alike, that he died too suddenly to make a new will and that you grabbed
- everything under a will made when your brother William was thought to be
- too sickly to ever raise. You <i>know</i> that you let him grow up an
- idle, worthless coot of a fellow, an’ then encouraged him—yes, don’t
- deny it, encouraged him I say—to make a fool of my daughter, and run
- away with her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You knew I wouldn’t look at him as a suitor for Jenny; but you thought I
- would be soft enough, once they were married, to give him my farm, an’ you
- counted on getting it away from him afterwards, just as your father got
- the Kennard farm before you. You egged him on into the trouble, an’ you
- let him die in it, without help. Oh <i>I</i> know you, Lemuel Fairchild—I
- know your breed!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your <i>wife</i> was a good woman—a million times better than you
- deserved. <i>She</i> knew the wrongs that had been done me, an’ Annie, an’
- her poor ne’er-do-well of a father before her; <i>she</i> was anxious to
- make them good, not I. It was she who talked, year after year, when she
- ran over here on the sly to visit me, of squaring everything by the young
- folk’s marriage. For a long time I didn’t like it. I distrusted the
- family, as, God knows, I had reason to. But all that I heard of Seth was
- in his favor. He was hardworking, patient, even-tempered, so everyone
- said. What little I saw of him I liked. An’ I felt sorry for him, too,
- knowing how dear he was to his mother, and yet how helpless she was to
- give him advantages, an’ make something besides a farm-drudge out of him.
- So little by little, I gave in to the idea, an’ finally it became mine
- almost as much as Cecily’s.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As for Annie, I don’t know how much she has grown to care for him; I’m
- afraid she’s known about our talks, and lotted on ’em, though if
- anything has passed between them she would have told me. For she’s a good
- girl—a <i>good</i> girl—and she’ll stand by me, never fear,
- and say as I say now, that it’s good riddance! D’ye mind? Good riddance to
- bad rubbish—to your whole miserable, conniving, underhanded family!
- There ain’t an honest hair in your head, Lemuel Fairchild, and there never
- was. And you can go back to them that sent you, to your old catamaran of a
- sister and your young sneak of a son, and tell ’em what I think of
- them, and you, and the whole caboodle of you, that ruined and killed my
- Jane, and made me a broken old woman before my time, and now tries to
- break my grand-daughter’s heart! And the longest day you Jive, don’t ever
- let me lay eyes on you again. That’s all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lemuel groped his way out again through the dark hall, to the front door.
- The groaning discords from upstairs rose to a triumphant babel of sound as
- he knocked against the hat-rack, and fumbled for the latch, as if to
- emphasize and gloat over his discomfiture. The cold evening air, after the
- sweltering heat of the sick-room, was a physical relief, but it brought no
- moral comfort.
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Lemuel was much pained, and even more confused, by the hard words to
- which he had had to listen. They presented a portrait of himself which he
- felt to be in no way a likeness, yet he could not say wherein a single
- line should be altered. He knew that he was not a bad man; he felt
- conscious of having done no special wrong, intentionally, to anybody; he
- had always tried to be fair and square and easy-going with everybody: yet
- the mischief of it was that all these evil things which the witchlike
- M’tildy had piled at his door were of indubitable substance, and he could
- not prove, even to himself, much less to her, that they did not belong
- there. It was a part of the consistently vile luck of his life that all
- these malignant happenings should be charged up against him, and used to
- demonstrate his wickedness. He had not enough mental skill or alertness to
- sift the unfair from the true in the indictment she had drawn, or to put
- himself logically in her place, and thus trace her mistakes. He only
- realized that all these events which she enumerated had served to convince
- Mrs. Warren that he was a villain. The idea was a new one to him, and it
- both surprised and troubled him to find that, as he thought the matter
- over he could not see where she was particularly wrong. Yet a villain he
- had certainly never intended to be—never for a moment. Was this not
- cruelly hard luck?
- </p>
- <p>
- And then there was this business about Seth. He had meant it all in the
- friendliest spirit, all with the best of motives. And how she had snapped
- him up before he had a chance to explain, and called him a scoundrel and
- his boy a sneak, and driven him from the house! Here was a muddle for one—and
- Sabrina had said he would make a muddle of it, as he had of everything
- else, all through his life. The lonely, puzzled, discouraged old man felt
- wofully like shedding tears, as he approached his own gate—or no, it
- was Albert’s gate now—and passed the young people chatting there,
- and realized what a feeble old fool they all must think him.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER X.—THE FISHING PARTY.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he young people
- were arranging, as Lemuel slunk past them in the dark, a fishing party for
- the following day. The proposal had been Isabel’s—she had a fertile
- mind for pleasure planning—and Annie and Seth were delighted with
- it. They would take a basket of food, and make the tea over a fire in the
- woods, and the two women could take turns in playing at fishing with a
- little rod which Seth had made for himself as a boy. It would be an ideal
- way of bidding good-bye to Seth, said his pretty sister-in-law, and Annie,
- feeling more deeply both the significance of saying good-bye and the charm
- of having a whole day to herself along the river and in his company, had
- assented eagerly.
- </p>
- <p>
- As for Seth, this sudden accession of feminine interest in, and concern
- for, him was extremely pleasant and grateful. The very suggestion of the
- trip, in his honor, was like a sweet taken in advance from the honeyed
- future which he was so soon to realize. Long that night, after he had
- walked over to the Warren gate with Annie, and returned to the unlathed
- attic where Milton lay already snoring, he thought fondly of the morrow’s
- treat.
- </p>
- <p>
- The morning came, warm but overcast, with a soft tendency of air from the
- west. “It couldn’t have been better if it had been made to order,” Seth
- said enthusiastically, when Isabel made her appearance before breakfast.
- “It will be good fishing and good walking, not too hot and not wet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert smiled a trifle satirically when the project was unfolded to him—with
- that <i>conceited tolerance which people who don’t fish always extend to
- those who do</i>. “You’ll probably get wet and have the toothache” he said
- to his wife, but offered no objection.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lunch was packed, the poles were ready, the bait-can stood outside the
- shed door, breakfast was a thing of the past, and Isabel sat with her
- sunhat and parasol—but Annie did not come. Seth fidgeted and fumed
- as a half-hour went by, then the hour itself. It was so unlike Annie to be
- late. He made an errand to the hay-barn, to render the waiting less
- tedious, and it was there that Milton found him, rummaging among some old
- harness for a strap.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Annie’s come over,” said Milton, “I heerd her say somethin’ ’baout
- not goin’ fishin’, after all. Looks ’sif she’d be’n cryin’ tew. I
- tole ’em I’d fetch yeh.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth came out into the light, slapping the dust off his hands. “What’s
- that you say? Why isn’t she going?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dunnao nothin’ more ’n I’ve told yeh. Ask her yerself. I ’spose
- she’s be’n cryin’ at the thought of yer goin’. That’ll be the eend o’
- ev’rythin’ atwixt you two, won’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, do mind your own business, Milton!” Seth said, and hurried across the
- barnyard to where the two young women stood, on the doorstep. “Why aren’t
- you going, Annie? What’s the matter?” he called out as he approached.
- </p>
- <p>
- Poor Annie looked the picture of despair. Her face bore the marks of
- recent tears and she hung her head in silence. Isabel answered for her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Going? Of course she is going. It would be ridiculous not to go, now that
- everything’s arranged. Get the things together, Seth, and let us make a
- start.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But Milton said she wasn’t going,” persisted Seth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear, dear, how downright you are! Don’t I tell you that she <i>is</i>
- going, that there is nothing the matter, that we are waiting for you?” And
- there was nothing more to be said.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sun came out before the trio had gone far, but not before they had
- begun to forget the cloud at the start. The grass in the pastures was not
- quite dry yet, but wet feet were a part of the fun of the thing, Isabel
- said gaily. The meadow larks careened in the air about them, and the
- bobolinks, swinging on the thistle tops, burst into chorus from every side
- as the sunlight spread over the hill-side. There were robins, too, in the
- juniper trees beyond the white-flowering buckwheat patch, Seth pointed
- out, too greedy to wait till the green berries ripened. A flock of crows
- rose from the buckwheat as they passed and who could help smiling at
- Isabel’s citified imitation of their strident hawing? They came upon some
- strawberries, half-hidden in the tall grass beside the rail-topped wall,
- and Isabel would gather them in her handkerchief, to serve as dessert in
- their coming <i>al fresco</i> dinner, and Annie helped her, smiling in
- spite of herself at the city lady’s extravagant raptures.
- </p>
- <p>
- When they stopped to rest, in the fresh-scented shadow of the woods, and
- sat on a log along the path, two wee chipmunks came out from the brake
- opposite and began a chirping altercation, so comical in its suggestions
- of human wrangling that they all laughed outright. The sound scared away
- the tiny rodents in a twinkling, and it banished as swiftly the restraint
- under which the excursion had begun.
- </p>
- <p>
- From that moment it was all gayety, jesting, enjoyment. Isabel was the
- life of the party; she said the drollest things;—passed the
- quaintest comments,—revealed such an inexhaustable store of spirits
- that she lifted her companions fairly out of their serious selves. Seth
- found himself talking easily, freely, and even Annie now and again made
- little jokes, at which they all laughed merrily.
- </p>
- <p>
- The fisherman’s judgment as to the day was honored in full measure. The
- fish had never bitten more sharply, the eddies had never carried the line
- better. It seemed so easy, to let the line wander back and forth between
- the two currents, to tell when the bait was grabbed underneath, and to
- haul out the plunging, flapping beauty, that Isabel was all eagerness to
- try it, and Seth rigged the little pole for her, baited the hook
- self-sacrificingly with his biggest worm, which he had thought of in
- connection with a certain sapient father of all pike further up the river,
- and showed her where and how to cast the line.
- </p>
- <p>
- Alas, it was not so simple, after all, this catching of fish.
- </p>
- <p>
- First she lost a hook on a root; then it seemed to her that ages passed in
- which nothing whatever happened and this was followed by the discovery
- that her hook had entirely been stripped of bait without her suspecting
- it. At last there came a bite, a deep, determined tug, which she answered
- with a hysterical pull, hurling through the air and into the thistles far
- back of her a wretched little bull-head which they were unable to find for
- a long time, and which miserably stung her thumb with its fin when she
- finally did find it.
- </p>
- <p>
- After this exploit Annie must try, and she promptly twitched her line into
- the tree overhead. And so the day went forward, with light-hearted
- laughter and merriment, with the perfect happiness which the sunshine and
- color and perfume of June can bring alone to the young.
- </p>
- <p>
- They grew a trifle more serious at dinner time. It was in the narrow
- defile where the great jam of logs was, and where the river went down,
- black and deep, under the rotting wood with a vicious gurgle. Just above
- the jam there was a mound, velvety now with new grass, and comfortably
- shaded—a notable spot for dinner and a long rest, and then the girls
- could watch to much advantage Seth’s fishing from the logs, of which great
- things were prophesied. Here then the cloth was spread on the grass, the
- water put on over a fire lighted back of the mound, and the contents of
- the basket laid in prandial array. It was in truth a meagre dinner, but
- were appetites ever keener or less critical?
- </p>
- <p>
- Once during the forenoon, when allusion was made to Seth’s coming
- departure, Isabel had commanded that nothing be said on that subject all
- day long. “Let us not think of it at all,” she had said, “but just enjoy
- the hours as if they would never end. That is the only secret of
- happiness.” But now she herself traversed the forbidden line.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How strange it will all seem to you, Seth,” she mused, as she poured out
- the tea. “As the time draws near, don’t you almost dread it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What I’ve been thinking most about to-day is your coming to the farm to
- live. It can’t be that you are altogether pleased—after what I’ve
- heard you say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh yes, why not?” said Isabel. “My case is very different from yours. I
- shall be just as idle as I like. I shall have horses, you know and a big
- conservatory, and a piano, and all that. We shall have lots of people here
- all summer long—just think what fishing parties we can make up!—and
- whenever it gets stupid we can run down to New York. Oh, I’ve got quite
- beyond the reconciled stage now. I am almost enthusiastic over it. When
- you come back in a year’s time, you won’t know the place. It will have
- been transformed into a centre of fashion and social display. I may get to
- have a veritable salon, you know, the envy and despair of all Dearborn
- County. Fancy Elhanan Pratt and Sile Thomas in evening dress, with patent
- leather pumps and black stockings, scowling at Leander Crump, with a
- crushed hat under his arm, whom they suspect of watering his milk! Oh, we
- shall be gay, I assure you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth looked at her attentively, puzzled to know how much of this was
- badinage, how much sincerity. She smiled archly at him—what a
- remarkably winning smile she had!—and continued:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then Annie will be company for me, too. I mean to bring her out, you
- know, and make her a leader of society. In a year’s time when you come
- back and I introduce you to her, you won’t be able to credit your senses,
- her air will be so <i>distingué</i>, and her tastes so fastidious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She ceased her gay chatter abruptly, for Annie had turned away and they
- could see that her eyes were filling with tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth bethought him of those earlier tears, the signs of which had been so
- obvious when they started, and it was natural enough to connect the two.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Something <i>has</i> happened, Annie,” he said. “Can’t you tell us what
- it is?”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then he bit his tongue at having made the speech, for Annie turned a
- beseeching look at him, then at Isabel, and burst into sobs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Isn’t it reason enough that you are going away?” said Isabel. “What more
- could you ask?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, it isn’t that alone,” protested Annie through her tears. Her pride
- would not brook the assumption. “There is something else; I can hardly
- tell you—but—but—my grandmother has suddenly taken a
- great dislike to Seth; if she knew where I was she would be very angry: I
- never deceived her, even indirectly, before, but I couldn’t bear not to
- come after I got to the house, and if I’ve done wrong—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, now dear” cooed Isabel, leaning over to take Annie’s hands, “what
- nonsense to talk of wrong; come now, dry your eyes, and smile at us, like
- a good girl. You are nervous and tired out with the task of tending your
- grandmother—that’s all—and this day in the woods will do you a
- world of good. Don’t let us have even the least little bit of unhappiness
- in it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth watched his sister-in-law caress and coax away Annie’s passing fit of
- gloom, with deep enjoyment. The tenderness and beauty of the process were
- a revelation to him; it was an attribute of womanhood the existence of
- which he had scarcely suspected heretofore, in his untutored, bucolic
- state. Annie seemed to forget her grief quickly enough, and became
- cheerful again; in quaint docility she smiled through her tears at
- Isabel’s command, and the latter was well within the truth when she cried:
- “There! You have never looked prettier in your life!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth nodded acquiescence, and returned the smile. But somehow this grief
- of Annie’s had bored him, and he felt rather than thought that his
- country-cousin, even in this radiant moment, was of slight interest
- compared with the city sister-in-law, who not only knew enough not to cry
- herself, but could so sweetly charm away tears from others.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth tested all the joints of his pole, and changed the hook and baited it
- with studious care, before he climbed out on the jam. Gingerly feeling his
- way from log to log, he got at last upon the wet mossy birch which
- projected like a ledge at the bottom of the pile. The women watched his
- progress from the mound, and gave a little concerted shout of triumph
- when, at the very first cast of his line into the froth of the dark eddy,
- it was caught and dragged swiftly across the stream, and a handsome pike a
- moment later paid the penalty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s by far the biggest yet, isn’t it?” Annie asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wait, there are bigger yet. Watch this!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The line, thrown in again, had been sharply jerked and was now being drawn
- upstream under the logs. Seth moved down to the end of the birch, stooping
- under the jutting heap of logs above, to be able to play the pole
- sidewise, and save the fish. It was a difficult position to stand in; he
- held the rod far forward with one hand, and grasped a bough above for
- support as he leaned out over the stream.
- </p>
- <p>
- The thing snapped—exactly how it was no one knew—a log
- released from its bondage shifted position, a dozen others rolled over it
- rumbling, and the women held their breath affrighted as they saw, without
- moving, the whole top of the jam tremble, lift a jagged end or two, and
- then collapse with a hollow noise. As they found voice to scream, the
- water was covered with floating debris, and the air filled with a musty
- fungus-like smell.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no sign of Seth.
- </p>
- <p>
- The roar of the falling timber had scarcely died away before Annie had
- left the mound, had torn her way through the alders at the bottom, and
- stood panting on the wet slimy rocks at the edge of the stream. She hardly
- heard the frightened warning which Isabel, pale and half-fainting, called
- out to her:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Keep away from the water, Annie! You’ll surely be drowned!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was painfully intent upon another thing, upon the search for some
- indication of her cousin. The logs were moving but slowly in the current,
- and were heaped so irregularly that no clear survey of the whole surface
- could be had. There seemed an eternity of suffering in every second which
- she spent thus, scanning the scene. Could the crush of logs have killed
- him? Even if he had escaped that, would he not be drowned by this time?
- The grinding of the logs against each other, the swash of the water at her
- feet, Isabel’s faint moaning on the mound above, seemed to her dazed
- terror a sort of death dirge.
- </p>
- <p>
- Oh, joy! She caught sight of something in cloth between two great
- tree-trunks, drenched, covered with the red grime of rotten wood,
- motionless; but it was Seth. His face she could not see, nor whether it
- was under water or not. She walked boldly into the stream—kneedeep
- at the outset, and the slippery rocks shelving off swiftly into unknown
- brown-black depths—but there was no hesitation. A halfdozen steps,
- and she disappeared suddenly beneath the water. Isabel wrung her hands in
- despair, too deep now to find a voice; but Annie had only slipped on the
- treacherous slates, and found her footing again. The water came to her
- shoulders now, and was growing deeper steadily.
- </p>
- <p>
- With a strength born of desperation she clambered up on the birch, which
- floated nearest her, and pulled herself along its length, swaying as it
- rolled in the current under her weight, but managing to keep on top. It
- was nothing short of miraculous to Isabel’s eyes, the manner in which she
- balanced herself, clambered from log to log, overcame all the obstacles
- which lay between her and the inanimate form at the other side. The
- distance was not great, and a swimmer would have made nothing of the feat,
- but for a girl encumbered with heavy wet skirts, and in deep water for the
- first time, it was a real achievement.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last she reached Seth—her progress had covered three minutes, and
- seemed to her hours long—and, throwing herself across both logs,
- with a final effort lifted his head upon her shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is alive!” she said to Isabel, feebly now, but with a great sigh of
- relief.
- </p>
- <p>
- The city woman ran down at this, all exultation. At Annie’s suggestion,
- she tied their two shawls together, fastened one end to a pole, and
- managed to fling the other over to the rescuer; it was easy work after
- that to draw the logs to the bank, and then Annie, standing knee-deep
- again in the water, made shift to get the heavy dead weight safe on land.
- The two women tugged their burden through the alders, and up to the place
- where the dinner dishes still lay, with scarcely a word. Then exhausted,
- excited, overjoyed, Isabel threw herself in Annie’s arms and they both
- found relief in tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth had been struck on the head and stunned by the first falling log; how
- much he had been in the water or how near he had been to drowning could
- not be discovered.
- </p>
- <p>
- He presently opened his eyes, and a smile came almost instantaneously to
- his face as he realised that his head was resting in Isabel’s lap, that he
- was muffled up in her shawl, and that she was looking down upon him
- anxiously, tenderly. A second sufficed to bring the whole thing to his
- mind, or at least the facts that he had gone under with the logs and by
- some agency had been landed here safe and comfortable, if not dry—and
- to bring also the instinctive idea that it would be the intelligent part
- to lie still, and be petted and sympathised with.
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel scarcely returned his smile. She had not recovered from her fright.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Seth,” she asked earnestly, “Are you hurt? Do you feel any pain?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a bit” he replied—“only dizzy like. By George! How they did
- come down though. I must have had a pretty narrow squeak of it. Funny—I
- don’t remember coming out at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled now. “I should think not. You lay perfectly senseless way out
- there among the logs. We fished you out, and dragged you up here. I feel
- like a heroine in a Crusader’s romance, really!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It entered Seth’s mind to say something nice in reply, that she looked
- like one, or that they were not equal in those benighted ages to producing
- such women, or something of that sort; but his tongue did not seem to
- frame the words easily and as he looked up at her he grew shy once again,
- and felt himself flushing under her smile, and only said vacuously,
- “Mightly lucky I wasn’t alone, isn’t it?” Annie appeared on the scene now,
- her clothes steaming from the heat of the fire, over which she had
- endeavoured to dry them, and her teeth displaying a spasmodic tendency to
- knock together between sentences. She too was full of solicitude as to
- Seth’s condition, and to satisfy this he reluctantly sat up, stretched his
- arms out, felt of the bump on his forehead, beat his chest, and finally
- stood erect.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m all right, you see” he said—“only, bo-o-o, I’m cold,” and he
- made for the fire, upon which Annie had heaped brushwood, which crackled
- and snapped now, giving forth a furious heat.
- </p>
- <p>
- They stood about the fire for a considerable time. Isabel was opposite
- Seth, rather ostentatiously drying sundry damp places in her dress which
- had come in contact with the rescued man’s dripping hair and clothes. He
- was so interested in watching her, and in thinking half-regret fully,
- half-jubilantly, that she had been put to this discomfort in saving his
- life, that he failed to notice how completely drenched his cousin had
- been. The conversation turned entirely, of course, upon the recent great
- event, but it was desultory and broken by long intervals of silence, and
- somehow Seth did not get any clear idea of how he was saved, much less of
- the parts the two women had respectively played in the rescue.
- </p>
- <p>
- It would be unfair to say that Isabel purposely misrepresented anything;
- it is nearer the truth to describe her as confounding her own anxiety with
- her companion’s action. At all events, the narrative to be gleaned from
- her scattering descriptions and exclamations had the effect of creating in
- Seth’s mind the impression that he could never be sufficiently grateful to
- his sister-in-law.
- </p>
- <p>
- As for Annie, the whole momentous episode had come so swiftly, had been so
- imperative, exhaustive in its demands of all her faculties, and then had
- so suddenly dwindled to the unromantic conditions of drying wet clothes at
- a brush fire, that her thoughts upon it were extremely confused. She
- scarcely took part in the conversation. Perhaps she felt vaguely that her
- own share in the thing was not made to stand forth with all the prominence
- it deserved, but she took it for granted that, in his first waking
- moments, while he was alone with Isabel, Seth had been told the central
- fact of her going into the water for him, and, if he was not effusively
- grateful, why—it was not Seth’s way to be demonstrative. Besides she
- said to herself, she did not want to be thanked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Still, late that night, long hours after Seth had said good-night to her
- at the Warren gate, and she had almost guiltily stolen up to her room
- without braving her grandmother’s questions, Annie could not go to sleep
- for thinking:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “He might at least have <i>looked</i> some thanks, even if he did not
- speak them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Three days later, Seth departed for the city. It was not a particularly
- impressive ceremony, this leave-taking, not half so much as he had
- imagined it would be.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had risen early, dressed himself in one of the two new, ready-made,
- cheap suits Albert had bought for him at Thessaly and packed all his
- possessions in the carpet satchel which had been in the family he knew not
- how long—and still found, when he descended the stairs, that he was
- the first down. It was a dark, rainy morning, and the living room looked
- unspeakably desolate, and felt disagreeably cold. He sat for a long time
- by a window pondering the last copy of John’s <i>Banner</i>, and trying to
- thus prepare his mind for that immense ordeal of daily newspaper work,
- that struggle of unknown, titanic proportions, now close before him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Alvira at last came in to lay the breakfast table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hello, you up already?” was all she said; but he felt she was eyeing him
- furtively, as if even thus soon he was a stranger in the house of his
- birth.
- </p>
- <p>
- Aunt Sabrina next appeared. “There! I knew it ’d rain,” she
- exclaimed. “I told Alviry so last night. When th’ cords on th’ curtains
- git limp, yeh can’t fool me ’baout it’s not rainin’. ’N’
- Seth, I hope you’ll go to Church regular whatever else you dew. ’N’
- ef yeh could take a class in th’ Sunday schewl, it’d go a long ways tow’rd
- keepin’ yeh aout o’ temptation. Will yeh go to th’ Baptist Church, think?
- Th’ Fairchilds ’v’ allus be’n Baptists.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The breakfast passed in constrained silence, save for Albert, who
- delivered a monologue on the evils of city life, and the political and
- ethical debauchery of the press, to which Seth tried dutifully to pay
- attention—thinking all the while how to say goodbye to Isabel, how
- to invest his words with a fervor the others would not suspect.
- </p>
- <p>
- When the time came, all this planning proved of no avail. He found himself
- shaking hands as perfunctorily with her as with her husband, and his
- father and aunt. Only the latter kissed him, and she did it with awkward
- formality.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he climbed into the buggy where Milton and the carpet bag were
- already installed, and, answering in kind a chorus of “Good-byes” drove
- out into the rain—and the World.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XI.—ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE WORLD.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>eth’s first
- impressions of the World, gathered when he found himself and his valise
- alone on the sidewalk of one of Tecumseh’s chief streets, were distinctly
- gloomy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Other passengers who had left the train here, and in whose throng he had
- been borne along thus far, started off briskly in various directions once
- they reached the busy thoroughfare, elbowing their way through the horde
- of clamorous hotel porters much as one might push through a clump of
- obstructing bushes. He had firmly fixed in his mind the cardinal rule of
- traveling countrymen, that these shouting runners were brigands intent
- upon robbing him, and he was clear in his resolution to give them no hold
- upon him, not even by so much as a civil expression of countenance. He
- said “No, thank you!” sternly to at least a dozen solicitations, so it
- seemed to him, and walked away steadily, fearful that their practised eyes
- had detected in him an utter stranger, and intent only upon proving to
- them that he knew where he was going. When at last it seemed likely that
- they were no longer watching him, he stopped, put his bag down in a door
- way, and looked about.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was half-past six of a summer afternoon (for a failure to make
- connections had prolonged the sixty-mile journey over eight hours), and
- the sun, still high, beat down the whole length of the street with an
- oppressive glare and heat. The buildings on both sides, as far as eye
- could reach, were of brick, flat-topped, irregular in height, and covered
- with flaring signs. There was no tree, nor any green thing, in sight.
- </p>
- <p>
- Past him in a ceaseless stream, and all in one direction, moved a swarm of
- humanity—laborers and artisans with dinner-pails, sprucely dressed
- narrow-chested clerks and book-keepers, and bold faced factory-girls in
- dowdy clothes and boots run down at the heels—a bewildering,
- chattering procession. No one of all this throng glanced at him, or paid
- the slightest attention to him, until one merry girl, spying his forlorn
- visage, grinned and called out with a humorous drawl “Hop-pick—ers!”
- and then danced off with her laughing companions, one of whom said, “Aw,
- come off! You’re rushin’ the season. Hop’s ain’t ripe yet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth felt deeply humiliated at this. He had been vaguely musing upon the
- general impudence of his coming to this strange city to teach its people
- daily on all subjects, from government down, while he did not even know
- how to gracefully get his bag off the street. This incident added the
- element of wounded self-pride to his discomfort—for even casual
- passers-by were evidently able to tell by his appearance that he was a
- farmer. Strange! neither Albert nor John had told him anything calculated
- to serve him in this dilemma. They had warned him plentifully as to what
- not to do. Indeed his head was full of negative information, of pit-falls
- to avoid, temptations to guard against. But on the affirmative side it was
- all a blank. John had, it was true, advised him to get board with some
- quiet family, but if there were any representatives of such quiet families
- in the crowd surging past, how was he to know them?
- </p>
- <p>
- While he tormented himself with this perplexing problem, two clerks came
- out of the store next to which he stood, to pull up the awning and prepare
- for night. A tall young man, with his hands deep in his trouser’s pockets,
- and a flat straw hat much on one side of his head, sauntered across the
- street to them, and was greeted familiarly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, Tom,” shouted one of these clerks, “you just everlastingly gave it
- to that snide show to-night. <i>Wasn’t</i> it a scorcher, though?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man with the straw hat put on a satisfied smile: “That’s the
- only way to do it,” he said lightly. “The sooner these fakirs understand
- that they can’t play Tecumseh people for chumps, the better. If the <i>Chronicle</i>
- keeps on pounding ’em, they’ll begin to give us a wide berth. Their
- advance agent thought he could fix me by opening a pint bottle of
- champagne. That may work in Hornellsville, but when he gets to-night’s <i>Chronicle</i>
- I fancy he’ll twig that it doesn’t go down here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, by the way, Tom,” said the other clerk, in a low tone of voice, “my
- sister’s engaged to Billy Peters. I don’t know that she wants to have it
- given away, that is, names, and everything, but you might kind o’ hint at
- it. It would please the old folks, I think—you know father’s taken
- the <i>Chronicle</i> for the last twenty years.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know” said Tom, producing an old envelope from a side pocket and making
- some dashes on it with a pencil—“the regulation gag: ‘It is rumored
- that a rising young hat-dealer will shortly lead to the altar one of the
- bright, particular social stars of Brewery street ’ eh? Something
- like that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, that’s it. You know how to fix it so that everybody’ll know who is
- meant. Be around at Menzel’s to-night?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll look in. The beer’s been fearfully flat there,
- though, this last carload. So long, boys!”—and Tom moved down the
- street while the clerks re-entered the store.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth followed him eagerly, and touched him on the shoulder, saying:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg your pardon, sir, but I heard you mention the <i>Chronicle</i> just
- now. I would be much obliged if you could tell me where the office is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man turned, looked Seth over and said, affably enough:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly. But you’ll find it shut up. The book-keeper’s gone home.” Then
- he added, as by a happy afterthought: “If you want to pay a weekly
- subscription, though, I can take it, just as well as not.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” answered Seth, “I’ve come to work on the <i>Chronicle</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh—printer? I guess some of the fellows are there still, throwing
- in their cases. If you like, I’ll show you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth replied, with some embarrassment, “No, I’m not a printer. I’ve come
- to be—to be—an editor.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tom’s manner changed in a twinkling from civility to extreme cordiality.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh—ho! you’re the new man from Thessaly, eh? Jack Fairchild’s
- brother! By Jove! How <i>are</i> you, anyway? When did you get in? Where
- are you stopping?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not stopping anywhere—unless it be this stairway here,” Seth
- replied, pointing to his carpetbag with a smile, for his companion’s
- cheerfulness was infectious. “I came in half an hour ago, and I scarcely
- knew where to go, or what to do first. I gather that you are connected
- with the <i>Chronicle</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I should remark!” said Tom, taking the bag up as he spoke. “Come
- along. We’ll have some supper down at Bismarck’s, and leave your grip
- there for the evening. We can call for it on our way home. You’ll stop
- with me to-night, you know. It ain’t a particularly fly place, but we’ll
- manage all right, I guess. And how’s Jack?”
- </p>
- <p>
- In the delight of finding so genial a colleague, one, too, who had known
- and worked with his brother, Seth’s heart rose, as they walked down the
- street again. He had been more than a little dismayed at the prospect of
- meeting these unknown writers whose genius radiated in the columns of the
- <i>Chronicle</i>, and in whose company he was henceforth to labor.
- Especially had he been nervous lest he should not speak with sufficient
- correctness, and should shock their fastidious ears with idioms insensibly
- acquired in the back-country. It was a great relief to find that this
- gentleman was so easy in his conversation, not to say colloquial.
- </p>
- <p>
- They stopped presently at a broad open door, flanked by wide windows, in
- which were displayed a variety of bright-tinted play bills, and two huge
- pictures of a goat confidently butting a small barrel. There was a steep
- pile of these little, dark-colored barrels on the sidewalk at the curb,
- from which came a curious smell of resin. As they entered, Seth discovered
- that this odor belonged to the whole place.
- </p>
- <p>
- The interior was dark and, to the country youth’s eyes, unexpectedly vast.
- The floor was sprinkled with gray sand. An infinitude of small, circular
- oak tables, each surrounded with chairs, stretched out in every direction
- into the distant gloom. Away at the farther end of the place, somebody was
- banging furiously on a piano. In the middle distance, three elderly men
- sat smoking long pipes and playing dominoes, silently, save for the sharp
- clatter of the pieces. Nearer, three other men, seated about a table, were
- all roaring in German at the top of their lungs, pounding with their
- glasses on the resounding wood, and making the most excited and menacing
- gestures. While Seth stared at them, expecting momentarily to see the
- altercation develop into blows, he felt himself clutched by the arm, and
- heard Tom say:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bismarck, this is Mr. Fairchild, a new <i>Chronicle</i> man. You must use
- him as well as you do me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth turned and found himself shaking hands with an old German monstrous
- in girth, and at once fierce and comical in aspect, with short, upright
- gray hair, a huge yellowish-white moustache, and little piggish blue eyes
- nearly hidden from view by the wave of fat which rendered his great purple
- face as featureless as the bottom of a platter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who effer vas Misder Vott’s frent, den you bed he owens dis whole
- houwus,” this stout gentleman wheezed out, smiling warmly, and releasing
- Seth’s hand to indicate, with a sweeping gesture of his pudgy paw, the
- extent of Seth’s new and figurative possessions.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the invitation of the host they all took seats, and a lean,
- wolfish-faced young man named “Ow-goost,” who shuffled along pushing his
- big slippers on the floor, brought three tall foaming glasses of
- dark-brown beer. Seth did not care for beer, and had always, in a general
- way, avoided saloons and drink, but of course, under these circumstances,
- it would be ridiculous not to do as the others did. The beverage was
- bitter, but not unpleasant, and with an effort he drank it half down at a
- time, as he saw his companions do. Then he looked about, while they
- discussed the merits of this new “bock,” Tom speaking with an air of great
- authority, and pronouncing it better than the last, but a bit too cold.
- </p>
- <p>
- The piano was still jangling, and the dominoes were being rattled around
- for a new game. The three noisy old men had grown, if possible, more
- violent and boisterous than ever. One of them now sprang to his feet,
- lifted his right hand dramatically toward the dusky ceiling, and bellowed
- forth sonorously something which Seth thought must be at least a challenge
- to immediate combat, while the others hammered their glasses vehemently,
- and fairly shrieked dissent.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m afraid those men are going to fight,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fight? Nonsense! They’re rather quieter than usual,” remarked Tom. “What
- are they chewing on to-night, Bismarck—the Sigel racket?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said their host, listening indifferently. “Dot’s Sigel.” Then,
- addressing Seth, he explained: “Somedimes it’s Sigel, unt somedimes the
- reffolution uff forty-eighd, unt den somedimes der k-vestion of we haf a
- vood bafement by Main streed. It all makes no differunce to dem, vicheffer
- ding dey shdarts mit, dey git yust so much oxcited. Dot rooster you see
- standing up mit der spegtacles, dot Henery Beckstein, he’s a tailor; he
- sits mid his legs tvisted all day, den when night comes he neets some
- exercises. Efery night for tweluf years he comes here, unt has his liddle
- dalk, und de udders, dey alvays pitches into him. He likes dot better as
- his dinner. De vurst is, dey all don’t know vat dey talk aboud. I bleef,
- so help me Gott, no one of ’em ever laid eyes by Sigel, unt dey all
- svear he vas deir dearest frent. Now—hear dot! Dot Beckstein say uff
- he didn’t shleep mid him four years in his dent, in de same bet! How was
- dot for lies, huh?” The host, pained and mortified at this mendacity, left
- his seat and waddled over to the disputants, shouting as he went, and
- joined the conversation so earnestly that his little eyes seemed bursting
- from his beet-red face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Great old man, that,” said Tom, pounding with his glass for the waiter;
- “there’s no flies on <i>him!</i> I named him Bismarck three or four years
- ago—everybody calls him that now—and it tickled him so,
- there’s nothing here too good for me. You like cheese, don’t you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, yes, I eat cheese sometimes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth never <i>had</i> eaten this kind of cheese which Owgoost presently
- slapped down before them, along with a mustard cup, a long bulging roll of
- black bread, and more beer. It was pale and hard and strong of scent, was
- cut in thick slabs, and was to be eaten, he judged from Tom’s procedure,
- under a heavy top-dressing of the brown mustard. He liked it though, and
- was interested to find how well beer went with it, or it went with beer.
- Then they had each a little pickled lambs-tongue, pink and toothsome, to
- be eaten with plenty of salt, and it was quite remarkable how ideally beer
- seemed to go with this, too. In all, three large glasses went.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tom was a delightful companion. It was simply charming to hear him talk,
- as he did almost continuously, describing the round of life in Tecumseh,
- relating gay little anecdotes of personal experience, and commenting
- trenchantly on various men as they came in. To some of these he introduced
- Seth. They seemed extremely affable young people, and some of them who
- took seats near by invited Tom and him with much fervor and still greater
- frequency, to have their glasses filled up. The former accepted these
- proffers very freely, but the beer did not taste as good to Seth as it had
- during supper, and he kept to his one glass—the fourth—sipping
- at it from time to time. Tom was so urgent about it, though, that he did
- take a cigar, a dark, able-bodied cigar which annoyed him by burning up on
- one side.
- </p>
- <p>
- The beer-hall presented a brilliant appearance now, with all the lights
- flaming, with most of the chairs filled by merry young men, with three or
- four white-jacketed waiters flitting about, bearing high in air both hands
- full of foaming glasses—a fine contrast to the dingy, bare interior
- of the twilight, with only the solitary Owgoost. Above the ceaseless hum
- of conversation and laughter, rose, at intervals, the strains of lively
- music from the far-off piano, reinforced now by a harp and a flute.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time cards were proposed, and Tom made one of a quartette who
- ranged themselves at the table. Seth could not play, and so moved his
- chair back, to watch the game. His cigar burned badly and he relighted it.
- Then it tasted bitter, and, after some hesitation, he threw it away. The
- game, called seven-up, was one he had never seen before; the ten-spots
- were invested with a fictitious value which puzzled him. Tom, over whose
- shoulder he watched had three of these tens, and silently indicated to
- Seth that they were of especial interest. Seth fixed his eyes upon them,
- to see how they were to be managed. They were very curious ten-spots,
- being made of beer-glasses running over with lambs-tongues, with lambs
- chasing them to rescue their lamented members, and burly “Bismarck”
- striving in vain to secure order. General Sigel came to help him, and Tom
- dealt him a terrific blow. Here <i>was</i> a fight at last, and John
- Fairchild stood by, rapidly taking notes. Then it came bed-time, and—Seth
- was being shaken into sensibility by Tom, who said between fits of
- chuckling:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wake up, old boy! Wake up!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Another great change had taken place in the beer-hall—the lights
- were out, the music had ceased, the crowd was gone. A solitary gas-jet
- flickered from the chandelier over the table; the game was ended, and the
- players were standing ready to depart, and laughing. Fat Bismarck stood
- behind him, in the half-shadow, looking very sleepy, and he seemed to be
- grinning too.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth saw all this first. Then he discovered that he held his collar and
- necktie in his hand, and that his coat and waistcoat were on the table. He
- dimly began to understand that he had been asleep, and that, in the
- operation of his dream, he had commenced undressing. Everybody was
- laughing at him, his friend Tom, who now was helping him on with his coat,
- most heartily of all.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I declare,” Seth said, “I must have fallen asleep. I had no idea—I
- suppose I was dreaming of getting ready for bed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, dots all right, dots all right,” said Bismarck heartily. “Ve don’d
- mind it a bit. You vas only dired owut.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, that’s it,” said Tom, “he’d had a hard day of it, traveling all the
- way from Thessaly. Are you ready? We’ll get the bag, and trot along home.
- Good night, boys!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth responded to the chorus of answering “good nights,” and the twain
- started out. Tom not only carried the bag, but took his companion’s arm—much
- to Seth’s satisfaction, for he felt very tired, and it seemed unusually
- difficult for him to shake off his sleepiness. Tom was more talkative than
- ever, and he seemed to be saying extremely clever things, but Seth somehow
- did not follow their meaning, and he could think of nothing to say in
- reply. They were in a dark side street now.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, I thought he’d be open!” said Tom, abruptly, stopping before a place,
- through the closed shutters of which long horizontal threads of light
- gleamed. “Let’s go in and have a night-cap. It’ll set you straight in a
- minute.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The curious reluctance to speak, of which Seth had felt vaguely conscious
- all along, now prompted acquiescence as the easiest course, and he
- followed Tom into a small, low room, thick with cigar-smoke and the odor
- of kerosene, where four or five men, with their hats tilted over their
- eyes, were playing cards: there was a pile of money in the centre of the
- table, to which each in turn seemed to be adding from a smaller heap
- before him. They were so much engrossed in the game that they only nodded
- at Tom, and Seth felt relieved at escaping the ordeal of being introduced
- to them. At Tom’s suggestion he took a little glass of brandy—“to do
- their duty by the National debt,”—what ever that meant. It was
- burning, nauseous stuff, which brought the tears to his eyes, but it made
- him feel better.
- </p>
- <p>
- It especially enabled him to talk, which he proceeded to do now with a
- fluency that surprised him. Tom was evidently much impressed by his
- remarks, saying little, it is true, but gripping his arm more closely.
- Thus they walked to Tom’s lodgings—a tall, dark brick house opposite
- a long line of coal sheds. The hall was so dark that Seth, in trying to
- follow his guide, stumbled over an umbrella-rack, and fell to the floor.
- Tom assisted him to rise, with a paternal “steady now, steady; that’s it,
- lean on me,” and so helped him up the two flights of steep, narrow stairs.
- In all the world, it seemed to Seth, he could not have met a more amiable
- or congenial friend than Tom, and he told him so, as they climbed the
- stairs, affectionately leaning upon his arm, and making his phrases as
- ornate in diction and warm in tone as he could.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here we are,” said Tom, opening a door, and lighting a lamp which
- revealed a small, scantily furnished room, in extreme disorder. “Make
- yourself at home, my boy. Smoke a pipe before you go to bed?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, mercy, no. I thinks—do you know, I feel a little dizzy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you’ll be all right in the morning. Just undress and pile into bed.
- I’ll smoke a pipe first.” Half an hour after Seth’s first day in the World
- had closed in heavy slumber, Tom looked at him before blowing out the
- light, and smiled to himself: “He <i>is</i> about as fresh as they make ’em.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XII.—THE SANCTUM.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he young men
- dressed next morning in almost complete silence. Tom was still sleepy, and
- seemed much less jovial and attractive than he had been the previous
- evening; Seth, accustomed to far earlier rising, was acutely awake, but
- his head ached wearily and there was a dreadful dryness in his mouth and
- throat. They went through the forms of breakfast in the basement, too,
- without much conversation. Seth was ashamed of the number of cups of
- coffee he drank, and carried away only confused recollections of having
- been introduced to a middle-aged woman in black who sat at the head of the
- table, and of having perfunctorily answered sundry questions about
- business in Dearborn County, put by a man who sat next to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were well on their way to the office before Tom’s silent mood wore
- away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must brace up!” he said. “Don’t let Workman know that we were out
- together last night. He’s a regular crank about beer—that is, when
- anybody but himself drinks it. What’s the matter? You look as melancholy
- as a man going to be hanged.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose I’m nervous about the thing. It’s all going to be so new and
- strange at the start.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, that’ll be all right. You’ll get the hang of it fast enough. They are
- rather decent fellows to work with upstairs, all but Samboye. He’ll try to
- sit on you from the start, but if you hold your own with him you’ll get
- along with the rest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Samboye—he’s the editor, isn’t he?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. You don’t know any of them, I suppose?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not even by name.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, after Workman, who’s very rightly named, and who runs the thing,
- there’s Samboye, who koo-toos to Workman and bullies all the rest. He puts
- on more airs than a mowing machine agent at a state fair. He makes <i>everybody</i>
- tired. Next to him comes Tyler—Tony Tyler, you’ll like him—that
- is, if he takes a fancy to you. He knows about eighteen hundred times as
- much as Samboye does, only somehow he hasn’t the faculty of putting it on
- paper. Too much whisky. Then there’s Dent—he’s a Young Man
- Christian; plays duets on the piano with his sister, you know, and all
- that sort of thing—but he’s away now on his vacation. And then Billy
- Murtagh—he’s a rattling good fellow, if you don’t let him borrow
- money of you. He does part of the telegraph and news. Those are the only
- fellows upstairs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But where do you come in?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Me? Oh, I’m the City Editor. I and my gang are downstairs. I made a
- strike to have you down with me, and put you on police court, but Workman
- wouldn’t have it. It’s all poppycock, for they’ve got more men upstairs
- now than they know what to do with. However, if Workman thinks the people
- want to read editorials on the condition of Macedonia more than they do
- local news, he can go ahead. It’s none of my funeral.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know what special work I am to do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “From all I hear, it would be easier to tell what you’re not to do.
- Everyone of them has got a scheme for unloading something on you. First
- you’re to do a lot of Dent’s work, like the proofs and Agricultural and
- Religious; then Murtagh wants to put State News on you, and Tyler tells me
- you’ve got to do the weekly as soon as you get your hand in, and Art,
- Music and the Drama is a thing that must go up stairs, now that the
- baseball season has begun, for I can’t attend to it. But if they play it
- too low down on you, just you make a stout kick to Workman about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While Seth pondered this outlook and advice, they reached the <i>Chronicle</i>
- office, and presently, by a succession of dark and devious stair-ways, he
- found himself in an ancient cockloft, curiously cut up by low partitions
- into compartments like horse-stalls, each with a window at the end, and
- was introduced as “the new man” to Mr. Anthony Tyler, otherwise Tony.
- </p>
- <p>
- This gentleman bore no outward signs of the excess of spirituous liquor to
- which Tom had alluded, and was very cordial and pleasant. He was extremely
- dark in hair, beard and eyes, seemed to be not more than thirty, and sat
- at a table piled high with books, clippings and the like, and surrounded
- by great heaps of papers. Tom glanced over two or three of these latter,
- and then went off humming a tune lightly and calling out to Seth in
- imitation of a popular air, as he rattled down stairs “I’ll meet you when
- the form goes down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Among other polite questions Tyler asked Seth where he was stopping.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nowhere permanently. I must find some place. I stopped last night with
- Mr. Votts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With whom?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With Mr. Votts, the gentleman who just left us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you mean Tom Watts. You’ve got his name wrong.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come to think of it, it was a German who called him that last evening,
- and I was misled by his pronunciation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Tyler’s face grew more serious.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are a stranger here. Let me give you some advice. Don’t cultivate Mr.
- Watts’ German friends. He’s not a bad chap of his sort, but he drinks
- altogether too much beer. Who drinks beer, thinks beer, as Johnson says.
- Perhaps I can be of use to you in the matter of a boarding house. Oh,
- here’s Mur-tagh,” he continued introducing Seth to another tall, slender
- young man who had come up the stairs with an arm-full of papers; “he will
- take you now, and give you an idea of your work.” Whereupon Mr. Tyler
- turned again to his papers and shears, and Seth followed the new comer to
- the farthest stall in the row, which was henceforth to be his own.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- There came a brief quarter of an hour in the afternoon when what seemed to
- the novice a state of the wildest excitement reigned in the editorial
- room. An inky boy in a huge leather apron dashed from stall to stall
- shouting an interrogative “Thirty for you?” His master and patron, the
- foreman, also aproned from chin to knees, with shirt-sleeves rolled to the
- biceps, followed with the same mysterious question, put in an injured and
- indignant tone. A loud, sharp discussion between this magnate and Tyler,
- profanely dictatorial on the one side, profanely satirical on the other,
- rose suddenly and filled the room with its clamor. An elderly man, bald as
- a billiard ball, and dressed like a clergyman, came bounding up the
- stairs, pulling out his watch as he advanced, and demanding fiercely the
- reason for this delay. There was an outburst of explanation, in which four
- or five voices joined, mingling personal abuse freely with their analysis
- of the situation. Tom Watts leaped up the stairs four steps at a time and
- hurled himself into the controversy. Seth could distinguish in this babel
- of exclamations such phrases as—
- </p>
- <p>
- “You better get some india-rubber chases!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If that fire’s cut down, you might as well not go to press at all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If somebody would get down here in the morning, we could get our matter
- up in time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sick and tired of getting out telegraph for these chuckle-headed
- printers to throw on the floor!” “That Mayhew matter’s been standing on
- the galleys so long already that it’s got grey-headed!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “By the Lord Harry, I’ll make a rule that the next time we miss the
- Wyoming mail it shall be taken out of your wages!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Here the inky boy galloped through to Seth with a proof-sheet, shouting,
- “You’ve got a minute and a half to read this in!” The bald, elderly
- gentleman, who seemed to be Mr. Workman, came and stood over Seth, watch
- in hand, scowling impatiently. Under this embarrassment the wet letters
- danced before his eyes, and he could find no errors, though it turned out
- later that he had passed “elephant” for “elopement” and ruined Watts’
- chief sensation. A few minutes later, the clang of the presses in the
- basement shook the old building, and the inky boy bustled through the room
- again, pitching a paper into each of the stalls. There was a moment of
- silence, broken only by the soft rustling of the damp sheets. Then
- simultaneously from the several tables rose a chorus of violent
- objurgation.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth heard the voice which he had learned was Samboye’s roar out, “What
- dash-dashed idiot has made me say ‘our martyr President Abraham Sinclair?
- ’ Stop the press!” There were other voices: “Here’s two lines of
- markets upside down!” “Oh, I say, this is <i>too</i> bad. <i>Moyen age</i>
- is ‘mayonaise ’ in my Shylock notice, and it’s Mrs. McCullough
- instead of Mr. ————.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m dashed if the paper looks as if it had been read at all. We can’t
- have such proof-reading as this!”
- </p>
- <p>
- While these comments were still proceeding the noise of the press suddenly
- ceased. The silence was terrible to Seth’s guilty consciousness, for he
- had heard enough to know that it was his fault. Mr. Workman entered the
- room again, and again Sam-boye’s deep voice was heard, repeating the awful
- Sinclair-Lincoln error. Seth had looked at his fresh copy of the <i>Chronicle</i>,
- with some vague hope that the Editor was mistaken, but alas! it was too
- true. Mr. Workman came over to his stall; he had put his watch back in his
- pocket, but his countenance was stern and unbending.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are Mr. Fairchild, I presume,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth rose to his feet, blushing, and murmured, “Yes, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I understood from your brother that you were used to newspaper work.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I thought I was. I have been around the <i>Banner of Liberty</i>
- office a great deal, but it seems so different on a daily.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “H’m,—yes. Well, I dare say you’ll learn.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Luckily the press started up again here, and Mr. Workman, looking at his
- watch once more, went down stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth felt most grievously depressed. Looking back, his first day had been
- full of mortification and failure. The use of scissors and mucilage brush
- was painfully unfamiliar to his clumsy fingers. The scope and intention of
- the various news departments he had been told to take charge of were
- unknown to him, and he had watched Murtagh go over the matter he
- submitted, striking out page after page, saying curtly, “We’ve had this,”
- “This is only worth a line or two,” or “this belongs in county notes,”
- with a sinking heart. His duties were so mechanical and commonplace, after
- what he had conceived an editor’s functions to be, that his ineptitude was
- doubly humiliating.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then there was this dreadful proof-reading failure. Murtagh had given him
- the sample proof-sheet in the back of the dictionary to copy his marks
- from—and he had copied them with such scrupulous efforts after
- exactness that the printers couldn’t understand them. These printers—he
- could see them through the windows opposite, standing pensively over their
- tall cases, and moving their right arms between the frames and their
- sticks with the monotonous regularity of an engine’s piston-rod—seemed
- a very sarcastic and disagreeable body of men, to judge by the messages of
- criticism on his system of marking which the inky boy had delivered for
- them with such fidelity and enjoyment during the day. He had eaten nothing
- since the early breakfast, and felt faint and tired. The rain outside,
- beating dismally on the window and the tin roof beyond, added to his
- gloom, and the ceaseless drumming of the presses below increased his
- headache.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other men seemed to have nothing to do now save to talk, but he turned
- wearily to the great mound of exchanges from which Murtagh had directed
- him to extract “Society Jottings” and “Art, Music and the Drama” after the
- paper went to press.
- </p>
- <p>
- He spent a few despairing minutes on the threshold of the task—enough
- to see clearly that it was beyond his strength. Society was Syriac to him,
- and he had never seen a play acted, beyond an occasional presentation of
- “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or “The Octoroon” by strolling tenth-rate mummers in
- the tiny hall at Thessaly. How could he select matter for such
- departments? He wavered for a time, from a disinclination to confront men
- who had just condemned his work so unsparingly, but at last he got up from
- the table where he had been pinned all day, and went over to the further
- end of the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a sort of conclave about Tyler’s table. Both he and Samboye
- reclined in tipped-back chairs, with their feet upon it; Watts sat on the
- table swinging his legs, his straw hat still on the back of his head, and
- Murtagh was perched in the window seat. Their conversation, which had been
- flowing freely, stopped as Seth approached. He had expected to be
- introduced to his Editor, Mr. Samboye, but no one seemed to think of it,
- and that gentleman himself relieved him of the embarrassment by nodding
- not uncourteously but with formality.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Fairchild,” he said, with impressive slowness, “in the pursuit of a
- high career you will be powerfully aided by keeping in recollection the
- fact that the sixteenth President of the United States was named Lincoln
- and not Sinclair. We have a prejudice too, weak as it may seem, in favor
- of spelling ‘interval’ with a ‘v’ rather than an ‘n’.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth did not find it so difficult to address this great man as he had
- anticipated. He said simply that he was very sorry, but the work was
- utterly new to him, it was his first day, he hoped to learn soon, etc.
- Emboldened by the sound of his own voice, he added his doubts about being
- able to satisfactorily preside over such exacting columns as “Society
- Jottings” and “Art, Music and the Drama”—and gave reasons.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By George!” cried Watts, “I envy you! Just fancy a man who has never seen
- anything but ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’—and not even that with real
- Siberian bloodhounds. You shall begin going tonight. I’ll take you to
- ‘Muldoon’s Picnic.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, at any rate,” remarked Mr. Tyler, “you can do ‘Agricultural.’ You
- must know that right down to the ground.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” assented Seth, “I think I ought to manage that. The truth is, most
- of the stuff the papers print for farmers is nonsense—pure rubbish.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose it is. I know that Dent—he is a New York city boy, who
- doesn’t know clover from cabbage—once put in a paragraph about the
- importance of feeding chickens on rock salt, and an old farmer from Boltus
- came in early one morning and whaled the bookkeeper out of his boots
- because he had followed the advice and killed all his hens. There must be
- some funny man out West somewhere who makes up these bad agricultural
- paragraphs, and of course they get copied. How can fellows like Dent, for
- instance, tell which are good and which are not? But they can’t fool you,
- and that’ll be an advantage. Then there’s Religious. You can do that
- easily enough. I should think.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” interposed Murtagh, “all you have to do is to lay for the Obago <i>Evening
- Mercury</i>. Every Saturday that has a column of religious. Alec Watson, a
- fellow in that office, has fifty-two of these columns, extracts from
- Thomas à Kempis, and Wesley and Spurgeon and that sort of thing, which
- have been running in the <i>Mercury</i> since before the war. When New
- Year’s comes he starts ’em going again, round and round. Nobody
- knows the difference. Well, their columns are longer than ours, so each
- week you can run about half their paragraphs—the shortest ones—and
- then fill in with some news notes, statistics, you know, about how many
- churches the Moravians have now, and that sort of thing. You can pick
- those up during the week, anywhere.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then there ought to be some originality about it too,” said Tom Watts.
- “It is just as well to sling in some items of your own, I think, such as
- ‘There is a growing desire among the Baptists to have Bishops, like other
- people,’ or, ‘It is understood that at the coming Consistory the Pope will
- create seven new American Cardinals.’ That last is a particularly good
- point. Every once in a while, predict more Cardinals. It doesn’t hurt
- anybody, and it makes you solid when the thing does happen. There’s
- nothing like original news to show the influence of journalism. One
- morning, after the cakes had been bad for a week, heavy, sour or something
- else, I said to my landlady that I believed the fault must be in the
- buckwheat. She said no, she didn’t think so, for the flour looked very
- nice indeed. I put a line in ‘Local Glimpses’ that day, saying that
- unfortunately the buckwheat this year was of inferior quality, and the
- very next morning she apologised to me: said I was right; the buckwheat <i>was</i>
- bad; she had read so in the <i>Chronicle</i>. Can you imagine a nobler
- illustration of the power of the press?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth looked attentively at the speaker, to see if he was joking, but there
- was no more evidence of mirth in his thin face than in the serious tone of
- his voice. None of the others laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Samboye said some of the most remarkable things, at once humorous and
- highly original, and put in an elaborate frame of big unusual words. He
- was a huge man in frame, with an enormous head, bushy eyebrows, heavy
- whiskers, a ponderous manner, a tremendous voice—in fact seemed to
- Seth precisely the kind of man from whom delicate wit, and soft shading of
- phrases were not to be expected. He happened for the nonce to be in a
- complaisant mood, and was relaxing himself in the company of “his young
- men,” as he liked to call his colleagues. But ordinarily he was
- overbearing and arbitrary, and this had rankled so deeply in their minds
- that they listened with apathy, unresponsive, to his choicest sallies, and
- Watts even combated him, with scant courtesy it seemed to Seth.
- </p>
- <p>
- To him this monologue of the Editor’s was a revelation. He had never heard
- such brilliant talk, such a wonderful mastery of words, such delicious
- humor. He drank it all in eagerly, and laughed aloud at its broader points—the
- more heartily, perhaps, because no one else smiled. This display of
- appreciation bore fruit after its kind. Before Mr. Samboye went he spoke
- some decidedly gracious words to Seth, saying among other things:
- </p>
- <p>
- “However harshly we may be tempted by momentary stress of emotion to
- speak, always remember that we unitedly feel your fresh bucolic interest
- in things, your virginal capacity for admiration, and your pristine flush
- of enthusiasm for your work to be distinct acquisitions to the paper,”
- which Seth felt to be somewhat nonsensical, but still was grateful for.
- </p>
- <p>
- After Mr. Samboye had gone, Tom Watts took occasion to warn him in an
- aside:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Be careful how you appear to curry favor with Samboye before the other
- fellows. Oh, I know you didn’t think of it—but don’t laugh at his
- jokes. They’ll think you’re trying to climb over them, and they’ll be
- unpleasant to you, perhaps.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIII.—THIRTEEN MONTHS OF IT.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">G</span>ROWING familiarity
- with his work did not restore to Seth the lofty conceptions of
- journalism’s duties and delights which he had nourished on the hill-side
- farm, and which had been so ingloriously dimmed and defaced by his first
- day’s experience.
- </p>
- <p>
- The tasks set before him, to which he gradually became accustomed, seemed
- almost as unintellectual and mechanical as the ploughing and planting he
- had forsaken. The rule of condensation, compression, continually dinned
- into his ears by his mentors, robbed his labors of all possible charm. To
- “boil down” columns of narrative into a few lines of bald, cold statement;
- to chronicle day after day in the curtest form, fires, failures, crimes,
- disasters, deaths, in a wearying chain of uninteresting news notes; to
- throw remorselessly into the journalistic crucible all the work of
- imagination, of genius, of deep fine thought which came into his hands,
- together with the wordy dross spun out by the swarm of superficial
- scribblers, and extract from good and bad alike only the meaningless,
- miserable fact—this was a task against which, in the first weeks of
- experience, his whole soul revolted.
- </p>
- <p>
- By the time he had become reconciled to it, and had mastered its tricks,
- his dream of journalism as the most exalted of all departments of activity
- seemed to him like some far-away fantasy of childhood.
- </p>
- <p>
- He not only had failed to draw inspiration from his work; it was already
- ceasing to interest him. Under pleasanter conditions, he felt that he
- would have at least liked the proof-reading portion of the daily routine;
- but the printers were so truculent and hostile, and seemed so
- pre-determined to treat him as their natural enemy, that this was irksome,
- too. There was no relief to the distasteful monotony in other branches of
- his work. Even the agricultural column, which he had promised himself to
- so vastly improve, yielded no satisfaction. The floating, valueless stuff
- from which his predecessors had selected their store came so easily and
- naturally to the scissors that after a week or two he abandoned the idea
- of preparing original matter: it saved time and labor, and nobody seemed
- to know the difference. These words, in fact, came to describe his mental
- attitude toward all his work. He had no pride in it. If he escaped curses
- for badly-read proofs, and criticism for missing obvious matters of news,
- it was enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth did not arrive at this condition of mind without much inner protest,
- or without sundry efforts to break through the crust of perfunctory
- drudgery which was encasing him. At the start he bestowed considerable
- thought and work upon an effort to brighten and improve, by careful
- re-working of materials, one of the departments entrusted to him, and,
- just when he expected praise, Tyler told him to stop it. Then he tried to
- make his religious column a feature by discarding most of the ancient
- matter which revolved so drolly in the Obago <i>Evening Mercury</i>, and
- picking out eloquent bits from the sermons of great contemporary
- preachers; but this elicited denominational protest from certain pious
- subscribers, and Mr. Workman commanded a return to the old rut.
- </p>
- <p>
- But <i>the</i> cruel humiliation came when Seth took to Mr. Samboye an
- editorial paragraph he had written with great care. It was a political
- paragraph, and Seth felt confident that it was exactly in the <i>Chronicle’s</i>
- line, and good writing as well. The Editor took it, after regarding the
- young writer with a stony, half-surprised stare, and read it over slowly.
- He delivered judgment upon it, in his habitual pomposity of phrases: “This
- is markedly comprehensive in scope and clarified in expression, Mr.
- Fairchild.” Then, as Seth’s heart was warming with a sense of commendation
- and success, the Editor calmly tore the manuscript in strips, dropped them
- in his waste-basket, and turned reflectively to his newspaper.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth’s breath nearly left him: “Then you can’t use it;” he faltered. “I
- thought it might do for an editorial paragraph.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was the faintest suggestion of a patronising smile on Mr. Samboye’s
- broad, ruddy face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am reminded, Mr. Fairchild,” he answered, with bland irrelevance;
- “pray do not allow Porte to pass again with a small p, as you did
- yesterday in the proof of my Turkish article. It should be capitalized
- invariably.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The beginner went back to his stall both humiliated and angry. The cool
- insolence with which he had been reminded that he was a proof-reader, and
- warned away from thoughts of the editorial page, enraged and depressed
- him. He passed a bitter hour at his table, looking savagely through the
- window at the automatic motions of the printer directly opposite, but
- thinking evil thoughts of Samboye, and cursing the fate which had led him
- into newspaper work. So uncomfortable did he make himself by these
- reflections that it required a real effort to throw off their effects when
- Watts came upstairs, and the two left the office for the day. It was
- impossible not to relate his grievance.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tom did not see its tragic side, and refused utterly to concede that Seth
- ought to be cast down by it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s only Samboye’s way,” he said, lightly. “He won’t let any of the
- fellows get on to the page, simply because he’s afraid they’ll outwrite
- him. He’d rather do it all himself—and he does grind out an immense
- load of stuff—than encourage any rivals. Besides, he never loses a
- chance to snub youngsters. Don’t let it worry you for a minute. If he sees
- that it does, he’ll only pile it on the thicker. In this business you’ve
- got to have a hide on you like the behemoth of Holy Writ, or you’ll keep
- raw all the while.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth found some consolation in this view, and more still in Tom’s cheery
- tone. The two young men spent the evening together—at Bismarck’s.
- </p>
- <p>
- This came gradually but naturally to be Seth’s habitual evening resort. It
- represented to him, indeed, all that was friendly and inviting in Tecumseh
- society. He was able to recall dimly some of the notions of coming social
- distinction he indulged in the farm days—dreams of a handsome young
- editor who was in great request in the most refined and luxurious home
- circles, who said the most charming things to beautiful young ladies at
- parties and balls, who wavered in his mind between wedding his employer’s
- daughter and taking a share in the paper, or choosing some lowlier but
- more intellectual maid to wife, and leading with her a halcyon and
- exaltedly literary career in a cottage—but they were as unreal, as
- indistinct now as the dreams of night before last. All the social bars
- seemed drawn against him as a matter of course.
- </p>
- <p>
- This did not impress him as a hardship, because he was only vaguely
- conscious of it, at first, and then grew into the habit of regarding it as
- a thing to be grateful for. Tom Watts pointed out to him frequently the
- advantage of being a Bohemian, of being free from all the fearsome,
- undefined routine and responsibility of making calls, of dressing up in
- the evening, and of dangling supine attendance upon girls and their
- mammas. This “social racket,” the city editor said, might please some
- people; Dent, for instance, seemed to like it. But for his part it seemed
- quite the weakest thing a young man could go in for—entirely
- incompatible with the robust and masculine character demanded in a
- successful journalist.
- </p>
- <p>
- This presented itself to Seth as an extremely sound position, and he made
- it his own so willingly that very soon he began to take credit to himself
- in his own eyes for having turned a deaf ear to the social siren, and
- having deliberately rejected the advances of fashionable Tecumseh. He
- grew, really, to believe that it was by preference, by a wise resolution
- to preserve his freedom and individuality, that he remained outside the
- mysterious, impalpable regions which were labelled in his mind as
- “Society.”
- </p>
- <p>
- On the other hand, there was no nonsense at Bismarck’s, or at the other
- similar beer halls to which Tom introduced him. One dressed as one chose,
- and did as one liked; seven-up or penochle provided just the mental
- recreation a wearied literary brain demanded; and the fellows one met
- there were cheerful, companionable young men, who likewise had no nonsense
- about them, who put on no airs of superiority, and who glided swiftly and
- jovially through the grades of acquaintanceship to intimacy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth was greatly strengthened in his liking for this refuge from
- loneliness in a strange city by what he saw of Arthur Dent, whom Watts had
- prepared him to regard as the embodiment of the other and strait-laced
- side.
- </p>
- <p>
- This young man was not at all uncivil, but he was delicate, almost
- effeminate in frame, wore eye-glasses, dressed with fastidious neatness,
- never made any jokes or laughed heartily at those of others, and rarely
- joined the daily lounge and smoke around Tyler’s table after the paper had
- gone to press—and in all these things he grated upon Seth’s
- sensitiveness. He was the one member of the staff whom Mr. Workman seemed
- to like and whom Mr. Samboye never humiliated publicly by his ponderous
- ridicule, and these were added grievances. He worked very steadily and
- carefully, and was said to do a good deal of heavy reading at home,
- evenings, in addition to the slavish routine of high social duties in
- which Seth indefinitely understood him to be immersed. His chief tasks
- were the book reviews, the editing of correspondence, and the preparation
- of minor editorial paragraphs in a smaller type than Mr. Samboye’s. Seth
- thought that his style, though correct and neat, was thin and emasculated,
- and he came to associate this with his estimate of the writer, and account
- for it by his habits and associations—which the further confirmed
- him in his judgment as to the right way to live.
- </p>
- <p>
- But there was something more than this. The first few days after his
- return from his vacation, Dent had tried to be courteous and helpful to
- the newcomer from the country, in his shy, undemonstrative way, and Seth,
- despite his preconceived prejudice, had gone a little way on the road to
- friendship. Then one night, as he and Watts were returning arm-in-arm to
- their joint lodgings from Bismarck’s, a trifle unsteadily perhaps, they
- had encountered Dent walking with a young lady, and Tom had pleasantly
- accosted them—at least it seemed pleasantly to Seth—but Dent
- had not taken it in the right spirit at the time, and had been decidedly
- cool to Seth ever since. This was so unreasonable that the country boy
- resented it deeply, and the two barely spoke to each other.
- </p>
- <p>
- His relations with the others were less strained, but scarcely more
- valuable in the way of companionship. Mr. Tyler did not seem to care much
- for his company, and never asked him to go to the “Roast Beef”—a
- sort of combination of club and saloon where he spent most of his
- evenings, where poker was the chief amusement and whisky the principal
- drink. From all Seth could learn, it was as well for him that he was not
- invited there. As for Murtagh, all his associations outside the office
- seemed to be with young men of his own race, who formed a coterie by
- themselves, and frequented distinctively Irish resorts. Like most other
- American cities Tecumseh had its large Irish and German elements, and in
- nothing were ethnographic lines drawn so clearly as in the matter of
- amusements. There were enough young Americans holding aloof from both
- these foreign circles to constitute a small constituency for the “Roast
- Beef,” but a far greater number had developed a liking for the German
- places of resort, and drank beer and ate cheese and rye bread as if to the
- manner born. Seth found himself in this class on his first step over the
- threshold of city life; he enjoyed it, and he saw very little of the
- others.
- </p>
- <p>
- The two most important men on the <i>Chronicle</i>, Mr. Workman and Mr.
- Samboye, were far removed from the plane upon which all these Bohemian
- divisions were traced. They belonged to the Club—the Tuscarora Club.
- Seth knew where the club house was—but he felt that this was all he
- was ever likely to know about it. The first few days in Tecumseh had
- taught him the hopelessness of his dream of associating with his employer.
- Socially they were leagues apart at the outset, and if the distance did
- not increase as weeks grew into months, at least Seth’s perception of it
- did, which amounted to the same thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not so readily abandon the idea of being made a companion by
- Samboye, but at last that vanished too. The Editor held himself very high,
- and if he occasionally came down off his mountain top, his return to those
- heights only served to emphasize their altitude. There were conflicting
- stories about his salary. Among the lesser lights of the editorial room it
- was commonly estimated at forty-five dollars a week, but some of the
- printers had information that it was at least fifty—which fatigued
- the imagination. Seth himself received nine dollars, which his brother
- supplemented by five, and he found that he was regarded as doing
- remarkably well for a beginner. But between this condition and the state
- of Samboye with his great income, his fine house on one of the best
- streets, his influential position in the city, and his luxurious
- amusements at the Club, an impassable gulf yawned.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is no pleasure in following further the details of the country boy’s
- new life. He lost sight of his disappointment in the consolations of a
- phase of city existence which does not show to advantage in polite-pages.
- He did not become vicious or depraved.
- </p>
- <p>
- The relentless treadmill of a daily paper forbade his becoming indolent.
- By sheer force of contact his mind expanded, too, more than even he
- suspected. But it was a formless, unprofitable expansion, which did not
- help him to get out of the rut. He performed his work acceptably—at
- least he rarely heard any criticisms upon it—lived a trifle ahead of
- his small income, and ceased to even speculate on the chance of promotion.
- </p>
- <p>
- When, thirteen months after his advent in Tecumseh, the news came to him
- from the farm that his father was dying, he obtained leave to go home. Mr.
- Workman remarked to Mr. Samboye that afternoon:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shan’t mind much if Fairchild doesn’t come back.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is that so? He seems to get through his work decently and inoffensively
- enough. He will never set the North River ablaze, of course, but he is
- civil and all that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, but I can’t see that there’s anything in him. Beside, I don’t like
- his influence on Watts. I’m told you can find them together at Bismarck’s
- every night in the week.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course, that makes it bad,” said Mr. Samboye.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the proprietor and the editor locked up their desks, went over to the
- Club, and played pyramid pool till midnight.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIV.—BACK ON THE FARM.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he farm seemed
- very little like home to Seth, now that he was back once more upon it. He
- could neither fit himself familiarly into such of the old ways as remained
- nor altogether appetize the changes which he felt rather than discerned
- about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of all these alterations his father’s disappearance was among the least
- important. Everybody had grown out of the habit of considering Lemuel as a
- factor in any question. Nobody missed him now that he was gone, or felt
- that it was specially incumbent to pretend to do so—nobody save Aunt
- Sabrina. Those who cared to look closely could see that the old maid was
- shaken by her weak brother’s death, and that, though she said little or
- nothing about it, an augmented sense of loneliness preyed upon her mind.
- For the rest, the event imposed a day or two of solemnity, some
- alterations of dress and demeanor, a sombre journey with a few neighbors
- to the little burial plot beyond the orchard—and then things resumed
- their wonted aspect.
- </p>
- <p>
- To the young journalist this aspect was strange and curious. The farm had
- put on a new guise to his eyes. It was as if some mighty hand and brush
- had painted it all over with bright colors. It was not only that the house
- had been restored and refurnished, that new spacious buildings replaced
- the ancient barns, that the fences had been rebuilt, the farm yard cleaned
- up and sodded, the old well-curb and reach removed—the very grass
- seemed greener, the bending of the boughs more graceful, the charm of sky
- and foliage and verdure far more apparent. The cattle were plumper and
- cleaner; there were carriage horses now, with bright harness and sweeping
- tails, and a costly black mare for the saddle, fleet as the wind: the food
- on the table was more uniformly toothsome, and there were now the broad
- silver-plated forks to which Seth had somewhat laboriously become
- accustomed in his Tecumseh boardinghouse. He admired all these changes, in
- a way, but somehow he could not feel at home among them. They were
- attractive, but they were alien to the memories which, in his crowded,
- bricked-up city solitude, had grown dear to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were droll changes among the hired people. For one thing, they no
- longer all ate at the table with the family. An exception was made in
- favor of Milton Squires, who had burst through the overalls chrysalis of
- hired-manhood, and had become a sort of superintendent. He had not learned
- to eat with a fork, and he still talked loudly and with boisterous
- familiarity at the table, reaching for whatever he wanted, and calling the
- proprietor “Albert,” and his aunt “Sabriny.” He did not bear his social
- and industrial promotion meekly. He bullied the inferior hired men—Leander
- had a colleague now, a rough, tow-headed, burly young fellow named Dana
- Pills-bury—and snubbed loftily the menials of the kitchen. This
- former haunt scarcely knew him more, and his rare conversations with
- Alvira were all distinctly framed in condescension. This was only to be
- expected, for Milton wore a black suit of store-clothes every day, with a
- gold-plated watch chain and a necktie, and met the farmers round about on
- terms of practical equality. He was reputed to be a careful and capable
- manager; his wrath was feared at the cheese-factory; his judgment was
- respected at the corners’ store. Naturally, such a man would feel himself
- above kitchen associations.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of course this defection evoked deep wrath in Alvira’s part of the house,
- some overflowings of which came to Seth’s notice before he had been a day
- at the farm. Alvira was not specially changed to the young man’s eyes—indeed
- her sallow, bilious visage, dark snapping eyes and furrowed forehead
- seemed the most familiar things about the homestead, and her acidulous
- tones struck a truer note in his chords of memory than did any other
- sound.
- </p>
- <p>
- Aunt Sabrina, wrapped as of old in her red plaid shoulder shawl, but
- seemingly less erect and aggressive, spent most of her time in the
- kitchen, ostentatiously pretending to pay her board by culinary labor.
- Behind her back Alvira was wont to say to her assistant, a slatternly
- young slip from the ever-spreading Lawton family tree, that the old lady
- only hindered the work, and that her room would be better than her
- company. But when Aunt Sabrina was present, Alvira was customarily civil,
- sometimes quite friendly. The two were drawn together by community of
- grievance.
- </p>
- <p>
- They both hated Isabel, with her citified notions, her forks and napkins,
- and stuck-up airs generally. It had pleased Aunt Sabrina’s mood to regard
- herself as included in the edict which ordained that servants should eat
- in the kitchen, and only the sharpest words she had ever heard Albert
- speak had prevented her acting upon this. She had come to the family
- table, then, but always with an air of protest; and she had a grim
- pleasure in leaving her napkin unfolded, month after month, and in keeping
- everybody waiting while she paraded her inability to eat rapidly or
- satisfactorily with the new fangled “split spoon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She and Alvira had a never-failing topic of hostile talk in the new
- mistress. To judge by their threats, their jibes and their angry
- complaints, they were always on the point of leaving the house on her
- account. So imminent did an outbreak seem to Seth, when he first heard
- their joint budget of woes and bitter resolves, that he was frightened,
- but the Lawton girl reassured him. They had talked just like that, she
- said, every day since she had been there, which would be “a year come
- August,” and she added scornfully: “They go away? You couldn’t chase ’em
- away with a clothes-pole!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The two elderly females had another bond of sympathy, of course, in
- Milton’s affectation of superiority.
- </p>
- <p>
- They debated this continually, though as Sabrina had the most to say about
- her niece-in-law, with Alvira as a sympathetic commentator, so the hateful
- apotheosis of the whilom hired-man was recognized to be Alvira’s special
- and personal grievance, in girding at which Sabrina bore only a helping
- part.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth accounted for this by calling up in recollection an old vague
- understanding of his youth that Milton was some time going to marry
- Alvira. He could remember having heard this union spoken of as taken for
- granted in the family. Doubtless Alvira’s present attitude of ugly
- criticism was due to the fear that Milton’s improved prospects would lead
- him elsewhere. The Lawton girl indeed hinted rather broadly to him that
- there were substantial grounds for Alvira’s rage. “I’d tear his eyes out
- if I was her, and he wouldn’t come up to the scratch,” she said, “after
- all that’s happened.” Seth understood her suggestion, but he didn’t
- believe it. The Lawtons were a low-down race, anyway. He had seen one of
- the girls at Tecumseh once, a girl who had gone utterly to the bad, and
- this sister of hers seemed a bold, rude huzzy, with a mind prone to mean
- suspicions.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a relief to go back again to the living-room, where Isabel was, and
- he both verbally and mentally justified her gentle hint that the kitchen
- was not a good place for young men to spend their time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have no idea,” she said, letting her embroidery fall in her lap for
- the moment, “how ruinous to discipline and to household management
- generally this country plan of making companions of your servants is. I
- had to put a complete stop to it, very soon after I came. There would be
- no living with them otherwise. There’s not much comfort in living with
- them as it is, for your Aunt sits out in the kitchen all day long,
- pretending that she is abused and encouraging them to think that they are
- ill-used too. She makes it very hard for me—harping all the time on
- my being a Richardson, just as she did with your mother.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then there’s Milton. I did not want to make any difference between him
- and the other hired people, but your brother insisted on it—on
- having him at the table with us, and treating him like an equal. He is as
- coarse and rough and horrid as he can be, but it seems that he is very
- necessary on the farm, and your brother leaves so much to him and relies
- so much on him that I couldn’t help myself. He hasn’t got to calling me
- ‘Isabel’ yet, but I expect him to begin every day of my life. You can’t
- imagine what an infliction it is to see him eat—or rather, to hear
- him, for I try not to look.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel took up her work again, and Seth looked at her more closely than he
- had done before. She sat at the window, with the full summer light on her
- bright hair and fair, pretty face. Her tone had been melancholy, almost
- mournful; looking at her, Seth felt that she was not happy, and more—for
- he had never supposed her to be particularly happy—that she was
- bitterly disappointed with the result of the farm experiment. She had not
- said so, however, and he was in doubt whether it would be wise for him to
- assume it in his conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Albert seems to thrive on country fare,” he said, perhaps unconsciously
- suggesting in his remark what was turning in his mind—that she
- herself seemed not have thrived. The rounded outlines of her chin and
- throat were not so perfect as he remembered them. She looked thin and
- tired now, in the strong light, and there was no color to speak of in her
- face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes!” she said, with that falling inflection which is sister to the
- sigh, and keeping her eyes bent upon her work, “<i>he</i> grows fat. I did
- not imagine that a man who had always been so active, who was so
- accustomed to regular office work and intellectual professional pursuits,
- could fall into idle ways so easily. But it is always a bore to him now
- when he has to go down to New York at term time. Once or twice he has had
- a coolness with his partners because he failed to go at all. I shouldn’t
- be surprised if he gave New York up altogether. He talks often of it—of
- practising at Tecumseh instead. Oh, and that reminds me. You can tell.
- What relation does Tecumseh bear to this place? I know they have some
- connection in his mind, because he spoke once of the ‘pull’—whatever
- that may mean—being a Tecumseh lawyer would give him here. I know
- they are not in the same county, for I looked on the map. Whatever it is,
- that would be his purpose in going there, I am curious to learn. You
- know,” she added, with a smile and tone pathetic in their sarcasm, “a wife
- ought to be interested in whatever concerns her husband.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are in the same Congressional district,” Seth replied. “There are
- three counties in the district, Dearborn (where we are now), Jay, which
- lies east of us, and then Adams, which is a long, narrow county, and runs
- off South of Dearborn. Tecumseh is away at the extreme southern end of
- Adams county. Perhaps that is what you have in mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is what <i>he</i> has in mind,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But how does Albert fill his time here—what does he do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “In about equal parts,” she made answer, lifting her eyes again, with the
- light of a little smile in them now, “he reads novels here in the house,
- and drives about the neighborhood. What time he is not in the easy-chair
- upstairs, devouring fiction, he is in his buggy on the road. He won’t let
- me have anybody up from New York, even of the few I know, but he has
- developed a wonderful taste for striking up acquaintances here. He must by
- this time know every farmer for twenty miles around. First of all, in
- buying his stock when he took the farm, he spread his purchases around in
- the queerest way—getting a cow from this man, a colt from another, a
- pig here and a bull there. Milton and he went together, and they must have
- driven two hundred miles, I should think, collecting the various animals.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t understand it at first, but I begin to now. He wanted to
- establish relations with as many men here as he could. And the farmers he
- invites here to dinner—you should see them! Sometimes I think I
- shall have to leave the table. It’s all I can do, often, to be decently
- civil to them, rough, vulgar men, unwashed and untidy, whom he waylays out
- on the road and brings in. He thinks I ought to exert myself to make them
- feel at home, and chat with them about their wives and children, and ugh!
- call on them and form friendships with them. But I draw the line there. If
- he enjoys bringing them here, why I can’t help it; and if he likes to
- drive about, and be hail-fellow-well-met with them, that is his own
- affair. But——”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stopped, and Seth felt that the silence was eloquent. He began to
- realize that his pretty sister-in-law was in need of sympathy, and to rank
- himself, with indignant fervor, on her side.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie Fairchild came in. Seth had seen and spoken with her several times,
- during the period of his father’s death and funeral, but hurriedly and in
- the presence of others. Her appearance now recalled instantly the day of
- the fishing trip—a soft and pleasant memory, which during his year’s
- exile had at times been truly delicious to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The women thought of it too, now, and talked of it, at Seth rather than to
- him, and with a playful spirit of badinage. As of old, Isabel did most of
- the talking. Annie had become quite a woman, Seth said to himself, as she
- took off her hat, tidied her hair before the glass, and laughingly joined
- in the conversation. She talked very well, too, but she seemed always to
- think over her words, and there appeared to be in her manner toward him a
- certain something, intangible, indefinite, which suggested constraint. He
- could feel, though he could not explain, it.
- </p>
- <p>
- During his stay in Tecumseh he had seen almost nothing of the other sex.
- There were often some young women at the boarding-house, but he had not
- got beyond a speaking acquaintance at the table with any of them, in the
- few instances where his shyness had permitted even that. His year in a
- city had improved him in many ways. He could wear good clothes now without
- awkwardness; he spoke readily among men, and with excellent choice of
- language; he knew how to joke without leading the laughter himself. But he
- had had no chance to overcome by usage his diffidence in female company,
- and he had not been quite at ease in his mind since Annie came in. She
- seemed to make a stranger of him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He thought upon this, and felt piqued at it. He wondered, too if he was
- not sitting clumsily in his chair—if it was not impolite in him to
- cross his legs. Gradually, however, he grew out of his reserve. It dawned
- upon him that Annie was timorous, nervous, about the impression she was
- making on him, and that Isabel listened with real respect and deference to
- what he had to say. He grew bold, and took the lead of the conversation,
- and the two women followed meekly. It was a delightful sensation. He said
- to himself: “It is the easiest thing in the world, once you make the
- plunge. I could talk with women now in the finest drawing room in the
- land.” He sat back in his chair, and told them some anecdotes about Mr.
- Samboye, from which somehow they gathered the notion that he was at the
- best coordinate in rank with Seth. They were more than ever proud of their
- relative, who had so rapidly conquered a high and commanding position for
- himself in that mystic, awesome sphere of journalism. Seth expanded and
- basked in this admiration.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had heretofore found the evenings on the farm stupidly tedious. To sit
- at the big table till bed time, reading by the light of a single kerosene
- lamp, or exchanging dry monosyllables with Albert, offered a dismal
- contrast to the cheerful street lamps, the bright store-windows, the noise
- and gaiety and life of the places of evening resort in Tecumseh. But this
- evening revealed a far more attractive side of country life than he had
- known before. Annie stayed after tea, and the three played dominoes.
- Albert seemed somewhat out of sorts, but they did not mind his silence in
- the least. They chatted gaily over their games, and time flew so merrily
- and swiftly, that Seth was surprised when Annie said she must leave, and
- he discovered that it was a quarter to ten.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How pleasantly the evening has passed,” Isabel said, and smiled at him,
- and Annie answered, “Hasn’t it! I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so
- much—” and she, too, smiled at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old walk over the fields, down the poplar lane, to see Annie home—how
- like the old times it seemed! And yet how far away they were! Sometimes in
- these bye-gone walks, as they came up now in Seth’s memory, he and Annie
- had been almost like lovers—not indeed, in words, but in that
- magnetic language which the moon inspires. It occurred to neither of them
- to saunter slowly, now. They walked straight ahead, and there were no
- “flashes of eloquent silence.” Their conversation was all of Isabel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not as happy as she expected!” said Annie, repeating a question of
- Seth’s; “you can’t guess how wretched she is! Sometimes it’s all she can
- do to keep from breaking down. I am literally the only person she has to
- talk to, that she cares about, week in and week out. Albert is away a
- great deal. I don’t think he is much company when he <i>is</i> home. She
- did try, when she first came, to make some acquaintances round about,
- among the well-to-do farmers’ wives. But she couldn’t bear them, and they
- said she was stuck up, and so <i>that</i> came to nothing. She doesn’t get
- on at all with Aunt Sabrina, either. Poor girl! she is so blue at times
- that my heart aches for her. Of course she wouldn’t let you see it.
- Besides she has been ever so much more cheerful since you came. I <i>do</i>
- hope you will stay as long as you can—just for <i>her</i> sake.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She added this explanation with what sounded to Seth’s ear like gratuitous
- emphasis. The disposition rose swiftly within him to resent this.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are very careful,” he said, “to have me understand that it’s for her
- sake you want me to stay.” Then he felt, even while the sound of his voice
- was in the air, that he had made a fool of himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- His cousin did not accept the individual challenge. “No, of course we are
- all glad to see you. You know we are. But <i>she</i> specially needs
- company; it’s a mercy to her to have somebody to brighten her up a little.
- Really, I get anxious about her at times. I try to run over as much as I
- can, but then I have grandmother to tend, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How is the old lady, by the way? And oh—tell me, Annie, what it was
- that all at once set her against me so. You remember—the day before
- we went fishing, and Isabel saved my life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The answer did not come immediately. In the dim starlight Seth could see
- that his cousin’s face was turned away, and he guessed rather than saw
- that she was agitated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will tell you,” she said at last, nervously, “why grandmother—or,
- no, I will <i>not</i> tell you! You have no right to ask. Don’t come any
- further, I am near enough to the house now. Good night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had hurried away from him. He watched her disappear in the darkness,
- then turned and walked meditatively home.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was not so sure as he had been that it was easy to understand women.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XV.—MR. RICHARD ANSDELL.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was no light
- task to spend a vacation contentedly on the farm. There were thousands of
- city people who did it, and seemed to enjoy it, but Seth found it
- difficult to understand how they contrived to occupy themselves. What work
- on a farm meant, he knew very well; but the trick of idling in the country
- was beyond him. It was too hot, in these July days, for driving much, and
- besides, Albert rarely invited him into the buggy when the grays were
- brought around to the step. The two brothers saw little of each other, in
- fact. It was not precisely a coolness, but Albert seemed to have other
- things on his mind beside fraternal entertainment. The old pastime of
- fishing, too, failed him. In the renovation of the house his fine pole and
- tackle had somehow disappeared, and he had no money wherewith to replace
- them. He had entered upon his vacation unexpectedly, at a time when he
- happened to be particularly short of cash—and there was something in
- Albert’s manner and tone which rendered it impossible to apply to him,
- even if pride had not forbidden it.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was, it is true, the increasing delight of being in Isabel’s
- company, but alongside this delight grew a doubt—a doubt which the
- young man shrank from recognizing and debating, but which forced its
- presence upon his mind, none the less—a doubt whether it was the
- part of wisdom to encourage too much of a friendship with his
- sister-in-law. This friendship had already reached a stage where Aunt
- Sabrina sniffed at its existence, and she hinted dimly to Seth of the
- perils which lurked in the lures of a citified siren, with an expression
- of face and a pointedness of emphasis which clearly had a domestic
- application. There was nothing in this, of course, but the insensate
- meddlesomeness of a disagreeable old maid, Seth said to himself, but still
- it annoyed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- More serious, though, was his suspicion—lying dormant sometimes for
- days, then suddenly awakened by a curt word or an intent glance—that
- Albert disliked to see him so much with Isabel. Often this rendered him
- extremely nervous, for Isabel had no discretion (so the young man put it
- to himself) and displayed her pleasure in his society, her liking for him,
- quite as freely in her husband’s presence as when they were alone. There
- was nothing in this, either, only that it made him uneasy. Hence it came
- about that, just when one set of inclinations most urgently prompted him
- to stay about the house, another set often prevailed upon him to absent
- himself. On these occasions he generally walked over to Thessaly, and
- chatted with John.
- </p>
- <p>
- “John and I have so much to talk about, you know, being both newspaper
- men,” he used to say, with a feeling that he owed an explanation of some
- sort to Isabel. “And then I can see the daily papers there. That gets to
- be a necessity with a journalist—as much so as his breakfast.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I scarcely dare to read a paper now,” Isabel once replied. “It drives me
- nearly mad with longing to get back among people again. I only read heavy
- things, classic poetry and history—and then, thank Heaven, there is
- this embroidery.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was at John’s, or rather on the way there, that Seth met one day a man
- of whom he was in after life accustomed to say, “He altered the whole bent
- of my career.” Perhaps this was an exaggerated estimate of the service
- Richard Ansdell really rendered Seth; but it is so difficult, looking
- back, to truly define the influence upon our fortunes or minds by any
- isolated event or acquaintance, and moreover, gratitude is so wholesome
- and sweet a thing to contemplate, and the race devotes so much energy to
- civilizing it out of young breasts, that I have not the heart to insist
- upon any qualification of Seth’s judgment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Ansdell at this time was nearly forty years of age, and looked to be
- under thirty. He was small, thin-faced, clean-shaven, dark of skin and
- hair, with full, clear eyes, that by their calmness of expression
- curiously modified the idea of nervousness which his actions and mode of
- speech gave forth. He was spending his fortnight’s vacation in the
- vicinity, and he was strolling with his friend the school-teacher, Reuben
- Tracy, toward the village when Seth overtook them. Seth and Reuben had
- been very intimate in the old farm days—and <i>here</i> was a young
- man to the latent influence of whose sobriety of mind and cleanliness of
- tastes he never fully realized his obligation—but since his return
- they had not met. After greetings had been exchanged, they walked together
- to the village, and to the <i>Banner of Liberty</i> office.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the beginning of the week, and publication day was far enough off
- to enable John to devote all his time to his visitors. There was an hour
- or more of talk—on politics, county affairs, the news in the city
- papers, the humors and trials of conducting a rural newspaper, and so
- forth. When they rose to go, John put on his hat, and said he would “walk
- a ways” with them. On the street he held Seth back with a whispered “Let
- us keep behind a bit, I want to talk to you.” Then he added, when the
- others were out of hearing:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have got some personal things to say, later on. But—first of all—has
- Albert said anything since to you about the farm?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a word.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I have been thinking it all over, trying to see where the
- crookedness comes in—for I feel it in my bones that there <i>is</i>
- something crooked. But I am not lawyer enough to get on to it. I’ve had a
- notion of putting the whole case to Ansdell, who’s a mighty bright lawyer,
- but then again, it seems to be a sort of family thing that we ought to
- keep to ourselves. What do you think?—for after all, it is mostly
- your affair.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t see that Albert isn’t playing fair. It must be pretty nearly as
- he says—that he has put as much money in the farm as it was worth
- when he took it. It’s true that father’s will leaves it to him outright—and
- that wasn’t quite as Albert gave us to understand it should be—but
- Albert pledges us that our rights in it shall be respected, and it seems
- to me that that is better than an acknowledged interest in a bankrupt farm
- would be, which we hadn’t the capital to work, and which was worthless
- without it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps you are right.” John paused for a moment, then began again in a
- graver tone: “There’s something else. How are you getting on on the <i>Chronicle?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, well enough; I get through my work without anybody’s finding fault. I
- suppose that is the best test. A fellow can’t do any more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is where you are wrong. ‘A fellow’ can do a great deal more. And
- when you went there I, for one, expected you were going to do a deuced
- sight more. You have been there now—let’s see—thirteen months.
- You are doing what you did when you went there—sawing up miscellany,
- boiling down news notes, grinding out a lot of departments which the
- office boy might do, if his own work weren’t more important. In a word
- you’ve just gone on to the threshold, and you’ve screwed yourself down to
- the floor there—and from all I hear you are likely to stay there all
- your life, while other fellows climb over your head to get into the real
- places.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “From all you <i>hear?</i> What do you mean by that—who’s been
- telling you about me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That you shan’t know, my boy. It is enough that I <i>have</i> heard. You
- haven’t fulfilled your promise. I thought you had the makings of a big man
- in you; I believed that all you needed was the chance, and you would rise.
- You were given the chance—put right in on the ground floor, and
- there you are, just where you were put. You haven’t risen worth a cent.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you expect a fellow to do? Get to be editor-in-chief in thirteen
- months? What could I do that I haven’t done? There have been no vacancies,
- so no one has climbed over my head. I’ve done the work I was set to do—and
- done it well, too. What more can you ask?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth spoke in an aggrieved tone, for this attack seemed as unjust as it
- had been unexpected.
- </p>
- <p>
- John replied, “Now keep cool, youngster! Nobody expected you to get to be
- editor-in-chief in thirteen months, so don’t talk nonsense. And I am not
- blaming you for not getting promotion, when there have been no vacancies.
- What I do mean, if you want to know, is that you have failed to make a
- good impression. You are not in the line of promotion. Workman doesn’t say
- to himself when he thinks of you ‘There’s a smart, steady, capable young
- man on whom we can count, who’s able to go as high as we are able to put
- him.’ No! instead of that he says—but no, never mind. I don’t want
- to hurt your feelings.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you are mighty considerate, all at once,” retorted Seth, angrily. “Go
- on! Say what you were going to say! What is it that Workman says, since
- you’ve been spying on me behind my back?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now you are talking like a fool,” said the elder brother, keeping his
- temper. “I haven’t been spying on you. I have only been commenting on
- facts which have come to my knowledge without seeking and which were
- brought to me by one who has your interests at heart. I have only been
- talking to you as I ought to talk, with the sole idea of benefiting you,
- helping you. If you don’t want to hear me, why I can shut up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth did not reply for a minute or so; then he growled moodily: “Go ahead!
- Let’s hear it all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The ‘all’ can be said in a few words. You have been wasting your time. I
- grant that you have done your work well enough to escape blame—but
- what credit is there in that? a million mechanics do that every day.
- Instead of improving yourself, elevating and polishing yourself, by good
- reading, by studying the art of writing, above all by choosing your
- associates among men who are your superiors, and from whom you can learn,
- you have settled down in a Dutch beer saloon, making associates out of the
- commonest people in town, and having for your particular chum that
- rattle-headed loafer Tom Watts. Do you suppose Mr. Workman doesn’t know
- this? Do you suppose he likes it, or that it encourages him to hope for
- your future?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth was silent longer than ever, this time. When he spoke it was to utter
- something which he instantly regretted: “I haven’t been able to gather
- from your old friends that you were altogether a bigot, yourself, on the
- subject of beer, when you were my age.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortunately John did not get angry; Seth honestly admired and envied his
- elder brother’s good temper as he heard the reply:
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s neither here nor there. Perhaps I did a good many things that I
- want you to avoid. Besides, there was nothing in me. I am good enough as
- far as I go, but if I had worked on a daily paper till my teeth all fell
- out, I should never have got any higher than I was. With you it is
- different; you can go up to the head of the class if you are a mind to.
- But the beer saloon isn’t the way—and Tom Watts isn’t the guide.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is the only friend I have got. What was I to do? It is easy enough to
- talk, John, about my knowing good people and all that, but <i>how?</i>
- That is the question? It isn’t fair to blame me as you do. All the men
- like Workman and Samboye—I suppose you mean them—hold
- themselves miles above me. Do you suppose I’ve ever seen the inside of
- their houses or of their club? Not I! You dump a young countryman in a
- strange city, new at his work, without knowing a solitary soul—and
- then you complain because he gets lonesome, and makes friends with the
- only people who show any disposition to be friendly with him. Do you call
- that fair play?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, there’s something in that,” John replied, meditatively. “Some time
- I’m going to write a leader on the organized indifference of modern city
- society to what becomes of young men who deserve its good offices and
- drift into beer saloons because they are not forthcoming. It would make
- the <i>Banner</i> immensely solid with orthodox people.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You wouldn’t have wanted me to go to the Young Men’s Christian
- Association, I suppose?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No-o, I don’t know that I would. I don’t know, after all, that you could
- have done much differently. But you’ve done enough of it, do you
- understand? You have served your time; you have taken your diploma. It is
- time now to quit. And I can put you on to a man, now, who will help you on
- the other tack. Do you see Ansdell, ahead there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes;—is he the man who told you about Workman and me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- John ignored the question. “Ansdell is one of the cleverest men going;
- he’s head and shoulders over anybody else there is in Tecumseh, or in this
- part of the State. For you to know him will be a college education in
- itself. He is more than a big lawyer, he is a student and thinker; more
- than that, he is a reformer; best of all, he is a man of the world, who
- has sown more wild oats than would fill Albert’s new bins, and there’s not
- an atom of nonsense about him. He knows about you. We’ve talked you over
- together. He understands my idea of what you ought to be, and he can help
- you more than any other man alive—and what is more he will.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was he who told you about me, wasn’t it?” Seth persisted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you will know, it was and it wasn’t. All he said was that he had heard
- Workman speak of you; that he had got the idea from his tone that you were
- not making the most of your opportunities; that he thought this was a
- great pity; and that if he could be of any use to you he would be very
- glad. That is all—and not even your sulkiness can make anything but
- kindness out of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This practically ended the dialogue, for the others had stopped to let the
- brothers come up, and John shortly after left the party.
- </p>
- <p>
- The three men had a long stroll back to the hillside road, with a still
- longer lounge on the grass under the elms by the bridge. Seth watched and
- listened to this swarthy, boyish-looking mentor who had, so to speak,
- thrust himself upon him, very closely, as was natural. Did he like him? It
- was hard, he found, to determine. Mr. Ansdell was extremely opinionated.
- He seemed to have convictions on almost every subject, and he clung to
- them, defended them, expanded them, with almost tearful earnestness. His
- voice was as strong and powerful as his figure was diminutive; he talked
- now chiefly about the Tariff, which he denounced with a vibrating
- intensity of feeling. Seth knew nothing about the Tariff, or next to
- nothing, but he admired what Ansdell said, mainly because it was said so
- well. But he grew quite enthusiastic in his endorsement when he heard his
- Editor, Mr. Samboye, used as a typical illustration of the dishonesty with
- which public men treated that question. After that he felt that it would
- be easy to make friends with Mr. Ansdell.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XVI.—DEAR ISABEL.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was the last day
- but one of Seth’s vacation on the farm. He was not sorry, although the
- last week, by comparison, had been pleasant enough. He had seen a good
- deal of Mr. Ansdell, who interested him extremely, and who had come for
- him three or four times for long walks in the fields. He sat now in the
- living room near Isabel, dividing his attention between her and his book—one
- of Albert’s innumerable novels. The desultory conversation mixed itself up
- with the unfolding work of fiction so persistently that he presently gave
- over the attempt to read, and drew his chair nearer to his sister-in-law.
- It was raining outside, and wet weather always made her want to talk. She
- said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me, Seth, if you have noticed any change in Alvira.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I can’t say that I have. In fact, she seems to me the one person
- about the place who has <i>not</i> altered a bit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “See what eyes men have! Why, she has grown ages older. She goes about now
- muttering to herself like an old, old woman. And the way she looks at one,
- sometimes, it is enough to give one the chills. I tell Albert often that I
- am almost afraid to have her in the house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth chuckled audibly, in good-natured derision. “What a mountain out of a
- mole hill! Why Alvira has glared at people that way, with her little
- black-bead eyes, ever since I was a boy. She doesn’t mean anything by it,—not
- the least in the world. The trouble is, Isabel, that you let your
- imagination run away with you. You are desperately lonesome here, and you
- amuse yourself by conjuring up all sorts of tragic things. You will have
- Aunt Sabrina a professional witch next thing you know, and Milton a mystic
- conspirator, and this plain old clap-boarded farm house a castle of
- enchantment.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had never before assumed even this jocose air of superiority over his
- blond sister-in-law, and he closed his sentence in some little trepidation
- lest she should resent it. But no, she received it with meekness, and only
- protested mildly against the assumption underneath.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I am sure there is something in it. She is brooding about Milton. Not
- in any sentimental way, you know, but it used to be understood, I think,
- that they were to marry, and now he carries himself way above her. Why, I
- can remember, as long ago as when I visited here that summer, when we were
- all boys and girls and cousins together, I heard your mother say they
- would make a match of it some time. But now he avoids the kitchen and her.
- It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, for me to be speculating in this way
- about the love affairs of the servants. But you are driven to it here. You
- have no idea how grateful one gets to be, here in the country, for the
- smallest item of human gossip.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth was still considering whether it was possible for him, in careful
- language, to suggest his own—or rather the Lawton girl’s—view
- of the Milton-Alvira affair, when Isabel spoke again:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Speaking of gossip, there is something I have been tempted half a dozen
- times to mention to you—something I heard almost every day during
- the little time that the women round-about were calling on me. You will
- guess what I mean—the talk about you and Annie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth did not immediately answer, and she continued:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course, you know, Seth, that I wouldn’t speak of it if I thought it
- would be distasteful to you. But I know it used to be the idea that you
- two were marked for each other. I have heard ever so much about it since
- we have lived here. And yet you don’t seem to me to be at all like lovers—hardly
- even like affectionate cousins. I think she has rather avoided the house
- since you have been here, although that, of course, may be only
- imagination. She is such a dear, good girl, and I am <i>so</i> fond of
- her, but still I can hardly imagine her as your wife. You don’t mind my
- speaking about it, do you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth was still at a loss what to say, or, better, how to say it. While she
- had been speaking the contrast between the two young women, which had been
- slumbering in his mind for a year, had risen vividly before him. The
- smile, half-deprecating, half-inviting, with which she looked this last
- question at him, as she laid the everlasting embroidery down, and leaned
- slightly forward for a reply, gave the final touch to his vanishing
- doubts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mind <i>your</i> speaking about it? No, no, Isabel.” He scarcely knew his
- own voice, it was so full of cooing softness. “I am glad you did—for—for
- who has a better right? No, there is nothing in the gossip. Our people—my
- mother, her grandmother—had it in mind once, I believe, but Annie
- and I have never so much as hinted at it between ourselves. Ever since
- mother’s death old Mrs. Warren has, however, taken a deep dislike to me—you
- remember how she forbade Annie to go with us on that fishing trip—but
- even without that——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, I shan’t forget that fishing trip,” Isabel whispered, still with the
- tender smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nor I, you may be very sure.” The caressing tone of his voice sounded
- natural to him now. “As I was saying, even if we two young people had once
- thought of the thing, I fancy it would be different now, anyway. <i>Then</i>,
- I was going to be a farmer. <i>Now</i>, of course, that is all changed. My
- career is in the city, in circles where Annie would not be at home. She is
- a dear, good girl, as you say: nobody knows that better than I do. But you
- must admit she <i>is</i>—what shall I say?—rural. Now that I
- have got my foot on the ladder, there is no telling how far I may not
- climb. It would be simply suicide to marry a wife whom I perhaps would
- have to carry up with me, a dead weight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The youngster was not in the least conscious of the vicious nonsense he
- was talking. In the magnetic penumbra of Isabel’s presence his words
- seemed surcharged with wisdom and good feeling. And the young woman, too,
- who was four years his senior, and who should have known better, never
- suspected the ridiculous aspect of the sentiments to the expression of
- which she listened with such sweet-faced sympathy. We <i>are</i> such
- fools upon occasion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Besides, there is no reason why I should think of marriage at all, for a
- long time to come—at least not until I have made my way up in my
- profession a bit. When the time does come, it will be because I have found
- my ideal—for I have an ideal, you know, a very exalted one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at her keenly, blushing as he did so, to discover if she had
- caught the purport of his words; then he addressed himself, with an
- absence of verbal awkwardness at which he was himself astonished, to
- making it more clear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I mean, Isabel, that my brother has won a prize which would make anything
- less valuable seem altogether worthless in my eyes. If there is not
- another woman in the world like my brother Albert’s wife, then I shall
- never marry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Brother Albert’s wife” looked up at the speaker for an instant—a
- glance which seemed to him to be made of smiles, sadness, delight,
- reproach and many other unutterable things; then she bent over her work,
- and he fancied that the pretty fingers trembled a little between the
- stitches. There was a minute of silence, which seemed a half hour. At last
- she spoke:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Does your brother impress you as being a particularly happy man? I won’t
- ask a similar question about his wife.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth found it necessary to stand up, to do this subject justice. “No!” he
- answered. “He doesn’t deserve such a wife. But because one man is
- incapable of appreciating a treasure which he has won, it’s no reason why
- another man shouldn’t—shouldn’t say to himself ‘I will either marry
- that kind of woman or I’ll marry none.’ Now, <i>is</i> it, Isabel?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps this wife is not altogether the treasure you think she is,” the
- young woman answered, with the indirection of her sex.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth found words entirely inadequate to express his dissent. He could only
- smile at her, as if the doubt were too preposterous to be even suggested,
- and walk up and down in front of her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Still intent upon her work, and with her head inclined so that he saw only
- a softened angle of face beneath the crown of glowing light-hued hair, she
- made answer, speaking more slowly than was usual with her, and with
- frequent pauses:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t think you know all my story, though it is a part of your family’s
- history on both sides. You remember my father—a sporting,
- horse-racing man of the world, and you know that my mother died when I was
- a baby. You knew me here, one summer, as a visiting cousin, and we played
- and quarrelled as children do. Now you know me again as your brother’s
- wife—but that is all. You know nothing of the rest—of how my
- father, proud about me as he was common in other things, kept me mewed up
- among governesses and housekeepers in one part of the house, while his
- flash companions rioted in another part; of how my wretched, chafing
- girlhood was spent among servants and tutors, with not so much as a
- glimpse of the world outside, like any Turkish girl; of how, when your
- brother, because he was a cousin, did become the one friend of my father’s
- who might be invited into the drawing room, and be introduced to me, and
- took a fancy that he would like to marry me, I welcomed even such a chance
- for emancipation, and almost cried for joy; and of how I woke up afterward—no,
- this is what you do not know.” There was a considerable pause here. “And I
- do not know why I tell this to you now, except that I want you to
- understand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I <i>do</i> understand, Isabel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As a matter of fact he did not understand at all, but he thought he did,
- which, for present purposes, came to the same thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you can realize,” she went on, “how I feel at the thought of staying
- here the rest of my life—or, even if we go elsewhere—of having
- my life mapped out for me without any regard to my wishes and aspirations,
- while you are just pluming your wings for soaring, and can fly as high as
- you like with no one to gainsay you. Oh, what it must be to be a man!” She
- was looking up at him now, with enthusiasm supplanting the repining in her
- eyes. “And you love your work, so, too! You are so clever and capable! You
- can be anything you like in your profession—and it is impossible
- that I should ever be anything that I want to be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A month ago, when he first came to the farm, this calm assumption of his
- ability to carve whatever part he desired out of the journalistic cake
- would have fallen upon Seth like cruel and calculated sarcasm. As it was,
- he winced a little under its exaggeration, but the substance pleased him.
- He squared his shoulders unconsciously as he answered:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I am only at the threshold as yet, but if there is any such thing
- as doing it, I am going to push my way on. It doesn’t seem so easy always,
- when you are right in the thick of the fight, but now, after my rest here,
- I feel like an eagle refreshed. I am full of new ideas and ambitions. I
- owe a good deal of it to Ansdell, I suppose. You never saw such a fellow
- for making everybody believe as he does, and take an exalted view of
- things, and long to be doing something great. John prescribed him to me as
- a doctor would some medicine, and I took him more or less under protest,
- but I feel immensely better already.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel took only a languid interest in the inspiring qualities of this
- prodigy, and reverted to her own grievance:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, you will go and conquer your position. I will stay here and count
- those miserable poplars across the road—did you ever see a more
- monotonous row?—and work anti-macassars for no one to see, and mope
- my heart out. Why, do you know, I haven’t one single correspondent!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The full enormity of the situation thus revealed was lost upon Seth, who
- had never written more than half-a-dozen letters in his life, and did not
- see why people who did not have to write letters should want to do so. But
- he said “Indeed!” as compassionately as he could.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, not one. I did think you might have taken pity on me, but for all the
- year that you have been away, I have never heard a word from you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wrote once or twice to Albert,” Seth answered, tentatively, to occupy
- time until he could turn around in his mind the immense suggestion
- involved in this complaint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, and I used to hear at the breakfast table—‘Oh, by the way,
- Aunt Sabrina, Seth sends his love to you and Isabel—’ only this and
- nothing more! What is the good of having a literary man in the family, if
- he doesn’t write you long, nice letters?” The vista which had flashed
- itself before Seth’s mental vision was filled with dazzling light. He
- could not mask the exultation in his voice as he asked:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you really want me to write to you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You ought not to have waited to be asked,” she said, smiling again. “Yes,
- you shall write me—and long letters too, mind—as often as you
- like.” She added after a moment’s pause, in which both had been turning
- over the same idea, “You needn’t be afraid of writing too often. The
- bundle from the post office always comes to me in the morning, hours
- before <i>he</i> gets downstairs. Dana brings it up when he comes back
- from the cheese-factory, and it never goes into any one’s hands but mine.
- Beside, henceforth I shall watch for it all the more carefully.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Next morning Seth prepared once again to leave the homestead, but this
- time with a light heart and a gay demeanor. A month’s absence had served
- so to remodel his views of the <i>Chronicle</i>, that he already felt
- himself to be a personage of importance, in its control. He had been
- constantly spoken of in the village as “one of the editors” of that
- journal, and found so much pleasure in the designation that he had come to
- use it in thinking of himself. He felt himself fired, too, with new
- enthusiasm and power by his talks with Ansdell, and he believed, not only
- that he saw where his past errors had lain, but that he knew now the trick
- of success. Above all, he was to write long letters to Isabel, and receive
- answers equally long and nice from her, and—this gave him an
- especial sense of delight—it was all to be a secret between them.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sun shone brightly, too, after the rain, as if to be in harmony with
- his mood. Albert was more affable than he had been before, and after
- breakfast, and while the carriage was being brought around, gave him some
- cigars for the journey, and a $20 bill for pocket money. These were
- pleasant preludes to a little brotherly conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish you would hurry up and get to have a say on the <i>Chronicle</i>
- as soon as you can, Seth,” said the lawyer, holding him by the lappel in
- fraternal fashion. “You can help me there, help me very materially. I am
- going to be nominated for Congress in this district next year—don’t
- whisper about it yet, but I’ve got it solid. I haven’t let any grass grow
- under my feet since I moved here, and they can’t beat me in the
- Convention. But the <i>Chronicle</i> can do a good deal in the election,
- and I look to you for that. I am not going to Washington without knowing
- my business after I get there. There is a big thing on hand, big for me,
- big for you too. Good-bye now, my boy; I must get upstairs to my writing.
- You won’t forget!”
- </p>
- <p>
- No, Seth promised, very cordially and heartily, he would not forget.
- </p>
- <p>
- When his traps had been piled again into the carriage, and he said
- good-bye to his Aunt and to Alvira, no Isabel was to be seen. She had been
- at breakfast, but had subsequently disappeared. Seth went into the living
- room—no one was there. He opened the door to the stairs and called
- out her name—no answer. As he closed the door again, he heard the
- faintest tinkle imaginable from a piano key. He had not thought of the
- parlor, which was ordinarily unused, but he hastened to it now. Isabel
- stood at the instrument, her head bowed; her finger still pressing the
- key. She turned with a dear little exclamation, which might be either of
- surprise or satisfied expectancy, and held out her hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you <i>wouldn’t</i> go, after all, without saying good-bye to me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, Isabel, you know better!” answered Seth, still very downright for
- his years. He was actually pained at her having fancied him capable of
- such a thing, and while he held her hand, he looked at her with mild
- reproach in his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, do I?” she answered, rather inconsequently. Then she sighed, and
- bowed her fair head again. “Have you given it a thought at all—how
- lonely it will be after you are gone for—for those who are left
- behind? I can’t bear to think of it—I came in here because I
- couldn’t stand and see the horses at the door, and the preparations for
- your going. It is as if the tomb door were swinging back on me again. I am
- foolish, I know—” here the words were much hampered in their flow by
- incipient sobs—“but if you could realize my position—the awful
- desolation of it, the—the—” She broke down altogether, and,
- with the disengaged hand, put her handkerchief to her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth had never seen a young and beautiful woman in tears before, off the
- stage, but his racial instincts served him in the emergency. He gently
- took her hand down again, holding them both, now, in his. He told her,
- again surprising himself by the smoothness and felicity of his words, how
- delightful she had made his visit, how deeply he prized her sympathy and
- compassionated her lot, and how the pangs of regret at parting were only
- solaced by the thought that she had permitted him to write. Then he kissed
- her—and hurried out to the carriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- The handsome, high-bitted grays made short work of the drive to Thessaly
- station, where John was waiting to have a parting word, so that Seth
- scarcely had time to collect his thoughts and settle accounts with
- himself, before the train started. Three hours later when he got off at
- Tecumseh, he had progressed no further in his work of striking a moral
- balance than:
- </p>
- <p>
- “After all, she is my cousin as well as my sister-in-law.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XVII.—AN UPWARD LEAP.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HAT man of
- achievement cannot recall some one short period of his life which seems to
- transcend in significance and value all the rest of his career—when
- great things for which he had only unconsciously waited came to him
- without the asking; when the high court of events rendered its sudden,
- unexpected verdict of success, without costs to him who had never made a
- plea; when the very stars in their courses seemed to have privily
- conspired to fight for him? How swift, inexplicable, even amazing it all
- was! And yet how simple too! And when the first flush of astonishment—half
- delight, half diffidence—had passed, how natural it all seemed; how
- mind and manners and methods all expanded to meet the new requirements;
- how calmly and as a matter of course the dignity was worn, the increment
- appropriated, the mental retina adapted to the widened focus! How easily,
- too, he sloughed off his own conviction that it was all pure luck, and
- accepted the world’s kind judgment of deserved success! Who is it that
- accuses the world, and rails at its hardness of heart? What man among us
- all, in the hour of honest introspection, does not know that he is rated
- too high, that he is in debt to the credulity, the generosity, the dear
- old human tendency to hero-worship, of his fellows?
- </p>
- <p>
- This is an extract from a letter which the successful Seth Fairchild wrote
- a few months ago. Chronologically, it is dated only a couple of years
- after the occurrences with which we are now concerned—but to him an
- interval of decades doubtless seemed to separate the periods. Perhaps the
- modesty of it is a trifle self-conscious, and the rhetoric is of a
- flamboyant kind which he will never, apparently, outgrow, but at all
- events it shows a disposition to be fair as between himself and history.
- The period of great fortune, to which he alludes, is to be glanced at in
- this present chapter—to be limned, though only in outline, more
- clearly no doubt than he himself could be trusted to do it. For, though a
- man have never so fine a talent for self-analysis, you are safe to be
- swamped if you follow him a step beyond your own depth. In cold fact, Seth
- could no more tell how it was that, within one short year, he rose from
- the very humblest post to become Editor of the <i>Chronicle</i>, than
- Master Tom here can explain why he has outgrown his last summer’s
- knickerbockers while his twin brother hasn’t.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had been back at his work in Tecumseh only a month when word came to
- the office one morning that Mr. Tyler could not come—that he had
- been seriously injured in the havoc wrought by a runaway horse. It was too
- early for either editor or proprietor to be on the scene, and Arthur Dent
- at that hour was the visible head of the staff. He and Seth had scarcely
- spoken to each other for months—in fact since that disagreeable
- evening encounter—but he walked over now to our young man’s desk and
- said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Fairchild, you would better take the News to-day. Tyler has been
- badly hurt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Marvelling much at the favoritism of the selection, for Dent had not only
- passed Murtagh over but had waived his own claims of precedence, Seth,
- changed desks. He got through the work well enough, it appeared, but he
- mistrusted deeply his ability to hold the place. Mr. Samboye did not seem
- to approve his promotion, though he said nothing, and the manner in which
- Mr. Workman looked at him in his new chair seemed distinctly critical.
- </p>
- <p>
- After the paper had gone to press, and some little routine work against
- the next morning’s start was out of the way, he wavered between idling the
- remaining two hours away among the exchanges, or attempting an editorial
- article for the morrow, such as Mr. Tyler occasionally contributed. His
- former experience with Mr. Samboye dismayed him a bit, but he concluded to
- try the editorial experiment again. Some things which Ansdell had said one
- day on the Silver question remained in his mind, and he made them the
- basis of a half-column article. He was finishing this when the office-boy
- told him Mr. Workman wished to see him below. He took his Silver article
- with him, vaguely hoping, hardly expecting, to be congratulated on his
- day’s work, and told to keep the desk.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth’s impressions of his employer were that he was a hard, peremptory
- man, and he searched his face now for some sign of softness in vain. Mr.
- Workman motioned him to a seat, and said abruptly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You were on the News desk to-day. Did you take it yourself, or were you
- sent there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Dent told me to take it, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why didn’t he take it himself, or put Murtagh on?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth had it in mind to explain that Murtagh did not come down early
- enough, but he remembered how strenuous the rules were in the matter of
- matutinal punctuality, and concluded to say simply that he didn’t know.
- Mr. Workman looked at him for a moment, made some arabesque figures with
- his pencil on the edge of the blotter, looked at him again, and then said,
- in a milder tone than Seth had supposed his voice capable of:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I may as well be candid with you. I have been very much disappointed in
- you so far. You haven’t panned out at all as your brother led me to expect
- you would.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This was a knock-down blow. Poor Seth could only turn his copy about in
- his hands and stammer: “I am very sorry. In what way have I failed?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be hard to tell exactly in what way. I should say it was in a
- general failure to be the sort of young man I thought you were going to
- be. You have shown no inclination, for example, to write anything—and
- yet your brother praised you up to the skies as a writer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what was the good? I did write a long paragraph when I first came
- here, and handed it in to Mr. Samboye, and he tore it up before my eyes!
- That would be enough to discourage anybody!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, he did that with you too, did he?” Mr. Workman made more arabesques
- on his blotter, shading them with great neatness.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth thought this was a favorable opportunity to get in his Silver
- article, and handed it to the proprietor with a word of explanation. Mr.
- Workman read it over carefully and laid it aside without a syllable of
- comment. There was nothing in his face to show whether he liked it or not.
- He surrounded all his penciled figures with a wavy border, and said again:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then there are your associations. Before ever you came I was discouraged
- at the amount of money and time and health my young men were squandering
- in saloons. It had become a scandal to the town. I get a young man in from
- the country, whose habits are vouched for as perfect, with an idea that he
- will influence the rest, and lo and behold! he becomes the boss guzzler of
- the lot!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is a good deal of justice in that, Mr. Workman—or there was.
- But since I’ve been back this time it has been changed. I have moved into
- another boarding house where I have a room to myself, and I have read at
- home almost every evening when I was not with Mr. Ansdell. I think I see
- the folly of that old way, as clearly as any one can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ansdell and I had a long talk about you the other day. It was he who gave
- me my first idea that there was anything in you. He is something of a
- crank on certain subjects, but he knows men like a book. I have been
- saying to myself that if he liked you there must be more in you than I had
- discovered. If I am right in this, now is your time to show it. It is a
- toss up, the doctors say this afternoon, whether poor Tyler lives or dies.
- In any case he won’t be about in months. You can keep on at the desk for a
- while. We’ll see how you make it go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The next afternoon, when the inky boy brought up the damp first copies
- from the clanging, roaring region of the press, Seth was transfixed with
- bewilderment at seeing his article in the position of honor on the
- editorial page. While he still stared at it, amazed and troubled, Mr.
- Samboye with an angry snort swung around in his chair to face him:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is this Silver thing yours?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And it is your conception of the ethics of journalism, is it, to sneak
- leaders into the composing, room without authority?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I sneaked nothing in! I gave the copy to Mr. Workman last night. I am as
- much surprised to see it the leader as you are.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Samboye rose abruptly, and strode through the room to the stairs. They
- were ricketty at best and they trembled, the whole floor trembled, under
- his wrathful and ponderous tread.
- </p>
- <p>
- The fat-armed foreman, who was in on his eternal quest for copy, had heard
- this dialogue. He grinned as the Editor slammed the door below, and
- chuckled out “He’ll get his comb cut now. The boss ordered your thing to
- be the leader himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Samboye presently returned with his broad face glowing crimson, and
- seated himself at his work again in gloomy silence. He made more erasures
- than usual, and soon gave it up altogether, taking his hat and stick with
- an impatient gesture, and stamping his way out.
- </p>
- <p>
- Time went on. The luckless Mr. Tyler died, and Seth became confirmed in
- his place. He had developed more strongly, perhaps, than any other one
- trait, the capacity for system, and he was able to so remodel and expedite
- the routine work of the News desk that he had a good deal of time for
- editorial writing. His matter was never again given the place of honor,
- but it came to be and important and regular feature of the page.
- </p>
- <p>
- He worked hard on the paper—and almost equally hard, by spells, at
- home evenings. He did drop in at Bismarck’s or some like place, for a few
- moments now and then, but he was careful to avoid games, or any further
- intimacy with habitués. Had it not been for Ansdell and Dent, this part of
- his new regimen would have been well nigh impossible, for the gregarious
- instinct was strong in him—as it is in any young man worth his salt—and
- associations of some sort were as necessary as food to him. He had
- discovered, long before this, that Dent was an old acquaintance of
- Ansdell’s, and that he, in fact, had told the latter about Seth and his
- profitless courses, and interested the lawyer in his case.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had learned, too, that this pale “Young Man Christian” as Watts had
- called him derisively, had from the first been well-disposed toward him,
- and, when the emergency of Tyler’s absence came up, had waived alike his
- own claims to preferment and his justifiable personal pique, and thrust
- Seth forward into the place because he felt that he needed some such
- incentive to make a man of himself. This was very high conduct, and Seth
- tried hard to like Dent a great deal in return. He never quite succeeded.
- They were too dissimilar in temperament to ever become close friends. Seth
- explained it to himself by saying that Dent was too cold and
- non-emotional. But Dent himself never seemed conscious of anything lacking
- in their relations, and they were certainly cordial and companionable
- enough when they met, generally two evenings a week, at Mr. Ansdell’s
- chambers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nothing less like the bachelor’s den dear to tradition can be imagined.
- There were no pipes, for the lawyer smoked cigars and nothing else; there
- was no litter of papers, opened books, pamphlets, scraps and the like, for
- he was the soul of order; no tumbled clothes, odd boots, overflowing
- trunks, etc., for he was the pink of neatness. He used to like to describe
- himself in the words with which Evelyn paints his father, as “of a
- thriving, neat, silent, methodical genius,” but it was always with a
- twinkling eye, for surely no man was ever less silent. He was a born
- talker—nervous, eager, fluent, with a delicate sense of the sound
- and shading of words, a keen appreciation of all picturesque and salient
- points, a rare delight in real humor, and, above all, with tremendous
- capabilities of earnestness. Conceive such a man, if you can—for
- there will never be another like him—and then endow him in your mind
- with a marvelous accumulation of knowledge, with convictions upon every
- conceivable subject, and with nothing short of a passion for enforcing
- these upon those of whom he was fond—and some idea of the perfect
- ascendancy he gained over Seth will have been obtained.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Ansdell was neither impeccable nor omniscient. There was much in both
- his theories and his practice which would not commend itself to the moral
- statutes of the age; he attempted no defense, being incredulous as to the
- right of criticism upon personal predilections. But he had a flaming
- wrath, a consuming, intolerant contempt, for men who were unable to
- distinguish between private tastes and public duty. On this subject of
- public duty he was so strenuous, so deeply earnest, that often there
- seemed but a microscopic line between his attitude and fanaticism. But
- this zeal had its magnificent uses. Often it swayed despite themselves the
- politicians of his party who had least in common with him, and who
- disliked him and vaunted their conventional superiority to him even while
- they were being swept along toward nobler purposes than their own small
- souls could ever have conceived, in the current of feeling which his
- devotion had created.
- </p>
- <p>
- He took complete possession of Seth’s mind, and he worked wonders upon it.
- There is neither room here, nor power, to analyze these achievements. The
- young man, heretofore through circumstances slow and mechanical, revealed
- under the inspiration of this contact his true temperament. He became as
- receptive as a sensitized plate in the camera. He seemed to take in facts,
- theories, emotions, prejudices, beliefs, through the very pores of his
- skin. He found himself hating one line of public action, and all its
- votaries, vividly; he found himself thrilling with violent enthusiasm for
- another line, and its exponents—such an enthusiasm as exiled men
- tremble under when they hear the national air of their native land.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was not always right. Very often indeed he did injustice, in his mind,
- and in the types as well, to really well-meaning men who after their
- lights were just as patriotic as he was. He condemned with undue ferocity
- where he could not unreservedly praise, and, like most men of
- three-and-twenty who sit on the tripod of judgment upon their fellow
- mortals, he made many mistakes. But his mental and moral advance, despite
- these limitations, was tremendously swift, and, in the main, substantial.
- No man ever made the world budge an inch ahead who had not well developed
- the capacity for indignation at weak and wrong things. This indignant
- faculty grew and swelled in Seth’s nature like a strong vine, spreading
- upon the tree of his admiration for his ideals.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had a fair income now—twenty dollars a week—and he lived
- very well, having a room in a good house, and taking his meals down town.
- This was a condition of life which had always commended itself to his
- imagination, and he revelled now in realising it. Of course he saved no
- money. Through Ansdell and others he had made the acquaintance of a number
- of Tecumseh men of position, and he had been asked a little to their
- houses, but he had not gone more than once. This single experience did not
- dismay or humiliate him; he flattered himself that he came out of it with
- credit. But it did not interest him; it was wofully difficult to talk to
- the women he met—to know what to say to them. It was the easier to
- come back from this one excursion to his old Bohemian bachelor notions,
- and justify them to himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- The correspondence with Isabel had not been altogether so attractive as he
- had anticipated. It had its extremely pleasant side, of course, but there
- were drawbacks. She wrote well, but then most of her writing was about
- herself, which grew wearisome after a time. It was difficult too, to find
- time to answer her letters always when the philandering mood was upon him,
- and in this matter he found himself curiously the creature of his moods.
- The routine of daily newspaper toil had rendered him largely independent
- of them in his ordinary work. He wrote about as well one day as another.
- But there were seasons when he could not write to Isabel at all. Then he
- would say to himself that the need of doing so was a nuisance, and in this
- frame of mind he would generally end by reproaching himself for even
- entertaining the idea of a mild flirtation with his brother’s wife. Not
- that there was anything wrong in it, of course; he was quite clear on this
- point; but it was so useless, such a gratuitous outlay of time and talent!
- </p>
- <p>
- But then next day, perhaps, a good dinner, or a chance glimpse of fresh
- romance in the exchanges, or some affecting play at the theatre of an
- evening, would bring back all the glamour of her pretty, tender face, the
- magic of her eyes, the perfume of her tawny hair. And then he could write,
- and did write, often with a force of sweet rhetoric, a moving quality of
- caressing ardor, which it is difficult to distinguish from love making.
- </p>
- <p>
- To him these letters did not mean that at all; they were really abstract
- reflections of the sentimental side of his nature, which might have been
- evoked by almost any likable, intelligent woman.
- </p>
- <p>
- But to the wife on the farm they seemed deeply, deliciously, personal.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XVIII.—BOLTING THE TICKET.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was the year of
- a great political revival—coming none too soon.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is a part of the history of human progress that grand moral movements,
- once they have fulfilled their immediate purpose, swing backward to the
- establishment of some new abuse. The net gain is, no doubt, century by
- century, continuous. But to those who look for episodic interest rather
- than epochal meaning the march of the race must often seem crab like—as
- when a Henry VIII utilizes a reforming revolt to crush and plunder a vast
- system of benefaction, and create a hard-fisted, commercial plutocracy
- with one hand, while calling into existence with the other a permanent
- class of starving poor; or when a Bonaparte makes the waning impetus of a
- democratic uprising serve his imperial ambition, and converts the legions
- of the Republic into the guards of a Caesar.
- </p>
- <p>
- So, in our own time, in our own country, craft and greed had climbed to
- the control of a great organization, baptized in the name of Freedom and
- excited still with the thoughts of its tremendous achievements, and
- diverted its forces to the service of base ends.
- </p>
- <p>
- This ignoble mastery had not gone unchallenged. More than one revolt
- against it had given promise, for a little, of success. But each in its
- failure had but repeated the familiar experience of yeomanry against
- trained troops, of sporadic, scattering popular impulses against the cool,
- consecutive plans of organized power. But it is the fate of despotisms,
- whether of a man or of a machine, to by excesses sap their own
- foundations. There came a time when the political usurpers who, through
- the listlessness of some citizens, the ancient prejudices of others, the
- mean lust for profit and place of still a third class, had attained power,
- went just a step too far.
- </p>
- <p>
- As this is a romance, and not a political history, it is permitted to
- avoid both dates and any details which might seem to fix a particular
- occurrence, and ask the reader to conceive that the crisis grew out of the
- manner in which these politicians obtained control of an imaginary but
- important Convention—that they bribed delegates, that they forged
- telegrams to secure a majority for themselves on the organizing committee,
- and that they made drunk the poor tool they had selected for Chairman and
- locked him in his hotel room that he might not escape them. It strains
- credulity to assume all this, I know, but its acceptance is essential to
- the story. Fortunately it is less difficult to credit the corollary—that
- the decent people of the State, led by an honest press, rose <i>en masse</i>
- and pulverized this machine at the following election.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was at the outset of this crisis that Seth became Editor of the
- Tecumseh <i>Chronicle</i>. The young man had been, it need scarcely be
- said, deeply interested in the events which led up to it, and when the
- first of the party papers came out frankly, the morning after the
- Convention, refusing to support its nominations, he was in a tremor of
- delight. He scarcely dared hope that the <i>Chronicle</i> would follow
- their lead, but still he did hope. Mr. Samboye remained downstairs in
- consultation with Mr. Workman longer than usual on that eventful forenoon.
- They were settling the policy of the paper, of course, and the young news
- editor, perfunctorily weeding out copy for the “first side,” was conscious
- all the while of being eagerly anxious to know what this policy was to be.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Samboye presently came up, took his seat without the ordinary prelude
- of conversation, and began writing. He finished his article, still without
- a word to any one, and took it down to Mr. Workman. He was absent but a
- few moments. On his return Seth asked him:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do we bolt the ticket?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Before he could answer, a telegraph boy came running up the stairs (this
- one actually did run) with a dispatch for Mr. Samboye. The editor opened
- and read it in a puzzled way at first, then more carefully and with a
- light of comprehension on his broad face. He folded the telegram up
- carefully, put it into his inner vest pocket and said to Seth:
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, we occupy a picturesque position on the top rail of the fence.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The editor did not seem quite himself that day. He stayed about the
- editorial room instead of going out to lunch, until the leader proof was
- ready, and then he asked to read it himself, instead of letting it go in
- the ordinary course to the proof-reader. He made a good many corrections
- on it, which was unusual for him. Finally, about half-an-hour before the
- paper went to press, he took his departure, saying briefly to Seth that he
- would not return that day.
- </p>
- <p>
- Two hours later the office boy summoned Seth to the counting-room below.
- Mr. Workman sat alone at his desk, with the day’s <i>Chronicle</i> spread
- out before him, and with the original proof-sheet of the leader in his
- hand. He motioned Seth to close the doors, and to take a seat close beside
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have read this leader?” he asked, after a moment’s silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you think of it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shouldn’t like to say all that I think of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Neither should I,” replied Mr. Workman with an iron-clad smile. He was
- very pale, and Seth scented a storm in the manner in which the grim smile
- faded from his face after an instant of hovering, as a gleam of wintry
- sunshine passes off the snow. “There’s a story—a very curious story—back
- of this leader. I only know part of it; perhaps you can help me to get at
- the rest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Not knowing what to say, Seth remained silent. The proprietor continued:
- “When this leader left my hands this morning, it bolted the ticket, out
- and out. There was no mistake about it. It was squarefooted. As it is now,
- it’s neither fish, flesh nor fowl. It condemns the Convention and the
- frauds, but it practically says that the result must be accepted. The
- worst of it is I didn’t see the paper until the edition had been worked
- off. The alterations in the proof here, which make all the difference
- between white and black, are in Samboye’s hand. Did he say anything to you
- about it? Was anybody up in the editorial room to see him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No one came up to see him; he said nothing to me except that we were on
- the fence. That disgusted me so much that I asked nothing further.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did he say that when he came up from here—or later, after he had
- gone over the proof?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He said it when—or no, hold on—he received a dispatch just
- before;” and Seth recounted the episode of the telegram.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Workman was much impressed with this. He covered his blotter thick
- with scrolls and geometrical figures while he pondered it. At last he
- spoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t know where the telegram came from?—no, of course not. I
- think I know about where, and I think I can guess about what it said. It
- said that, in this matter of bolting tickets, one day’s delay might make
- an immense amount of difference, and that it would be worth his while to
- keep the <i>Chronicle</i> non-committal in its first issue by hook or by
- crook. Take my word for it, that is what it said in substance. The fellows
- who sent it were scared about the <i>Chronicle</i>. They knew what an
- effect its course would have on the weeklies, most of which go to press
- to-morrow. They couldn’t spend money better than in having us accept the
- ticket, and not only commit ourselves but the country editors—and <i>they’ve
- bought Samboye!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a long silence. The two men looked at each other. Finally
- Workman said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “The worst feature of it is, there is no way of getting at the thing—of
- proving it. I suppose I could get an order compelling the Company to
- produce the telegram, but I am not sure, and then it would be a big
- scandal and a big expense.” He lapsed into pencil work again and sighed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But is Samboye that kind of man?” asked Seth. “Oh yes, I have no
- illusions on that score. I very nearly caught him in a thing of this sort—on
- a smaller scale, of course—three years ago.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But why then——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why have I kept him? You were going to ask. Well, he is a good man in his
- way. He is an immensely clever writer, if you don’t care much for solid
- argument, and do care for decorative stuff, with a good deal of fun, and
- epigram, and big words. People used to talk about his articles. I suppose
- hundreds of people buy the <i>Chronicle</i> just to read them. Well, we
- will have to lose those people, and all the others who will quarrel with
- us for bolting the ticket. For she’s going to be bolted! So you better go
- to bed early to-night, and eat raw meat for breakfast, for we want a
- leader to-morrow that will make their hair curl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean——” began Seth in a flutter of strange excitement.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, you will have to take hold. Samboye shall never show his face in
- that room again. That’s settled! I may get somebody else, later—we’ll
- see. But you can carry it along for a time, can’t you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll try—but I am afraid——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You needn’t be afraid. In a campaign you simply want straightforward,
- red-hot, to-the-point writing. It is the rest of the year, when one must
- write general matter, that pulls on a man. Besides, Ansdell will help you
- out, if you need him. Oh, yes, and that reminds me—your brother
- Albert didn’t show to very good advantage in that Convention. He might
- easily have made a better beginning in politics than that. From all
- accounts he had the Dearborn County delegates in his pocket, and, although
- these other scandals have diverted attention from it, I think the way they
- ratted over was about the worst thing in the whole affair.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It wasn’t nice, for a fact,” said Seth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t had it mentioned in the paper, mostly on your account. But I am
- not so clear about keeping silent next week, when the Congressional
- Convention comes up. Your brother, I suppose, has Dearborn County solid
- for his own candidacy. But here in Adams County the delegates are for
- Ansdell—and of course he is our sort of man. I don’t think much of a
- party paper interfering before the nomination is made, but this may be a
- case where it will be necessary—especially if Abe Beekman, up in Jay
- County, tries any of his funny work. However, it will be time enough to
- cross that bridge when we get to it. Meanwhile, say not a word to anybody,
- in the office or out of it, about what has happened. Just go ahead with
- the work, and pay attention to no one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no scandal. Mr. Samboye took his punishment quietly, and left
- Tecumseh shortly afterward, ostensibly on a long vacation. There was some
- little gossip, but no whisper of the actual facts in the case.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth surprised himself by the excellence and evenness of his work in the
- new position. Probably he will never do better or stronger writing than he
- did in this his first campaign. For one thing, it is doubtful if any
- political contest can ever again appeal to his enthusiasm, and stir all
- his emotions to the glowing point of ardency, as this one did. In one
- sense his new position was embarrassing, for a number of the old time
- readers of the <i>Chronicle</i> refused to support it now against their
- party, and some of them said very disagreeable things about the youngster
- rattling about in Samboye’s shoes. But there was another class, a larger
- class it seemed to him, who shared his enthusiasm, and, in their excited
- admiration for the course of the paper, heaped praises upon him even
- beyond his deserts. So he worked on, writing almost the entire page daily,
- coming down early in the morning and staying long after the paper was out,
- and giving scarcely a thought to the outside world.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had barely seen Ansdell since his promotion. He felt an even greater
- sense of loss in this than he would have done under ordinary
- circumstances, for the tremendous mental outpouring to which he was daily
- subjected made him almost famished, at times, for food in the form of
- conversation with this man who, of all others, most sympathized with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- But there was a difficulty in the way—of which Seth’s sensitiveness
- made, no doubt, a great deal too much. The fight for the Congressional
- nomination in the district was attracting attention all over the State,
- and, as evil luck would have it, Seth’s brother was pitted against Seth’s
- dearest friend. It was no ordinary contest, in which a man could with ease
- maintain a friendly neutrality. Everywhere the struggle in the
- Thirty-sixth District was regarded as a sample conflict, as embodying in
- itself all the features of the larger issue between the machine and the
- people. Albert Fairchild had identified himself so thoroughly with the
- party organization, and had played so prominent a part in the scandals
- which provoked the revolt, that his cause was distinctly that of the
- politicians; while Ansdell was just as distinctively the representative of
- the independent and rebellious element. In no other district of the State
- were the lines so clearly drawn.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a fortnight or so after Seth’s assumption of the editorship that
- the District Convention was held—at the little village of Tyre, some
- dozen miles from Thessaly, up in Jay County. The <i>Chronicle</i> had
- taken no part in the contest. No one doubted that its sympathies were with
- Ansdell, but still it had not said so. The night before the Convention Mr.
- Workman advised Seth to write to his brother, warning him that if he were
- nominated the <i>Chronicle</i> could not support him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So long as we are in the bolting business, we might as well be hanged for
- a sheep as a lamb,” said the proprietor.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was not a pleasant task, but Seth performed it as graciously as he
- could.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no news from Tyre next day save that Mr. Beekman of Jay was also
- a candidate, and that the Convention was in a deadlock. The second day,
- along with the news announcement that the Convention, after seventy-odd
- fruitless ballots, had adjourned for a week, came a despatch from Albert
- begging Seth to visit the farm for a couple of days, and talk the thing
- over, before the <i>Chronicle</i> took action. Upon consultation with Mr.
- Workman Seth replied that this was impossible, owing to the necessities of
- his work.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then there came a letter from Albert, brief, but very much to the point.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>DEAR Brother: I am sorry if your work must suffer by your coming to
- me, but I think I have a claim upon you superior to even that of the </i>Chronicle<i>.
- If I have not, I ought to have. I decline to believe that, if you
- represent the matter to him as really imperative, my former friend, Mr.
- Workman, will place any obstacles in your way. But if he does I still
- insist that your choice between him and me must be a final one. I do not
- write a word to you about gratitude. I simply say, be here at the farm on
- Sunday—or never again.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Albert</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After this there was nothing to do but for Seth to telegraph that he would
- come.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIX.—THE WELCOME.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Seth walked
- over from the Thessaly station, Sunday forenoon, to the farm, he was not,
- it may be imagined, in a placid frame of mind. There lay before him an
- interview with his brother which could not, in the nature of things, be
- pleasant, and which might very easily be distinctly unpleasant. It was his
- duty to say sundry things to Albert which were not in themselves nice, and
- if Albert was still in the mood shown forth by his peremptory letter,
- these remarks would very likely produce a scene. Seth was in no sense
- afraid of his brother, nor had the thrifty thought that this brother was a
- rich, childless man, to offend whom would be a gratuitous economic
- blunder, ever entered his head. The youngster had no faculty whatever for
- financial prudence. But he was grateful—almost ridiculously grateful—by
- nature. The trait is not a rare one, even in these days when a new
- civilization has substituted for individual patronage and beneficence the
- thanks-to-nobody trade-unionism of universal conceit and rivalry, but it
- was abnormally developed in the youngest of the Fairchilds.
- </p>
- <p>
- He said to himself, as he crossed the fields toward the white and red
- land-mark of house and barns on the side hill, that he owed everything in
- the world to this brother. Whatever there might be in his public attitude
- to condemn, however pernicious his politics might be, still it was his
- fraternal feeling and generosity which had created the vast gulf between
- Seth the plow-yokel and Seth the editor. These reflections brought no
- comfort to the young man.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some perverse agency whispered to him, as he strode along over the
- stubble, that after all he had never really liked Albert; and this
- liberality of his, too, might it not be a mere cheap mess of pottage,
- thrown to Seth to console him for the loss of his rights in the farm? John
- had always been incredulous as to Albert’s true goodness in this matter;
- might there not be something in these suspicions? Seth tried manfully to
- combat these ungenerous doubts, but they forced themselves upon his mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then there was Albert’s treatment of his wife! Seth had never been clear
- as to the exact nature of Isabel’s grievance against her husband. No
- specific allegation of cruelty or neglect, much less of infidelity, had
- ever been laid by her at Albert’s door in his brother’s hearing. Indeed,
- so far as Seth’s observation went, Albert had always appeared to be a
- decent enough sort of husband, complaisant even if somewhat indifferent,
- and acquiescent to the verge of weakness, in her whims. He seemed to
- refuse her nothing, in the matter of having her own way, and if he most
- often broke the ruling conjugal dumbness by satirical comments on her
- actions and opinions, he at least never seriously attempted to fetter
- either. This sounded like the description of a tolerable husband, as
- husbands go. But up against it was to be set Isabel’s plaintive, pitiful,
- persistent assertion of unhappiness with him. And clearly she ought to
- know what her husband was like a good deal better than an outsider could.
- </p>
- <p>
- So the arguments did battle in Seth’s mind, as he climbed the last fence,
- and felt his feet on ancestral soil. He had now only to cross a short
- stretch of pasture land to be at his journey’s end.
- </p>
- <p>
- Perfect silence rested on the farm. The fat cows lay lazily about him,
- comfortably chewing the cud of sweet aftermath; the cluster of bright,
- neat buildings fell into picturesque lines of composition before him, in
- the soft, hazy sunshine of Indian summer. The background of scarlet and
- ochre and deep purple-browns in the woods beyond, of warm mauve hills and
- pale, fluffy clouds above; the shaggy old horse, standing in tranquil
- bliss, with his head over the fence; the aged shepherd-dog stretched
- asleep on the kitchen door-stone in the sunny distance—all brought
- to him a sense of content and beauty which warmed his heart and calmed his
- thoughts. The spell of the peaceful, restful scene soothed him. Then, as
- by magic, the whole picture seemed to take on the charm of Isabel’s
- presence. “I am to see her!” he said aloud, almost exultantly.
- </p>
- <p>
- There had been no special pleasure in this prospect, a few hours before.
- Indeed, it had been months since he had been conscious of a genuine desire
- to meet his sister-in-law. At times of late it had even seemed to him that
- a meeting would be a source of embarrassment, just as the necessity of
- keeping up the clandestine correspondence presented itself often to him in
- the light of a bore.
- </p>
- <p>
- But now—yes! she was walking forth swiftly to meet him—coming
- over the grass with a gliding haste which had a wealth of welcome in every
- motion. The very genius of the mellow, warm-hearted season she seemed to
- his eyes as she advanced, clad in some soft, indefinite stuff,
- loose-flowing, and that in tint under the red noon sun could be the shadow
- on golden grain, or the light on dark puce grapes, or the dim, violet haze
- over the distant valley. She was near him now, beaming with unaffected
- delight, reaching out her hands in greeting—and his heart went to
- meet her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Seth! How good of you to come!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had almost thrown herself into his arms, and had stood upon tiptoe to
- be kissed. He held himself back from the embrace, but he did kiss her, and
- he swung her hands now in his, looking into her glowing eyes with tender,
- responsive intentness, and smiling his joy. This reception did make him
- very happy, but he had also a great uneasiness lest some of the folks
- should be observing them from the windows of the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- She divined his thoughts, and said, gayly: “They are all at church!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What? Albert too?” Seth knew that his brother was not of a religious
- turn; but he swiftly bethought himself, and added “Oh, I forgot that
- election is coming on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” she chirruped, springing along by his side, her arm tight in his,
- her walk reflecting exultantly her emotion, “he is in New York. He will be
- back to-morrow. He has telegraphed me to have you wait.” She dropped into
- a mock-serious tone: “That is, of course, if you would <i>like</i> to
- wait?” She looked up archly: “Do you much mind waiting?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do I <i>mind!</i>” He could only look his delight. His voice trembled.
- </p>
- <p>
- She made a tiny skip, and lifted her face to him again, radiant with
- happiness. “Do you know,” she said, “I could run and jump like any little
- child, I am so wild with joy! It seems such an age since we were together
- last! Only letters—but they were very nice, though. You dear boy,
- who taught you to write such pretty letters—?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He pressed her arm closer in his. “Who taught me everything that is
- sweet?” he whispered. It was all very delicious, but still it troubled
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- They entered the house, and he excused himself while he took his hand-bag
- up to his old room, and made his toilet after the long hot walk. As he
- occupied himself thus, and brushed his novel beard, his thoughts were much
- perturbed. It was very far from his ideas to make love to his brother’s
- wife. This bald statement of the situation which framed itself now in his
- mind, almost for the first time, repelled and alarmed him. Yet it seemed
- to sum up the state of affairs fairly. If there was not lovemaking in
- every feature of that meeting out on the lawn, then his conceptions of the
- tender passion were all at fault.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By Jove, it mustn’t come to that!” he said to himself. “A fellow ought to
- be able to be fond of his sister-in-law, and be pleasant to her, and
- sympathize with her and all that, without going beyond the bounds, and
- making a scoundrel of himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And it was with a deep resolution to be careful, and watch all his words,
- that he descended the stairs. He had taken out of his valise two front
- pages of a Sunday newspaper, containing “Jeff Brigg’s Love Story,” which
- he had saved a while before for Isabel, and he gave them now to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here is something I cut out for you, Isabel; it is a very pretty story,
- and I know you will like it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, how sweet of you! How well you know just what will please me most of
- all! And you shall read it to me! The other stories you have sent me were
- only moderately nice, because I had to read them by myself, but this—oh!
- this will be enchanting!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She arranged an easy chair—a low, capacious chair with light blue
- the dominant color in its covering—close beside the window in the
- parlor which overlooked the poplars, and seated herself in it. Seth
- brought a hassock for her feet, and then put his own chair along side,
- where he could see her, and still get a good light on the print. It was
- not easy for him to begin the reading, so great was the fascination of
- looking at his companion. The sunlight flared upon the white curtains
- above her, and its reflections glowed back again from her crown of golden
- braids, luminous against the azure of the chair, and tipped with soft
- radiance her rounded profile, in cameo-relief against the deep olive of
- the poplars. Isabel was an artist.
- </p>
- <p>
- He made a beginning at last, and read until the democrat-wagon drove up in
- the yard, with its load of church-goers. She made a little mouth at the
- interruption.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose Sabrina will come in now, and dinner will be ready soon. But
- afterwards we can be quiet again, for she always reads the Bible in her
- own room Sunday afternoons.”
- </p>
- <p>
- All through the cold dinner, despite the necessity of answering Aunt
- Sabrina’s and Milton’s remarks, Seth found his mental vision fixed on that
- beautiful profile against the leafy background; especially sweet was the
- portrait when the eyes were closed, and the lovely fullness above the
- lids, as in the face of a Madonna, was revealed in the wavering light.
- </p>
- <p>
- The story was not to be finished that afternoon, for Elhanan Pratt and his
- daughter dropped in almost before the meal was finished, and a little
- later Annie Fairchild came. There was not even much consolation in the
- pretty grimaces expressive of discontent which Isabel from time to time,
- when the visitors were not looking, confided to Seth. It was a very dull
- afternoon.
- </p>
- <p>
- The venerable Mr. Pratt, a weazen, verbose little “gentleman-farmer,” who
- wore a huge black satin stock over his high flaring collar opening behind,
- and remained clean-shaven, in pious memory of Henry Clay and the coon
- campaign, sat on the edge of his chair and droned commonplaces by the
- hour. He evidently had an axe to grind by his visit, and he was much
- disappointed by Albert’s absence. But if he could not see “the coming
- Congressman,” as he called him once or twice, and sound that new political
- magnate as to his own renomination for the Assembly, he could at least
- enjoy the monopoly of a long conversation with the Editor of the Tecumseh
- <i>Chronicle</i>, and impress that young man with the breadth and value of
- his views. So Seth was forced to spend three dreary hours, answering as
- briefly as might be, listening wearily, and stealing stray glances at the
- three young women, who made a brighter group on the other side of the
- parlor stove. Once or twice he tried tentatively to engraft himself upon
- their conversation, and choke old Elhanan off, but the solemn little bore
- relentlessly brought him back to the dry bones of politics. Thus it
- happened that he had barely had an opportunity of exchanging a word with
- his cousin Annie, when she stood up and said, “I must be going.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He walked over to her now, and put his hand in a brotherly way on her
- shoulder, as he helped her on with her cloak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve scarcely had a word with you, Annie,” he said, smiling. “How is your
- grandmother? I needn’t ask how <i>you</i> are. You grow prettier everyday.
- And how do you get on with your school?”—for the girl was now
- teaching in the district school house over the hill.
- </p>
- <p>
- She answered, “Oh, grandmother is about the same; perhaps a little weaker,
- but as bright mentally as ever. You are looking well, Seth, and quite the
- man now. Your beard becomes you—doesn’t it, Isabel? We are so sorry
- you can’t come to-morrow night. We see so little of you since you have
- become a city man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sorry that I can’t come!” repeated Seth after her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come where?” Isabel interposed with a ready explanation. “There is to be
- a husking over at Crump’s to-morrow evening—the first of the season.
- There will be a big party of young people, and Crump sent over by Annie an
- invitation for us. But I have explained that you are here on business,
- which may very likely occupy you to-morrow evening, and that in any case
- you would have to write your leaders for the next day’s paper. We are ever
- so sorry, Annie,” she added, turning to the school-teacher now, “but you
- know this is a terribly busy time with Seth, and we mustn’t think of
- letting our little country sociables interfere with his work. Some time,
- soon, he will come for a real vacation, instead of a flying business trip,
- and then we can monopolize him—and we will, too, won’t we, Annie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie smiled, a little faintly, as if her heart were not altogether in it,
- and replied, “Yes, to be sure we will.” She added, to Seth, “I won’t say
- goodbye. I suppose I shall see you again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He assented, and went to the door with her, and stood on the steps
- watching her as she walked away in the autumn dusk. Decidedly she <i>was</i>
- a pretty girl!
- </p>
- <p>
- The Pratts, father and daughter, consented upon the shadowiest suggestion
- of an invitation to stay and partake of the picked-up Sunday tea, and that
- involved their spending the evening. Aunt Sabrina came in, and the talk
- was dreary and general. So “Jeff Briggs” and his amatory affairs went over
- to the morrow.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the morning Seth walked over to Thessaly and saw John. The interview
- depressed him. John had had some idea of following the <i>Chronicle’s</i>
- lead, and bolting the State ticket, but the county politicians had bullied
- him out of the thing by threatening the destruction of the job-printing
- business connected with the <i>Banner of Liberty</i>, and the boycotting
- of the paper itself. All his inclinations, too, were toward Ansdell in the
- Congressional race; but Albert had loaned him some money, and, beside, he
- couldn’t see his way clear to disregarding, openly at least, the fraternal
- tie. He was consequently in a savage mood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m thinking of taking out the head-line of the paper this week,” he
- growled, with a sardonic humor, “and putting in instead a cut of a runaway
- slave, with a bundle over his shoulder, which is in the job-room here,
- left over from the days when there was slavery in New York State, and
- masters used to advertise in the old paper for fugitives. ‘<i>Banner of
- Liberty</i> ’ indeed! By heaven, it ought to be ‘<i>Banner of
- Bondage!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no comfort or profit in discussing the situation, either general
- or local, with John. He neither knew nor cared, he swore, what Albert’s
- chances were to dissolve the deadlock on the morrow. He might or he
- mightn’t; it was all one to him, and apparently to the party, who were the——!
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth left John to his bad temper and language, and returned to the farm in
- the afternoon. A telegram from Albert awaited him.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>“New York, Oct. 19.—If possible conclude business, home to-night,
- at latest to-morrow morning. Wait for me at all hazards.—Albert.”</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- To provide against a possible delay over Tuesday, Seth devoted the
- afternoon, and the earlier part of the evening, to writing matter for his
- paper, which Dana was to convey to Thessaly for the early morning train,
- when he went to the cheese-factory. If Albert was coming at all that
- night, he would arrive about eight.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nine o’clock came. Aunt Sabrina, after sitting in stem silence by the
- living-room stove for an hour or two, looking at the wall-paper as her
- brother Lemuel had been won’t to do, went up to bed with a frigid “good
- night.” The farm people had all retired with the chickens, long before.
- </p>
- <p>
- Scarcely raising his eyes from his writing, Seth remarked:
- </p>
- <p>
- “How Aunt Sabrina has failed since I left the farm! She grows ever so much
- like father. Poor old woman, she was so eager to have Albert come here, so
- elated with the idea that the family was to be restored to social and
- political dignity again—and now the apples seem to be all dead-sea
- fruit to her. I can’t see that she takes the slightest interest in
- Albert’s campaign. Odd, isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel was sitting near the stove, around the corner of the table from
- him. The reddish radiance reflected down from the shaded lamp fell upon
- her rounded chin and her smooth white neck, dainty in tint as the ruffle
- in which it lost itself. Above this lace at the back, as she bent over her
- embroidery, some stray curling wisps of hair gleamed like gold in the
- light. She replied:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It isn’t that at all. She’s interested enough in the Congress idea, or
- would be if she hadn’t something else on her mind. The prying old piece
- found out, by quizzing Dana, about our writing to each other. She has got
- it into her ridiculous old head, I feel sure, that there is something
- between us. Didn’t you notice the way she eyed us at the dinner table
- yesterday?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth did not answer. His article was unfinished, but he suddenly found
- himself in doubt whether it was not already long enough. He reflected, or
- tried to reflect, for a moment, while the soft tones of her voice murmured
- in his ears, then added a sentence which might serve as a conclusion, and
- scrawled a dash underneath.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There! I’m through!” he said, and looked up.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her eyes were fixed upon his face. They were in the shadow of the tinted
- lamp-shade, but they had a light of their own—a languorous, alluring
- glow. He had never looked into such eyes before; they fascinated him, and
- he knew, in a delicious trembling, that his own were answering them in
- kind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can read to me now,” she said, the rapt, wistful gaze melting into a
- smile. “He will not come to-night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth took the story, as she gave it to him from her workbox, and glanced
- over it to pick up the thread of the narrative where it had been dropped.
- As he was still thus engaged, he felt her hand laid upon his, and, as
- their eyes met again, heard her low, soft voice murmur:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know why I declined our invitation for the husking?”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a silence, which the young man felt that his face made full of
- acquiescent meaning.
- </p>
- <p>
- She answered her own question: “I wanted you here, all for myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth lost himself in an uplifting, floating sensation of ethereal
- beatitude. Her hand was in his now, warm and palpitating, and he raised it
- to his lips. It was difficult to breathe, but the oppression in his breast
- was all delight. He rose to his feet, his arms outstretched, his heart
- beating in exultant tumult. He heard her whisper—he could scarcely
- see her for the magnetic waving before his eyes—the refrain of the
- story: “So strong and yet so gentle!” His lips were formed for the
- passionate utterance—already framed in his heart—“My darling!”
- when there came the sound of footsteps on the path without, and of a hand
- upon the latch.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth mechanically took up the manuscript of his article, and turned toward
- the door. Beneath an impassive mien, far more composed than he dared to
- hope, there was the sensation of being hurled down, down, through the air,
- to unwelcome earth.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Albert. He looked at the two cursorily but closely, and only said,
- as he tossed his bag into a chair:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Train was late. You go to bed at once, Isabel. I have particular business
- with Seth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XX.—THE NIGHT: THE BROTHERS.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>lbert seemed in an
- amiable mood as, divesting himself of his outer garments, he drew up a
- chair by the fire, offered Seth a cigar from his case and lighted one
- himself. He examined Seth’s face by the flame of the match, as the latter
- lighted his cigar, and appeared to be satisfied with the inspection.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sit down here,” he said pleasantly. “I want a good long talk with you. It
- was too bad to keep you waiting so long, but there was no help for it. I
- couldn’t see the people in New York that I wanted to see until to-day, and
- it was only by good fortune that I caught the train as it was. Then we
- were delayed on the road, of course. If an engineer on this one-horse line
- should ever get a train through on time I believe he’d have a fit, just
- from the shock of the thing. And then I had to wake up the man at the
- livery stable in Thessaly—fancy his being asleep at eight o’clock!—and
- he would only bring me as far as the foot of the hill, because he had been
- up to a dance all the previous night. But of course, in my position now,
- running for office, I couldn’t complain. Beside, I ought to be used to all
- these little delights of rural existence by this time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert stretched his feet out comfortably on the rail of the stove, and
- leaned back in his chair with an air of enjoyment. He had been growing
- very stout this past year, Seth noticed, and the bald spot on his crown
- had visibly spread. He seemed unwontedly good-natured too—a natural
- and proper accompaniment to increasing obesity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But all this has nothing to do with my asking you to come here, has it?
- Did Workman raise any objections to your coming?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, of course not, after he read your letter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer smiled complacently: “I thought that letter would fetch him. Of
- course, my boy, the harshness of the letter was for effect on him, not on
- you. It simply gave you a chance to say you had <i>got</i> to come.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth did not find himself wholly clear on this point, but he nodded
- assent. Albert looked at him, and seemed a trifle annoyed at having the
- conversation all to himself, but he went on after a moment’s pause,
- speaking now with good humored gravity:
- </p>
- <p>
- “First of all, I ought to tell you how proud I have been of your fine
- progress on the <i>Chronicle</i>. I doubt if there is another young man of
- your age in the State who has done so much climbing in so short a time. I
- take a real satisfaction in thinking that you are my brother. I can’t tell
- you how often I say to myself: ‘Albert Fairchild, the best thing you ever
- did in your life, or ever will do, was to give that boy a chance.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- This was gall and wormwood to the young man. He had almost succeeded in
- regaining the composure so abruptly scattered by Albert’s unexpected
- arrival. The fluttering agitation came back now, and brought with it a
- painful sense of shame and self-reproach as Albert’s words recalled the
- scene which his entrance had interrupted. Seth did not look his brother in
- the face, but murmured some commonplace of gratitude. He was glad that
- there was a red shade on the lamp; it might conceal his flush of
- humiliation.
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert went on: “But you were not invited here so peremptorily just to
- hear this. Brotherly pride and affection are things that don’t need words—that
- can be taken for granted—are they not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth tried to smile, and said, “Yes, of course they are.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, youngster, I am taking them for granted in your case. Mind, as I
- said in my letter, I am not saying a word about gratitude. I don’t want
- the thing to be put on that footing at all. Brothers ought to be able to
- help each other, and all that, without lugging in the question of
- gratitude. I am talking to you as one man should to another who bears the
- same name, and was of the same mother. By George! poetry, isn’t it? Well,
- the point is this. The time has come when you can help me, help me
- immensely. I am not in this fight for myself alone. Personally I care very
- little about going to Congress. But I have got the family to consider, and
- I am in a position now where I can make a ten-strike for it. A good deal
- of it I have created myself. These countrymen up here in Dearborn County
- fancy they are shrewd politicians, but it has taken me, almost a novice in
- politics, less than two years to get the whole machinery right under my
- thumb. It’s in the blood, I tell you! There wasn’t another manager in this
- whole section that could hold a candle to the old Senator, in his day,—and
- if he could keep track of things now I imagine he’d admit that his
- grandson was no slouch.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert chuckled quietly at the slang word, the expressiveness of which
- pleased him, and at the vision of the satisfaction of the departed
- ancestor which it suggested. He proceeded:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t tell you all my plans, but I am in a big combination. I have made
- use of my large connections as a lawyer in New York to arrange some things
- which would open your eyes if you knew them. It is all settled that I am
- going on to a Committee which will be worth while, I can tell you. And
- then, once started in the thing, with my grandfather’s name back of me,
- there is no telling where I may not climb. A name that has figured in the
- blue book as ours has is a tremendous power. The Republic derides
- heredity, but the public believes in it. It is human nature, my boy. And
- in this rehabilitation of the family name you have as much concern as I
- have—in fact more than I have—for you will enjoy even more
- than I shall the fame and wealth I am going to get out of this thing, for
- the family.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where does the wealth come in, Albert? There is no money honestly to be
- made in politics.” Seth had forgotten his earlier embarrassment now, and
- the spirit of dispute was rising within him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear fellow,” said the elder brother, comfortably contemplating the
- rings of cigar smoke he was making, “to the wise there is money
- everywhere. The word ‘honesty’ in politics is a purely relative term, just
- as it is in your line, or in law, or in medicine. If we lawyers strictly
- graded our charges by the net value of our services to our clients, if
- doctors refused to make all calls upon patients that were not altogether
- necessary, and based their bills rigidly upon the actual good they had
- done—by George! the poor-houses would have to be enlarged. Take your
- own business, for instance, or I ought to call it a profession, too, I
- suppose. Are editors invariably candid with their readers, do you think?
- Do they always tell the disagreeable truth about people they make their
- money from? And don’t they have an open hand behind the back about the
- same as other folks do? Occasionally, I admit, an ass like our brother
- John does drift into the profession, and retains his childhood belief that
- the moon is made of green cheese. But I have noticed that such fellows as
- he, who run their papers on an exalted moral plane, generally come around
- to borrow money from the ungodly, toward the close of the year, to make
- their accounts balance. I am sorry to see that John and Ansdell have
- filled your head with all this nonsense. A newspaper man tearing his shirt
- in defense of financial fastidiousness in politics presents rather a
- comical spectacle, if you only knew it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have no right at all to say that!” Seth answered hotly. “I believe
- firmly that the newspaper men of this country, considering their influence
- and the great temptation to make money out of it, are as honest a body of
- men as you can find in America. This conventional talk about their
- venality is the cruellest kind of libel, and if you knew them as I do you
- wouldn’t lend yourself to circulating it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am not entirely without acquaintance in this white-winged
- profession of yours,” replied the lawyer, smilingly. “I know Mr. Mortimer
- Samboye, for example. I could tell you too, you confiding youngster, just
- his figure, and where the cheque, made payable to his wife, was cashed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you do know about Samboye, you know what I believe to be the one
- exception to the rule in the State. I don’t for a moment believe that
- there is another editor whom your people could have bought. It is an
- odious exception, to be sure, but exceptions prove the rule. If
- journalists and journals were in the market, as you and your machine
- friends seem to imagine, there would be no such widespread bolt against
- your machine ticket to-day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you think so, do you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer was getting vexed. He stood up, thrust his hands deep into his
- trowsers pockets, and spoke with more sharpness than before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You think so! Why, man alive, this same d——d <i>Chronicle</i>
- of yours has been in the market since before you were born. I bet you
- to-day that Workman would rather plank out five thousand dollars from his
- own pocket than let me cross-examine him in the witness box on his
- recollections of the <i>Chronicle’s</i> record. Why, that is the very last
- paper in the State that has a title to throw stones! Do you want to know
- when this new reforming zeal of Workman’s was born? I can tell you. It was
- the day that another man (Dick Folts, if you wish names), was appointed to
- the Territorial Governorship that Workman wanted for his brother. So you
- thought it was only high morality and noble patriotic sentiments that
- ailed the <i>Chronicle</i>, did you? You never suspected that it was
- simply a bad case of brother—that it all happened because Samuel M.
- Workman of Toboggan was compelled to continue to adorn a private station?
- You think the world is run on kid-gloved, scriptural ethics? It reminds me
- of a novel I read here awhile ago. It set out to describe An American
- Politician—and in almost every scene in the book where he appeared,
- he was drinking tea in some lady’s drawing room, declaiming to the fair
- sex on how he was going to reform politics. He thought he was a deuce of a
- fellow, and so did the women and the author too. This politician was a
- good sample of all your reformers. I tell you, the men who go to afternoon
- teas in America, exert no more influence on American politics than—than
- a hen who was too refined to scratch in the barn-yard for worms would
- exert on the question of female suffrage. Now <i>don’t</i> make a fool of
- yourself, Seth. Your predecessor, Samboye, was in no way your equal—some
- fellow at the club once, I remember, just hit him off in a phrase which he
- had hunted up in the dictionary to sling at him: ‘a nugipolyloquous
- numbskull ’—but he knew enough to feather his own nest, and
- to take men as they are, and not as the Prophet Jeremiah might think they
- ought to be. <i>Don’t</i> make me angry with this pharisaical nonsense!
- You are very young yet. You will see things differently when you have
- rubbed up against the world a while longer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth also stood up now, with his hands deep in his pockets—a trick
- of all the Fairchilds when they were excited.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no desire to make you angry,” he answered, beginning with an
- effort at calmness, but soon raising his voice, “and I shouldn’t have
- dreamed of inflicting my juvenile views on you if you hadn’t insisted,
- even to the point of a threat, on my coming here. I would rather not argue
- the thing at all. We regard politics from totally different standpoints. I
- believe that your methods and aims—by ‘your’ I mean your wing of the
- party—are scandalous, corrupting and ruinous. I believe that if some
- check is not put upon the rule of the machine, if the drift of public
- acquiescence in debased processes of government is not stopped, it will
- soon be too late to save even the form of our institutions from the dry
- rot of venality.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Seems to me I’ve read all this. Don’t work your old leaders off on me.
- Talk sense!” said Albert.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth dropped rhetoric: “All this is very real, very big, to me. To you it
- is impracticable and meaningless. You don’t at all believe in the dangers
- which are so apparent to me. Perhaps if you did you wouldn’t care. That is
- all right. I have no desire to convert you, or to debate the question with
- you. I simply want to explain that there is no community of premises,
- even, between us on this subject. As for your explanation of the motives
- underlying the <i>Chronicle’s</i> attitude, I shan’t contradict you. So
- far as I am concerned, the matter is not in argument. It is enough for me
- that we bolt the State ticket, and occupy the ground we do. It is no
- concern of mine by what path we got there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert had heard his brother through with contemptuous impatience. He said
- now, with one foot on the stove hearth, and in a voice which, by its very
- coldness of calm, ought to have warned Seth of the temper underlying it:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You may bolt the State ticket as much as you d——d please. I
- don’t like your doing it, and it will injure you more than any efforts of
- mine can make good, but I can’t help it, and it wasn’t for that that I
- wanted to see you. But if you bolt <i>me</i>, Mr. Seth, or put so much as
- a straw in my path, by God! I’ll grind you, and your paper, and everybody
- responsible for it, finer than tooth-powder! However—we will exhaust
- the other side of the subject first. I’ve had it in mind for a long while,
- in fact ever since I first procured you a place there, to buy you a share
- in the <i>Chronicle</i>. Workman would be glad of the ready money—he
- itches for it as much as any living man—and it would be a good thing
- for you. Would you like that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You haven’t told me yet what you dragged me up here, away from my work,
- for,” said Seth. “You presumably had an object of some sort.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, you want to get down to business, do you? You shall have it, in a
- nutshell. I want you to see Ansdell, and get him to promise that if I beat
- him in the Convention he will support me squarely at the polls; I want you
- to get a pledge from Workman that the <i>Chronicle</i> will come out for
- me, solid, the day after I am nominated. <i>That’s</i> what I want, and it
- is mighty little for <i>me</i> to ask of <i>you!</i> And you may tell
- Workman for me that if he and his paper give me the smallest ground for
- complaint, and waver in the least in backing me up, I’ll start a paper in
- Tecumseh before Christmas that will crush the <i>Chronicle</i> out of
- sight. The paper is no good, anyway. I know hundreds of good citizens who
- would rejoice to have a decent substitute for it.” The pride of the editor
- was wounded. “You seem to worry a good deal about this worthless paper, at
- all events,” he said, bitterly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t bandy words with me, youngster!” cried Albert, scowling and pacing
- the floor. “I want your answer, or the answer of your employer—yes
- or no! I’ll have none of your impudence!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth held his temper down. He could not help feeling that his brother,
- from the fraternal standpoint at least, had some pretty strong arguments
- on his side. He made answer:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should have no influence with Ansdell, one way or the other, even if I
- talked with him. He knows his own business best, and if he has made up his
- mind to a certain course, nothing that I could say would move him. As for
- the <i>Chronicle</i> we’ve kept our hands off, thus far, on your account,
- and we’ve said nothing at all about your leading the Dearborn County
- delegates into the machine camp at the State Convention, although the
- whole rest of the State is ringing with it. But I am charged to say that
- that is as much as we can do. If you are nominated, we can’t and won’t
- support you. It is not a nice thing for me to have to say to you, but
- there’s no good mincing matters. Besides, you know—there may be a
- way out of it; you may not be nominated to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All hell can’t prevent it!” The words came forth in an explosion of
- wrath. Albert stamped his foot and clenched his fists as Seth had never
- seen him do before. He tapped his breast three or four times,
- significantly, as if there were something in the pocket to which he was
- referring—Seth remembered the gesture long afterward—and
- repeated that his nomination was assured. He seemed to dislike his
- passion, and strive to restrain it, but the choleric vein between his
- brows grew more swollen, and his black, keen eyes flashed more angrily
- than ever, as he strode up and down before the stove.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, and I’ll be elected too! All the white-livered hounds in Adams
- County, from my own brother up, shall not stop me! I’ll stump the district
- every night and day till election. I’ll speak in Tecumseh—yes, in
- Tecumseh, at the biggest meeting money and organisation can get together—and
- I’ll handle this whole bolting business so’s to warm the hearts of honest
- men all over the State. By God! I’ll shake Workman as a terrier shakes a
- rat, in view and hearing of his whole community! Won’t he squirm though!
- And won’t the crowd enjoy having him shown up! And <i>you</i>”—there
- followed some savage personal abuse, profane in form—“after
- to-morrow morning, never let me lay eyes on you again!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is not for the pleasure of seeing you that I come here, ever,” Seth
- retorted, the words coming quick and fierce. “Be sure I’d never trouble
- you again, if you were the only one in this house!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer’s eyes sparkled with a sardonic meaning, and Seth, as he saw
- it, bit his tongue with impatience at the thoughtless form of his speech;
- for he read in this cold, glancing light that nothing had been lost upon
- his brother’s perception when he entered the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a full minute’s silence, in which the two men faced each other.
- Albert was busy thinking how to put most effectively the things he was now
- moved to say. At last he spoke, coolly, incisively once more, while Seth,
- flushed and anxious, pretended to regulate the flame of the lamp.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I have no illusions about the motive of your visits to the farm. I
- am not blind; even if I were, others about the house are not. I am not
- going to say what you are doubtless expecting. I might point out to you
- that a young man who comes to a brother’s house—I will say nothing
- of the debt of gratitude he owes him—and steals chances to make love
- to that brother’s wife, is a pitiful cur. Stop!”—for Seth had
- straightened himself angrily at this epithet, despite his consciousness of
- self-reproach.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I repeat that I <i>might</i> say this—but I will not. I prefer to
- view it in another light. I don’t think you are a knave. To be that
- requires intelligence. You are a fool,—a conceited, presumptuous,
- offensive fool. You set yourself up to judge <i>me</i>; you arrogate to
- yourself airs of moral superiority, and assume to regulate affairs of
- State by the light of your virtue and wisdom—and you have not brains
- enough meanwhile to take care of yourself against the cheapest wiles of a
- silly woman, who amuses herself with young simpletons just to kill time.
- You take upon yourself to lay down the law to a great National party—and
- you don’t know enough to see through even so transparent a game as this.
- Get out of my sight! I have wasted too much time with you. It annoys me to
- think that such an idiot belongs to the family.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert had rightly calculated that he could thus most deeply and surely
- wound Seth, but he was mistaken in his estimate of the nature of the
- response. If Seth’s vanity was scalded by his brother’s words, he at least
- didn’t show it. But he did advance upon Albert with clenched fists, and
- gleaming eyes, and shout fiercely at him:
- </p>
- <p>
- “A man who will speak that way of his wife is a coward and a scoundrel!
- And if it is my cousin Isabel he means, he is a liar to boot! If you were
- not my brother——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I were not, what then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert waited a moment for the answer, which the conflict between Seth’s
- rage and his half-guilty consciousness choked in the utterance, and then
- calmly turned on his heel and left the room, by the same outside door at
- which he had entered.
- </p>
- <p>
- As Seth went upstairs, he heard Isabel’s door close softly. “I wonder how
- much of it she heard?” he said to himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXI.—THE NIGHT: MASTER AND MAN.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>LBERT walked
- across the yard toward the larger of the new stable buildings. It was a
- dry, warm, luminous night, radiant overhead with the glory of a whole
- studded heaven of stars. The moon, the full, shining-faced moon of
- October, would rise in an hour or so, and then would come pale mists along
- the valley bottom-lands, and perhaps clouds in the eastern sky. But one
- could walk bareheaded in this soft starlight now, without a fear of cold.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer paid no sort of attention to the night, but strode across the
- grass, swung himself over the stile, and pulled back the great stable
- door, creaking shrilly on its rollers, with angry energy. He stopped upon
- the threshold of the darkness, through which the shapes of carriages
- covered with white sheets vaguely loomed, and called out:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Milton!”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was the answering sound of footsteps overhead. A door at the top of
- the stairs was opened, and a flood of light illumined the staircase.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you’ve got back, ay?” said a voice from the top.
- </p>
- <p>
- It had been Milton’s idea, when the new buildings were erected, to achieve
- complete domestic autonomy by arranging for himself a residential room
- above the carriage place. The chamber was high and commodious. It had been
- lathed and plastered, and, in lieu of wall-paper, the sides were decorated
- with coarsely-colored circus bills, or pictures from sporting weeklies,
- all depicting women in tights. There was a good corded bed in one corner.
- Two chairs, a stained pine table on which, beside the lamp, were some
- newspapers, a little wood stove, and a mantel-shelf covered with tin-types
- and cheap photographs, completed the scene. Milton enjoyed living here
- greatly. It comported with his budding ideas of his own personal dignity,
- and it freed him from the disagreeable supervision which the elder Miss
- Fairchild was so prone to exercise over all who lived in the house. Only
- the Lawton girl, Melissa, came across the yard each forenoon, to tidy up
- the room, and chuckle over the pictures and the tastes which these, and
- the few books Milton from time to time brought home from a
- sporting-library at Thessaly, indicated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s lucky you hadn’t gone to bed,” said the lawyer, curtly, pulling his
- hat over his eyes to shade them from the flaring light, and sitting down.
- “I was going to wake you up. What’s your news?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve been over to Tyre twice to see Beekman, ’n’ no use. Once he
- wouldn’t talk at all—jis’ kep his ole lantern-jaws tight shet, ’n’
- said ’Ef Albert Fairchild wants to see me, he knaows where I kin be
- faound.’ Th’ other time he was more talkative—tried his best to fine
- aout what I was drivin’ at, but I couldn’t git no satisfaction aout o’
- him. He wouldn’t bine himself to nothin’. He jis’ stood off et arm’s
- lenth, ’n’ sized up what I was a sayin’ in that dum sly way o’ his.
- I couldn’t make head nor tail of him. He wouldn’t say he would take money,
- ’n’ he wouldn’t say he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t say yes or nao to th’
- post office scheme, or anythin’ else. He jis’ kep’ his big eyes on me, as
- much as to say, ‘You ketch a weasel asleep!’ ’n’ listened. Naow yeh
- knaow th’ hull of it. If yeh want anythin’ more done, yeh better do it
- yerself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer looked attentively at his hired man, and drummed with his
- fingers on the-table. “So that’s all, is it? You are no further ahead with
- Beek-man than when the Convention adjourned? You’ve got no proposition
- from him—no statement as to how he takes my proposals?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s it, Albert—jest it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Something in Milton’s tone seemed to annoy Albert even more than his
- confession of failure had done. He rose to his feet abruptly. “Don’t
- ‘Albert’ me!” he said, raising his voice out of its accustomed calm; “I
- don’t like it! You take too much upon yourself. But—I am to blame
- for it myself. I’ve let you run things with too free a hand, and trusted
- affairs to you that I ought to have kept to myself. It is always my way,”
- he went on, in petulant selfcriticism. “I never did trust anybody who was
- worth the powder to blow him up. I ought to be used to it by this time.
- But to encounter two such fools in one evening—and this evening of
- all others, too—by George! it’s enough to make a man strike his
- mother!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ain’t no fool, Mister Fairchild”—the hired man was standing up
- too, and his harsh tones gave the title an elaborate, almost ridiculous
- emphasis—“’n’ I’ll thank yeh to keep yer tongue civil, tew!
- Ef yeh don’t like my style, yeh kin git sum’un else to do yer dirty work
- for yeh. I’ve no hankerin’ fer it. I’m hired to manage this farm, I am.
- Nothin’ was said ’baout my hevin’ to run a Congresshn’l campaign
- into th’ bargain. I ain’t sayin’ but what I kin do it’s well’s some other
- folks. I ain’t sayin’ that it’s beyon’ me. P’raps I’ve got my pull ’n’
- this caounty, ’s well ’s some other people. P’raps ’f
- I was amine to, I could knock somebuddy’s game skyhigh, jis’ by liftin’ my
- little finger tomorrer. I ain’t sayin’ I’m goin’ to dew it. I ain’t
- findin’ no fault with yeh. All I say is I ain’t goin’ to take one ioty o’
- slack from you, or anybody else, about this thing. You hear <i>me!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The hired man had spoken aggressively and loudly, with his thumbs in the
- arm-holes of his vest, and his shaggy head well up in the air. He knew his
- employer pretty well, and had estimated with some precision the amount of
- impudence he would bear. This full measure he was not disposed to abate
- one atom. He had failed to buy the Jay County boss, or even to
- satisfactorily gauge his intentions, it was true, but that was no reason
- why he should submit to being called a fool by Albert Fairchild, who
- couldn’t run his farm, let alone his Congressional campaign, without him.
- So the mean-figured, slouching countryman, with his cheap, ill-fitting
- clothes, frowzy beard, and rough, red hands truculently spread palm
- outward on his breast, stood his ground before the city lawyer and grinned
- defiance at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer did not immediately reply. He was not ordinarily at a loss for
- words or decisions in his dealings with men, but this rude, uncouth
- rustic, with his confident air and his fund of primordial cunning, puzzled
- him. There was some uneasiness in the feeling, too, for he could not
- remember the exact limits of his confidences with Milton. Moreover he
- could not afford, at any price, to quarrel with him now on the eve of the
- Convention. “After the election we’ll clip your wings, my fine fellow,” he
- thought to himself, but he gave the words upon which he finally decided a
- kindlier turn.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I hear you. Almost anybody on the side-hill could, the way you are
- talking. There is no reason why you should lose your temper. If you
- couldn’t fix Beekman, why that’s all there is to it. We must go at it in a
- different way. I can see through him. He’s standing out for a cash
- payment. The old fox wants money down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you’ve got it fur him, hain’t yeh? Go ’n’ give it to him,
- straight aout!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that’s it—I wanted you to bring back an idea of his figure.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “His figger. How much hev yeh got?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never mind that—it’s a d——d sight more than the office
- is worth; but when a man gets into a fight of this sort, he’s got to force
- his way through, cost or no cost.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Air yeh sure it can’t be traced? Wuz yeh careful to raise it so nobuddy
- cud spot yeh, and give aout that yeh got so much money together for
- purposes o’ bribery?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, it is perfectly safe. There is no record.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ nobuddy on airth knaows yeh’ve got th’ money?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a living soul!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The two men communed together as to the importance of immediate action.
- The Convention was to reassemble at Tyre, fifteen miles away, at eleven
- the following forenoon. The political master of Jay County, Abe Beekman,
- who held in his hands the deciding power, lived near Tyre, but in the
- valley some miles further on. The first train from Thessaly in the morning
- would be too late, for Beekman would have already arrived on the ground at
- Tyre, coming from the opposite direction, and would have begun work on his
- own hook. He must be seen at his home, early in the morning. The question
- was—how to encompass this.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You might drive across to-night,” Albert suggested; “it can’t be more
- than twenty miles. It’s a bad, up-hill road, but four or five hours ought
- to do it, easily enough. By George—I believe I’ll go myself—start
- at once, see Beekman about daybreak, and then come back to Tyre by
- breakfast time; as if I had just driven over from here. No one will
- suspect a thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, thet’s a fust-rate idee,” assented Milton; “only be keerful ’n’
- put yer money in a safe place.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer again slapped his breast with a confident “Never fear about
- that,” and went to the house to get some wraps for the night ride, leaving
- Milton to harness the grays, and drag out the sidebar buggy with the pole.
- The hired-man hummed to himself as he moved quietly, dextrously in the
- semi-darkness in the performance of this task.
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert returned, just as the hame straps were being buckled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Everybody seems to be asleep in the house,” he said. “If they ask any
- questions in the morning, mind you know nothing whatever. That brother of
- mine is no friend. Be careful what you say to him. Let him walk to the
- depot in the morning. It’ll do him good. Oh yes, by the way, better let me
- have one of those revolvers of yours—you have ’em upstairs,
- haven’t you—give me the one that strikes fire every time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton came down and out presently, saying that he just remembered having
- lent the weapon. “’Tother’s no good,” he added; “yeh don’t need no
- pistol anyway. Th’ moon’ll be up direc’ly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Albert gathered up the lines, and drove out slowly toward the road.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yeh better save th’ beasts till after yeh git over Tallman’s hill, ’n’
- rest ’em there by th’ gulf!” Milton called after him, as a last
- injunction.
- </p>
- <p>
- The hired man stood at the stable door, and watched the buggy pass the
- darkened, silent house, turn out on the high-road, and disappear beneath
- the poplars. The moon was just coming up, beyond this line of trees, and
- it made the gloom of their shadow deeper. His eyes, from following the
- vehicle ranged back to the house, which reared itself black against the
- whitening sky. There was there no sound, nor any sign of life. He took a
- revolver out of his pocket, and examined it in the starlight, cocking it
- again and again to make sure that there had been no mistake. Satisfied
- with the inspection, he put it back in his side coat-pocket. He went
- upstairs, changed his hat, took a drink out of a flat brown bottle in his
- cupboard, and spent a minute or two looking at one of the tin-type
- portraits on the mantel-shelf. He held the picture to the light, and
- grinned as he gazed—then put it in his breast pocket, blew out the
- lamp, and felt his way softly down stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- A few minutes later he came out from the stable, leading the swift black
- mare. She was saddled and bridled, and seemed to understand, as he led her
- over the grass, that he wanted no noise made. The man and beast, throwing
- long, grotesque shadows on the lawn, in the light of the low moon, stole
- past the house, and out upon the road. Milton here climbed into the
- saddle, and with an exultant little cluck, started in the direction his
- master had gone, still keeping the black mare on the grass. They, too,
- disappeared under the poplars.
- </p>
- <p>
- The moon mounted into the heavens, pushing aside the aspiring clouds which
- sought to dispute her passage, then clothing them in her own livery of
- light, and drawing them upward after her, in a glittering train of
- attendance. All over the hill-side the calm radiance rested. The gay hues
- with which autumn’s day brush painted the woods, the hedge rows, the long
- stretches of orchard, stubble, and field, sought now to only hint at their
- beauty, as they yielded new outlines, mystic suggestions of form and
- color, in the soft gray picture of mezzotint. Thin films of vapor rose to
- enwrap the feet of the dark firs, nearer to the sky, and in the valley
- below the silver of the moonlight lost itself on the frost-like whiteness
- of the gathering mist. It was a night for the young to walk together, and
- read love’s purest, happiest thoughts in each other’s eyes—for the
- old to drink in with thankful confession the faith that the world was
- still gracious and good.
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton was walking the mare now, still on the grass. He could hear the
- sound of wheels, just ahead.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXII.—THE NIGHT: THE LOVERS.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>eth had gone up to
- his room in a state of wretchedness which, seeming insupportable at the
- outset, had grown steadily worse upon reflection. He said to himself that
- he had never before in his whole life been so humiliated and unhappy, and
- then smiled with pitying contempt for the inadequacy of such a statement
- of the case. One’s career must have been titanic in its tragic experiences
- to warrant such a comparison. “I have never known before what suffering
- was,” he thought, as he paced up and down his little room, scourging
- himself with the lash of bitter reflections.
- </p>
- <p>
- To try to sleep did not enter his head. He sat for a long time on the side
- of the bed, seeking to evolve something like order from the chaos of his
- wits, but he could not think. Had he tried to write, to discuss the thing
- in a letter, the simple familiar operation of the pen might have led him
- out of the <i>cul de sac</i>. As it was, whichever turn his mind sought to
- take, there rose an impassable barrier of shame, or rage or
- self-recrimination. In whatever light he tried to view the situation, it
- was all pain. He had been curtly, cruelly thrown off by his brother—the
- man to whom he owed everything—and he had had to listen to the most
- cutting, insulting language from this brother before they parted. Then, as
- he clenched his fists and fumed with impotent anger at the recollection of
- this language, there would come to divert this wrath, and turn it back
- upon himself, the facts that he had interposed his own boyish vanity and
- conceit to balk this brother’s purposes, and had been caught trembling on
- the very brink of making love to this brother’s wife. Did he not richly
- merit Albert’s scorn? He could remember—should he ever forget?—the
- exact words of Albert’s contemptuous characterization: “A conceited,
- presumptuous, offensive fool.” Did he not deserve them all? He owed this
- brother everything: the honest boy insisted upon saying this to himself
- over and over again, as the basis of all argument on the subject; the
- opportunity came for him to repay something of this debt. How had he
- improved it? By setting himself up to oppose this brother in the chief
- object of his life, and, as if this were not enough, by yielding weakly to
- the temptation to rob him of his domestic honor as well! “I must be a
- villain as well as a fool, must I!” the youngster growled between his set
- teeth, as he threw himself from the bed, and began the gloomy pacing up
- and down again.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had not lighted his lamp. The soft half-darkness of the starlight,
- sufficing barely to render objects visible in the room, suited his mood.
- He heard the sound of wheels now on the gravel below. Looking out, he
- could see that the grays were being driven out; as they turned the corner
- of the house, the full moonlight fell upon them and the carriage, and Seth
- saw distinctly that it was his brother who was driving, and that he was
- wrapped as for an all-night ride.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He won’t even stay under the same roof with me!” he said half-aloud, with
- a fresh bitterness of self-accusation—and then the torment of
- reproaching voices began in his breast again.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he turned from the window he heard a low rapping at his door; a minute
- later, he heard Isabel’s voice, almost a whisper:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Seth! Don’t open the door, but tell me, who was it that went out with the
- carriage just now? I heard it, but from my window I could see nothing. Was
- it <i>he?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth answered, as calmly as he could: “Yes, I am sure of it. I recognized
- him.” He stood close to the door, and the thought that only the thin pine
- panels divided him from her was uppermost in his mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a little pause. Once his hand involuntarily moved toward the
- latch, but he drew it back. Then she spoke again:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had a terrible quarrel, didn’t you, and all for me! I heard your
- answer, Seth, way up here. How nobly you spoke! It went straight to my
- heart, to hear his brutality rebuked in that manly way. I shan’t forget
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a moment’s silence; then she whispered with a lingering
- softness, “Good night!” and he heard the faint rustling of her garments
- down the hall.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brief as the interruption was, it had changed the whole spirit of his
- thoughts. The vindictive accusing demons had vanished, and left no more
- than a numbing sense of past torture in his breast. The anguish of
- self-condemnation, the crushing burden of self-humiliation, had passed
- away. The moonlight, as it spread over the slope toward Thessaly village,
- seemed to bring healing in its peaceful radiance. His own provocation grew
- mountain high; his brother’s justification for his insults and barbarity
- diminished. “I was doing only my duty in opposing him,” he said
- confidently, and there was no voice of dissent now. “Still more was I
- right in defending poor Isabel from his unmanly imputations. If a man is
- incapable of appreciating such a wife——.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not follow out his thought, but surrendered himself instead to
- calling up, and enjoying in detail, the sweet scene which Albert’s coming
- had so rudely broken into. How delicious it all was, as fancy now limned
- its outlines—yet not all the dainty graces of imagination and memory
- could reproduce in its full charm the original. He could think, and think,
- until the whole room seemed instinct with her presence, but how poor a
- counterfeit it all was, lacking the perfume of her hair and laces, the
- deep, languorous glow of her eyes, the thrilling melody of her low voice.
- The tender, caressing prolongation of syllables in that whispered “good
- night” made soft soul-music still in his ears. The insane thought—he
- did not dare ask himself if it were also a hope—that she might come
- again, took possession of him, and he stood for a long time close by the
- door, listening, waiting.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was while Seth stood thus, seeing only with the eyes of the mind, that
- Milton stole past on the grass below, with the black mare, on his mission
- of murder. Had the young man been at the window instead, much that
- followed might have been different.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth stood at the door for what seemed to him a long time, until gradually
- the futility of the action became apparent to him. “Of course she would
- not come!” he said, and resumed his pacing once more.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Faust-like vision began to dance before his eyes again, but with a
- witchery now which was uncanny. The calm of waiting had brought him enough
- strength of control to feel the presence of the cloven hoof in it all. The
- temptation was more urgent, strenuous than ever, but he was conscious of a
- deeper, more dogged spirit of resistance within him than ever, as well.
- There was no renewal of the savage, chaotic war of emotions under which he
- had suffered at the outset, groaning in the self-infliction of purposeless
- pain. This was a definite, almost scientific, struggle between two
- distinct forces, and though they fought their battle with all manner of
- sophistical weapons, and employed feints, pretended retreats and false
- advances in highest strategical form, he was never deceived for a moment
- as to which was the bad and which the good.
- </p>
- <p>
- The issue forced itself upon him, finally, with a demand for decision
- which was imperative. He could stay no longer in his room. There was
- neither sleep nor rest of any kind there for him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He went to the door, and opened it. Through the blackness he could see a
- faint vertical line of light at the front end of the low hall, as of a
- lamp burning, and a door left ajar. The yellow ray gleamed as he looked at
- it, and seemed to wave itself in fascinating motions of enticement. He
- stood for a moment undecided, all his impulses strongly swaying towards
- the temptation, all his resisting reasons growing weaker in their
- obstruction, and some even turning coward, and whispering, as they laid
- down their arms, “After all, youth has its rights.” Then he squared his
- shoulders, with the old gesture of resolution, and walked steadily away
- from the line of light, down the stairs, and out of the door, bareheaded
- under the stars.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had walked for a long, long time, before he became conscious that he
- had left his hat behind. The night air was exceptionally mild for the
- season, but it grew cool enough to bring this fact to his notice. As he
- put his hand to his head, and stopped short at the discovery, his whole
- mind seemed to clarify itself. He had been walking aimlessly, almost
- unconsciously—it must have been for much more than an hour. In a
- vague way, he knew where his steps had led him. He had walked through the
- orchard to his mother’s grave, and stood for some time by the brier-clad
- wall and fence which surrounded it, thinking of his boyhood, and of her.
- Then he had struck across through Sir Thomas’s pasture, to the main road;
- thence by the way of the school-house, and skirting the hill, to the
- Burfield road, at the farthermost end of the line of poplars.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he stopped here now collecting his thoughts, awakening himself as it
- were, the sound of chorussinging reached him, faint at first, then growing
- more distinct. A wagon-load of young people were returning from Leander
- Crump’s husking, enjoying themselves in the fair moonlight. From the
- sounds, they must have been about in front of the Fairchild homestead, and
- they were coming rapidly toward Seth. If he remained in the road, they
- must pass and recognize him.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a division line of thorn hedge, long since grown into tall young
- trees, coming to the road here, and a path beside it leading to a rude
- stile in the turnpike fence. This path went straight to Mrs. Warren’s
- house, as Seth had known from boyhood, but he gave this no thought as he
- stepped over the stile, and moved along in the shadow of the thorns. He
- walked a score of yards or so, and then stepped closer into the obscurity
- of the hedge, to wait till the hay-wagon and its caroling crew had passed
- by on the road outside. He was feeling very cold now, and tired to boot,
- and said to himself that as soon as the road was clear he would go home
- and go to bed.
- </p>
- <p>
- To his surprise the singing came to an abrupt halt, just as the wagon
- approached the end of the hedge.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a chorus of merry “whoas!” as the horses drew up, and through
- the clear air Seth could hear a confused babel of voices, all jovially
- discussing something. One male voice, louder than the rest, called out:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d better let me come along with you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was some giggling audible, out of which rose a clear, fresh girlish
- voice which Seth knew:
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, thanks! I can cut across by this path in less than no time. I’m not
- afraid. The tramps are all abed and asleep by this time, like other honest
- people.”
- </p>
- <p>
- With more laughter, and a salvo of “good nights!” the wagon started off
- again, and Annie Fairchild, singing lightly to herself the refrain of the
- chorus, and holding her face up to catch the full radiance of the
- moonlight, came walking briskly down the path.
- </p>
- <p>
- Despite her valiant confidence the young woman gave a visible start of
- alarm as Seth stepped out from the shadows to speak to her. She threw
- herself forward as if to run, then looked again, stopped, and then gave a
- little tremulous laugh, and cried:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, Seth! is that you. Mercy! How you frightened me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He could think of nothing better than a feeble parody of her words: “Yes,
- it is time all honest people were abed and asleep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He said this with a half-smile, but the girl’s face grew more serious
- still as she looked at her cousin. She spoke eagerly:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, what’s the matter with you to-night? Where is your hat? You look as
- white as a ghost! Oh—have you come from our house? Is it something
- about grandmother?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, it’s nothing about her. I haven’t been nearer your place than this. I
- only stepped in here so as to avoid the wagon. I didn’t want them to see
- me like this.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But why should you <i>be</i> like this? Now, Seth, I know something <i>has</i>
- happened. What is it? Am I wanted? Can I do anything?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me walk with you to your house,” he said, and they turned together
- down the path. “Something <i>has</i> happened. I don’t know that I can
- tell you what it is, but only to be with you like this rests and comforts
- me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was walking in the shadow; the strong light, which only tipped his
- shoulder occasionally, enveloped her. He watched her furtively as they
- moved along, and, just in proportion as he found relief and solace in the
- contemplation of her clear, frank, serene face, he shrank from confiding
- his own weak woes to her. But, as he said, it was a comfort to be with
- her.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had walked almost to within sight of the Warren farmhouse before he
- broke the silence. She had scarcely looked at him since they started, but
- kept her gray eyes straight ahead, as if viewing some fixed, distant
- object. Her lips were tightly pressed together—the only sign of
- emotion on her face—and this proof that she was hard at work
- thinking tended further to embarrass him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I truly don’t know how to tell you, Annie,” he said at last. “But Albert
- and I have—have had words together; in fact—we’ve quarrelled.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her lips quivered a little. She did not turn her face toward him, but
- said, nervously: “I have been expecting that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth did not ask himself the cause of his cousin’s anticipatory
- confidence, but went on gloomily: “Well, it has come. We had it out, this
- evening, to the very last word. And then, as if that were not enough, the
- devil himself got hold of me afterward, and tugged and tore at me to—but
- I can’t tell you <i>that</i>. I can scarcely realize myself what I’ve been
- through this night. Why, I’ve been wandering about here on the hill-side
- for hours, not knowing where I was going, or even what I was thinking of,
- like a mad man. You can see how my hands are scratched, and my clothes
- torn; that is from the berry-bushes, I suppose, up by mother’s grave. I
- remember being there. I didn’t even know that my head was bare, until just
- before the wagon came up.” Before this remarkable recital of insane
- things, Annie was properly silent.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth added, after a pause, “But it is all over now. And I can’t tell you,
- you can’t begin to guess, how it brings me to my senses, and soothes and
- restores me to have met you like this.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As he paused suddenly, they both turned to listen and look. From the knoll
- to the east, where the turnpike ran through a cutting, there came a
- curiously muffled sound, like yet unlike the first measured drumming of a
- partridge. It swelled a second later into something more definite, as they
- saw a dark horse, the rider crouching low over its neck, galloping like
- the wind along the high-road toward Thessaly. The pace was something
- prodigious—the horse had vanished like an apparition before they
- could look twice. But there had been nothing like a commensurate volume of
- sound.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The horse was running on the grass beside the road,” Seth remarked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Probably going for a doctor,” was her comment. “I wonder who is ill!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It looked to me more like the headless horseman than a sick-messenger.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As he said this, and they turned to walk again, his face lighted up once
- more. The thought seemed to please him, and he smiled on her as he added:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me be superstitious enough to fancy that the thing which just flashed
- by, in a rumble of low thunder, was the demon that has been torturing me
- all this while. We will say that he has been defeated, baffled, and has
- fled in despair, and that”—he looked still more smilingly at her—“the
- fiend has been beaten and driven away by you. Do you know, Annie, that
- here in this lovely light you are the very picture of a good angel?
- Perhaps angels don’t wear seal-skin cloaks, or have such red cheeks, but
- if they knew how becoming they were, they would.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie’s face, which had been immobile in thought, softened a little. She
- was accustomed to her cousin’s hyperbole.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am delighted if you feel better,” she laughed back. “But it is no
- credit specially to me. Contact with any other rational human being would
- probably have had the same effect upon you. If I had helped you in any
- way, or advised you, perhaps I might own the angelic impeachment. But I
- don’t even know the first thing about your trouble, except that you’ve
- quarrelled with Albert, and—and had a temptation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had begun gayly enough, but she uttered the last words soberly, almost
- gravely. Instinct and observation alike told her that Seth’s experiences
- had been of a deeply serious nature.
- </p>
- <p>
- He sighed heavily, and looked on the ground. How much could he tell her?—in
- what words should he put it? Even as he sought in his mind for safe and
- suitable phrases, an Idea—a great, luminous, magnificent Idea—unfolded
- itself before his mental vision. It was not new to him—years ago he
- had often entertained and even nourished it—yet it had been hidden,
- dormant so long, and it burst forth now so grandly transformed and
- altered, that for an instant he stopped abruptly, and put his hand to his
- breast as if to catch his breath. Then he walked on again, still with his
- eyes on the ground. He fancied that he was meditating; instead, he was
- marvelling at the apotheosized aptness of the Providence which had sent
- this Idea at just this time, and swearing grateful fealty to it with all
- the earnestness of his being.
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked up at last, and drew her arm through his. They were near the
- house now. “I am going to make a clean breast of it, Annie,” he said. “If
- I have not finished when we get to the bars, shall we turn back? I want
- you to hear it all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is pretty late, Seth,” she said, but neither in tone, nor in the
- manner in which she allowed her arm to be taken, was there the kind of
- refusal which dismays.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no need now to seek words. They came fast, keeping pace with the
- surge of his thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Annie,” he began, “I have been as near the gates of hell to-night as it
- is given to a man to go, and bring back his soul. I have fancied all this
- while that I was strong because I was successful; that I was courageous
- because I happened to be clever. I found myself put to the test to-night,
- and I was weak as water. I am afraid of myself. More, I have been making a
- fool of myself. I know now the measure of my weakness. I have the brains,
- perhaps, but I have no balance-wheel. I fly off; I do insensate things; I
- throw myself away. I need a strong, sweet, wise nature to lean upon, to
- draw inspiration from. Oh if you could realize the peace, the happiness
- your simple presence brought me this evening! I haven’t said it yet,
- Annie, but you have guessed it—I want to pledge myself to you, to
- swear that you are to be my wife.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl had drawn her arm from his before the last sentence was finished,
- and stood facing him. They were within call of the house, but she did not
- offer to renew the walk. She answered him with no trace of excitement,
- looking him candidly in the face:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not sure just how to answer you, Seth. Hardly any girl would know, I
- think, how to treat such a declaration as that. Wait a moment—let me
- finish! In the first place, I am in doubt whether I ought to treat it
- seriously at all. You are disturbed, excited, to-night; when we first met
- you looked and acted like a madman. And then again—understand, I am
- trying to talk to you as a friend of all your life, instead of a mere girl
- acquaintance—I would not marry any man who I did not firmly believe
- loved me. You have not even pretended that you love me. You have simply
- complimented me on my disposition, and pledged yourself to a partnership
- in which I was to be a balance-wheel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are laughing at me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, Seth, my dear cousin, not at all. I am only showing you the exact
- situation. You are too excited, or too unpractical, to see it for
- yourself. You talk now about being at the gates of hell and expressions
- like that—wild words which signify only that you have had trouble
- during the evening. I fancy that all men are apt to exaggerate such things—I
- <i>know</i> you are. Why, do you even know what trouble is? Have <i>I</i>
- had no trouble? Have I not lived a whole life of trial here with a
- bed-ridden invalid? And there are other things that—that I might
- speak of, if I chose to complain. For instance”—her face brightened
- as she spoke, now, and a suggestion of archness twinkled in her eyes—“was
- it not a terrible thing that I should have waded into the water, that day
- of the fishing party, and got you out all by myself, and then heard the
- credit coolly given to another—person, who never got so much as the
- soles of her shoes wet?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie had begun seriously enough, but the softness of her real mood toward
- her cousin, together with the woman’s natural desire to have justice done
- her in affairs of the heart, had led her into a halfplayful revelation of
- pique. Seth would have answered here, but she held up her hand, and went
- on: “Wait till I am through. You didn’t know the truth in that matter of
- the log-jam. I understand that. There are a good many other things the
- truth of which you don’t know. You don’t, for instance, know the real
- facts about your own mind. You have had trouble to-night—for all
- your talk about making a clean breast of it you haven’t told me yet what
- it was—and your imagination makes a mountain out of what was
- probably a molehill, and you straightway rush off bareheaded to wander
- about like a ghost, and frighten people out of their wits; and then,
- happening to meet a girl who, by the deceptive light of the moon, looks as
- if she had some sense about her, you take without consideration the most
- important step a man can take in his whole life. Isn’t that a fair
- statement of the case? And, thinking it all over, don’t you agree with me
- that you would better tie my handkerchief about your head and go home and
- go to bed?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth laughed—a reluctant, in-spite-of-himself laugh. “You always
- would make fun of me when I tried to be serious. But if I ever <i>was</i>
- serious in my life, it is now. Listen to me, Annie! It is not my fault if
- I see you now, truly as you are, for the first time. I have been a fool. I
- know it I said so at the start. But a man is the creature of
- circumstances, you know. Things have happened tonight which have opened my
- eyes. I realize now that you have been closest to my heart all the while,
- that I have loved you all——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie stopped him, with her hand upon his arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t want you to finish that to-night. Please don’t, Seth. It would
- not be fair to me—or to yourself. Perhaps some other time when you
- have thought it over calmly—we will talk about it—that is, if
- you are of the same mind. If you are not, why, everything shall be just as
- it was before. And more than that, Seth, you—you mustn’t feel in the
- least bound by what has been said to-night. You know that I am older than
- you—two whole months! That isn’t as much as four years”—the
- meekest of her sex could scarcely have foregone that shaft—“but it
- gives me some sort of authority over you. And I am going to use it for
- your good. If it becomes necessary, I shall treat you like a perverse
- little boy, who doesn’t in the least know what is good for him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no discouragement to Seth in the tones of her speech, however
- non-committal its text might be. He put his arm about her and murmured:
- </p>
- <p>
- “To think that I never <i>knew</i> until now! Ah, you make me very happy,
- Annie. And shall you be happy, too, do you think, happier than if we
- hadn’t met?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled as she disengaged herself, and gave him both hands to say that
- they must separate: “Happier at least than on the night of the fishing
- party. I cried myself to sleep that night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth found the house wholly dark, upon his return. He had no difficulty in
- getting to sleep, and his heavy slumber lasted until long after the
- breakfast hour the following forenoon.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXIII.—THE CONVENTION: THE BOSS.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>yre had seen
- better days. In the noble old time of stage coaches it had been a
- thriving, almost bustling place, with mills turning out wares celebrated
- through all the section, with a starch factory which literally gave the
- name of the town to its product as a standard of excellence, and with
- taverns which were rarely left with a vacant room more than a day at a
- time. In those days it had been a power in politics too. The old
- court-house which frowned now upon the village green, elbowing the more
- modern brick jail out of public sight, was supposed to have echoed in its
- time about the tallest eloquence that any court-house in the State had
- heard. From Tyre had come to Albany, and Washington as well, a whole
- cluster of strong, shrewd, stalwart-tongued politicians, who forced their
- way to speakerships, and judgeships, and even senatorships, like veritable
- sons of Anak. It was a Tyre man who had beaten Aaron Burr in such and such
- a memorable contest. It was another Tyre man who, by assuming lead of the
- distracted Bucktails at a certain crucial period, had defeated sundry
- machinations of the Clintonians, and sounded the death-knell of their
- hopes. There was a Tyre man in the Regency, of course, and he is popularly
- believed, at least in Jay County, to have held that storied syndicate up
- by the tail, so to speak, years after it would otherwise have collapsed.
- At every State Convention, in this fine old time, inferior politicians
- from other sections dissembled their appetites until Tyre had been fed to
- satiety. And in the sowing season of politics, when far-seeing candidates
- began arranging for a share in the autumn harvest of offices, no aspirant
- felt that his seed had a chance of sprouting until he had paid a
- pilgrimage to Tyre, and invoked the mercy, if he could not have the
- smiles, of the magnates there.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was due doubtless to the traditions of these visits, when Judge Gould,
- the hero of the great Biggs murder case, would be at the Nedahma House,
- and Senator Yates, who unravelled and dragged to the pitiless light the
- masonic plot to blow up Mount Vernon, was to be found at the turnpike
- tavern, and both would keep pretty well in-doors toward evening because
- Colonel De Lancey, who had shot four men before Hamilton’s death
- discredited duelling, was in town on private business—it was no
- doubt due to these memories that Tyre kept up its political tastes and, in
- a faded way, its political prestige, long after its material importance
- and interest had vanished. The mills were remembered now only by the
- widened reaches in the stream where their dams had once been; the starch
- factory was a dismantled ruin, from which what woodwork the lightning had
- spared had long since been abstracted for fuel; one of the taverns was now
- a private dwelling, and the other two neither profited themselves nor
- pleased the wives of the village by their dependence upon local custom.
- But the men of Tyre were still intense politicians. Indeed their known
- virulence had given to their county sobriquet of Jayhawker an almost
- national fame. Nowhere else in the State, proportionately, were so many
- weekly partisan papers taken—not tame, dispassionate prints, but the
- fire-eaters of both party presses, with incessant harrowing accounts of
- peaceful and confiding negroes being massacred in the South, on the one
- side, answered regularly on the other by long imposing tables of the money
- stolen by notorious criminals in the public service. This was the meat
- Tyre fed on, and contending editors could not serve it out too rank or
- highly peppered for its taste.
- </p>
- <p>
- The one excitement of Tyre too—far transcending the county fair,
- which had only interested them casually, and which they had seen moved
- over to Sidon, on the line of the newly-extended railroad, without a
- protest—was a political convention. There would be such a crowd
- about the Court House then as scarcely the spectacle of its being consumed
- by flames could draw at another time. The freeholders of Tyre paid much
- more than their fair share of county taxes; they knew it, and did not
- grumble at the injustice. In fact it rather pleased them than otherwise to
- see their town rated on the Supervisor’s assessment-rolls according to its
- ancient wealth; the amercement was a testimonial to their dignity. Upstart
- towns like Sidon might wrangle over a few hundred dollars, and cheapen
- their valuation in the public eye by unworthy tricks; Tyre would have none
- of such small doings; it would preserve a genteel exterior, even if it had
- to eat pork grease on its buckwheat cakes in domestic seclusion. But if
- there had been so much as a hint about holding a county convention
- anywhere else than in the Tyre Court House—then, to use Abe
- Beekman’s homely expression, you would have seen the fur fly! Other towns
- might indulge their modern and mercenary tastes in county fairs,
- railroads, gas, reservoirs and the like, to their hearts’ content, but
- they must keep their hands off political conventions. He would be a brazen
- Jayhawker indeed who should question Tyre’s monopoly of these!
- </p>
- <p>
- So new generations of county politicians followed precedent without
- thought of murmuring, and accepted the discomforts of jolting in crowded
- democrat-wagons over the stony, bleak hills to Tyre, of eating cold, bad
- dinners in the smoke-dried, draughty barracks which had once been hotels,
- of drinking limed well-water with the unspeakable whiskey—as natural
- consequences of being interested in the public affairs of the nation. This
- resignation of other Jay County towns to the convention claims of Tyre
- swelled into a spirit of truculent defence every two years, when the
- question of a joint Congressional gathering for all three counties of the
- district came up. Precisely what would have happened if the bigger shires
- of Dearborn and Adams had combined in a refusal to come to Tyre, I am not
- bold enough to guess. The general feeling would probably have been that a
- crisis had arisen in which Jay County could do no less than dissolve her
- relations with the Federal Union.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortunately no such menace of secession and civil war was ever suffered to
- rise glowering on the horizon. Abe Beekman, the boss of Jay County, always
- managed to have Tyre designated by the District Committee, and the
- politicians from Dearborn and Adams amiably agreed to console themselves
- for the nuisances of the trip by getting as much fun out of it as was
- possible—which, reduced to details, meant bringing their own
- whiskey, sternly avoiding the dangerous local well-water, and throwing at
- each other during the dinner scramble such elements of the repast as
- failed to attract their metropolitan tastes. This procedure was not
- altogether to the liking of the Tyre landlords, who, however, compensated
- themselves for the diminution of the bar traffic and the havoc wrought in
- the dining room, by quadrupling their accustomed prices; and the invasion
- of boisterous aliens had its seamy side for the women of the place, who
- found it to the advantage of their dignity to stop indoors during the day
- which their husbands and fathers consecrated to the service of the
- Republic. But Tyre as a whole was proud and gratified.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the morning when the adjourned District Convention was to reassemble,
- political interest throbbed with feverish quickness in all the pulses of
- Tyre.
- </p>
- <p>
- The town could remember many a desperate and stirring combat on its
- well-worn battle-field, but never such a resolute, prolonged, and
- altogether delightful contest as this. The fight had its historic side,
- too. Every voter in Tyre could remember, or had been taught in all its
- details about, the famous struggle of the wet fall of ’34, when
- Hiram Chesney, the Warwick of Jay County then, locked horns with the elder
- Seth Fairchild of Dearborn, and, to pursue the local phraseology, they
- pawed up more earth in their fierce encounter than would dam the Nedahma
- creek. Poor Hiram had finally been worsted, falling ignobly on his native
- stamping ground, before the eyes of his own people. He had long since
- passed away, as Warwicks should when their king-making sinews have lost
- their strength. But another boss, perhaps in some ways a greater boss, had
- arisen in Jay County, in the person of Abram K. Beekman, and now, nearly
- half a century later, he was to try conclusions with a second Fairchild of
- Dearborn—a grandson of the hero of ’34. They had grappled
- once, a fortnight before, and had had to separate again, after an all-day
- tug, with a fall credited to neither. Now, in a few hours, they were to
- confront each other once more. What wonder that Tyre was excited!
- </p>
- <p>
- The two gladiators had been the observed of all observers during the
- preliminary skirmish. Tyre was almost disposed to fancy the Dearborn man.
- In his portly, black-clad figure, his round, close-shaven, aquiline face,
- and his professional capacity for oratory, he had recalled pleasantly the
- days when the Jay County bar was famous. The local magnate, Beekman, was
- not a lawyer; he could not make a speech; he didn’t even look as if he
- could make a speech. He had none of the affable, taking ways which Albert
- Fairchild used to such purpose, but was brusque, self-contained, prone to
- be dogmatic when he was not taciturn. Thus the balance turned enough in
- Fairchild’s favor to about offset Beckman’s claims to local sympathy as a
- Jayhawker, and put Tyre people in excellent mental trim to enjoy all the
- points of the duel.
- </p>
- <p>
- For in the minds of these practical politicians, it <i>was</i> a duel.
- There was a third candidate, named Ansdell, it was true, supported by
- nearly all the Adams delegation, but then he was a reformer, and had not
- even come to the Convention, and Tyre had no use for him. A county boss
- who had got a machine, and purposed doing certain definite things with it,
- either to build up himself or crush somebody else, was natural and
- comprehensible; but a man who set himself up as a candidate, without the
- backing of any recognized political forces, who came supported by
- delegates elected in a public and lawless manner without reference to the
- wishes of leaders, and who pretended that his sole mission in politics was
- to help purify it—who <i>could</i> make head or tail out of that?
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus Tyreans talked with one another, as the village began to take on an
- air of liveliness after breakfast, and groups slowly formed on the
- sidewalks in front of the two hotels. There were many shades of diverging
- opinion as to the merits and the prospects of the approaching contest, but
- on one matter of belief there was a consensus of agreement. The fight lay
- between Beekman and Fairchild, and the third man—it was interesting
- to note that ignorance of his name was fashionable—wasn’t in the
- race. Steve Chesney, whose right to speak oracularly on politics was his
- sole inheritance from the departed Warwick, his father, summed up the
- situation very clearly from the standpoint of Tyre when he said, leaning
- comfortably against the post office hitching post, and pointing his
- arguments in the right places with accurate tobacco juice shots at a crack
- in the curb:
- </p>
- <p>
- “The hull p’int’s this: Dearborn’s got seventeen votes, ain’t she?—solid
- for Fairchild. Then he’s got two ’n’ Adams, ain’t he?—makin’
- nineteen ’n’ all. Th’ dude, he’s got what’s left of Adams, fifteen
- ’n’ all. Jay County’s only got ten votes, ain’t she? Very well,
- they’re solid for Abe. <i>Now!</i> Twenty-three’s a majority of the
- convention. Git twenty-three ’n’ that settles it. Th’ reformer, he
- needs eight votes. Kin he git ’em? Whair frum? Frum Dearborn? Not
- much! Frum Jay? Well, not <i>this</i> evening! Count him out then. Of th’
- other two, Fairchild wants four votes, Abe needs thirteen. Thet looks kind
- o’ sickly for Abe, mebbe yeh think. But bear in mine thet th’ Adams men
- air pledged agin’ Fairchild by th’ same resolution which bines ’em
- to th’ other chap. Abe wasn’t a candidate then ’n’ he didn’t git
- barred out. But they made a dead set agin Fairchild all through Adams, on
- ’count of his funny work at th’ State Convention. <i>So</i>, Adams
- kin go to Abe, ’n’ she can’t go to Fairchild. I tell yeh, Jay can’t
- be beat, ef she’s only a mine to think so—thet is, of course, ef
- Dearborn fights fair. Ef she don’t, p’raps she may win to-day, but I tell
- yeh, in thet case ther won’t be enough left of her candidate come ’lection
- night to wad a hoss-pistol with.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Jay County delegates had begun to straggle into town, and percolate
- aimlessly through the throngs in and about the bar-rooms, listening to the
- discussions, and exchanging compliments and small talk with acquaintances.
- Pending the appearance of their leader there was nothing else for them to
- do. There was a rumor that Abe Beekman was in town, sending for men as he
- wanted to see them, one by one, but nobody professed to be in the secret
- of his hiding place, and nobody dreamed of attempting to find out what Abe
- wished to keep dark.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Adams County men, delegates and others, came over the hill from the
- Spartacus station in a carryall, with four horses, and created a genuine
- sensation as they drew up with a great clatter and splashing of mud in
- front of the Nedahma House, and descended jauntily from the rear step to
- the curb-stone. The natives eyed them all with deep interest, for upon
- their action depended the issue of the day, but there was a special
- excitement in watching the nine delegates with stove-pipe hats and gloves,
- and tight rolled umbrellas, who came from Tecumseh itself. Tecumseh was
- the only city in the district, or the whole section, for that matter, and
- Jay County people timidly, wistfully dreamed of its gilded temptations,
- its wild revels of sumptuous gayety, its dazzling luxuriance of life, as
- shepherd boys on the plain of Dura might have dreamed of the mysteries and
- marvels of Babylon. It was something, at least, to touch elbows with men
- whose daily life was passed in Tecumseh.
- </p>
- <p>
- Such of the younger Tyreans as had been introduced to these exalted
- creatures on their previous visit crowded around them now, to
- deferentially renew the acquaintance, and shine before their neighbors in
- its reflected light.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the news filtered through the groups round about that Ansdell himself
- had come up this time, and was the short, wiry little man with the drab
- overcoat and the sharp black eyes. This aroused a fleeting interest, and
- there was some standing on tip-toe to get a good view of him, but it could
- not last long, for Ansdell as a politician was not a tangible thing on
- which the tendrils of Tyre’s imagination could get a real grip.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was of more importance to learn whether the views of the Adams
- delegates had undergone any change—whether a new light had dawned
- upon them in the interim. They submitted graciously to the preliminary
- test of drinks at the bar, and pretended with easy affability to remember
- distinctly the various Tyre men who came up and recalled their
- acquaintance of a fortnight ago, but they had nothing to say that was to
- the purpose. They were waiting; they would see what turned up; they would
- certainly vote for Ansdell on the first ballot; further than that they
- couldn’t say, but they saw no reason now why they shouldn’t keep on voting
- for him; still, perhaps something might happen—this and nothing
- more.
- </p>
- <p>
- Meanwhile there was an uneasy whisper going the rounds to the effect that
- the two Adams men who had previously voted for Fairchild were now for
- Ansdell, having succumbed to local pressure during the fortnight. The
- story could not be verified, for the two gentlemen in question had
- secreted themselves upon their arrival, and the other Adams men only
- grinned bland mystery when interrogated on the subject. This worried the
- Tyre men a good deal more than they would have liked to admit, but there
- was a certain element of pleasure in it, too, for it added piquancy to the
- coming fight.
- </p>
- <p>
- The wooden minute hand of the old clock on the court house cupola had
- laboriously twitched along to the zenith of the dial once more, marking
- ten o’clock; only half an hour remained now before the time for the
- Convention to reassemble, and the Dearborn delegates were still absent.
- People began to stroll toward the court house, and casually attach
- themselves to the outskirts of the cluster of saturnine, clean-shaven,
- thin-featured old villagers, in high black stocks and broad-brimmed soft
- hats, who stood on the steps, behind the fluted columns of the building’s
- ambitious Grecian front, and chewed tobacco voraciously while they set up
- the rival claims of Martin Van Buren and Francis Granger, or mumblingly
- wrangled over the life and works of De Witt Clinton. These old men, by
- reason of the antiquity and single-heartedness of their devotion to their
- country, had two inalienable and confirmed rights: to sit on the platform
- close by the speakers when the Declaration of Independence was read each
- Fourth of July and to have the first chance for seats when the doors were
- opened at a political Convention.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last the eyes of those who had lingered about the Turnpike Tavern were
- gladdened by the sight of the Dearborn crowd, driving furiously up in
- three or four vehicles. Milton Squires was in the foremost wagon, and he
- was the first to alight.
- </p>
- <p>
- He trembled and turned around swiftly as a man laid a hand on his
- shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What d’yeh want?” he demanded, with nervous alertness.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man whispered in his ear: “Abe Beekman is over in the back settin’
- room at Blodgett’s, ’n’ he wants to see your man Fairchile right
- off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton had regained his composure. “So do I want to see him. Whair abaouts
- is he? I was to meet him here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There ain’t been no sign of him here, this mornin’. Nobuddy ’n
- Tyre’s laid eyes on him, so far’s I kin fine aout.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thet’s cur’ous,” said Milton reflectively. “He started to drive over
- early enough. We cum by train, expectin’ to fine him here. P’raps he’s
- seen Beekman by this time, on th’ quiet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, he ain’t!” The messenger’s tone was highly positive.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then mebbe I’d better go ’n’ see Beekman myself. Whair is
- Blodgett’s?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The man led the way off the main street, to a big, clap-boarded, dingy
- white house, fronting nowhere in particular, and stopped at the gate.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ain’t you comin’ in?” Milton asked him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dasen’t.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXIV.—THE CONVENTION: THE NEWS.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here were two
- strange men in the low-ceilinged, grimly-furnished “settin’ room,” as
- Milton was ushered into the presence of the Boss, but at a gesture from
- this magnate they went out; the Boss surveyed the new comer without a word
- of greeting or comment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Beekman was a tall, angular man, past the prime of life, as was shown
- by the gray in his thick hair, curling at the ends, and in the stiff,
- projecting ruff of beard under his chin. His face was thin, hungry, with a
- plaintive effect of deep lines, and his great blue-black eyes were often
- tearful, like a young robin’s, in their intent watchfulness. He was almost
- wholly Dutch in parentage—of that silent, persistent,
- quietly-masterful race which, despite all the odds, has still held more
- than its own in Stuyvesant’s State—and the descent showed itself in
- the dusky hue of his skin. He had never been a wealthy man, though he came
- of a family decently supplied with substance, and of long settlement in
- the county. He had climbed to his present eminence after a long career in
- local politics, by that process of exhaustion which we call the survival
- of the fittest. Having attained it, his rule was that of a just despot,
- rewarding and binding still more closely to him the faithful,
- remorselessly crushing all signs of rivalry, and putting the recalcitrant
- without pity to fire and sword. He had an almost supernatural faculty of
- organizing information, and getting at the motives of men. He sniffed
- treachery as a deer in the breeze sniffs the dog, and he had an oriental
- way of striking with cruel swiftness, before anybody but the guilty victim
- suspected offence. Withal, he was a kindly man to those who deserved well
- of him, an upright citizen according to his lights, and a profound
- believer in his party.
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat now chewing an unlighted cigar, with his feet on the hearth of the
- stove, and contemplated Milton at his leisure. He did not like Milton at
- all, and one of his chief reasons for doubting the real ability of Albert
- Fairchild was his choice of such an agent and confidant. At last he said,
- curtly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s you, is it? I’ve got no business with you! Where’s Fairchild?”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was something in Beekman’s eager, searching way of looking at a man
- with those big bright eyes of his which, coupled with the question,
- embarrassed Milton, and he fumbled with his hat as he repeated the
- explanation he had given to the messenger. He was annoyed with himself for
- being thus disturbed.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Boss looked his visitor out of countenance once more. Then he said:
- “Sit daown! Well, what is it to be?”
- </p>
- <p>
- ‘Milton grinned, and leaned forward familiarly in his chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I sh’d ruther think that was fur you to say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you think so, do yeh? You imagine you’ve got me on the hip, ay?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, p’raps we’re no jedge, but it sorts o’ looks that way, now, don’t
- it?” Milton tipped back his chair, satisfiedly, and put one of his big
- feet up on the hearth, to dispute possession with the Boss.
- </p>
- <p>
- Beekman reflected for a minute: then he began, after glancing at the
- clock:
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s no time to waste. I might as well talk up ’n’ daown with
- yeh. Your man Fairchild makes me tired. Ef he’d set his heart on goin’ to
- Congress, why on airth didn’t he come to me in the first place, ’n’
- say so? It could ’a’ been arranged, easy’s slidin’ off a log. But
- no, instid of that, he must go ’n’ work up th’ thing his own way,
- ’n’ then come ’n’ buck agin me in my own caounty, ’n’
- obleege me to fight back. D’yeh call that sense? He’s smart enough in his
- way, I grant yeh. He’s fixed up a putty fair sort o’ organisation in
- Dearborn, although it can’t last long, simply because it’s all built up on
- money, ’n’ I don’t go a cent on that kind of organising. Still it’s
- good enough in its way. <i>But</i>, he made his mistake in lettin’ the
- idea run away with him that he could skeer me into a conniption fit with
- his musharoon organisation. He didn’t knaow me. He never took the trouble
- to find aout abaout me. He jest took it fur granted that I’d crawl daown
- aout o’ my tree, like Davy Crockett’s coon, as soon’s he pinted his gun at
- me. Well, I didn’t come worth a cent. Then, when he faound aout that he’d
- struck a snag, ’n’ that Dearborn County wasn’t the hull deestrick,
- he turns raoun’ ’n’ aouts with his wallet, ’n’ tries to hire
- me to come daown. Fur that’s what you was here for last week, ’n’
- you knaow it’s well’s I do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton tried to get in some words here, of dissent or explanation, but the
- Boss would not hear them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lem me go on; ’s no use your lyin’. That was Fairchild’s second
- mistake. He thought politics was all money. Ef I was poorer than Job’s
- turkey, he couldn’t buy me to so much as wink an eye fur him. I’m not in
- politics fur what I kin make aout of it. I’m in because I like it; because
- it’s meat ’n’ drink to me; because I git solid, substantial comfort
- aout of it. Ther’s satisfaction in carryin’ yer eend; there’s pretty nigh
- as much in daownin’ them that’s agin yeh. Jest naow I’m a thinkin’ a good
- deal what fun it ’d be to let the floor aout from under your man
- altogether, ’n’ nominate this feller from Tecumsy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But,” broke in Milton, “you’re a candidate yer-self, ’n’——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wait till I’m threw, will yeh? I <i>said</i>, I’m leanin’ a good deal
- jest naow to’rd this man from Tecumsy. I c’d beat him easy ’nough
- at the polls, ef he turned cranky, but I daoubt ef it ’d be wuth
- while. I ain’t seen him yet, but I’m told he’s here, ’n’ ef I like
- his looks durn me ef I ain’t a mine to nominate him. He can’t do no harm,
- even ef he tries. These reform spurts don’t winter well. They never last
- till spring. The boys lose their breath for a few months. But then they
- git daown to work agin, and baounce the reformers to the back seats where
- they belong. But it ’d be one thing to elect a high-toned,
- kid-gloved, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-maouth kind o’ man like
- what’s-his-name, ’n’ a hoss o’ quite another color to ’lect
- Fairchild. <i>He’d</i> make me trouble from the word ‘go!’ Understan’, I
- ain’t afraid of his meddlin’ with me here in Jay caounty; not a bit of it.
- But he’d use his position to cripple me in the deestrick. The present
- Congressman tried that on— ’n’ you ain’t so much as heerd his
- name mentioned fur a re-nomination. But it was bother ’nough to
- squelch him. I ain’t goin’ to hev it to do all over agin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Right you air, tew!” Milton responded.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Boss held up his hand to forbid further interruption, while he looked
- curiously at his visitor, as if puzzled by his acquiescence. He went on:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ef you was a man of any readin’ you’d hev heerd of a custom among
- Europe-ian kentries, when one whips another, of makin’ the under dog in
- the fight pull aout his front teeth, like. The beaten kentry has to tear
- daown its forts, ’n’ blow up its men-o’-war, ’n’ so on, jest
- as a guarantee not to make any more trouble. Well, ef I’d concluded to hev
- any dealin’s at all with Fairchild, that’s what I’d hev done with him. I’d
- ’a’ made him turn over the appintment of all Dearborn’s men on the
- deestrick Committee; ’n’ I’d ’a had a written agreement that
- half the Postmasters in Adams ’n’ Dearborn, as well as all in Jay,
- should be o’ my namin’. My wife’s brother should hev hed the Thessaly post
- office, tew, right under Fairchild’s nose, so’s to keep an eye on him.
- It’s the duty of every man to purvide for his own fam’ly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothin’ small about <i>you!</i> You only wanted the hull airth!” chuckled
- Milton, ingratiatingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, it was Fairchild who wanted the airth ’n’ thought he’d got it,
- ’n’ while he was deliberatin’ whether he’d have it braowned on both
- sides or not, lo ’n’ behold I went in ’n’ took it away from
- him slick ’n’ clean.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Boss rose as he was speaking, reached for his overcoat and put it on.
- “Time’s up!” he said, sententiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton had risen too, and placed himself between Beekman and the door.
- “There’s seven minutes yit,” he said eagerly, “I’ve got something yeh
- can’t afford to miss. Don’t you want th’ nomination yer-self?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. What good’d Washington be to me? New York State’s big enough for me.
- If yeh don’t understand that I put my name before the Convention jest to
- hold my caounty together, ’n’ block Dearborn, yer a dummed sight
- bigger fool than even I took yeh to be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But s’pose Dearborn’s votes cud be thrown to you! They’d nominate yeh!
- What’d thet be wuth to yeh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What ’d it be wuth?” mused the Boss, looking intently at Milton.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes! in ready money, here! naow!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Boss took up his hat, meditatively, and gazed at his companion again.
- “Did you knaow th’ man that brought yeh here?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—’twas Jim Bunner, wa’nt it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That man ’d wade threw fire ’n’ water fer me. Yeh couldn’t
- tempt him with a hundred thaousan’ dollars to so much as say an evil word
- abaout me, let alone injure me. Yit he’s desprit poor, ’n’ th’ unly
- thing I ever did fer him in my life, excep’ givin’ him a day’s work naow
- ’n’ then, was to help him bury his child decently, ten years ago.
- But <i>I</i> know my <i>men!</i> Here Fairchild has took you off a
- dunghill, where all yer hull humly, sore-eyed, misrubble fam’ly belong, ’n’
- made a man of yeh, trusted his affairs to yeh, clothed yeh, fed yeh, yes,
- ’n’ let yeh fatten yerself on the profits of his farm—and
- naow yeh turn ’raound ’n’ offer to sell him aout. By gum! I
- was right. Fairchild hain’t got no sense! ’N’ you, yeh skunk, git
- aout! Don’t yeh walk on the same side of the street with me, or I’ll swat
- the hull top of yer head off!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll nominate Ansdell ’fore you git a chance!” snarled Milton.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The Convention met, depressed by the evident feeling of disappointment
- among the spectators, who swarmed on all the high, pewlike seats back of
- the bar railing, while the delegates sat in rows of chairs inside the
- space reserved in term time for the lawyers. There was ground enough for
- this disappointment. Fairchild had not come, and the prospects of a good
- speech, or even a bitter personal contest, were fading away. No one had an
- explanation for his absence. The Dearborn delegates were more in the dark
- than outsiders even, for they had been told to meet him in Tyre, before
- the Convention, and that he would breakfast at the Turnpike Tavern. Milton
- reassured them for a time by enlarging upon the bad condition of the
- roads, but even he ended as they took their seats, by professing some fear
- of an accident. “However, I’ll cast th’ solid vaote, th’ same as before, I
- suppose?” he said, and the bondsmen nodded assent.
- </p>
- <p>
- The proceedings opened tamely. The Chairman was a professor from the
- Tecumseh Academy; the other counties each had a secretary. Two written
- announcements were handed up to be read, one that Milton Squires was
- authorized to cast seventeen votes for Dearborn County, the other naming a
- man to perform a similar function for the ten votes of Jay. There was to
- be no break yet awhile, apparently, in the two machine counties. But—what
- would Adams do?
- </p>
- <p>
- As this question flashed through the minds of the assemblage, one of the
- Adams delegates rose, walked to the bench, gave a paper to the presiding
- officer, and then joined the little throng of spectators to one side. Did
- this mean that he left the Convention? What <i>did</i> it mean?
- Experienced observers began to feel that something startling was coming.
- </p>
- <p>
- The paper being read, turned out to be an announcement that Abram K.
- Beekman had been substituted in the Adams County delegation for the
- delegate who had just vacated his seat, and as the words died away the
- Boss himself pushed his way down the aisle, threw his long leg over the
- bar-rail, and took his seat. The master of Jay County getting substituted
- for Adams County—here <i>was</i> a mystery! Did it portend that
- Adams had been won for Beekman’s candidature? Yes, it must mean that—and
- Tyre’s heart leapt for joy. Or no—it couldn’t mean that. The Boss
- would hardly thrust himself forward in that brash way if he were sure of
- winning—and Tyre’s heart sank again, sadly.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Chairman announced that balloting would be resumed; that the counties
- would be called in alphabetical order, and that, in the case of Adams
- County, which did not signify a desire to vote as a unit, the names of the
- delegates would also be called in that order. Before the words were fairly
- out of his mouth a hundred shrewd brains had discovered that this meant
- Beekman’s being the first name called. But what was his game?
- </p>
- <p>
- So perplexed were the men of Tyre with this problem that they almost
- forgot to cheer when their man rose to his feet, in response to his name.
- It was rarely that one saw Abe Beekman in Conventions; he preferred to run
- them from the outside; and no one in the hall had ever heard him make a
- speech. Imagine how they listened now!
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke with an almost boyish nervousness, resting his hands on the table
- before him, and clinging, as it were, with his eyes to the Chairman for
- support. What he said was brief, to the point, and worth repeating here:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I got substituted, ez p’raps some of yeh hev guessed, because I wanted a
- word at the very start. I hev my reasons. I ain’t a’ goin’ to mention no
- names—” he darted a swift, significant glance over toward the
- Dearborn County men, singling out Milton for a second, then reverting his
- troubled gaze to the Chairman—“but I kin feel it in my bones that
- things ain’t on the square here. Ther’s a nigger in the fence. Mebbe it’s
- no business of mine to yank him aout, but it’s only fair to my caounty
- that we shouldn’t let anybody git ahead of us in doin’ what we want to
- dew. It’s trew that D. comes ahead o’ J. in the alph’bet, but”—and
- there was a momentary relaxation of his eager, sombre face as he
- enunciated this undoubted fact—“its jest as trew that A. comes in
- front o’ D. Ef any set o’ men—mind, I mention no names, but—ef
- any set o’ delegates come here with the idee o’ sellin’ their man aout, or
- o’ makin’ a combination which’ll put them solid with the next Congressman,
- and leave Jay aout in the cold, perhaps ’fore I’m threw they’ll see
- thet they bit off more’n their jaws could wag.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Cheerman, I don’t want to go to Congress. I never ’v’ hed the
- least hankerin’ after it. This State of aours is good enough for me. I
- wouldn’t feel like myself ef I had to stan’ ’raoun’ ’n’ see
- chaps from Rhode Island or Floridy puttin’ on airs, and pretendin’ to cut
- as big a swath as New York did. I’m too much of a State man fer thet. I’d
- be itchin’ to jump on ’em all the while. So I want to say that I
- withdraw my name——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Hon. Elhanan Pratt rose here, his weazen little figure coming up with
- a spring like a jack-in-the-box, and squeaked out sharply: “I rise to a
- point of order. The Abram K. Beekman whose name is before this Convention
- is a Jay County man, nominated by Jay County, and voted for alone by Jay
- County. No Adams County man”—there was an elaborate sarcasm in the
- tone—“has any right to withdraw that name.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The point of order is well taken,” said the Chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, in thet case I won’t ask to withdraw my name,” responded Beekman.
- “But I don’t think it’ll make much differ’nce. A wink is as good as a nod
- to a bline man. P’raps you kin git an idee by this time haow the Jay
- caounty cat’s goin’ to jump; p’raps you can’t. I’m-goin’ to vaote fer Mr.
- Richard Ansdell, ’n’ I wan’ to say——”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was interrupted here by a stout, sharp burst of hand-clapping from the
- Adams delegates, and the few Adams men in the audience. The Tyre crowd
- were taken aback for an instant, and sat bewildered; then the fact that
- their man had played his game, and was acting as if he had won, inspired
- them to join tumultuously in the applause, though they were in total
- darkness as to the nature of the stakes played for.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Boss went on: “I wan’ to say that I’ve never laid eyes on him but
- once, ’n’ never spoke a word with him in my life. But I ain’t lived
- all this while ’thaout learnin’ to read somethin’ of a man’s natur’
- in his face. I believe he’s honest and straight-aout; I don’t believe
- there’s a crookid hair in his head. P’raps he’s got some naotions that
- we’d look on as finnickin’ up here in Jay, but I ain’t afeard o’ them.
- It’s better to hev a man standin’ so upright thet he bends back’rd, then
- to hev—— to hev—— the fact is, Mr. Cheerman, <i>I</i>
- think I’ve said ’baout enough. Th’ other candidate hain’t showed up
- today! P’raps it’s jest as well fur him that he hain’t. I guess he’ll
- consider that he’s got abaout threw with deestrick politics—but I
- don’t want to appear to be rubbin’ it in. The lawyers hev a Latin sayin’
- abaout speakin’ nothin’ but good o’ the dead——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Beekman stopped short. The Chairman had risen to his feet. Half the
- delegates had followed his example, and were gazing intently at one of the
- tall, small-paned windows on the right side of the room. The three
- reporters who were sitting in the clerk’s desk had begun climbing over the
- rails and weaving their way between the chairs toward this same window. A
- hum of rising murmurs was running through the audience. Beekman, finding
- suddenly that he had no auditors, and disconcerted at the interruption,
- looked about the room for a moment, in search of an explanation. Then he
- followed the direction of the faces, and saw his retainer, Jim Bunner,
- clambering in under the lifted sash, and making strenuous, almost frantic,
- efforts meanwhile to attract his attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man was breathless with excitement. He had climbed to the window from
- the roof of a low adjoining shed, and he could be heard now, as he found a
- footing on the back of a bench, in panting explanation of his conduct: “I
- <i>hed</i> to come this way! It’d ’a taken me tew long to’ve got
- threw the crowd at th’ door. I’ve got news for th’ Boss that won’t keep a
- second!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had pushed his way roughly through the throng now, brushing the
- reporters aside with especial impatience, and stood whispering, gasping
- his tidings in Beekman’s ear. The assemblage, silent now as the midnight
- watch, read in the deepening shadows and shocked severity of the Boss’s
- face that something far out of the ordinary had happened. Beekman appeared
- to be asking some questions, and pondering the whispered answers with
- increasing emotion.
- </p>
- <p>
- The waiting hundreds, all on their feet now, watched him in a tremor of
- expectation.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last he spoke, in a low, changed, yet extremely distinct voice:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Cheerman, when I spoke abaout sayin’ nothin’ but good o’ th’ dead, I
- spoke unbeknaown to myself like a prophet. My friend here brings some
- awful news. Mr. Fairchild o’ Dearborn has jest been faound, stark ’n’
- cold, crunched under his hosses ’n’ carriage, at the bottom of
- Tallman’s ravine!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXV.—“YOU THOUGHT I DID IT!”
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HEN Seth awoke
- next morning, the position of the shadow cast by the thick green-paper
- curtain which covered the upper half of his window, told his practised
- faculties that it was very late, and impelled him to get out of bed,
- before he began at all to remember the several momentous events of the
- previous evening. As he dressed he strove to get these arranged in their
- proper order in his mind. Curiously enough there were certain inchoate
- recollections of feminine screams, of bursts of hysterical sobbing, of low
- but rough and strange male voices, doleful and haunting, which confusedly
- struggled for place in his sleepy thoughts, and seemed now to be a part of
- the evening’s occurrences, now to belong to this present morning, and to
- have come to him while he was nearing the end of his sleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he passed his Aunt Sabrina’s door on his way to the stairs, he heard
- from within this same sound of suppressed weeping. This much at least of
- the unlocated recollections must have belonged to the first stages of his
- waking. “Another quarrel with Isabel!” he thought, as he descended the
- stairs. “Why is it that women must always be rowing it with each other!”
- Then his own dispute with Albert came fresh and overpowering in
- distinctness of impression across his mind, and the grounds of his
- grievance against the temper of the other sex faded away.
- </p>
- <p>
- The living-room was vacant—the breakfast table still standing in the
- disorder of a meal just finished, and the shades down as though the day
- had not yet begun, although the clock showed it to be past ten. One of the
- folding doors of the parlor was open and he heard Isabel’s voice—it
- struck him as being strangely altered toward harshness of fibre—calling
- him to enter.
- </p>
- <p>
- She stood, as he remembered her once before, in front of the piano. In the
- dusk of the drawn curtains—how gloomy and distrait everything about
- the house was this morning!—her figure was not very clearly visible,
- but her face was so pale that it seemed to be independent of any light.
- Her eyes had the effect of slight distention, and, in the shadow, were
- singularly dark of tint. They were gazing at him with a strange, intent,
- troubled look, and the expression of the pallid face went with this to
- disturb him vaguely. He said to himself, in the moment of waiting for her
- to speak, that he must keep his troth with Annie resolutely in mind, and,
- if needs be, not shrink from avowing and standing by it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel did not offer him her hand, or tender him any greeting whatever;
- only looked him through and through with that searching, unaccustomed
- gaze.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wouldn’t let them call you,” she said at last, speaking slowly, as if
- with an effort to both form these words, and repress others. “I knew that
- you needed the sleep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sorry if I put anybody out by my laziness. But it is such a relief
- to be able to sleep like that once in a while, instead of having to get
- down to the office by eight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard you go out last night. I heard you come in this morning. But not
- another soul in the house suspects that you were out; not one!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The tone was unmistakably solemn, and weighted with deep feeling of some
- sort. Seth uneasily felt that a scene was impending, though he could not
- foresee its form. He felt, too, that the part he must play in it would of
- necessity be an awkward one.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” he answered, “the night seemed too fine to stay in doors. Besides,
- I was nervous, and it did me good to walk it off. You can’t imagine how
- light-hearted I was when I returned, or—for that matter—how
- heavy-hearted when I went out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Seth!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The word came forth like the red flash from clouds which can no longer
- retain their pent-up, warring, swelling forces—an interjection of
- passion, of dread, of infinite troubling, of doubt wreathed in struggle
- with pain. She swayed slightly toward him, her hands clasped and stretched
- down and forward with a gesture of excessive perturbation, her great eyes
- lustrous with the excitement of this battle of emotions. Seth fancied that
- the dominant meaning of the look was reproach. He could not in the least
- see his way through the dilemma, or even understand it. He could only say
- to himself that the enchantment was ended, and that, come what might, he
- would not forget Annie.
- </p>
- <p>
- The woman glided a step nearer to him. She put one hand to her brow with a
- sudden movement, and rested the other upon the piano, as if all at once
- conscious of needing support. With a painful little laugh, hysterically
- incongruous, she said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am almost beside myself, am I not? I can not speak to you, it seems!
- And yet there is so much to say—or no! isn’t silence better still?”
- Her voice trembled as she went on: “For what <i>could</i> we say? How
- meaningless all our words would be in the face of—— of——-.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She swept both hands to her eyes, with an impetuous gesture. Her form
- seemed to totter for a moment, so that Seth instinctively moved toward
- her. Then with a wild outburst of sobs she threw herself upon his breast,
- convulsed with incessant paroxysms of passionate weeping.
- </p>
- <p>
- They stood thus together for some minutes. The young man, moved to great
- tenderness by her evident suffering, the cause of which he vaguely
- referred to the previous evening’s events, put his arm about her,
- whispered gently to her to be comforted, and stroked her hair with a soft,
- caressing touch. His hand touched her cheek, and she shuddered at the
- contact; then swiftly took the hand in hers, and raised it to her lips,
- murmuring between the sobs:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ungrateful! was it not done for me? Ah, dear, I shall not shudder again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She kissed the hand repeatedly, and pressed it to her bosom, as she spoke.
- She was still trembling like a leaf in his arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- What could it all mean? he asked himself—and found no answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We must be brave, dear,” she whispered now. “We must be on our guard
- every instant! Oh—h! they shall tear my heart out before they learn
- anything—so much as a syllable! We must keep our nerves.” She looked
- up into his astonished face, with almost a smile in her effort to
- strengthen his courage. “We <i>will</i> be brave, won’t we, mine? The test
- will come soon now. Perhaps in an hour they will bring—<i>it!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The trembling seized her frame, and shook it with cruel force. She buried
- her face in his breast with along, low cry of anguish, and sobbed there
- piteously, clinging to his hand still. Once she bent as if to kiss it
- again, but stopped, then turned her head aside, groaning “Oh how terrible!
- how terrible!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The mystification now demanded light of some sort.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is it that is so terrible, my poor girl?” he asked. “What are they
- going to bring in an hour? Tell me, Isabel—my sweet sister—what
- does it all mean?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked up into his face, with flickering suggestions of a mechanical
- smile at the comers of her pale lips, and with soft reproach in her eyes:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you going to pretend to <i>me</i>, too, dear one? As if it were not
- all here in my heart—all, all! Ah, they shan’t get it! They shan’t
- get the shadow of a hint. You were home here all the while! You were
- asleep, sound asleep! If it be necessary, I could swear that I <i>knew</i>
- you were asleep, that—but no, there might be suspicion then. That we
- mustn’t have! Don’t fear for me, dear one! I shall be so discreet, so
- circumspect, watching, weighing every word! But oh—h—shall we
- dream of <i>it?</i> What if we should, and should cry out in our sleep—Oh-h,
- my God! my God!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She sank again, convulsively clutching his hand, and quivering with
- feverish sobs upon his breast.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Upon my soul, I don’t in the least know what you are talking about,
- Isabel! Do try and be calm, and tell me what it is!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>He</i> asks <i>me!</i>” she cried, with the same jarring, painful
- half-laugh he had heard before.
- </p>
- <p>
- He held her from him, so that he might look into her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come, come! You are acting like a tragedy-queen on the stage. Do be
- sensible, and tell me what the matter is. You make me out of patience with
- you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke in the vexed tone of a man needlessly perplexed with foolish
- mysteries. To her strained senses the simple expression of impatience was
- cruel mockery. She drew herself still further back from him, and dropped
- his hand. She was able to speak collectedly now:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is <i>you</i> who are the actor. You persist in playing the part—to
- <i>me!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Still in riddles! <i>What</i> part, Isabel?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You <i>will</i> have me tell you? You want to hear the thing—in
- words?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, by all means.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had never once taken her frightened, fascinated gaze from his face.
- “You insist on hearing from my lips that while you were out last night
- your brother was murdered——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Murdered not four miles from here, as he was driving on the road, and his
- body thrown down into a ravine. Some boys found it. Fortunately, everybody
- thinks it was an accident. The men who brought the news thought so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had spoken the words coldly, as if they were commonplaces and had been
- learnt by rote; but all the passion of her being was flaming in her eyes,
- which transfixed him with their stare.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mur-dered!” the young man stammered, feeling his senses reeling. “Albert
- murdered! Oh-h this must be nonsense! It is too terrible to think of even!
- You are out of your mind, Isabel!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her lips quivered: “It would be no wonder if I were, after <i>this!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The darkened rooms, the sobbing of his Aunt upstairs, the sounds of
- anguish that he knew now had partially awakened him, the crazed demeanor
- of Isabel—all these rose around him, like a black fog, to choke and
- confound his mind. Her fixed gaze burned him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me what you know!” he cried, wildly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wouldn’t it be easier to tell me what <i>you</i> know?” The chilling tone
- of the words startled him, as might a sudden contact of warm flesh with
- ice, before his bewildered brain had grasped their meaning. Then, like the
- crimson, all-pervading outburst of a conflagration, the thing dawned upon
- him, and his thoughts seemed blood-red in its hideous light. He pushed her
- from him fiercely, returning her piteous look of fright with a glare, and
- biting his tongue for words that should be great enough to fairly
- overwhelm her. As she cowered, he strode toward her: “You thought I did
- it!” he shouted at her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her only answer was to bury her face in her hands, and sink weakly at his
- knees.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood relentlessly glowering down upon her. The bitter, brutal words
- that might be heaped upon her, nay, that ought to be, crowded upon his
- tongue. It was too great a task to restrain them, to keep silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>You</i> thought <i>I</i> did it,” he repeated. “And you didn’t object—you
- didn’t shrink from me! Why, I remember—my God!—you kissed my
- hand! You said: ‘it was done for me! ’ Oh-h!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The woman at his feet, her face hidden, had been sobbing violently. She
- lifted her eyes now, and strove appealingly to conquer him with their
- power. She rose, unaided, to her feet, and confronted him. Terror and
- tenderness visibly struggled for the mastery of her facial expression, as
- for the mood behind it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t, Seth, don’t! Can’t you see how I am suffering? Have you no pity?
- How <i>can</i> you have the heart to speak to me like this?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>You</i> talk about pity—about hearts!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How long ago was it that they were on your tongue—that you had your
- arms stretched open for me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t recall it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I were to die this day, this hour, it would be the one thing I should
- want to remember, the one thing of my life that I should hug to my heart.
- What is changed since then? A man dead?—a man dies every minute of
- the day somewhere in the world! Suppose I was wrong! Suppose it <i>was</i>
- an accident—yes, we’ll say it was! <i>Don’t</i> you see—how
- little that is, how unimportant, compared with—with——”
- </p>
- <p>
- She finished the sentence by a faltering step toward him, her arms
- outstretched, her lips parted, her form offering itself for his embrace
- with a sinuous seduction of moving outlines.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old witchery flamed up for a second in his pulses; then it was
- emberless ashes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Without a word he turned and left her.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Aunt Sabrina opened the door of her room in response to his strenuous
- rapping, and wiped her tear-stained face with the end of her
- shoulder-shawl as her nephew entered. At his behest, she told all the
- tidings that had come to the farm. Its master had been found at the bottom
- of Tallman’s ravine, by some boys who had climbed down to see if the
- beech-nuts were turning. The whole equipage had pitched off the narrow
- road which crossed the gulf at this point, high above. The buggy was
- smashed. One of the horses was dead; the other had two of its legs broken.
- Half hidden under the carriage and one of the beasts was Albert, quite
- lifeless and cold. The men who brought the news believed every bone in his
- body must have been broken.
- </p>
- <p>
- As she concluded the bare recital of facts, the poor old maid began her
- sobbing afresh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I might uv knaowd it’d ’a’ come to this,” she groaned; “‘pride
- goeth before a fall,’ ez Solomon says. I hed my heart tew much sot on his
- goin’ to Congress; I was exaltin’ my horn tew high. I was settin’ by the
- window, that very minute, watchin’ Sarah Andrews go by perked up in their
- democrat wagon, with her injy shawl ’n all her fine feathers on, ’n’
- never so much’s turnin’ her head this way, ’n’ I was sayin’ to
- myself, ‘M’ lady, you’ll come daown a peg ’r two off ’n your
- high hoss when Albert goes to Congress’—’n’ there the men was
- comin’ in the gate, thet identical minute, with the news. I tell you!” she
- roused herself into indignant declamation here, “men like Zeke Tallman
- ought to be hung, who ’re tew shiftless or penurious to fix up
- their fences on pieces o’ raoad like thet, sao’s to keep folks from
- drivin’ off in the dark, ’n’ killin’ themselves! That’s what they
- ought!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it wasn’t dark, Aunt Sabrina,” said Seth; “the moon was so bright all
- last night, you could have seen to read by it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old lady was too occupied with her own thoughts to even think of
- inquiring as to her nephew’s source of information. She only rocked to and
- fro, desolately, and said, as if talking to herself:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sao much the wuss, Seth. It <i>was</i> to be! Nothin’ could a’ stopped
- it. Thet old witch, M’tildy Warren, is right. There’s a cuss on aour
- fam’ly. Here, almost inside tew years, Sissly’s gone, ’n’ Lemuel’s
- gone, ’n’ naow its poor Albert! ’N’ he was gittin’ so like
- his grandfather, the Senator, tew, gittin’ to look like him, ’n’
- ack like him; I kin remember my father——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth had left the room, with soft footsteps. He would go at once to the
- scene of his brother’s death.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the outside door, as he opened it, he stood face to face with Annie.
- She gave him her hand silently. Her face was paler than he had ever seen
- it before, and she looked on the ground, after the first little start of
- surprise at the meeting, instead of into his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have heard?” he whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. Isn’t it awful?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Will you go upstairs and see Aunt Sabrina? She is in her room. I think
- the sight of you would do her good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. What a terrible shock it must be to her. And——?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The widow? You’ll find her in the parlor. Strange enough, she was weeping
- her eyes out when I last saw her.” He could not keep the bitterness out of
- his tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Poor woman!” was all that Annie could find it in her heart to murmur, as
- Seth passed her on his gloomy errand, and she entered the house of
- mourning.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXVI.—THE CORONER.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HERE was a short
- cut by which, using a rough back road across the hill, and then a
- dimly-marked bridle path down the bed of the creek, one could get to
- Tallman’s ravine in less than an hour on foot. Seth saddled the black
- mare, and brought her up on the meadow plateau overlooking the gulf,
- panting and white on breast and barrel with foam, inside fifteen minutes.
- He had galloped furiously, unable to think save in impatient flashes, and
- reckless alike of his own neck and the beast’s wind and limbs. He reined
- up the plunging mare at the very edge of the ravine, where some score of
- farmers and boys were standing clustered under the trees, watching his
- excited approach.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he threw himself from the saddle among them, and looked swiftly from
- face to face for the right one to speak to first, the attention of the
- elder bystanders concentrated itself upon the mare. They would have given
- their foremost thoughts to her anyway, for they were owners of livestock
- even before they were neighbors, and her splashed and heated condition
- appealed in protest to their deepest feeling—reverential care for
- good horseflesh. But there was something more: the mare was strangely,
- visibly agitated at the sight of the glen before her, and reared back with
- outstretched trembling forelegs, lifted ears, and distended, frightened
- eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By Cracky!” cried Zeke Tallman himself, “don’t it beat natur’! This ’ere
- mare knaows what’s happened! Look at her! She senses what’s layin’ down
- there at the bottom!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ it they say dawgs has got more instinck than a hoss!” said a
- younger yokel. He kicked a mongrel pup which was lounging around among the
- men’s legs, with a fierce “Git aout! yeh whelp, yeh! What d’<i>you</i>
- knaow abaout it!” to illustrate his contempt for this canine theory.
- </p>
- <p>
- A third farmer, more practically considerate, took the shivering,
- affrighted beast by the bridle, and led it away from the gulf’s edge,
- patting its wet neck compassionately as they went.
- </p>
- <p>
- Meanwhile Seth had found his way through the group to his brother John,
- who stood with his back against a beech tree, springing from the very
- brink of the gulf, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the trampled
- grass at his feet. A half circle of boys, with one or two girls of the
- school age, stretched about him at some distance, like the outer line of
- an open fan, mutely eyeing him as the second most important figure in the
- tragedy. They separated for Seth to make his way, and made signs to each
- other that the interest was doubled by his arrival. The brothers shook
- hands silently and scarcely looked at each other.
- </p>
- <p>
- There came the sound of a pistol shot from the glen below; somebody said:
- “There! they’ve killed th’ off-hoss. Ther’ goes th’ best matched team o’
- grays in Dearborn Caounty!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you been down yet, John?” Seth asked softly, as the low buzz of
- conversation began about them once more.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, not yet. I suppose I could if I had insisted on it, but when I got
- here, twenty minutes or so ago, they told me here that Timms had got his
- jury together down there, and forbidden anybody coming down till they were
- through. So I’ve stayed here. Not that I care about Timms, but—I can
- wait.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let’s go down!” As he spoke, Seth swung himself around the beech, and
- began the descent, letting himself swiftly down the steep, mossy declivity
- by saplings and roots. His brother followed. One or two boys started also,
- but were roughly restrained by their elders, with a whispered “Stay back,
- can’t yeh! H’ain’t yeh got no sense. Them’s the brothers!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The scene at the bottom was not unlike what Seth’s fancy had painted it,
- adding the terrible novelties of the night to a spot he had known from
- boyhood. Half-shaded even in the noon sunlight by overhanging branches
- from the towering, perpendicular sides of the glen, the miniature valley
- lay, a narrow stretch of poor, close-cropped grass, with the spiral, faded
- mullein stalks, the soft brown clumps of brake, the straggling, bloomless
- thistles, and even some tufts of glowing golden-rod, which push their way
- into unfrequented pasture-lands and encompass their sterility. The stream,
- which once had been a piscatorial glory of the section, but now, robbed of
- its water and its life by distant clearings, mills and reservoirs,
- wandered sadly and shallowly on an unnoted course, divided itself here to
- skirt each side of the gulf with a contemptible rivulet—the two
- coming together abruptly at the mouth of the low stone culvert, and
- vanishing into its dark recesses, above which rose, sloping steeply, the
- high embankment of the road traversing the ravine.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was over this embankment that horses, carriage and owner had
- precipitately pitched; it was at its base, on the swail and gravel of the
- stream’s edge, that the wreck lay, surrounded by a little knot of men.
- Vertical gashes in the earth down the bank, with broken branches and tom
- roots, marked the awful track of the descent; the waters of the brook to
- the right, dammed by the body of the horse killed in the fall, had
- overflowed the sands and made muddy rivulets across to the culvert.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Coroner turned with obvious vexation at the sound of the brothers’
- approach. “I thought I give word—” he began; then, recognizing the
- newcomers, added, without altering his peremptory, officious tone: “It’s
- all right; you can come now, if you want to. The gentlemen of the jury
- have completed their labors for the present. I was on the pint of
- adjourning the ink-west.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brothers joined the jurors, and dumbly surveyed the spectacle at their
- feet. One of the grays lay across the rivulet; the other, more recently
- dead, was piled awkwardly upon its mate’s neck and shoulders, in an
- unnatural heap. The front portions of the buggy, scratched but not
- smashed, were curiously reared in the air, by reason of the pole being
- driven deep into the soft earth, between the horses; the rear wheels and
- the seat, broken off and riven by the violence of the shock, were imbedded
- in the marsh underneath. On the higher ground, close in front of the
- brothers, lay something decorously covered with horse-blankets, which they
- comprehended with a sinking of the heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He lay in theer, part under the hind wheels ’n’ part under the
- nigh hoss,” explained the Coroner, with dignity. “The fall was enough to
- brek his neck twenty times over, let alone the hosses may’ve kicked him on
- the way down. We hev viewed the remains, ’n’ we’ve decided—
- </p>
- <p>
- “We ain’t decided nothin’!” broke in one of the jurors, a serious, almost
- grim-faced farmer, with a bushy collar of gray whiskers framing his brown
- square jaw. “How kin we decide till we’ve heerd some evidence, ’n’
- before the ink-west is threw with?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s some men’d kick if they was goin’ to be hung. Did I <i>say</i>
- we’d arrived at a verdict? What I mean is we’ve agreed to adjourn the
- ink-west now till arter the funeral.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, why daon’t yeh say what yeh mean, then?” rejoined the objecting
- juror. “They can’t no cor’ner make up my verdict fur me, ’n’ you’ll
- fine it aout, tew.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The more fool me fur panelin’ yeh!” was the Coroner’s comment.
- </p>
- <p>
- The brothers insensibly edged away from this painful altercation. A little
- elderly man, in shabby broadcloth which seemed strangely out of place
- among the rough tweeds and homespuns of the farmers, detached himself from
- the group of jurors, and came over to them, with a subdued halfsmile of
- recognition. It was the Thessaly undertaker.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tew bad, ain’t it?” he said glibly, “allus some such scrimmage as thet,
- on every one of Timms’ juries. He ain’t got no exec’tive ability, <i>I</i>
- say. I’d like to see <i>him</i> run a funer’l with eight bearers—all
- green han’s! I told him thet once, right to his face! But then of course
- yeh knaow <i>I</i> can’t say much. He’s techy, ’n’ ’twouldn’t
- do fur me to rile him. We hev a kind o’ ’rangement, you see. I hev
- to be on hand any-way, ’n’ he allus puts me on the jury; it helps
- him ’n’ it helps me. I kin always sort o’ smooth over things, if
- any o’ th’ jurors feels cranky, yeh knaow. They’ll listen to me, cuz they
- reelize I’ve hed experience, ’n’ then there’s a good deal in
- knaowin’ haow to manage men, in hevin’ what <i>I</i> call exec’tive
- ability. Of course, this case is peculiar. They ain’t no question abaout
- th’ death bein’ accidental. But this man you heerd kickin’, this Cyrus
- Ballou, he’s makin’ a dead set to hev’ Zeke Tallman condemned fur hevin’
- his fence up there in bad repair. He ’n’ Tallman’s a lawin’ of it
- abaout some o’ his steers thet got into Tallman’s cabbages, ’n’
- thet’s why——-”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose we can leave this to you!” John broke in, impatience mastering
- the solemnity of the scene. “Have you made any arrangements? You know what
- ought to be done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, my boy ought to be here by this time with my covered wagon, what I
- call my ambulance.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brothers turned away from him. The little man remembered something and
- hurrying after them laid his hand on John’s arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I spoke abaout allus bein’ on the jury, you knaow, p’raps I ought
- to’ve explained.” He proceeded with an uneasy, deprecating gesture. “You
- see, a juror gits a dollar a day, ’n’ sometimes friends of the
- remains think I ought to deduck thet f’m my bill, but ef you’ll jest
- consider——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh for God’s sake! leave us alone!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Seth who spoke, and the undertaker joined his fellow-jurors at the
- foot of the hill forthwith. The brothers went back, and stood again in
- oppressed silence over the blanketed form.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. William Henry Timms meanwhile conversed apart with his panel. He was a
- middle-aged, shrewdfaced man, who, like so many thousands of other Whig
- babes born in the forties, had been named after the hero of Tippecanoe. He
- was more politician than coroner, more coroner than doctor. He hung by a
- rather dubious diploma upon the outskirts of his profession, snubbed by
- the County Society, contemned by most sensible Thessaly families as “not
- fit to doctor a sick cat.” But he had a powerful “pull” in the politics of
- the county, and the office could not, apparently, be wrested from him, no
- matter how capable his opponent.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the earlier years of his official service he had been over zealous in
- suspecting mysteries, and had twice been reprimanded by the Supreme Court
- Judge, and much oftener by the District Attorney, for enveloping in
- criminal suspicion cases which, when intelligently examined, were palpable
- and blameless casualties. These experiences had sensibly modified his
- zeal. He had put the detective habit of mind far away behind him, and,
- like a wise official, bent all his energies now to the more practical
- labor of dividing each inquest into as many sessions as possible. Had he
- been a Federal Deputy Marshal, he could not have been more skilled in this
- delicate art of getting eight days’ pay out of a three hours’ case. A bare
- suggestion of mystery at the start, to be almost cleared up, then revived,
- then exploited carefully, then finally dissipated, and all so deftly that
- the District Attorney, who lived at Octavius, would not be inspired to
- come over and interfere—this was Dr. Timms’ conception of a
- satisfactory inquest. Occasionally there would be the added zest of an
- opportunity to formally inflict censure upon somebody, and if this
- involved some wealthy or potential person, so much the better: to withhold
- the censure meant tangible profit, to sternly mete it (failing a fair
- arrangement) meant public credit as a bold, vigilant official.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Timms was still turning over in his mind the professional
- possibilities involved in Tallman’s bad fence-building, and casually
- sounding his jurors as to their private feelings toward the delinquent;
- the brothers had followed the jury up to the meadow plateau, and were
- standing aloof from yet among their neighbors, answering in monosyllables,
- and following mentally the work of the undertakers’ squad down in the
- bottom; the farmers were beginning to straggle off reluctantly, the
- demands of neglected work and long-waiting dinners conquering their
- inclination to remain—when a big carry-all from Tyre drove up on the
- road outside, and a score of men clambered out and over the fence to join
- the group. They had driven post-haste from the Convention, and among them
- were Ansdell, Beekman, and Milton Squires.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Ansdell came straight to the two brothers, giving a hand to each with
- a gesture full of tender comprehension. While they talked in low tones of
- the tragedy, they were joined by Abe Beekman; upon the normal eagerness
- and wistful solemnity of his gaunt face there was engrafted now a curious
- suggestion of consuming interest in some masked feature of the affair. He
- was so intent upon this, whatever it might be, that to the sensitive
- feelings of the other three he seemed to dash into the subject with wanton
- brusqueness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How air yeh, Fairchild?” he nodded to John, “I want somebody to tell me
- this hull thing, while it’s fresh. Who knaows th’ most ’baout it?
- Where’s th’ Cor’ner? What’s he done so far?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Obedient to a word from John, the Coroner dignifiedly came over to the
- beech tree, where our little group stood, and listened coldly to a series
- of searching questions put by the Jay County magnate. When they were
- finished he made lofty answer:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ain’t institooted no inquiries yit. That’ll be arranged fur later, to
- convenience the family ’n’ the officers of the law. It ain’t
- customary, in cases of accident like this, to rush around like a hen with
- her head cut off, right at the start. The law takes these things ca’mly,
- sir—ca’mly ’n’ quietly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But have you made an examination?—you are a doctor, I think,”
- interposed Ansdell. “Have you satisfied yourself when the death occurred?
- Have you learned any of the circumstances of it? Were there any
- witnesses?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Coroner looked at the questioner, then at the brothers, as if
- including them in his pained censure, then back again at Ansdell:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know ez it’s any o’ <i>your</i> business,” he said. “Who <i>air</i>
- yeh, any way?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Before anyone else could answer, Beekman spoke: “He’s the next Congressman
- from this deestrick—nominated by acclamation over at Tyre to-day—that’s
- who <i>he</i> is. But never mind that, what I want to knaow is—air
- yeh sure he died from an accident? Kin yeh swear to thet ez a doctor?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Toe be sure I kin!” responded the official, in a friendlier tone. “He was
- simply mashed out o’ shape by the fall. He come down forty feet, ef it was
- an inch, plum under the horses. They jest rolled over each other, all the
- way down.—And so this is Mr. Ansdell, I presewm. I’m proud to make
- yer acquaintance, sir. Only by the merest accident I wasn’t at the
- Convention to-day, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The undertaker came up now to announce that the first stage of his labors
- was completed and that the ambulance wagon was on the road outside, ready
- to start for the Fairchild homestead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We went up by t’other side, lower daown the gulf,” he explained; “’twas
- easier, ’n’ then there was no shock to yer feelin’s. Ef I might be
- ’lowed to s’jest, it ’ud look kine o’ respectful to hev all
- these friends of the remains walk two by two, behine the wagon, daown to
- the haouse. Yeh might let the carry-all come along arterwards, empty, yeh
- knaow, ez a sort o’ token of grief.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The suggestion was passively accepted as the proper thing under the
- circumstances, and the little procession began to shape itself on the road
- outside. Seth was moving toward the fence with the others, when the
- thought of the black mare he had ridden to the scene occurred to him. A
- farm-boy was holding the animal a little way off, near some bars opening
- from the meadow to the road. Seth saw Milton getting over the rails—he
- had been busy on the outskirts of the assemblage gathering accounts from
- those earlier on the ground—and said to him: “Won’t you get the
- mare, and ride her home, along with the carry-all. I shall walk—with
- the rest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The cortege had formed just beyond the fateful narrowing of the road,
- where it crossed the gulf, and the men who were to follow Albert to the
- homestead, including all the late comers from Tyre and a few neighbors,
- had looked down the steep declivity, and noted the new breaking away of
- earth on the road’s edge, before they passed on to fall in line behind the
- black, shrouded vehicle. The procession had moved some rods when there
- came sounds of excitement from the rear; at these some of the walkers
- turned, then others, and even the driver of the ambulance drew up his
- horses and joined the retrospective gaze.
- </p>
- <p>
- The black mare was balking again, on the road directly over the gulf, and
- was crowding back with her haunches tight against the fencing on the side
- opposite to that over which her late master had fallen. It was a moment of
- cruel tension to every eye, for the fence was visibly yielding under the
- animal’s weight, and another tragedy seemed a matter of seconds. Milton
- appeared to have lost all sense, and was simply clinging to the mare’s
- neck, in dumb affright. Luckily a farmer ran forward at this juncture, and
- contrived to lead the beast forward diagonally away from the spot. Milton
- sat up in the saddle again, turned the mare away from the gulf, and
- galloped off.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dummed cur’ous thet!” whispered Beekman to Seth; “does thet mare ack thet
- way often?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never knew her to balk before to-day. She acted like that when I first
- brought her up to the ravine. It <i>is</i> curious, as you say. But animal
- instinct is a strange, unaccountable thing any way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hm-m!” answered the Boss of Jay County, knitting his brows in thought, as
- the procession moved again.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXVII.—ANNIE AND ISABEL.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>nnie found the
- living room of the Fairchild homestead unoccupied. She could hear Alvira
- talking with the Lawton girl out in the kitchen, and from the parlor on
- the other side there came a murmuring sound which she did not comprehend
- at once. As she laid her hand upon the stair door, with the purpose of
- ascending to Sabrina’s room, this sound rose to a distinguishable pitch.
- It was a woman’s weeping. Annie hesitated, listening for a moment; then
- she turned, rolled one of the parlor doors back, and entered.
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel lay buried in the blue easy-chair, her face, encircled by one arm,
- hidden against its back. The great braids of her yellow hair were
- dishevelled and loosened, without being in graceful disorder. Her whole
- form trembled with the force of her hysterical sobbing.
- </p>
- <p>
- At Annie’s touch upon her shoulder she raised her face quickly. It was
- tear-stained, haggard, and looked soft with that flabbiness of outline
- which trouble may give to the fairest woman’s beauty when it is not built
- upon youth; over this face passed a quick look of disappointment at
- recognition of Annie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it is you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The almost petulant words escaped before Isabel could collect herself. She
- sat up now, wiping her eyes, and striving with all her might for control
- of her thoughts and tongue.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, Isabel. I <i>was</i> going up to Sabrina’s room, but I heard you
- sobbing here, and I felt that I must come to you. It is all so terrible—and
- I do so feel for you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Terrible—yes, it <i>is</i> terrible! It was kind of you to come—very
- kind. I—I scarcely realize it all, yet. It was such a shock!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know, poor dear.” Annie laid her hand caressingly on the other’s brow.
- She had not come with over-tenderness in her heart, but this unexpected
- depth of suffering, so palpably real, touched her keenly. “I know. Don’t
- try to talk to me—don’t feel that it is necessary. Only let me be of
- use to you. It will be a dreadful time for you all—and perhaps I can
- spare you some. I shan’t go to the school to-day. Oughtn’t you to go up to
- your room now, Isabel, and lie down, and leave me here to—to arrange
- things?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, not yet! Perhaps soon I will. My impulse is to stay down, to spare
- myself nothing, to force myself to suffer everything that there is to be
- suffered. I’ll see; perhaps that may not be best. But not now! not now! No—don’t
- go! Stay with me. I dread to be left alone; my own thoughts murder me!”
- She rose to her feet, and began pacing to and from the piano. “Let me walk—and
- you talk to me—anything, it doesn’t matter what—it will help
- occupy my mind. Oh, yes—were you at Crump’s last night? I heard them
- come by, late, singing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Isabel, how <i>can</i> we talk of such trivial things? Yes, I was
- there; I was in the singing party, too. It makes me shudder to think that
- at that very minute, perhaps——” The girl paused for a moment,
- with parted lips and troubled face, as if pondering some sudden thought;
- then exclaimed, “<i>Oh-h!</i> the horse! Could it have been!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Could what have been!” Isabel stopped in her caged-panther-like pacing,
- and looked deep inquiry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But no, of course not! What connection <i>could</i> there have been! You
- see, after I left the wagon, to cut across by the path at the end of the
- poplars, a horse came galloping like the wind up the road, with some
- figure lying low on its back. We were too far away to see distinctly,
- though the night was so light”—she had insensibly drifted into the
- use of the plural pronoun—“but the thing went by so like a flash
- that it seemed an apparition. And come to think of it, there was an effort
- to avoid noise. I know I wondered at there being such a muffled sound, and
- Seth explained——”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stopped short, conscious of having said more than she intended.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Seth was with <i>you</i>, then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—he met me, quite unexpectedly, by the thorns. He had been out
- walking, he said; the night was too fine to sleep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I heard him go out, an hour and a half at least before the singers
- came by. Did he say anything to you about what had happened, here in the
- house, during the evening?” Isabel’s azure eyes took on their darkest hue
- now, in the intentness of her gaze into her companion’s face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only that he had had words with Albert—poor boy! how like a knife
- the memory of them must be to him now!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did he tell you what the words were about?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did he say anything else to you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie grew restive under this persistent interrogation. The habit of
- deference to the older, wiser, more beautiful woman was very strong with
- her, but this did seem like an undue strain upon it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why yes, no doubt he did. We talked of a number of things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What were they? What did he say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, really, Isabel, I——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The elder woman gave a little click with her teeth and, after a searching
- glance into the other’s face, resumed her walk up and down, her hands
- clenched rather than clasped before her, and her movement more feline than
- ever. “Well, really you—what?” she said with the faintest suggestion
- of a mocking snarl in the intonation.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl drew herself up. It was not in human nature to keep her tone from
- chilling. “Really, I think I would better go up to Sabrina. I fancied I
- might be of some service to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Annie! Are you going to speak like that to me?—<i>now</i> of all
- times!” The tone was outwardly appealing. Annie’s sense was not skilled
- enough to detect the vibration of menace in it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, Isabel, not at all. But you make it hard for me. Can you wonder? I
- think to comfort a desolate, stricken woman in her hour of sorrow, and she
- responds by peremptory cross-examination as to what a young man may have
- said to me, in the moonlight. Is it strange that I am puzzled?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Strange! Is not everything strange around and about me! That I should
- have married as I did; that I, loathing farm life, should have come here
- to live; that I should be waiting here now for them to bring my husband’s
- corpse home to me—is it not all strange, unreal? The conversation
- ought to be to match, oughtn’t it?”—she spoke with an unnatural,
- tremulous vivacity which pained and frightened the girl—“and so,
- while we wait, I talk to you about young men, and the moonlight, and all
- that. <i>Can’t</i> you see that my mind is tearing itself to pieces, like
- a machine in motion with some big rod or other loose, pounding, crushing,
- right and left like a flail! We <i>must</i> talk! Tell me what he said,
- anything—everything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, that isn’t so easy,” Annie replied dubiously, much mistrusting the
- sanity of all this conversation, but pushed along with it in spite of
- herself. “He said something about a misunderstanding with his poor
- brother, and then—then something that I didn’t at all understand
- about a temptation, a great temptation leading him to the gates of hell he
- called it—but you know how Seth is given to exaggerate everything—and
- then——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He told you all this, did he. How confiding! How sweet! Go on—what
- <i>else</i> did he say to you—in the moonlight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie felt vaguely that the tone was cruel and hostile. As she paused in
- bewildered self-inquiry, Isabel glided forward and confronted her, with
- gleaming eyes and a white, drawn face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why do you stop there?” she demanded in a swift, bitter whisper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There <i>are</i> things which—a girl doesn’t like to—have
- dragged from her in this——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Even as Annie was forming this halting halfsentence, a change came over
- the elder woman. She dropped the hand which had been raised as if to
- clutch Annie’s shoulder. The flashing light passed from her eyes, and
- something of color, or at least of calm, came back into her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I understand!” she said, simply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can see, Isabel, that this is not a time I should have chosen to
- speak of such things to you, if you had not insisted. It seems almost
- barbarous to bring my joy forward, at such a time, and appear to contrast
- it with your affliction. You <i>won’t</i> think I wanted to do it, will
- you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The widow of a day was looking contemplatively at her companion; she had
- effaced from both expression and voice every trace of her recent
- agitation. “Are you sure it is all joy?” she asked calmly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wouldn’t admit it to him. And at first I was not altogether clear about
- it in my own mind. Indeed, with this other and terrible thing, I can
- scarcely think soberly about it, as it ought to be thought of. But still—you
- know, Isabel, we were little children together—and I have never so
- much as thought of anybody else.” Annie spoke more confidently, as she
- went on; the notion that there had been malevolence in Isabel’s tone had
- faded into a foolish fancy: there seemed almost encouragement, sympathy,
- in her present expression. “I should have lived and died an old maid if he
- had not come to me. And it comforts me, dear, too, to think that in your
- great trouble I shall have almost a sister’s right to be with you, and
- help you bear it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel did not respond to this tender proffer of solace. She still stood
- eying her companion reflectively. “You are very certain of being happy,
- then?” she mused.
- </p>
- <p>
- A sense of discordance touched the girl’s heart again—a something in
- the restrained, calm tone which seemed to sting. She looked more
- searchingly into the speaker’s eyes, and read in their blue depths a
- mystery of meaning which froze and silenced her. While Annie looked, in
- growing paralysis of thought, Isabel spoke again, slowly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your married life at least won’t be deadly dull, as mine was. There must
- be great possibilities of excitement in living with a man who can propose
- marriage to a girl—in the moonlight—<i>on his way home from
- having murdered his brother!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Samantha Lawton, the member of the tribe who served as
- maid-of-all-work at the Warren homestead, had a mind at once imaginative
- and curious. From an upper window she had caught sight of the mournful
- procession from Tallman’s ravine, winding its way down the hill, in the
- distance. She stole out from the house, whose bedridden occupant could at
- best only yell herself hoarse in calling if she chanced to need anything
- during her absence, and walked up the path by the thorns to the main road,
- over which the cortege would presently pass. Inside the sharp angle of
- shade made at this corner, where the thorns aspiringly joined the poplars,
- there was an old board seat between two trees, the relic of some past and
- forgotten habit of rendezvous, perhaps whole generations old. Samantha
- knew of this seat, and stood on it now; from it, she had a clear view of
- the road in front and, through the tangled thorns, of the meadow-path to
- the left, while there were branches enough about her to render her
- practically invisible. From this coign of vantage Samantha saw some things
- which she had not expected to witness.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie Fairchild came suddenly across the line of vision, from the
- direction of the dead man’s house, and walked straight to the stile at the
- edge of the thorn row. There was something so curious in the expression of
- her face, as she advanced, that Samantha scented discovery, and prepared
- on the instant an exculpatory lie. But Annie passed the one place where
- discovery was probable, and the hidden girl saw now that the strange look
- had some other explanation. She crossed the stile, and clung to the fence
- post, as if for support; glanced up the road, where now the black front of
- the nearing procession could be discerned; then with a shudder turned her
- face in profile toward her unsuspected observer, and looked vacantly,
- piteously up into the afternoon sky.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie’s face, with its straight, firm outlines, was not one which lent
- itself to the small facial play of evanescent emotions. Its regular
- features habitually expressed an intelligent, self-reliant composure, not
- easily responsive to shades of feeling. To see this calm countenance
- transfixed now with a helpless stare of anguish was to comprehend that
- something terrible had happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- She stood at the stile, desperately clinging to the rail at first, then
- edging into the thorns to be more out of sight, as the ambulance and the
- little file of friends moved slowly by. She noted nothing of the
- peculiarities of the procession—that most of the silent followers
- were strange men, in city dress—but only gazed at Seth, walking
- along gravely behind the vehicle, beside his brother John. She saw him
- with eyes distended, fixed—as of one following the unfolding of a
- hideous nightmare. So long as the party remained in sight, these set,
- affrighted eyes followed him. Then they closed, and the sufferer reeled as
- if in a swoon.
- </p>
- <p>
- Samantha’s first and best impulse was to get down and go to the agonized
- woman’s aid; her second, and controlling, thought, was to stop where she
- was, and see and hear all that was going.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie seemed to recover her strength, if not her composure. She wrung her
- hands wildly and talked with strange incoherence aloud to herself. Once
- she started, as if to cross the stile again and return to the house of
- mourning, but drew back. At last, walking straight ahead, like one in a
- dream, she moved toward her home.
- </p>
- <p>
- Samantha followed at a safe distance, marvelling deeply.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXVIII.—BETWEEN THE BREAD-PAN AND THE CHURN.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ELL, I don’ knaow
- ’s I go’s fur’s Sabriny, ’n’ say ther’s a cuss on th’
- fam’ly, ’n’ thet M’tildy Warren put it there, fur after all, three
- deaths hand-runnin’ in tew years ain’t an onheerd-of thing, but I don’t
- blame her fur gittin’ daown-hearted over it. Poor ole creetur, she’s be’n
- a carryin’ the hull load o’ grief on her shoulders sence Sissly died. I
- shouldn’t wonder if it’d be tew much for her naow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Alvira sighed, and let her eyes wander compassionately from the kneading
- board and its batch of dough to the old, cushioned arm chair by the
- kitchen stove where Aunt Sabrina customarily sat. This last bereavement
- had rendered the hired-girl almost sentimental in her attitude toward the
- stricken old maid—so much so that when young Samantha Lawton dropped
- in, toward evening, and offered to sit down in this chair, Alvira had
- sharply warned her to take another.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl had brought a note over from Annie to Seth, and was not a little
- vexed that Alvira should have taken it from her, and gone upstairs to
- deliver it herself, instead of allowing the messenger to complete her
- errand. She declined, therefore, to display any interest in the subject of
- the aged aunt, and warmed her hands over the glowing stove-griddles in
- silence. The elder Lawton girl, Melissa, resting for a moment from her
- churning, turned the talk into a more personal channel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fur <i>my</i> part, I think it’s a pesky shame, where there’s three big
- strappin’ men ’raoun’ th’ haouse, to make a girl wag this old
- chum-dash till her arms are ready to drop off. ’N’ I’ll tell ’em
- sao, tew.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I sh’d thought Dany’d done it fur yeh” said her younger sister, with a
- grin. “He allus seemed to me to be soft enough to do all yer work fur yeh,
- ef you’d let him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not he! Both he ’n’ Leander ain’t so much’s lifted a finger ’raoun’
- th’ haouse to-day. They’re off daown to th’ corners, hangin’ raoun’ th’
- store, ’n’ swoppin’ yarns ’baout th’ accident. <i>They</i>
- wouldn’t keer ’f I churned away here till I spit blood. In th’
- mornin’ he’ll be awful sorry, of course, ’n’ swear he furgot all ’baout
- Wednesday’s bein’ churnin’ day. Thet’s th’ man of it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ I s’pose Milton never does nothin’ ’baout th’ haouse
- naowadays,” remarked Samantha, interrogatively.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, siree!” snapped Alvira. “You bet he daon’t! He’s tew high ’n’
- mighty fur thet! Prob’ly he’s furgot so much as th’ name of a churn, even.
- He might git his broadcloth suit spotted, tew. I wouldn’t dream o’ askin’
- <i>him</i>. I’d ruther ask Seth any day then I hed Milton. <i>He</i> don’t
- put on half so many airs, even if he does git thirty dollars a week in
- Tecumseh, ’n’ live ’mong ladies ’n’ gentlemen ev’ry
- day ’f his life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Melissa rested from her labors again, to say sneeringly: “Pritty ladies ’n’
- gentlemen he <i>use’t</i> to travel with, there in Tecumsy, accordin’ to
- all accaounts!” Alvira paused in turn, with her arms to the elbow in the
- floury mixing, and an angry glitter in her little black eyes. “Ef I was <i>some</i>
- folks, ’n’ hed <i>some</i> folk’s relations in Tecumsy, ’pears
- to me I’d keep my maouth pritty blamed shut ’baout what goes on
- there!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The retort was ample. There was no answering sound, save the muffled
- splash and thud of Melissa’s vigorously-resumed churning.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lull in conversation was beginning to grow oppressive when the young
- visitor asked: “Haow does th’ fine lady take it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She seems more opset than anyone’d given her credit fur,” Alvira
- answered, sententiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- Melissa interposed to expand this comment, and rest her arms: “Yes, she <i>seems</i>
- opset enough. P’raps she <i>is</i>. But then agin, p’raps ef you was young
- ’n’ good lookin’, with blew eyes ’n’ a lot o’ yalleh hair
- thet was all yer own, ’n’ you hed a hus-ban’ twice as old as you
- was, ’n’ he sh’d fall daown ’n’ break his neck, ’n’
- leave you a rich young widder, p’raps you’d cry yer eyes aout—when
- people was lookin’—speshly if thet husban’ o’ yours left a likely
- young brother who was soft on yeh. When you git as old ’s I be,
- S’manthy, you’ll learn ther’s a good deal in appear’nces.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When she gits as old as you air,” broke in Alvira, sharply, “I hope
- she’ll learn better ’n’ to blab everythin’ thet comes into her
- head! You’ll let that cream break, ef yeh don’t look aout!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t b’lieve its within an ’aour o’ comin’” said Melissa,
- wearily resuming her task.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, but—reelly,” began Samantha, “<i>is</i> Seth——?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never you mind whether Seth is or whether he isn’t,” answered Alvira. “A
- young tadpole of a girl like you’s got no business pryin’ ’raoun’
- older folks’ affairs. You better go home! M’tildy may need yeh. Yer
- sister’s got her work to dew, ’n’ so ’ve I.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This plain intimation produced no effect upon Samantha. She continued to
- warm her hands, which were already the hue of a red apple with the heat,
- and remarked: “No, she don’ want me. Annie said I might stay ’s
- long ’s I wanted to. She said she wanted to be left alone. She’s
- abaout the wuss broke up girl <i>I</i> ever sot eyes on. You ought to see
- the way <i>she</i> takes on, though. I bet the widder ain’t a succumstance
- to her. Ef you’d seen what <i>I</i> saw, ’n’ heern what <i>I</i>
- heerd this afternoon, I guess you’d think so tew.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl spoke calmly, with a satisfied conviction that nobody would tell
- her to go home again in a hurry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What was it?” came simultaneously from the kneading-board and the churn.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I dunnao,—I ain’t much of a han’ to blab everythin’. A young
- tadpole of a girl like me, yeh knaow, ain’t got no business——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come naow! <i>Don’t</i> be a <i>fool</i>, S’manthy! Ef you’ve got
- anythin’ to say, spit it aout!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus adjured by the commanding tones of Alvira, the girl trifled no more,
- but related what she had seen, while hidden behind the thorns. She had a
- talent for description, and made so much of Annie’s stony face and strange
- behavior, that she succeeded in producing an effect of mystification upon
- her listeners scarcely second to that under which she, as an involuntary
- spectator, had labored. The success of her recital was not lost upon
- Samantha, as she went on:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Et was after th’ undertaker’s waggin ’n’ th’ men—some gallus
- lookin’ young fellers, f’m Tecumsey I guess, was amongst ’em—et
- was after these’d all gone by, thet I heerd her talk. She kind o’ hid
- herself in th’ bushes while they was a goin’ by, ’n’ stared at ’em
- like mad, ez fur’s she c’d folly ’em. Then she bust aout—not
- a-cryin’ mind yeh, fur she never shed a tear—but wringin’ her han’s
- ’n’ groanin’ ’n’ actin’ ’s ef she was goin’ to faint. I c’d
- see her jest ez plain ’s I kin see you stan’in’ there naow, ’n’
- heer her, tew. All to onc’t she up ’n’ said——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young girl stopped here in the narrative abruptly, with a fine
- disregard for the consuming interest with which her companions were
- regarding her; she lifted her nose, and drew two or three leisured sniffs.
- Then she bent down at the side of the stove and repeated them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ther’s somethin’ burnin’ in thet oven,” she said at last, confidently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Et’s th’ barley. I knowed S’briny’d traipse off ’n’ leave it. She
- allus does;” said Alvira, flinging open the oven door, and dragging out
- with her apron a smoking pan of scorched grain.
- </p>
- <p>
- Through the dense, pungent smudge which temporarily filled the room,
- Samantha was heard to remark with offensive emphasis: “We allus drink
- genu-wine coffee over to M’tildy’s. She’s mean enough ’baout some
- things, but she wouldn’t make us swell ourselves aout with no
- barley-wash.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ sao do we here, tew—all but S’briny!” retorted Alvira,
- indignantly. “She got use’ to drinkin’ it in war-times, when yeh couldn’t
- git reel coffee fur love n’r money, jes’ ez all th’ other farm-folks did.
- On’y she’s more contrary ’n’ th’ rest, ’n’ she wouldn’t
- drink nothin’ else naow, not ef yeh poured it into her maouth with a
- funnel. But go on ’th yer yarn!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Samantha had to cough a little, on account of the smoke, and then it took
- her some moments to collect the thread of her narrative. But at last even
- the spirit of Tantalus could invent no further delay, and she proceeded:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, she didn’t say much, fer a fact, but they was business in ev’ry
- word she did say. Fust she hollered aout—right aout, I tell yeh: ‘<i>Et’s
- a wicked lie! She’s a bad, wicked woman!</i> ’ Then she stopped fer
- awhile ’n’ put her han’s up to her for’id—like this. Then she
- shuk herself, ’n’ commenced to climb back over th’ stile, but she
- seemed to think better of it, ’n’ started fer her own haouse,
- like’s ef she was a walkin’ in her sleep, ’n’ a groanin’ to
- herself: ‘<i>Seth a murd’rer! Seth a murd’rer!</i>’ Thet’s what I heerd!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl put both feet up on the stove hearth, and tilted her chair back
- in conscious triumph. “Got ’n’ apple handy?” she inquired of
- Alvira, carelessly, in the tone of one whose position in life was assured.
- </p>
- <p>
- To this strange recital, involving such terrible suggestions, there
- succeeded a full minute of silence in the kitchen, broken only by the
- ponderous clucking of the high wooden clock. Alvira and Melissa looked at
- each other dumbly—each for once willing to forego the first word.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what d’yeh say to <i>thet?</i>” finally asked Melissa.
- </p>
- <p>
- After some reflection, Alvira answered, “I sh’d say S’manthy was a lyin’.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “S’elp me die, crisscross, I ain’t!” protested the girl at the stove:
- “I’ve told it all, jest’s it happened, straight’s a string. Where’s yer
- apples?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Alvira meditated again for a moment. Then she said to her subordinate: “Go
- down ’n’ git that sister o’ yourn a Spitzenberg—’n’
- bring up some cider, yeh might’s well, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When Melissa had gone, Alvira went over to the ‘younger girl, and gripped
- her sharply by the shoulder: “Look here, you, is what you’ve be’n tellin’
- us here honest? Don’t lie to <i>me!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Honest Injun? Alviry! ev’ry word!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Alvira returned to her dough, and slapped it savagely into a huge,
- unnatural pancake. She maintained silence until Melissa had returned, and
- not only supplied her sister’s wants, but poured out a cupful of the new
- cider for herself, as a proof of her appreciation of the Lawton family’s
- supremacy over the existing crisis. Then Alvira spoke:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t ’tach th’ least ’mportance in th’ world to what
- S’manthy heerd. Annie’s a school-teacher, ’n’ she’s be’n workin’
- pritty hard, ’n’ this thing’s kind o’ opset her—what with
- tendin’ to her gran’mother, ’n’ then this teachin’, which is
- narvous, wearin’ kine o’ work. Thet’s th’ trewth o’ th’ matter. <i>I</i>
- kin un-derstan’ it. She was jest aout of her senses. But other folks won’t
- understan’ it as I dew. Once a hint gits flyin’ amongst outsiders, who
- knaows where it’ll stop? Naow, girl ’n’ woman, I’ve be’n in this
- haouse twenty year ’n’ more. I’m more a Fairchild than I’m anythin’
- else. I remember th’ man in there—layin’ dead in th’ parlor—when
- he was a youngster, comin’ home f’m college; I remember Seth when he was a
- baby. I ain’t got no folks of my own thet I keer a thaousandth part ‘s
- much abaout, nur owe a thaousandth part ’s much tew, ez I dew this
- Fairchile fam’ly. <i>Well!</i> They’ve hed trouble enough, this las’ tew
- year, ‘thout havin’ any added onto it by th’ tattlin’, gossipin’ tongues
- of outsiders. I ain’t goin’ to <i>hev</i> it! D’yeh understan’! Ef I heer
- s’ much’s a whisper of this yere crazy school-teacher’s nonsense reported
- ‘raound, by th’ Lord above, I’ll skin yeh both alive!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who’s <i>b’en</i> a gossipin’?” asked Samantha, reproachfully. “I
- shouldn’t never said a word, ef you hadn’t insisted, ’n’ called me
- a fool fur holdin’ my tongue.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dunnao where you’ll gao to when you die, S’manthy,” said Alvira,
- reflectively. “But nao, girls, trewly naow, this mustn’t be mentioned. Yeh
- kin see with half ’n eye what a raow it’d stir up. Naow prommus me,
- both o’ yeh, thet not a word of it shell pass yer lips. Yeh can see fer
- yerself haow foolish it is! Ev’rybody knaows he driv off th’ raoad, ’n’
- killed himself ’n’ th’ hosses by th’ fall. It’s ez plain ‘s th’
- nose on yer face. Still it’s jest sech cases as this thet people git
- talkin’ abaout, once they’re sot goin’—so yeh <i>will</i> promise
- me, won’t yeh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- They promised.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hon’r bright, ye’ll never say a word to nao livin’ soul?”
- </p>
- <p>
- They asseverated solemnly, honor bright, and Samantha had a doughnut as
- well as another cup of cider.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The tiresome butter came at last, and the dough passed into a higher form
- of existence through the fiery ordeal of the oven; supper was laid and
- silently eaten; two neighbors, volunteers for the night-watch with the
- dead, came, and were ushered into the gloomy parlor; while apples, cheese,
- doughnuts and a pitcher of cider were placed on the table outside, for
- their refreshment in the small hours. Night fell upon the farm.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Melissa Lawton stole out-doors as soon as Alvira retired to her room, and
- made her way through the darkness to the barns. As Albert had done on the
- fatal previous evening, she opened the sliding door of the big stable, and
- called up the stairs to Milton. There was no response, and investigation
- showed that he was not in his room, although the lamp was burning dimly.
- The girl stopped long enough to look over the familiar coarse pictures on
- the walls and the shelf, and then crept down the steep stairs again.
- </p>
- <p>
- As she groped her way through the blackness to the stable door she came
- suddenly in contact with a person entering, and felt herself rudely seized
- and pushed back at arms’ length.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who’s here? What d’yeh want?” demanded a harsh voice, which seemed
- despite its gruffness to betray great trepidation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s me—M’lissy!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come along aout here into the light, so I kin see yeh. What a’ yeh doin’
- here, praowlin’ ’raoun’ ’n th’ dark, skeerin’ people fur?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Lawton girl’s native assurance all came back to her as she confronted
- Milton in the dim starlight outside—which was radiance by contrast
- with the stable’s total darkness—and she grinned satirically at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ve got a nerve on you like a maouse, I swaow! You trembled all over
- when yeh tuk holt o’ me, in there. What was yeh skeert abaout? I wouldn’t
- hurt yeh!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wa’n’t skeert,” the man replied, sullenly. “What was yeh after
- in there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was lookin’ fur you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What fur?” The tone was still uneasily suspicious.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I got somethin’ to tell yeh.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “D’yeh knaow, I more’n half b’lieve this thing wa’n’t an accident
- at all. What’d yeh say ’f it sh’d turn aout to be a murder?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Even in this faint light Melissa could see that Milton was much taken
- aback by the suggestion. He thrust his hands into his pockets, pulled them
- out again, shuffled his feet, stammered, and betrayed by other signs
- general among rustics his surprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pshaw—git aout!” he said at last; “what nonsense! Of caourse ’t
- was ’n accident. Didn’t th’ Cor’ner say sao? Daon’t ev’rybody knaow
- it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Annie Fairchile don’t say sao. <i>She</i> don’t knaow it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl went on to relate the substance of Samantha’s revelations, adding
- unconsciously sundry embellishments which tended to throw a clearer light
- upon Seth as the chief figure in the mystery.
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton listened with deep attentiveness. His slow, inefficient brain
- worked hard to keep up with the recital, and assimilate its chief points.
- When the girl had finished he still thought steadily on this strange
- story, with its unforeseen, startling suggestions. Gradually two items
- took shape in his mind as most important: that Annie believed Seth to be
- the criminal, and hence would be estranged from him; and that if by any
- unexpected means people came to suspect foul play, here were the elements
- of a ready-made suspicion against Seth. The first of these was very
- welcome; it would be time enough to think of the other if a discovery were
- made.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What dew I think?” he said at last, in response to the girl’s repeated
- inquiries. “I think thet sister o’ yourn lied, ’n’ I think yeh
- better keep yer maouth, ’n’ her’n tew, pritty dum shet, ef yeh
- don’t want to git into trouble.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXIX.—THE BOSS LOOKS INTO THE MATTER.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>OUSIN Seth—<i>There
- are reasons why I cannot come to the house again, even to the funeral; and
- why I shall not see you again during your stay. I think you will
- understand them. If you explain to Aunt Sabrina that I am ill, it will not
- be a falsehood. I have been and am suffering—terribly. But nobody
- can help me, save by leaving me to myself. I am trying to forget, too,
- everything that was said when we last talked together, and I shall
- succeed. Never fear, I shall succeed. A.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- It was this note, scrawled in a hand very unlike Miss Annie’s customary
- prim, school-teacher’s writing, which Samantha had borne over from the
- Warren house. Seth had studied it, perplexedly, for a long time on the
- evening of its arrival. He ruminated now again upon it, as he walked along
- the road toward Thessaly, the following forenoon. The temptation to
- confide the thing to John, who had stayed over night with him at the
- homestead, and now was walking silently by his side toward the village,
- wavered in his mind. Perhaps John could assist him to comprehend it; but
- then, it would be necessary to explain so much to him first. Finally the
- arguments in favor of confession triumphed, and with a “Here, old man;
- this is a letter from Annie. I want you to help me guess what it means,”
- he made the plunge.
- </p>
- <p>
- John read the note carefully. “What was it you talked about on this
- occasion she refers to, and when was it?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was night before last, <i>the</i> night, and I asked her to marry me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And what was her answer?—I’ll tell you afterward how glad I am to
- hear what you’ve just told me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, it wasn’t decisive—but she admitted that it made her very
- happy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you haven’t seen her since?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—or yes! I did. I met her just for a moment yesterday forenoon,
- as I was starting out from the house after hearing—the <i>news</i>.
- We only exchanged a word or two, though.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did she seem angry with you then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not at all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what can have happened since? Try and think! She has reasons, she
- says, which she thinks you will understand. When a woman says she has
- ‘reasons’ she means that some mischief-maker has told her something
- disagreeable. Now——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, my God! I see it now!” Seth stopped short in the road, and clenched
- his fists.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what is it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She went into the house, and saw Isabel!” Seth continued, as if talking
- to himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What has that got to do with it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth looked up at his brother with a blanching face, in which fright and
- amazement blended. “What is that line of Congreve’s about Hell having no
- fury like a woman scorned?” he asked mechanically.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was John’s turn to stare. Gradually a light began to spread in his
- mind, and make things visible whose existence he had not suspected before.
- “Well, you <i>are</i> a simpleton!” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t I know it?” was the pained, contrite response.
- </p>
- <p>
- The brothers walked on a few yards in silence. Then John said “Of course,
- you needn’t tell me any more of this than you want to—but at least I
- can ask you—how <i>much</i> of a fool have you made of yourself up
- at the farm?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s hard to say. Just now I’m inclined to think that I am the champion
- ass of the world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you’re displaying some sense <i>now</i>, anyway. What have you
- done?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t done anything. That’s the foolish part of it all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- John stopped in turn, and looked his brother’s face attentively over. “Go
- on, now,” he said, “and tell me what there is of it. There’s no use in my
- butting my brains out against a stone wall, guessing at such an
- inscrutable mess as this seems to be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s hard to tell—there isn’t anything specially <i>to</i> tell. I
- simply got sort of sentimental about Isabel, you know—she was lonely
- and disappointed in life, and my coming to the farm was about the only
- chance for company she got, and all that—and then I found the thing
- might go too far and so I stopped it—and to clinch the thing, asked
- Annie to marry me. That’s what there is of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s good as far as it goes. Go on, youngster; out with the rest of
- it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you that <i>is</i> all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Humbug! Annie never wrote this letter on the strength of such
- philandering nonsense as that. You say Isabel must have told her
- something. What <i>was</i> that something? Do you know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes!” The answer was so full of despondent pain, that John’s sympathy
- rose above his fraternal censariousness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come, my boy,” he said, “you’d better make a clean breast of it. It won’t
- seem half so bad, once you’ve told me. And if I can help you, you know I
- will.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I <i>will</i> tell you, John. Night before last, Monday night, I
- had hard words with Albert, up at the house. You know how he sent for me,
- insisted on my coming, and what he wanted. Of course I could only say no,
- and we quarreled. Toward the end we raised our voices, and Isabel, who was
- upstairs, overheard us. Just then he began about me and her—it seems
- he had noticed or heard something—and she, hearing her name, took it
- for granted the whole quarrel was about her. I went upstairs, and
- presently he drove out of the yard with the grays. I couldn’t sleep, I was
- so agitated by the idea of our rupture, and I went out to walk it off. It
- was while I was out that I met Annie and had the talk I have told you
- about. Then I came home, went to bed, and slept till after ten—long
- after everybody else had heard the news. I heard of it first from Isabel,
- and she—she——”
- </p>
- <p>
- He came to an abrupt halt. The duty of saying nothing which should
- incriminate the woman rose before him, and fettered his tongue.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And she—what?” asked John.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, she somehow got the idea that I had followed Albert out and—and—was
- responsible for his death! <i>Now</i>. you have it all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a long silence. They were nearing the four corners, and walking
- slowly. Finally John, with his eyes on the ground, said: “And so that’s
- what she has told Annie, you think?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s the only way I can explain the note.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But Annie couldn’t possibly believe such a thing as that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—but there’s an explanation for that too. Come to think of it, I
- must have said a lot of things to her, that night, which seem now to her
- to fit in with this awful theory. Poor girl! I don’t blame her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- John answered, after a pause, “There’s no use of my saying anything to
- show you what a situation you are in, or to scold you for it. I suppose
- you realize it fully enough. What’s more to the purpose, we must consider
- what is to be done. It is safe enough to assume that if Isabel thinks this
- and has said it to one person, either some one else will think it, or she
- will hint about it to another. The thing is too terrible to have even one
- person, even if she were silent as the grave, think about it. The obvious
- thing, I should think, would be to have a postmortem examination.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought they always had them at inquests.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, the Coroner can dispense with one if he and the jury agree that it
- isn’t necessary. Timms sent me word that he had decided to dispense with
- one, in this case, ‘out of consideration for the feelings of the family.’
- That means, of course, that he wants the <i>Banner</i> to help re-elect
- him next year. But now out of ‘consideration for the family’ we’ll have to
- have one. Don’t be so down in the mouth about it, boy; it will all come
- right, never fear!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brothers had reached the solitary building at the corners—a low,
- dingy store, with its sloping roof turned to the road, and a broad
- platform and steps stretching along its entire front. A horse and vacant
- buggy stood at the hitching-post. John proposed to go in and get some
- cigars, if Turner had any fit to smoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- Their surprise was great at meeting on the steps Mr. Beekman of Jay
- County, who was coming out. After terse salutations had been exchanged,
- Beekman said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lucky you fellows come daown jest ez yeh did. I come over this mornin’
- a-purpose to see yeh, ’n’ yit I didn’t quite like to go up to th’
- farm. I’ve got ever so many things I want to ask yeh, ’n’ say to
- yeh.” He led the way over to the farther end of the steps, and, following
- his example of sitting down on the platform, they waited curiously for him
- to proceed:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fust of all, I was daown to Tecumsy last night, ’n’ saw Workman.
- He said you”—turning to Seth—“needn’t worry yerself ’baout
- comin’ back till yeh was ready. They kin keep th’ paper runnin’ for a week
- or sao, while you stay up here ’n’ dew yer duty like a Christian.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth said he was much obliged, and then asked how it happened that Beekman
- had posted off to Tecumseh—over seventy miles—and returned so
- soon.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, there was some things I wanted to see abaout daown there, ’n’
- more thet I’m interested in keepin’ an eye on up here. So I kind o’ humped
- myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m glad to see you taking such an interest in Ansdell’s campaign,” said
- John.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Beekman’s gaunt visage relaxed for a second: “So yeh calc’late <i>thet’s</i>
- what I’m buzzin’ ’raoun’ th’ State fur, do yeh? Yeh never’s more
- mistaken in yer life. I’ve heerd reports circ’latin’ ’raoun’ thet
- ther’d be an election a fortni’t or so from naow, ’n’ thet Ansdell
- ’n’ I was concerned in it, but yeh can’t prove it by <i>us</i>. We
- ain’t s’ much as give a thought to politics sence th’ Convention ended. <i>We’ve</i>
- got somethin’ else to occupy aour minds with b’sides politics. I got a
- telegraph dispatch from him, sent from New York this mornin’, thet I want
- to talk to yeh ’baout presently, but fust——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ansdell in New York?” asked Seth, all curiosity-now.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, he went on daown, while I got off at Te-cumsy, ’n’ I sh’d
- jedge from his telegraph thet he’d be’n on the go some sence he got there.
- But what I want to ask yeh ’baout is this: Do yeh knaow haow much
- money yer brother hed on him night ‘fore last, when he was—when he
- met his death?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brothers looked at each other, then at, the speaker, “No,” answered
- Seth, finally. “We haven’t the least idea. Why do you ask?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll come to that bimeby. Naow next, do you knaow where he was th’ day
- b’fore th’ Convention?—thet is, Monday.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I can tell you that. He was in New York. He only got back Monday
- evening.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pre-cisely. Well, naow, do yeh knaow what he went there for?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. Something connected with politics, I suppose, but I can’t say for
- certain. He had business there very often, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I knaow. But he hed very special business this last time. Naow look
- at this telegram.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The two took the oblong sheet, and read:
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>New York—Oct. 21. 942 A.M. Unexpectedly easy sailing. Found clue
- to money almost without looking. Fancy now must been sixteen instead ten.
- Hope return to-night. Ansdell</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, still I am in the dark,” John said, after reading and re-reading
- the dispatch. “What is it all about? I suppose you understand it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m beginnin’ to see a leetle ways threw th’ millstone, I think, myself,”
- replied Beekman. “But it’s all so uncert’n yit, I don’t want to say
- nothin’ thet I can’t back up later on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth too had been busily pondering the dispatch, and he said now, with a
- flushing face: “<i>I</i> know what you think! You and Ansdell have got an
- idea there was foul play!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, yes, it ain’t much more’n an idee, <i>yit</i>;” assented Beekman.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you base your idea on?” demanded John, full of a nameless,
- growing fright lest there <i>might</i> be something further which Seth’s
- confession had not revealed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jest you wait one day more,” said the Boss of Jay County, grimly, “one
- day more ’ll dew. Then I miss my guess ef we ain’t in shape to tell
- yeh. Fust of all, there’s got to be a post-mortem.”
- </p>
- <p>
- John’s impulse was to say that he and Seth had already agreed upon this,
- but a second thought checked his tongue.
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ it’ll hev to be on th’ quiet. Everything depends on thet—on
- keepin’ it dark. There’s some folks might get skeered, ’n’
- complicate things, ef it ain’t kep’ mum. ’N’ thet’s what I wanted
- to ask yeh ’baout. I’ve thought of Dr. Bacon, over at Thessaly, ’n’
- Dr. Pierce daown at the Springs. They’re both good men, ’n’ got
- level heads on ’em. What d’yeh say to them?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve no objection to them in the world, but the Coroner——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I know ’bout him. He’s th’ blamedest fool in th’ caounty. Over
- in Jay we wouldn’t elect sech a dumb-head to be hog-reeve. But you ’n’
- Ansdell kin fix it with him to-morrow, ’n’ I’ll drive to-day ’n’
- see both doctors, ’n’ put ’em straight. ’N’ naow yeh
- must prommus me, both of yeh, thet yeh won’t breathe a word of this to any
- livin’ soul.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They promised, and he climbed into his buggy, and gathered up the reins.
- “Oh, there’s one thing more,” he said, on reflection. “P’raps you wonder
- why I’m takin’ so much on myself. I’ll tell yeh bimeby. I’ve got my
- reasons. I’m mixed up in it, more’n you’d think.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned about, and drove off briskly toward Thessaly. The brothers stood
- in perplexed silence by the roadside for some minutes. There was surely
- enough to think about.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last, with a frank gesture, John stretched his hand out to Seth:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Old boy,” he said, “I don’t know how this thing is coming out, but we’ll
- see it through together. You go down to the office and wait for me. You
- might do some things to fill up the paper this week if you’ve got nerve
- enough. I’m going back to the farm.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXX.—JOHN’S DELICATE MISSION.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hile Seth tried to
- divert his thoughts at the <i>Banner</i> office by going over the
- freshly-arrived batch of morning dailies, and fastening his attention upon
- their political editorials and reports of speeches instead of their
- displayed and minute reports of the sensational tragedy in Tallman’s
- ravine—John Fairchild retraced his steps toward the farm. He had a
- definite purpose in his mind—to confront and silence Isabel—and
- he strove hard as he went along to plan how this should be done, and what
- he should say.
- </p>
- <p>
- He felt that his dominant emotion was wrath against this sister-in-law of
- his, and he said to himself as he strode along that he had never liked
- her. He could recall the summer a dozen years before when she came to the
- farm as a visiting cousin. He had been civil to her then, even
- companionable, for she was bright, spirited, in a word good company, but
- it seemed to him now that even then he had suspected the treachery
- ingrained in her nature—that he had been instinctively repelled by
- those hateful qualities, dormant in her girlhood, which were later to plot
- infidelity to one of his brothers, and lure into trouble, shame, perhaps
- even crime, the other.
- </p>
- <p>
- This latter phase of her work was peculiarly abominable in John’s eyes. He
- was not going to get up any special indignation on the first count of the
- indictment; a bachelor of nearly forty who marries a sentimental young
- girl does it at his own risk, John felt, and Albert had invited just this
- sort of thing by exiling her to a farm, and forcing her romantic mind to
- feed on itself. But that she should have selected Seth—her own
- husband’s brother, the Benjamin of the flock, a veritable child in such
- matters—to practise her arts upon, was grievously unpardonable. To
- be sure, Seth ought to have had more sense. But then John, habitually
- thinking of him as “the youngster,” thought he could see how he had been
- led on, step by step, never realizing the vicious tendency of it all,
- until he had all at once found himself on the brink of a swift descent.
- Then, to do the boy justice, he seemed to have stopped short, turned his
- back upon the siren, and for the sake of further security, irrevocably
- committed himself to Annie. He had been sadly weak in the earlier stages
- of the affair, no doubt; but this last course appeared manly and sensible—and
- wholly incompatible, too, with any idea of malice or crime on Seth’s part.
- What fault there was belonged-to the woman, and she should be told so,
- too, straight and sharp.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus John’s thoughts ran as he entered the house, and bade the Lawton girl
- tell her mistress he wished to speak with her. He had not seen Isabel
- since her husband’s death—she having kept her room constantly—nor
- for a long time previous. They had, indeed, scarcely met more than
- half-a-dozen times since she came to live at the homestead, and then with
- considerable formality on both sides. As he stood by the stove in the
- living-room, awaiting her coming, he knitted his brows and framed some
- curt, terse words of address.
- </p>
- <p>
- She entered, clad in the same black and dark-gray wrapper which his memory
- associated with his mother’s funeral, and which gave the effect of height
- and slender dignity to her figure. Her face was pale and pathetic in
- expression, and the ghost of a smile which flitted in greeting over it for
- a second accentuated its stamp of suffering. She offered him her hand, and
- said, in a low mournful voice:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was good of you to come to me, John. I have been expecting, hoping you
- would. Won’t you take off your coat and sit down?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had shaken hands with her, loosened his overcoat and taken a seat
- before he had time to reflect that he ought to have ignored her greeting
- and her proffered hand. The sharp words, too, that he had arranged in his
- mind seemed too brusque now to utter to a weak, lone woman who was so
- evidently suffering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” he said, “I thought I ought to talk things over with you. You’ve
- got nobody else.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—not a soul! I couldn’t be more wholly alone if I were at the
- North Pole, it has seemed to me this last day. I have eaten nothing; I
- haven’t slept an hour. So you must make allowances for me,” she said, with
- a weak shadow of a smile, “if I seem nervous or incoherent. My mind goes
- all astray, sometimes now, and I seem unequal to the task of controlling
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had thought at last of a question which might introduce the desired
- subject without wounding her feelings. “Do you happen to know,” he asked,
- gently, “whether Albert brought a large sum of money with him from New
- York Monday?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t the least idea, I am sure. In fact, I only saw him for a moment
- after his return. And besides, you know, he never told me a syllable about
- his business arrangements. No one could be in more complete ignorance of
- his affairs than I have always been.” There was the tone of resigned
- regret in her voice which a wife might rightly use. “I do indeed—there
- is one exception—know about his will. He told me that, not by way of
- confidence, but because it came out—in some words we once had about
- property of mine in New York. I might as well tell you. The will gives
- everything except my third to you and your aunt and—your brother. <i>He</i>
- has the lion’s share. Don’t think I am complaining, John. I wouldn’t have
- had it altered if I could. I am more than independent, you know, apart
- from right of dower. If I had had the making of the will, it would have
- been just the same. It is only right that his money should go to his
- family.”
- </p>
- <p>
- John reflected for some moments before he answered. “I am almost sorry you
- told me,” he said then. “It makes me wretched and ashamed to think of the
- injustice I have done him in my mind. It sounds brutal, in the light of
- what you have told me,—but I am going to confess it to you—I
- suspected all along that he intended to come some game over us about the
- farm; and now, instead——. Oh, it’s <i>too</i> bad. I wish he
- could hear me!” John continued, with a glance toward the folding doors of
- the parlor, once more the chamber of death. “I wish he could know how I
- despise myself for having wronged him in my mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel said nothing, but her responsive eyes seemed to express
- appreciation and sympathy. John lost all sense of wrath toward her as he
- went on:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, from the very start we wronged him. We didn’t understand him. He was
- different from us—he was a man of the world, and we were countrymen,
- and we thought all the while that he held himself outside the family. I
- never gave him credit for good motives when he came to the farm; neither
- did Seth. We both thought he was playing his own game, for himself, and
- nobody else. And here, by George! he turns out to have had more brotherly
- feeling, more family feeling, than we ever had. It makes me miserable to
- think of it. It’ll break Seth’s heart, too; he’ll always torture himself
- with the thought that the last time he ever saw Albert alive they parted
- in anger.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The words were out before he realized their significance. He stopped
- short, and felt himself changing color as he looked at her to see whether
- she too was thinking about that terrible night.
- </p>
- <p>
- She made a motion as if to rise from her chair; then dropped back again
- and returned his inquiring glance with a fixed, intent look.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you know something about <i>that</i>,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did Seth tell you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes!” he answered, falteringly. “Seth told me. We had a long talk this
- forenoon. I think he told me about every thing there was to tell. In fact,
- that is mostly why I’ve come back now to see you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was silent, but her eyes seemed to John to be saying disagreeable
- things.
- </p>
- <p>
- He began again to realize that it was his duty to be indignant in attitude
- and peremptory in tone, but he was also conscious of feeling very sorry
- for Isabel. The village editor often described himself, and was uniformly
- characterized by others, as being “no hand for women.” His own brief
- career as a married man—it seemed almost a dream now, and a very
- painful dream, with a short period of great happiness, then a slightly
- longer season of illness, poverty, debt, despair, and then the rayless
- gloom of death in his scarcely established home—had taught him next
- to nothing of the sex, and inclined him against learning more. The
- impressions of womankind which clustered about the memories of his
- girl-wife were, however, all in the direction of gentleness and softness.
- As he reflected, it grew increasingly difficult for him to put on a harsh
- demeanor toward his sister-in-law. She might deserve it well enough, but
- it was not in his heart to speak ugly words to a pretty and troubled woman
- at such a time. He stumbled on:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, the youngster is fearfully cut up about the whole thing, and he <i>had</i>
- to talk to somebody. He’s always been used to telling me everything. He is
- not a tattler, though, and I’m bound to say he only told me because I
- questioned him, and insisted on his making a clean breast of it. Then I
- sent him down to the office, and I came back here, thinking it might be
- best for all concerned to have a frank talk with you about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had a course mapped out now in her mind. “I am sure that your motives
- are good, John,” she said, “and that you will be fair and candid. I
- confess I don’t see what there is to be gained, specially, but you no
- doubt know best. What is it you wanted to talk over?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, it isn’t easy to state it, off hand. Perhaps I might as well begin
- by speaking of motives, as you did. I own that when I came in I wasn’t so
- sure that your motives were good, as you say you are about mine.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is candid, at all events.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to be perfectly open and above-board with you, Isabel. You seem to
- have got into your head yesterday—I won’t say you have it now—some
- horrible and ridiculously wild suspicion of Seth——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know what you mean,” she interposed, with nervous haste. “You mustn’t
- think of that at all! You mustn’t blame me for it! I was simply distracted—mad—out
- of my senses. I don’t know <i>what</i> awful thing my fancy didn’t conjure
- up. Don’t pay any attention to that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the mischief of it is that you seem to have spoken of this to—to
- somebody else. It would have been unimportant otherwise. <i>This</i>
- complicates it badly. Don’t you see it does?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She made no answer, and kept her eyes on the figures in the carpet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you see it does?” he repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you know that I spoke of it to anybody?” she asked, after a pause,
- and still with downcast eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That has nothing to do with it, Isabel. It’s true, isn’t it, that you did
- speak of it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- To his surprise and embarrassment she began weeping, and hid her face in
- her handkerchief. He sat mutely watching her, wishing that she would stop,
- and perplexed at encountering on the very threshold of his inquiries and
- argument this un-meetable demonstration of a woman’s resources.
- </p>
- <p>
- She presently sobbed out, from behind the perfumed cambric: “You <i>can’t</i>
- hold me accountable for what I did yesterday, or what I said! I was beside
- myself! I scarcely know what I thought, or what I said! I acted like a
- crazy woman—and felt like one, too! It is easy enough for you to be
- cool and collected about the thing. You are a <i>man!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I know, Isabel,” he said, kindly, “I understand all that, and I can
- make all the allowances in the world for you, in your position. But still
- that doesn’t alter the fact that the thing has been said, and the harm
- done. To be sure, I suppose, the harm will be only temporary, but as it
- stands it affects the prospects of more than one person—of two
- persons, in fact, near to us—very materially. You know what I mean?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what can be done to remedy it? That is the question. I am not going
- to blame you, but still the fault <i>was</i> yours, and the steps to set
- it right ought to be yours, too, oughtn’t they?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean?” She looked up now, forgetting her tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not quite sure what I do mean. I haven’t thought over details. There
- is simply a given situation, with the question how to get out of it, and
- the onus of action on you. I want you to help me think what the best way
- will be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How logically you state it! Suppose I disavowed the whole thing, ignored
- it, refused to do anything or say anything. What then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won’t consider that at all. You couldn’t be so unfair as that—so
- ungenerous.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Unfair! Ungenerous!” Isabel rose to her full height, and frowned down at
- her brother-in-law, without a trace of tears in her eyes. “Fine fairness,
- distinguished generosity, have been shown to <i>me</i>, haven’t they!
- There has been so much delicacy in regarding <i>my</i> feelings! I ought
- to leap at the opportunity of smoothing over matters between Mr. Seth and
- his lady-love. My husband’s awful death, my position here, alone in the
- world, the shock and suffering of it all—these are mere trifles
- compared with the importance of seeing that their love affairs are
- uninterrupted! Perhaps I might get a chance at the funeral to have them
- kiss and make up—or would you prefer me to leave my dead now and go——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Your</i> dead!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brother had risen also, and taken his hat. The exclamation carried in
- its tone all the bitterness with which his mind had stored itself on his
- walk back to the farm. Pity for the woman, perhaps something too of innate
- susceptibility to beauty and grace, had restrained and covered up this
- bitterness, so that he had supposed it gone. It flamed forth now, in
- wrathful satire.
- </p>
- <p>
- As she put her handkerchief up again to her eyes, as a token of more
- tears, he went on, in a cold kind of excitement:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You talk very cleverly—more so than any other woman I ever knew.
- But you should pick your strong phrases with more discrimination. For
- instance, when you want to produce a really striking effect upon me, it is
- unwise to use an expression which recalls to me at once things that you
- would rather I didn’t think about. I wouldn’t say ‘<i>my</i> dead ’
- if I were you, especially when you are talking to his brother. It may do
- for outsiders, but here in the family it is a bad waste of words.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her only answer was a gust of sobs. They failed to move him and he went
- on:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know that I have any means of forcing you to do anything, or say
- anything, against your will. If you take that position, perhaps it won’t
- be necessary. The wicked, ridiculous thing you thought, or pretended to
- think, and said to that poor girl, can be straightened out very easily. We
- can’t prevent the pain it has already caused, but we can stop its causing
- more. But if you lisp it to another human being—well, I don’t know
- what to threaten you with. It isn’t easy to guess what considerations will
- weigh with a woman who has your ideas of wifely duty, and of her
- responsibilities towards young and foolish members of her husband’s
- family, and——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How <i>can</i> you be so cruel, so mean, John? What right have you to
- talk to me like that? Everybody attacks me like an enemy. You never have
- been decent to me since I was married. Your whole family has treated me
- like an outsider, almost a criminal, since I came here. Your old cat of an
- aunt never looked at me except to wish me evil. Your brother—yes, if
- he could hear me now, from where he lies, I would say it!—never was
- fond of me, never tried to make a companion of me, never treated me as a
- wife should be treated, or even as his intellectual equal. <i>You</i>
- avoided me as if I were poison. The neighborhood disliked me, gossiped
- about me, and I hated them. Only one there was of you all who was pleasant
- with me, and good to me—and now that you have turned him against me,
- too, you come and insult me because I was pleased and grateful for his
- friendship. That is <i>manly</i> isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- John had listened to the beginning of this impassioned speech with a
- callous heart. But he was a just man, and he had in almost unmeted degree
- that habit of mind which welcomes statements of both sides of a
- controversy. He might have been a wealthier man, and the owner of a more
- thriving paper, if he had had more of the partisan spirit. But to be
- strictly fair was the rule of his being. He would not criticise political
- opponents for doing things which in his heart he approved, and, on the
- same principle he would not condemn unheard even this woman, if she had
- any justification. As she went on, he began to feel that there was
- considerable force in her argument. She certainly had been most
- disagreeably situated, connubially and socially, and her definition of the
- Seth episode was plausible, if that were all there was of it. He softened
- perceptibly in tone as he answered:
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I am sorry if you think I wanted to insult you. Perhaps I did speak
- too strongly. I apologize for it. But I feel very earnestly on this
- subject. I’ve always been a sort of father and big brother combined to
- Seth, and the idea of his getting into a mess, or doing foolish or
- discreditable things, cuts me to the quick. You can see my position in the
- matter. I am anxious not to hurt your feelings, but my first duty is to
- him. Perhaps the two need not come into conflict. After all, no real harm
- has been done, I fancy, except in this one case of repeating your
- hysterical suspicion of him. <i>That</i> was inexcusable; can’t you <i>see</i>
- that it was? I’m sure that if you’ll think it over calmly, you’ll be
- disposed to do what is fair and right. I’m not blaming you particularly
- for the other thing. You might have remembered that you were older than
- Seth, to be sure, but then I realize that you were not at all pleasantly
- placed——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never mind what you realize! We won’t discuss that at all. There is
- nothing to discuss. You and your aunt seem bound to make yourselves
- ridiculous about me. I won’t demean myself by answering—or no! I <i>will</i>
- say this much to you. There has never a word passed between Seth and me
- that every soul of you might not have heard, and welcome. He was simply
- pleasant and friendly to me—and I was grateful to him and fond of
- him, as I might be of a brother. Where was the harm? In no decent state of
- society would any one ever have dreamed of suspecting wrong. But <i>here</i>—why,
- people live and breathe suspicion! It is the breath of their nostrils.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought you used to correspond,” John said, tentatively.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Correspond! There it is again! What of it, I should like to know? Why
- shouldn’t my cousin, my brother, write to me? I have all the letters;—you
- may see them every one. They gave me a great deal of pleasure. They
- represented my sole point of contact with civilization, with fine feelings
- and pretty thoughts. But you can go over them all, if you like. You won’t
- find a single whisper of proof of your aunt’s mean suspicion. I am almost
- ashamed of myself for having stooped to defend myself—but it is just
- as well to let you know the truth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes!” John breathed a sigh which was not altogether of relief, but
- carried a fair admixture of bewilderment. This ingenious explanation did
- not at all points tally with the inferences drawn from Seth’s confession.
- Perhaps it was true enough in the letter, but he felt that as a revelation
- of the spirit it left much to be desired. He added:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I am sorry if I misjudged you. Probably I did. However, even if
- Seth had come near getting into a scrape, he’s safe out of it now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This complaisant conclusion nettled-the woman. She went on, as if her
- explanation had not been interrupted:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course, we had what you might call a community of grievance to talk
- about, and draw us together. It wouldn’t be fitting in me to say more now
- than that my life here was not congenial: you won’t mind my saying <i>that</i>
- much? I had dreamed of a very different kind of married existence. Seth,
- too, had his trouble. In his boyhood, when it seemed assured that he was
- to remain the farmer of the family, his mother had planned a marriage for
- him. It isn’t for me to say a word against Annie. She is a good enough
- girl, in her way. But when Seth got out of his chrysalis, and learned what
- there really was in him, the thought that he was committed in a sense to
- marrying a farm girl made him very gloomy. He used to talk with me about
- it, not saying anything against Annie, mind you, but——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’ll do!” said John, curtly. “We won’t go into that. Evidently there
- was no limit to Seth’s asininity. Let that pass. Whatever he said, or
- didn’t say, during his vealy period, he’s going to marry Annie now. There
- never was a time, and I fear there never will be one, when I would not
- call her his superior. The question is: Are you going to retract before
- her the false, cruel things you have said?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am going upstairs again,” she said. “I think I will lie down awhile,”
- and moved towards the stair-door.
- </p>
- <p>
- The brother looked at her, amazed, pained, indignant. She had her hand on
- the latch by the time his emotions found words:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve wasted my time in pitying you. God forbid that any of our family,
- young or old, should ever fall in with such a woman as you are again!” He
- pulled on his hat and left the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXXI.—MILTON’S ASPIRATIONS.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he lamps were
- lighted in the little partitioned-off square which served as the editorial
- room of the <i>Banner</i> when John returned. He found Seth weakly
- striving to write something for the editorial page, and in substance laid
- the situation before him. He was not feeling very amiably toward his young
- brother at the moment, and he spoke with cold distinctness. The tone was
- lost upon Seth, who said wearily:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t see that it makes much difference—her refusing. What good
- would it have done, if she <i>had</i> gone to Annie? She could only tell
- her that she had abandoned such and such ideas. That isn’t what counts.
- The fact of importance is that she ever entertained them, that they ever
- existed. To my notion, there’s nothing to do but to wait and see what
- comes of Beekman’s suspicions. What do you think of them, anyway? I have
- been trying to imagine what he is aiming at, but it puzzles me? What do
- you think?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To tell the truth, I haven’t been thinking of that. My mind has been
- occupied with the female aspects of the thing. I’m not impatient.
- Evidently Beekman and Ansdell think they have got hold of something. They
- are not the men to go off on a wild-goose chase. Very good: I can wait
- until they are ready to explain. But what I can’t wait for—or bear
- to think about—is poor Annie, suffering as she must be suffering to
- have written that letter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I’ve thought of that, too, but I’m helpless. I can’t think of
- anything: I can’t do anything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t seem to be of much use, for a fact,” mused the brother. “I’ll
- tell you what I’ll do, if you think best. To-morrow afternoon, after I’ve
- seen Ansdell, or before that if he doesn’t come, I will go over and see
- Annie myself. I can go over to the school-house by the back road, and walk
- home with her. Perhaps by that time, too, I shall have something tangible
- to explain to her. Until then, I suppose she must continue in suspense. It
- is the penance she ought to do, I dare say—” the brother added this
- in mildly sarcastic rebuke—“for the luxury of being in love with
- such a transcendant genius as you are.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Something like an hour before this, Annie had dismissed her classes and
- locked up the school-house for the night. As she did so, she mentally
- wondered if she should ever have the strength to walk home.
- </p>
- <p>
- The day had been one long-drawn out torture from its first waking moments—indeed
- there seemed to have been nothing but anguish since her interview with
- Isabel the previous day, not even the oblivion of sleep. Her impulse, and
- her grandmother’s advice, had been to remain at home; but she had already
- left the school unopened on the fatal Tuesday, in the shock of the news of
- Albert’s death: to absent herself a second day might prejudice the
- trustees against her. Besides, the occupation might serve to divert her
- thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps the trustees were satisfied, she said to herself now, locking the
- door, but there certainly had been no relief in the day’s labor. The
- little children had been unwontedly stupid and trying; the older boys,
- some of them almost of her own age, had never before seemed so unruly and
- loutishly impertinent. Even these experiences alone would have availed to
- discourage her; as it was they added the stinging of insects to her great
- heartache. With some organizations, the lesser pain nullifies the other.
- She seemed to have a capacity for suffering, now, which took in, and made
- the most of, every element of agony, great and small. She turned from the
- rusty, squat little old building and began her journey homeward, with
- hanging head and a deadly sense of weakness, physical and spiritual,
- crushing her whole being.
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton Squires had been watching for her appearance for some time, from a
- sheltering ridge of berry-bushes and wall beyond the school, and he
- hurried now to overtake her, clumsily professing surprise at the meeting.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I jes happened up this way,” he said, “Dunnao <i>when</i> I be’n up here
- on this road b’fore. Never dreampt o’ seein’ yeou.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She made answer of some sort, as unintelligible and meaningless to herself
- as to him. She did not know whether it was a relief or otherwise that he
- was evidently going to walk home with her. Perhaps, if she let him do all
- the talking, the companionship would help her to get over the ordeal of
- the return less miserably. But she could not, and she would not, talk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I kind o’ thought mebbe you’d shet up schewl fer a week ’r sao,”
- he proceeded, ingratiatingly, “but then agin I said to m’self ‘no siree,
- she ain’t thet kine of a gal. Ef she’s got any work to dew, she jes’ does
- it, rain ’r shine’. Thet’s what I said. Pooty bad business, wa’n’t
- it, this death of yer cousin?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dreadful!” she murmured, wishing he would talk of something else.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir, it’s about’s bad’s they make ’em. Some queer things ’baout
- it tew. I s’pose yeh ain’t heerd no gossup ’baout it, hev yeh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” she whispered with a sinking heart; a real effort was needed to
- speak the other words: “What gossip? Is there gossip?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dunnao’s yeh kin call it real gossup. P’raps nobuddy else won’t ’spicion
- nothin’. But to me they’s some things ’baout it thet looks darned
- cur’ous. Of caourse, it ain’t none o’ my business to blab ’baout
- the thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, of course.”
- </p>
- <p>
- These little words, spoken falteringly, confirmed all that Milton had
- wished to learn the truth about. Over night a stupendous scheme had
- budded, unfolded, blossomed in his mind. Originally his primitive
- intellect had gone no further than the simple idea of committing homicide
- under circumstances which would inevitably point to an accident. The plan
- was clever in its very nakedness. But through some row among the women,
- probably out of jealousy, the hint of murder had been raised, and coupled
- with Seth’s name. If this hint ripened into a suspicion and an inquiry, a
- new situation would be created, but Milton could not see any peril in it
- for him, for Seth would obviously be involved. But it would be better if
- no questions of murder were raised at all, and matters were allowed to
- stand. This would not only place Milton’s security beyond peradventure,
- but it would give him a tremendous grip upon Annie. It was in this
- direction that his mind had been working steadily since he heard of
- Annie’s suspicions. The opportunity seemed to have come for placing the
- cap-stone of acquisition upon the edifice of desire he had so long and
- patiently been rearing.
- </p>
- <p>
- As for the poor girl, she had reasoned herself out of the suspicion of
- Seth’s guilt a thousand times, only to find herself hopelessly relapsing
- into the quagmire. Milton’s hints came with cruel force to drag her back
- now, this time lower than ever. Even he seemed to know of it, but he
- proposed to maintain silence. Of course, he <i>must</i> be induced to keep
- silent. Oh! the agony of her thoughts!
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’n’ Seth was allus kine o’ frenly,” he proceeded. “Way back f’m
- th’ time yeh was boys ’n’ gals.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, we always were.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ they used to say, daown to th’ corners, that yeou two was
- baoun’ to make a match of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There wasn’t anything in that at all!” She spoke decisively, almost
- peremptorily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, they wa’n’t, ay?” There was evident jubilation in his tone.
- “Never was nothin’ in that talk, ay?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, nothing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The pair walked along on the side of the descending road silently for some
- moments. A farmer passed them, hauling a load of pumpkins up the hill, and
- exchanged a nod of salutation with Milton. This farmer remarked at his
- supper-table an hour later, to his wife: “I’d bet a yoke o’ oxen thet
- Milton Squires is a’makin’ up to the schewl-teacher. I seed ’em
- walkin’ togither daown th’ hill to-night, ’n’ he was a lookin’ at
- her like a bear at a sap-trough. It fairly made me grit my teeth to see
- him, with his broadcloth cloze, ’n’ his watch-chain, ’n’ his
- on-gainly ways.” To which his helpmeet acidulously responded: “Well, I
- dunnao’s she c’d dew much better. She’s gittin’ pooty well along, ’n’
- fer all his ongainly ways, I don’t see but what he comes on, ‘baout’s
- well’s some o’ them thet runs him daown. A gal can’t jedge much by a man’s
- ways haow he’ll turn aout afterwards. <i>I</i> thought <i>I’d</i> got a
- prize.” Whereupon the honest yeoman chose silence as the better part.
- </p>
- <p>
- The red sun was hanging in a purplish haze over the edge of the hill as
- the two descended, and the leaves from Farmer Perkins’s maples rustled
- softly under their feet. Milton drew near his subject:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve be’n gittin’ on in th’ world sence yeou fust knew me, hain’t I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, everybody says so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “’N’ yit everybody don’t knaow half of it. I ain’t no han’ to tell
- all I knaow. Ef some folks c’d guess th’ speckle-ations I be’n in, ‘n’ th’
- cash I’ve got aout in mor’giges ’n’ sao on, it’d make ’em
- open their eyes. It’s th’ still saow thet gits th’ swill, as my mother
- use’ to say, ’n’ I’ve be’n still enough abaout it, I guess.”
- </p>
- <p>
- His coarse chuckle jarred on the girl’s nerves, but the importance of
- placating him was uppermost in her mind, and she answered, as pleasantly
- as she could:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sure I’m glad, Milton. You have worked hard all your life, and you
- deserve it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yeh <i>air</i> glad, reely naow?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why yes! Why shouldn’t I be? It always pleases me to hear of people’s
- prosperity.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But me purtic’ly?” he persisted, earnestly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes,” she replied, absent-mindedly. Then the odd nature of the
- question occurred to her, but she was too distrait to think consecutively,
- and she added no comment to her answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, it eases me to hear yeh say thet,” he went on, with awkward
- deliberation, “fer they’s somethin’ I’ve be’n wantin’ to say to yeh fer a
- long time. I don’t s’paose you reelize haow well off I am?” She did not
- answer. Her mind seemed to refuse to act, and she heard only the sound of
- his words. He took her reply for granted and continued:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I c’d eena’most buy up thet farm there”—pointing over to the
- Fairchild acres on the slope, now within sight—“’n’ I ain’t
- so all-fired sure yit thet I won’t, nuther! But what’s th’ good o’ money,
- on-less yeh kin git what yeh want with it, ay?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The impulse of her soul-weariness was to let this aimless question pass
- like the other, without reply. But she was reminded of the importance of
- being pleasant to this tedious man, and so answered, entirely at random:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is it you want, Milton?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dunnao—I’m kind o’ feared o’ puttin’ my foot in it; yeh won’t be
- mad ef I tell yeh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why no, of course not. What is it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, then,” he blurted out, “I want <i>yeou!</i>” The girl looked dumbly
- at him, at first not realizing at all the meaning of his words, then held
- as in a vise between the disposition to reply to him as he deserved and
- the danger, the terrible danger, of angering him. There fluttered through
- her senses, too, a mad kind of yearning to shriek with laughter—born
- of the hysterical state of her long-oppressed nerves. She eventually
- neither rebuked nor laughed, but said vacuously:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Want <i>me?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ef yeou’ll marry me, I’ll make one o’ th’ fust ladies o’ Dearb’rn Caounty
- aout o’ yeh. Yeh need never lay yer finger to a stitch o’ work agin, no
- more’n Is’bel did, daown yander.” He spoke eagerly, with more emotion in
- his strident voice than she had ever heard there before.
- </p>
- <p>
- The difficulty of her position crushed her courage. Of course she must say
- no, but how do it without affronting him? The idea of reasoning him gently
- out of the preposterous wish came to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is some flying notion in your head, Milton,” she said, civilly. “You
- will have forgotten it by next week.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Forgott’n it, ay! Yeh think sao? What ’f I told yeh I hain’t
- thought o’ nothin’ else fur nigh onto ten year?”
- </p>
- <p>
- His tone was too earnest and excited to render further trifling safe. He
- pulled out of an inner pocket and held up before her a little, irregularly
- squared tin-type—which she recognized as having been made in
- whimsical burlesque of her lineaments by an itinerant photographer years
- before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How did you come by that?” she asked, to gain time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I got it fr’m th’ man thet made it, ’n’ I paid a dollar bill fer
- it, tew,” he answered triumphantly, “’n’ I’ve kep it by me ever
- sence!”
- </p>
- <p>
- After a pause she said, as calmly as she could: “I never dreamed that such
- a thought had entered your head. Of course, it—it can’t be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not, I’d like to knaow?” he demanded. “Don’t yeh b’lieve what I’ve
- told yeh ’baout my bein’ well off?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That hasn’t anything to do with it. There are other reasons—a good
- many other reasons.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What air they?” His tone was peremptory.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know that I can explain them to you. But truly there are so many
- of them—and your words took me so wholly by surprise, that—that——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yeh needn’t mince matters! I <i>knaow!</i> Yeh hev sot yer idees on Seth!
- Yeh needn’t tell me yeh hain’t!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won’t talk with you at all if you shout at me in that way, and
- contradict me flat when I assure you to the contrary.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton paused for a moment, to consider the situation. They were
- approaching the poplars now, along the lonely turnpike, and the
- conversation could not be much protracted. What he had to say must be said
- without delay. But what was it that he wished to say? A dozen inchoate
- plans rose amorphously to the surface of his mind—to cajole her, to
- strive further to impress her with his wealth, to entreat her, to attempt
- to bully her. This last resource ran best with his mood, but there were
- difficulties. Annie was the reverse of a cowardly girl; there was nothing
- timid or tremulous about her; if he attempted to intimidate her, the
- enterprise would most probably be a ridiculous failure, for he stood too
- much in awe of her self-reliance and intelligence to have confidence in
- his own mastery.
- </p>
- <p>
- But stay—she was fearful about Seth. Whether it was true or not that
- she had no idea of marrying her cousin, she was evidently solicitous for
- his safety. An idea born of this conclusion swiftly engrafted itself upon
- the hired man’s general strategy. He lifted his light, shifty eyes from
- the grass of the roadside path to her face, once more, and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, ef you’re a mine to be mean, I kin be mean tew—meaner ’n’
- pussly. Ef yeh think I’m goin’ to stan’ still, ’n’ let yeou ’n’
- Seth hev it all yer aown way, yer mistaken. I’ve only got to open my
- maouth to th’ Cor’ner, ’n’ whair’d <i>he</i> be, ’n’ yeou
- tew?”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a certain indefinable suggestion of bravado in his tone which
- caught Annie’s attention. It was the barest, most meagre of shadows, but
- she grasped at the chance of substance behind it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t believe you could say anything, or do anything, which would
- injure him,” she said, with more confidence in her words than she felt in
- her heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yeh daon’t, ay!” he growled. “Ef yeh knaowed what I knaow, p’raps
- yeh’d change yer teune.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you know, then? Come now, let us hear it!” She grew defiant, with
- an instinctive sense that the inferior being beside her was ready to
- retreat, if only she could keep up her boldness of front.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never yeou mind what I knaow!” he answered, evasively. “It’ll be enough,
- I guess, to cook <i>his</i> geuse, when th’ time comes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, I thought so!” she exclaimed. “You were simply talking to hear
- yourself talk—to scare me. Well, you see now that you wasted your
- breath.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, <i>did</i> I! Well, I won’t waste any more of it, then, till I talk
- to th’ Cor’ner. I kin tell him some things ’baout who rid th’ black
- mare aout thet night, after Albert’d gone. Guess thet’ll kind ’o’
- fix things!”
- </p>
- <p>
- His slow imagination, working clumsily in the mazes of falsehood, had
- carried Milton a step too far; his simple plan of substituting Seth for
- himself in the events of the fatal night miscarried in a way he could not
- suspect.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie did not answer. An exclamation had risen to her lips, but something
- akin to presence of mind checked it there. Her brain seemed to be working
- with lightning flashes. The black mare had played a part in the tragedy,
- then; Seth had certainly not had the animal out that evening; the rushing,
- almost noiseless apparition which had startled them in the moonlight must
- have been the mare; it was coming from the direction of Tallman’s; it had
- a rider; who could that rider have been? and how did Milton know about it?—so
- the swift thoughts ran, in a chain which seemed luminous in the relief it
- brought to her. These two questions she could not answer—in her joy
- at the apparent exculpation of Seth it did not seem specially important
- that they should be answered—and she had self-possession enough to
- ask nothing about them.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a nice question what she should say to her companion, who was now,
- without any distinct suspicions on her part, growing luridly loathsome and
- repugnant in her eyes. The fear of angering him had died away, but a vague
- sense that mischief might be done by arousing his curiosity or
- apprehensions had come to take its place. She spoke cautiously:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope you won’t do anything rash, that you would regret afterwards.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They ain’t nao need o’ my doin’ nothin’, ef yeou’d only hev some sense.
- But if yeou’re goin’ to be agin me, ther’s nao tellin’ what I won’t dew,”
- he answered with sullen terseness.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had come to the poplars, and Annie stopped at the stile under the
- thorns.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shall have to leave you here,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then yeh won’t hev me, ay? Yeh better think twice ’fore yeh say
- nao! Yeh won’t git another sich a chance—to live like a lady, ’n’
- hev ev’rything yeh want. ’N’ ef yeh dew say nao, yeh kin rest ’sured
- yeh ain’t heerd th’ last of it, ner him nuther.” Milton’s little
- green-gray eyes watched her face intently, and he fingered his flaring
- plated watch-chain with nervous preoccupation. “What d’yeh say, yes’ ’r
- nao?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t say anything more than I have said—<i>now</i>,” she
- answered, and, stepping over the stile, left him.
- </p>
- <p>
- For a long time afterward Annie’s conscience debated the justification of
- that final word, the last one she ever addressed to Milton, and which was
- obviously intended to keep alive a hope that she knew to be absurdly
- without ground or reason. Sometimes even now she has momentary doubts
- about it—but she silences cavil by whispering to herself in
- unanswerable defence: “I thought then that possibly it might be needed to
- help Seth—perhaps even to save him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had little leisure just then, however, to devote to moral
- introspection, for Samantha met her, half-way down the thorn-walk, to
- excitedly tell her that her grandmother, Mrs. Warren, was very much worse
- than usual.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXXII.—“A WICKED WOMAN!”
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Isabel looked
- into her mirror next morning, the image shown back fairly startled her.
- Day by day during this eventful week the glass had helped her to grow
- familiar with reddened eyes, with harsh, ageing lines, and with a pallor
- which no devices of the toilet could efface. It was not so much an added
- accentuation of these which riveted her gaze, now, upon the mirror, as the
- suggestion of a new face—of a stranger’s countenance, reflecting
- meanings and thoughts of the uncommon kind.
- </p>
- <p>
- She studied the face at first with an almost impersonal interest; then as
- the brain associated these lineaments with her own, and made their
- expression a part of her own spiritual state, she said to this other self
- in the glass, audibly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Another week of this will make you an old woman.” She added, after a
- pause of fascinated yet critical scrutiny: “Yes, and a wicked woman, too!”
- There has been what one can only hope is an intelligible reluctance, from
- the beginning of this recital, to essay analysis or portrayal of Isabel’s
- thoughts and motives. A complex, contradictory character like hers,
- striving now to assimilate, now to sway the simple, straightforward,
- one-stringed natures with which it is environed, may be illustrated; it is
- too great a task to dissect it. Yet for the once we may venture to look
- into this troubled mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- A wicked woman! The phrase which she had addressed aloud to the mocking
- image in the glass, in mingled doubt and irony, clung to her meditations.
- Had she ever meant to be wicked—ever deliberately, or even
- consciously, chosen evil instead of good? No! There was no dubious
- reservation in her answer. Yet within the week—oh, the horrible
- week!—she had come to occupy a moral position for which hell could
- not hold too relentless or fierce a punishment. She had hugged to her
- heart thoughts which, when they are linked with acts, go to expiation on
- the gallows. She shuddered now at the recollection of them; she could
- recall that she had shuddered then, too. Yet all the same these thoughts
- were a part of her—belonged to her. She had not repelled them as
- alien, or as unwelcome. Even while in terror at their mien, she had
- embraced them. Was this not all wickedness?
- </p>
- <p>
- The reply came, in sophistical self-defense, that no one act or emotion of
- a life could be judged by itself. The antecedent circumstances, leading up
- to it, must be taken into account. She had been borne along on the current
- of a career shaped for her by others. She was not responsible—she
- had never fought with her destiny—she had done nothing but seek to
- bring some flowers and light and color into the desolate voyage of life.
- Was it fair to say that these little innocent, womanish efforts to soften
- a sterile existence were the cause of the shipwreck—that it was
- these which had brought her so suddenly, dazed and terrified, into the
- very breakers on the sinister rocks of crime? No, the answer came again;
- surely it could not be fair.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet she had hated her husband; she had been overjoyed, even while she was
- affrighted, by the news of his death—or at least there was a
- tremulous sensation very like joy; she had hailed as her deliverer the
- young man whom her wild fancy made responsible for that death—yes,
- had even in her frenzy kissed his hand, the hand which she then believed
- to have blood upon it, his brother’s blood! her husband’s blood! Were not
- these the thoughts and actions of a wicked woman? What difference was
- there between her and the vilest murderess confined for life in a
- penitentiary?
- </p>
- <p>
- Or no! What nonsense this was! What single thing had she said or done to
- bring on the catastrophe? It was an accident—everybody knew that
- now. But even if it had not been an accident, how would she have been to
- blame? Was it her fault that she was pleasing in men’s eyes, or that Seth
- had been attracted by her, and had been sympathetic to her? How could she
- have helped it? Was there any reason why she should have tried to help it?
- Was it wrong for her, exiled as she was to this miserable farm life, to
- make a friend of her cousin—her husband’s brother? And if they had
- grown to be attached to each other, could it be wondered at?
- </p>
- <p>
- And it had all been so innocent, too! What single compromising word, even,
- had ever been spoken! Might not the most blameless of women have had just
- such a pretty little romantic friendship, without dream of harm?
- </p>
- <p>
- As for the frantic things she had thought and said on that awful forenoon
- after the discovery, she strove to put them away from her memory, as born
- of a hysterical, wholly irresponsible state.
- </p>
- <p>
- But they would come back, no matter how often banished.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, too—perhaps worst of all, for honest John seemed to lay
- particular stress upon it—was the terrible declaration she had made
- to Annie. About this there could be no self-deception. She would not
- pretend to herself that this had been done through any but revengeful?
- spiteful motives—pure cruelty, in fact. But was she to be thus
- coolly pushed aside, her romance shattered, her dear day-dream dissipated—and
- not to be justified in striking back?
- </p>
- <p>
- This conceited boy—she was able thus to think of Seth now, in his
- absence, and in the light of the affront she felt he had put upon her—and
- this country school-teacher, to come billing and cooing in the very hour
- of her supreme excitement—did they not deserve just what they had
- received? After all, her words had done no permanent harm.. Doubtless by
- this time they had all been cleared up. And if Miss Annie <i>did</i>
- suffer a little, what better was she than other people, to be free all her
- life from heartaches?
- </p>
- <p>
- But then came a mental picture of Annie’s calm, sweet, lightful face
- transfixed with speechless horror at the brutal words—and after it,
- close and searching, the question: “Why should I have stabbed Annie? She
- was always kindness itself to me. Was it not heartless to make that poor
- girl suffer?” And there followed in her mind, as an echo of her first
- exclamation to the mirror—that had gathered reverberating force from
- all the thoughts we have striven to trace—the haunting cry: “A
- wicked woman!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Afternoon came, and the battle still went on. Bitter condemnation of her
- own conduct struggled with angry pleas of grievance against others, and
- the conflict wearied her into what threatened to be a sick headache. The
- idea of getting out into the open air and seeking relief in a walk, which
- had been dormantly in her mind all day, finally took form, and led her
- outside the homestead for the first time since her husband’s death.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once outside, she walked aimlessly through the orchard—in preference
- to the high road, where she might meet neighbors—toward the little
- family graveyard. It was not until she had nearly reached this spot that
- she recalled having heard that Seth, too, came here on that terrible
- night. The recollection brought an added sense of all the wrongs she held
- to have been done her. She stood for a long time by the old board fence,
- with its coating of dry, mildew-like moss on the weather-beaten surfaces
- turned to the north, and its inhospitable hedging of brown, half-bare
- briars, and looked in reverie upon the tombs within the enclosure.
- </p>
- <p>
- Three generations of the Fairchilds lay here under the straggling mat of
- withered strawberry vines. She saw the low blue-slate slabs, nearly
- covered now by aspiring weeds and brambles, which modestly pleaded in
- antique letters that the original shoemaker, Roger, and his lowly spouse
- might not be altogether forgotten. Rising ostentatiously above these
- timid, ancient memorials, as if with intent to divert attention from their
- humility, was the marble obelisk marking the resting-place of the family’s
- greatest man, the Hon. Seth Fairchild. The monument was not so white or so
- imposing now as it once had been, and the proud inscription setting forth
- how its subject had been “twice Senator of the State of New York,” was
- almost illegible from the storm-stains and mould on its venerable front.
- There were some other stones, gray and small, tipping humbly toward the
- central monolith, as if mutely begging at least a little share of the
- Senator’s greatness for his wife and sisters, and nearer were two plain
- modern slabs recounting the sole interesting facts of the colorless lives
- of Lemuel and Cicely Fair-child—that they had been alive, and now
- were dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- Here still nearer her, almost at her feet, the widow saw some pegs driven
- in the ground, with string stretched around them to form a long rectangle.
- The sight brought no thrill to her. She was conscious of all its meaning,
- but felt herself scarcely interested. In life she had owed nothing but
- dislike to the man whose last coming these signs of preparation betokened.
- His death had shocked her at first by its fearful suddenness; it did not
- especially disturb her now, save at times with a furtive elation at the
- accompanying thought that at last she was free. Her thoughts were with the
- living—and their relation to those long since dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- If these rambling thoughts could have been summarized in words they would
- have run in this fashion:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What has all your family pride brought you, all your planning and
- manoeuvring, you dull countrymen? <i>I</i> wasn’t good enough for you, eh?
- Your breed must conspire against me, eh? and treat me like an interloper,
- an outsider, eh? You thought I was to be brought here too, did you, when
- my time arrived, and be snubbed and bullied into some back corner like the
- rest of your wives, while my husband, ‘the Congressman,’ had a big
- monument like this of your old humbug, the Senator? And you expected to
- patronize me, or cut me dead, as the living dolts here on the turnpike
- have done, did you? Well, you are fooled! I’ve escaped you! I shall never
- come here but once again—to bring you your ‘Congressman.’ You can
- have him and welcome. And that old cat of an aunt of his, she will come
- presently, too, and I wish you much joy of <i>her!</i> And perhaps you
- will give up your idea, then, that you amount to anything, or ever will
- amount to anything. The farm is going to a young man who will sell it, and
- who doesn’t care a cent for the whole crowd of you, and who will live in a
- city, and eat with his fork, and forget that there ever were such people
- as you. And he will forget, too, that——”
- </p>
- <p>
- She came to a full stop in her meditations. Yes, Seth would forget her,
- too. She had no illusions on this point. Perhaps this was too kindly a
- view of it, even—he might be compelled to remember her by sheer
- force of his bitterness toward her. There could be no doubt, after his
- cruel words on the eventful forenoon—their last meeting—that
- he scorned and despised her. What an idiot she had been to disclose to him
- her thoughts—those mad fancies and beliefs of that frantic morning!
- She might have known that the idea of his fighting his brother, on <i>her</i>
- account, was preposterous. What did he care about her? He had been nice
- with her, had written her pretty, graceful letters when she asked him to
- do so, and had sent her books to read—that was all. There was
- nothing else. She had been a fool to dream that there was anything else.
- He would sell the farm, and go back to Tecumseh, and marry Annie—yes,
- marry Annie! And they, too, would refer to her now and then, and comment
- on her wickedness, and hope that they might never have a daughter like
- her. That would be all.
- </p>
- <p>
- She turned from the little enclosure of graves, without giving them
- another thought. The mental picture which she conjured up of the young
- couple, contented by a fireside of their own, perhaps with a child, tore
- at her heart-strings.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the farm-yard she was met by Mr. Ansdell, who was evidently watching
- for her, and who introduced himself courteously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Coroner is here,” he said, “with some medical gentlemen, and there
- are also your late husband’s partner, Mr. Hubbard, who accompanied me from
- New York last night, and the District Attorney and some others. In a
- couple of hours or so we expect to be able to tell you what brought us.
- Meanwhile, we are anxious to spare you any possible intrusion—and
- also a possible scene. It is for this that I have waited outside for you.
- If you could prolong your walk for that length of time, going to some
- friend’s house near by, for instance, without saying that anything unusual
- was transpiring here——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I will go,” she answered. “Will two hours be long enough?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope so,” he said, bowing his thanks.
- </p>
- <p>
- She walked out through the great swing-gate to the turnpike, and idly
- chose the westward turning, along under the poplars. The curious incident
- of all these visitors at the house did not excite her attention. Her mind
- was too busy torturing itself with that marriage which was already spoken
- of as assured.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the stile by the thorns, the idea of going to the Warren house suddenly
- occurred to her. It was a bold, purposeless, almost crazy thought; perhaps
- for those very reasons it commended itself to her mood. She felt herself
- impelled alike by good and malignant impulses to cross the stile; she
- walked down the thorn path, scarcely knowing whether her purpose was to
- bless or to curse.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door was opened by Samantha, whose scared face took on an added
- expression of anxiety on recognizing the visitor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go into the parlor, ’n’ I’ll light the stove fer yeh,” she
- whispered. “Th’ old lady’s very laow. Soon’s she comes hum from schewl
- I’ll send Annie in to see yeh.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXXIII.—THE SHERIFF ASSISTS.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hile Isabel sat
- over the stove in the cold, austere parlor of the Warren house, with its
- ancient furniture, the never failing photograph album, and those huge pink
- shells on the mantle-shelf without which no rural home used to be complete—waiting
- for she scarcely knew what—strange things were going forward in the
- home of the Fairchilds.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the forenoon of this same day, Thursday, there had been a gathering in
- the office of the Thessaly <i>Banner of Liberty</i>. It was the
- publication day of the paper, but for once it went to press without
- enlisting even the most careless scrutiny, let alone the solicitude, of
- its editor-proprietor. He had more serious business on hand. Closeted with
- him in the little editorial room, whose limited space had rarely before
- been so taxed, were Beekman, Ansdell, the District Attorney, the Sheriff,
- and the younger of the dead man’s two New York partners, a shrewd, silent,
- long-faced man. Seth had desired to be of the party but his brother had
- sent him off, to return after dinner.
- </p>
- <p>
- These men gravely discussed some subjects with which our readers are
- familiar, and some now first brought to light. John had a letter from
- Annie, sent by hand the previous evening, detailing the strange things
- Milton had said to her about the black mare. Ansdell and Mr. Hubbard, the
- partner, recited how they had discovered that Albert Fairchild, on the
- preceding Monday, sold $16,000 worth of government bonds, and the abortive
- effort he made to so arrange the transfer that it would not be traced.
- Beekman recalled how the black mare had balked on the edge of the gulf the
- day after the murder—for they all thus characterized it now. Later,
- the Coroner came in by appointment, and in the presence of the dreaded
- District Attorney was meekness itself. He even heard that two physicians
- were to go out with the party, and make an examination, without taking
- offence.
- </p>
- <p>
- After the noon-day dinner the gathering was reinforced by the two doctors
- and by Seth, the latter devoured by curiosity and vexed at being kept so
- long in the dark. Soon after, all of the party save the Sheriff made their
- way to the Fairchild house, driving by twos or threes, and at intervals,
- to avoid exciting suspicion. It was after the arrival of the last division
- that Ansdell met Isabel, and advised her to stay away from the house for a
- time.
- </p>
- <p>
- The two surgeons and the Coroner went silently into the parlor, and closed
- the door behind them. In the living-room Ansdell, Hubbard, John, and the
- District Attorney took chairs around the stove, having given word that
- Milton, who was off on the other side of the hill, arranging the sale of
- some apples, should be sent in to them when he arrived, which could not be
- very long now. In the kitchen, opening back from the living-room as this
- in turn did from the parlor, Seth and Beekman sat with the three women of
- the household.
- </p>
- <p>
- These latter had been told that something was going on, or rather had
- inferred it from being forbidden to leave the room, and were agog with
- puzzled excitement. They had no clue, save a vague understanding that
- important personages were in the front portions of the house, but Alvira
- and Melissa stole unhappy glances toward Seth, in uneasy fear that the
- worst suspicions born of Samantha’s recital were to be realized in fact.
- Aunt Sabrina, sitting with her shawl wrapped about her gaunt shoulders,
- and with her feet on a piece of wood in the oven, did not know of this
- story which gave point to the other women’s anxiety, but was in misery
- between a deep yearning to learn what had happened, and a pessimistic
- conviction that it must be another addition to the Fairchilds’ load of
- calamities.
- </p>
- <p>
- They heard Milton drive up presently, and hail Dana with instructions to
- put the horse out, and a query concerning the several strange vehicles
- under the shed. Then he came into the kitchen, stamping his feet with the
- cold, and walking straight to the stove to warm his hands. It was growing
- dark in the low room, and he did not recognize Beekman.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth delivered his errand, saying that his brother John wished to see
- Milton, as soon as he returned, in the living-room. The hired man gave the
- speaker a curious glance, and, after a moment or two of hand warming, went
- in to learn what was wanted.
- </p>
- <p>
- Almost as he closed the door behind him, the Sheriff entered the kitchen
- from the outside, and after an interrogative glance toward Beekman, which
- the latter answered by a nod, drew up a chair leisurely by the stove.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who’d a thought it ’d a turned out so cold, ‘fore the moon
- changed?” he asked of the company collectively. “Hev yeh got any cider
- abaout handy? ’N’ a daoughnut, tew, ef yeh don’t mine.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While Melissa was in the cellar, the Sheriff, who was a Spartacus man and
- a stranger to both Seth and the females, asked of Beekman: “What did yeh
- agree on fer a sign?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th’ shakin’ of th’ stove.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seth had been annoyed all day at the pains taken by John to keep the facts
- of the enterprise now in hand from him, and he displayed so much of this
- pique in the glance he now cast from the Sheriff to Beekman, that the
- latter felt impelled to speak:
- </p>
- <p>
- “P’raps you disremember my askin’ yeh ’t’ other day ’baout
- whether yer brother had much money on him that night. Well, we’ve settled
- thet point. He did hev’—’n’ ’twas a considerable sum
- tew—‘baout sixteen thaousan’ dollars.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No!” Seth’s exclamation was of incredulous surprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sixteen thaousan’. We knaow it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh! I remember now,” said Seth, searching his impressions of the night.
- “I remember that when I said he might fail to be nominated, he slapped his
- breast two or three times as if he had something in the pocket. By George!
- I wonder——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yeh needn’t waste no more time wond’rin’. Thet was it! ’N’ d’yeh
- knaow what he was goin’ to dew with thet money? No, yeh daon’t! He was
- agoin’ to buy me! I wouldn’t say this afore aoutsiders; I dunnao’s I’d say
- it to yeou ef your paper wa’n’t so dum fond o’ pitchin’ into me fer
- a boss, ’n’ a machine man ez yeh call it, ’n’ thet kine o’
- thing. Yer brother hed th’ same idee o’ me thet your paper’s got. He was
- wrong. They tell me ther air’ some country caounties in th’ State where
- money makes th’ mare gao. But Jay ain’t one of ’em. Yer brother
- wanted to git into Congress. Ther was nao chance fer him in New York City.
- He come up here ’n’ he worked things pooty fine, I’m baoun’ to say,
- but he slipped up on me. Bribes may dew in yer big cities, but they won’t
- go daown in Jay. I don’t b’lieve they’s ez much of it done anywhere ez
- folks think, nuther.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But this money, then, was——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lemme go on! P’raps this ’d never be’n faound aout, ef yer brother
- hadn’t made mistake number tew in pickin’ aout the wust ’n’ meanest
- cuss in th’ caounty to be his gao-between. I kin tell mean cusses when I
- see ’em, ’n’ this feller he had was jest <i>the</i> dirtiest
- scalawag I ever did see. I kin stan’ a scoundrel in a way ef he’s bright
- abaout it, but this was a reg’lar, natchul born fool. Somehaow in th’
- kentry, these men don’t seem to hev no sense. Ef they’re goin’ to rob a
- man, or set his barns afire, or kill him, they dew it in the darnedest,
- clumsiest saort o’ way, so they’re sure to git faound aout the minute
- anybody looks an inch beyond his nose into th’ thing. It makes a man
- ashamed to be a kentry-man to see th’ foolish way these here blockheads
- git caught, ev’ry time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The women had been listening intently to this monologue. They looked at
- one another now, with the light of a strange new suspicion in their eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is this man? Who are you talking about?” Seth asked eagerly.
- </p>
- <p>
- At that moment the sound of a stove being shaken vigorously came from the
- living-room. The Sheriff rose to his feet, and strode toward the door of
- this room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll shaow him to yeh in th’ jerk of a lamb’s tail,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The conversation in the living-room, after Milton entered, had been
- trivial for a time, then all at once very interesting. He had been
- disagreeably surprised at finding three men with John, but had taken a
- seat, his big hands hanging awkwardly over his knees, and had been
- reassured somewhat by the explanation that Mr. Hubbard, the dead man’s
- partner, was anxious to hear all he could about the sad occurrence. The
- District Attorney he did not know by sight, and he did not recognize
- Ansdell, who stood looking out of the window, softly drumming on the
- panes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Milton told a lot of details, about Albert’s return, about hitching up the
- grays for him, about how the news was received at the Convention and the
- like, all recited with verbose indirectness, and at great length. Once he
- stopped, his attention being directed to a slight sound in the parlor, and
- looked inquiry. John promptly explained that it was the undertaker, and
- the hired man went on.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last the District Attorney, who had hitherto been silent, asked
- quietly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You went back to the stable—to your own room—after Mr.
- Fairchild drove away?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, ’n’ went to bed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you hear any one enter the stables afterward?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, nary a soul.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is a black mare in the stables, used under the saddle. Was she
- taken out that night?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not thet I knaow of. Why?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, there seems to be a pretty positive story that she was. She was
- seen on the road, in fact, late that night, coming from the ravine. The
- rider was not recognized, but the mare was. How do you account for that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tain’t none o’ my business to ’caount for it.” Milton did not like
- the tendency of the conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I know that, but we are interested in finding out. I don’t think you
- know me—I am the District Attorney—and I shall take particular
- pains to find out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A gulf suddenly yawned before Milton’s feet, and he made a prompt, bold
- attempt to leap it. “I didn’t like to say nothin’ ’baout it, bein’
- as it’s in th’ fam’ly”—he cast an uneasy glance at John here—“but
- Seth Fairchild rides th’ mare a good deal. I did hear somebody saddlin’
- th’ mare, but I took it fer granted it was him, ’n’ sao I didn’t
- git up. It’d be jes like him, I said to myself, to go ridin’ in th’
- moonshine. He’s thet sort of a feller, naow ain’t he, John?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The sound of his own voice frightened Milton as he went on, and his
- closing appeal to the brother for corroboration carried the nervous accent
- of fear. John did not answer, but rose and walked over to join Ansdell at
- the window.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of caourse,” Milton began, in a lower voice, to which he sought to give a
- confidential tone, “I don’t wan’ to say nothin’ agin Seth. Of caourse,
- he’s John’s brother, ‘n’——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The words were cut short by the rolling back of one of the parlor doors,
- and the entrance of the three doctors. The Coroner, who came last, pulled
- the door shut again. The older of the other two came to the District
- Attorney and said, with deliberate distinctness:
- </p>
- <p>
- “We are both prepared to swear that Mr. Fairchild’s death was caused by a
- gunshot wound in the head.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was then that John sprang to the stove, and shook its grate vehemently.
- </p>
- <p>
- At sight of the Sheriff, who advanced upon him with a directness which
- left no ambiguity as to his purpose, Milton rose excitedly from his chair,
- cast a swift scared glance around the company, and then, while the
- handcuffs were being snapped upon his wrists, began to whimper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t do it! It’s a put-up job! It’s them brothers o’ his thet allus
- hankered after his money, ’n’ naow they got it they’re tryin’ to
- put the thing on me. ’N’ his wife, tew, thet stuck-up city gal, she——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come naow, yeou better shut up,” said the Sheriff sententiously. “Th’
- more yeh say th’ wuss it’ll be fer yeh.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Most of the men present averted their gaze during the brief period of
- alternate threats and cringing, of rough curses and frenzied fawning on
- the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and even the Coroner, which ensued;
- but Mr. Hubbard watched it all carefully with evident interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is a very curious type of criminal,” he said, as the Sheriff and his
- prisoner left the room; “very curious indeed! I never saw a murderer
- before who had so little nerve, and funked so absolutely when he was
- confronted with detection. Why, I’ve seen men, guilty as guilty could be,
- who would deceive even their own lawyers. But such a simpleton as that—he’s
- not worth his rope.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is because you are a city man,” explained the District Attorney.
- “You don’t know the kind of murderers we raise here in the country. The
- chances are that your city assassin would be tortured by remorse, if he
- escaped discovery, and that he committed the deed in a moment of passion.
- But the rural murderer (I am speaking of native Americans, now) plans the
- thing in cold blood, and goes at it systematically, with nerves like
- steel. He generally even mutilates the body, or does some other horrible
- thing, which it makes everybody’s blood boil to think of. And so long as
- he isn’t found out, he never dreams of remorse. He has no more moral
- perspective than a woodchuck. But when detection does come, it knocks him
- all in a heap. He blubbers, and tries to lay it on somebody else, and
- altogether acts like a cur—just as this fellow ’s doing now,
- for instance.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A hubbub of shrieks and sobs rose from the kitchen as he finished this
- sentence, and they with one accord moved toward the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Sheriff, with an eye to his promise to the two men in the kitchen, had
- led the livid and slinking wretch out to the centre of the room, where the
- dim candles had now been lighted, and, forcing him to hold up his hands so
- that the manacles might be fully visible, said to Seth:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here yeh air! I said I’d shaow him to yeh! Here is the whelp thet did th’
- mischief. Look at him!”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a second of dead silence, as the several listeners took in the
- significance of his words, and of the spectacle.
- </p>
- <p>
- The silence was broken by an inarticulate, indescribable cry from Aunt
- Sabrina. Then came with startling swiftness a confusion of moving bodies,
- of screams, and the rattling of the handcuffs’ chain, which no one could
- follow. When the intervention of the Sheriff and Beekman had restored
- quiet, it was discovered that the old lady, with an agility of which none
- could have supposed her capable, had snatched a potato knife from the
- table, and made a savage attempt to wreak the family’s vengeance upon
- Milton. She had not succeeded in inflicting any injury, save a slight cut
- on one of his pinioned hands, and Seth now with some difficulty persuaded
- her to leave the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- It fell to Alvira’s lot to bind up the bleeding hand—for Melissa,
- undertaking the task, was too nervous and trembling to perform it.
- </p>
- <p>
- A little dialogue, in hushed whispers, which only imperfectly reached even
- the sentinel Sheriff, ensued:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sao this is what yeh’ve come tew!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s all a lie!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, don’t tell <i>me!</i> Ef you’d be’n contented with yer lot in life,
- ’n’ hadn’t tried to swell yerself up like a toad in a puddle, this
- wouldn’t a happen’d. But nao, yeh poor fewl, yeh must set yerself up to <i>be</i>
- somebody! ’N’ naow where air yeh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Words with which to answer rose to Milton’s bloodless lips, but he could
- not give them utterance. He could not even look at her, but in a dazed way
- stared at the hand, which he held so that she could wind the bandage in
- spite of the gyves.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t use to think yeh was aout-’n-aout bad,” she continued, more
- slowly; “they was a time when yeh might a made a decent man o’ yerself—ef
- yeh’d kep’ yer word to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This time he did not make an effort to answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- The task of sustaining the talk alone was too great for her. The tears
- came into her eyes, and blinded the last touches to the bandage. As it was
- completed, the Sheriff put his hand roughly on the prisoner’s shoulder.
- The meaning of this movement spread over her mind, and appalled her. With
- a gesture of decision she stood on tiptoe, lifted her face up to Milton’s,
- and kissed him. Then, as he was led away, she turned to the onlookers, and
- said defiantly, between incipient sobs:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I daon’t keer! Ef t’ was th’ last thing I ever done in my life, I’d dew
- it. We was—engaged—once’t on a time!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXXIV.—AT “M’TILDY’S” BEDSIDE AGAIN.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>o you clip over
- and tell Annie,” John had said to Seth, when the first excitement of the
- scene had passed off, and they stood at the kitchen window, watching the
- Sheriff’s buggy fade off in the dusk down the hill toward Thessaly jail.
- “It’s the thing for you to do—the quicker the better!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie had been home from her day’s task some minutes, and sat by her
- grandmother’s bedside. The patient was in a semi-comatose state, breathing
- with unnatural heaviness, and Samantha had been dispatched with all haste
- to bring a doctor from Thessaly. It seemed terribly probable that Mrs.
- Warren’s last day had come.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet as she sat by the curtained recess, holding in her’s the withered hand
- which lay inanimate on the high edge of the bed, Annie still thought very
- little of the great change impending over her home; she had faced this
- death in life so long that its climax did not startle her, or wear the
- garb of strangeness. Instead, she was pondering the unaccountable,
- unwelcome fact with which Samantha had greeted her on her return—that
- Isabel was in the adjoining room, and had asked to see her.
- </p>
- <p>
- What could it mean? What could Isabel’s purpose be in coming? And ought
- she to sacrifice her own feelings to the dictates of politeness, and go in
- to see this wicked, cruel woman? Perhaps she had come to retract and
- apologize for the fearful words of Tuesday. Perhaps her intention was to
- reiterate them, or worse, to recount that now the whole world would know
- of them—and gloat over her pain. No, that could scarcely be, for
- since her interview with Milton Annie felt satisfied at least of Seth’s
- innocence. But still something new might have been disclosed—Isabel
- might have evil tidings of some sort with which to overwhelm her afresh.
- What should she do?
- </p>
- <p>
- The parlor door was ajar, and though she could not see her visitor, she
- could plainly hear the snapping of the wood fire within, which Samantha
- had kindled. Isabel must be perfectly aware of her return, and of her
- presence in this sick chamber. Every minute that she hesitated would only
- augment the widow’s anger at being thus inhospitably neglected. Even if
- she had relented, and had come with kindly intent, this reception might
- alter her impulses.
- </p>
- <p>
- She rose to enter the parlor, but still stood irresolute, holding her
- grandmother’s hand, when there came the sound of footsteps in the front
- hall—then of a hasty knock on the door opening from the hall into
- this room in which she was. She opened the door, and before her, excited
- and jubilant, stood her cousin Seth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve come to tell you!” he burst out, “It’s all cleared up. There <i>was</i>
- a murder. Milton did it! He’s just been arrested! I tried to ring your
- bell, but it didn’t seem to work. So I <i>had</i> to come in! And now——”
- </p>
- <p>
- He opened his arms with an unmistakable gesture, and they closed fondly
- upon an overjoyed maiden, who sobbed upon his breast for very relief.
- </p>
- <p>
- When she found breath and words, it was to say:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you can’t guess what I have suffered these last two days; I thought I
- should never live through them! And now it seems as if I should go wild
- with joy—as if I couldn’t keep my feet down on the floor!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, yes, I know, my darling. But we shall be all the happier for this
- spell of wretchedness. Dry your eyes, pet. There shall be no more thought
- or talk of tears—much less of dying.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “O Seth!—I forgot!—my grandmother!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She lowered her voice, and told him her fears.
- </p>
- <p>
- Hand in hand, and with his arm about her shoulder, they moved softly to
- the bedside of the dying woman. The noise of the talking, or some less
- apparent influence, had aroused her from her lethargy. Her pale eyes were
- brilliant still, with an unearthly light, it seemed to the awed young man,
- and she rested their gaze fixedly upon the couple.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is that?” she asked in a querulous whisper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is Seth, Granny,” the girl answered, relapsing unconsciously into the
- familiar form she had not used since childhood.
- </p>
- <p>
- The aged woman restlessly moved her head, and her eyes snapped with
- impatience at her inability to raise herself from the pillow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won’t have him here! Tell him to take his arm away. What’s he doin’
- here, anyway? He desarted yeh! His own father told me so! Tell him to go
- away! I hate the sight of the hull breed!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he’s come back to me, Granny,” the girl pleaded, while Seth shrank
- backward in the shadow of the curtain. “Truly he has, and he’s not to
- blame. And I love him very dearly”—a pressure from the young man’s
- hand answered the sweetness of this avowal—“and he will be all I
- shall have left when—when—” she stopped, unwilling to conclude
- her thought in words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An’ will he take yeh away, an’ do by yeh ez a husban’ ought to do, or
- will he take yeh onto that Fairchild farm, an’ break yer heart out ez his
- father did his mother’s, an’ ez his uncle did yer mother’s, an’ ez his
- brother, so they tell me, is doin’ with his wife?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, mercy!” the girl exclaimed, involuntarily; then she whispered to
- Seth, back of the curtains: “What shall I do! I forgot all about it—Isabel
- is there in the parlor and she has heard every word we’ve said.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The quick ears of the invalid caught the whispered explanation. .
- </p>
- <p>
- “Isabel!” she said, sharply. “That’s Albert Fairchild’s wife ain’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes!” the girl answered. She tried in dumb show to convey to Seth that
- her grandmother was ignorant of his brother’s death.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go an’ fetch her in here,” said Mrs. Warren, with more animation in her
- voice than it had shown before. “I want to see her—to talk with
- her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But, Granny, you ought’nt to see strangers; you know, the doctor——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I guess she ain’t much more of a stranger than this young man you’ve got
- here. Go an’ fetch her, I say! I won’t hurt her, an’ she won’t hurt me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was nothing for Annie to do, but go into the parlor, and bow
- shamefacedly to Isabel, and say, with embarrassment in every syllable:
- “Excuse me for not coming before, but I think my grandmother is dying. She
- wants very much to see you. Won’t you come, please?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel had risen to her feet upon Annie’s entrance. To the latter’s
- surprise and increased confusion she held forth her hand with a friendly
- gesture. “Yes, I will come with you,” she said, as Annie doubtingly took
- the proffered hand, and the two women entered the sick-room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel did not seem to see Seth, who stood at the head of the bed, among
- the drawn curtains, but walked to the bedside and said softly: “I am
- Isabel, Mrs. Warren; I am sorry that our first meeting should find you so
- low.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you’re Albert’s wife, eh?” The old woman eyed her keenly, for what
- seemed a long time. “I’ve heered tell o’ you. Would you mind gettin’ that
- candle there, on the mantle-piece, an’ holdin’ it, so’t I kin see yer
- face?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel gravely complied with the request, and stood before the invalid
- again, with the yellow light glowing upon her throat and lower chin and
- nostrils and full, Madonna-like brows. Her face was at its best with this
- illumination from below. She would have been a rare beauty close before
- the footlights.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” said Mrs. Warren, after a long inspection, “P’raps it’ll sound
- ridiculous to yeh, but yeh don’t look unlike what I did when I was your
- age. The farm ain’t had time to tell on yeh yit. But it will! It made me
- the skeercrow that you see; it’ll do the same for you. When I was a girl,
- I was a Thayer, the best fam’ly in Norton, Massachusetts. We held our
- heads high, I kin tell yeh. Why, when I brought my side-saddle here,
- stitched with silk, ’twas the fust one they’d ever seen in these
- parts. But I married beneath me, an’ I come up here into York State to
- live, on this very farm. With us, farmin’ don’t mean a livin’ death.
- P’raps we don’t hev sech fine big barns ez yeh build here, but our houses
- are better. We don’t git such good crops, but we pay more heed to
- education and godly livin’. It’s th’ diff’rence ’twixt folks who
- b’lieve there’s somethin’ else in life b’sides eatin’ an’ drinkin’ an’
- makin’ money, an’ folks that don’t. Well, I left a good home, an’ I come
- here, an’ here I am. Look at me! Look at Lemuel Fairchild’s wife, Cicely—she
- was a relation of yours, wasn’t she?—see how the farm made an ole
- woman o’ her, an’ broke her down, an’ killed her! You’re young, an’ you’re
- good lookin’ yit, but it’ll break yeh, sure’s yer born. Husban’s on these
- farms ain’t what they air in the cities, nor even in the country in New
- England. I’m told your husban’ don’t treat you right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t let us talk about that—please!” said Isabel: she stole a
- swift, momentary glance toward Seth as she spoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- The keen eyes in the recess followed this look. “Well, no,” the husky,
- whispering voice went on, “p’raps it ain’t none o’ my business. But tell
- me about this young man here—yer husband’s brother. I want to know
- about him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What about him?” asked Isabel slowly, after a pause.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, is he a likely man? Air his habits good? Could he take this girl o’
- mine—an’ she’s a good girl, Annie is—could he take her to
- Tecumsy, an’ make a fit home fer her? An’ <i>would</i> he do it? Would he
- make her a good husban’—ez good ez she desarves? I ask you, ’cause
- you know him. I leave it to you—would you yerself marry him ef yeh
- was free, an’ feel safe about him? Come, now, tell me that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel hesitated so long that the old woman, seemingly wandering a little
- after her long, laborious concentration of thought, broke in again:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I know ’em! I know ’em! Of all the Fair-childses, there
- never was one decent one. They stole my daughter, an’ let her die ’mongst
- strangers, an’ they made a broken ole woman o’ me, an’ they slaved
- Cicely’s life out o’ her, an’ now they want my Annie——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Isabel here, speaking softly, and putting her hand on the
- wasted arm which lay above the coverlet. “I think you wrong Seth. Whatever
- the rest may have done, I think he will be a good husband to Annie. I am
- <i>sure</i> he will.”
- </p>
- <p>
- No answer, save a low, incoherent murmuring, came from the recess. The
- invalid had lapsed into the lethargy of exhausted nature. As the trio
- stood by the bedside even this sound ceased. Nothing was to be heard but
- the labored, unnatural breathing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Isabel placed the candle again upon the shelf. She had not removed her
- bonnet and wrap, and she turned now irresolutely toward the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie went to her, and silently took her hand. “I forgive you,” she
- whispered. “Was there anything else? Did you want to speak to me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know what I wanted when I came. Let me go now. Perhaps if I said
- any more, I should hate myself afterward.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And thus, without a glance at Seth, she went.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXXV.—“SUCH WOMEN ARE!”
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE story, such as
- it is, is told.
- </p>
- <p>
- Before the daily press of the State, which had given great attention to
- the tragedy in Dearborn County, became fairly aware that a mystery
- attached to it, the wretched Milton had confessed his crime. He had
- followed and come up with his employer, who stopped at his call. There was
- a conversation—then the killing. The prisoner made a weak effort to
- pretend that there was a quarrel first, and that his deed was in
- self-defence, but he deceived no one. He had with much difficulty led the
- grays off the side of the ravine, the murdered man being first thrown
- over, and the horses and buggy purposely hurled down upon him. There was
- some angry criticism when it became known that the District Attorney had
- agreed to accept a plea of murder in the second degree, and the popular
- explanation—that it was done from motives of consideration for the
- family—provoked not a few jibes from people who wanted to know why
- the Fairchilds were any better than other folk. But the course of the law
- was not affected by this comment, nor did the District Attorney suffer
- appreciably from it when he came up the succeeding autumn for re-election.
- The money was all recovered—and, if you have the influence requisite
- to obtain a visiting pass to New York’s forest-girt prison on the Eastern
- watershed of the Adirondacks—that terrible subterranean place of woe
- from which even Siberian gaolers might get some hints of new things in
- anguish—you may still see a thin, bent, evil-faced wretch dragging
- out existence in the mines, who once was reckoned a likely man in Dearborn
- County, and who cast its united vote at the most famous of all Tyre’s
- Conventions.
- </p>
- <p>
- The funeral of Albert Fairchild will long be remembered in all the section
- round. More than one State official attended, and there was a vast
- concourse of lesser political lights, who kept a shrewd eye upon
- opportunities for profitable discourse with each other, before and after
- the services, while they put themselves dignifiedly in evidence before the
- public by getting their names in the local papers.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were no surprises to the inner circle of the family when the will
- came to be read. Subject to the widow’s third, the farm was devised in
- equal parts to the two brothers, but the major share of the other property
- went to Seth. The partner from New York remained at the homestead long
- enough to arrange the details by which the widow’s portion was bought by
- the brothers, and her leave-taking accomplished.
- </p>
- <p>
- John Fairchild lives in high contentment on the ancestral farm. He grows
- stout now, in the accustomed Fairchild fashion, and though his light ruddy
- face and brown beard are hostile to the suggestion, people profess to see
- the family likeness in him as he grows older. Aunt Sabrina especially
- cherishes this fancy with fondness. She has come to regard this nephew,
- whom once she so deeply disliked, with some affection and vast esteem, and
- she devotes her hours to dreaming of the great things he may accomplish as
- the Fairchild of Dearborn—what time she is not joining Alvira in
- prayer that he may not be moved to marry a city woman. Thus far there are
- no indications that he thinks of marrying any one, and his ambitions seem
- to take no higher form than the re-invigoration of the <i>Banner of
- Liberty</i>, which he drives over to Thessaly three times a week to
- superintend, and which, they say, promises soon to blossom into a daily.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- One closing scene we may glance at—a pretty room, with modern
- furniture, and wide, flower-clad windows looking upon one of the best of
- Tecum-seh’s residential streets. Annie, grown brighter-faced and yet no
- older in looks, despite the nearly four years of married life which have
- gone by, stands at the window with a baby in her arms, and laughs as she
- tosses the infant forward toward the panes, in greeting to the paternal
- parent, who is coming up the front steps. The wife is in gay spirits, not
- only because the head of the house has come home to dinner instead of
- stopping at the Club, but for another reason, compared with which all
- dinners were trivial.
- </p>
- <p>
- “O Seth, her first tooth has come through!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That so? It’s about time, I should-think.”
- </p>
- <p>
- His reception of the great tidings is so calm, not to say indifferent,
- that the beaming wife looks at him in mock surprise. Seth has not aged
- specially either, but he wears this evening an unwontedly serious
- expression of face, and gets into his dressing-gown and slippers with an
- almost moody air.
- </p>
- <p>
- Baby is brought up in frowning, blinking proximity to her sire and made by
- proxy to demand an explanation of this untoward gloom, on an occasion
- which ought to be given over to rejoicing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I’m tired,” Seth answers; “and then—then I have a letter which
- puzzles and annoys me a little.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it anything that I know about?” Annie has seated herself beside him
- now, and looks sweet inquiry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, yes. It is a letter from Dent—you know I’ve let him go down
- to Washington to get an idea of the place and the men while the session is
- on—and along with a letter to the paper, pretty good stuff, too, he
- sends me this personal note. Read it for yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie took the letter, and reads steadily along through its neat
- chirography:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Washington, March 7th.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear Fairchild:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I send a letter going into the Silver question from the standpoint of
- some of the Western men I have talked with. They impress me as being more
- sincere than sensible on the subject. I think the trip will be of vast
- service to me—and also, I trust, to the paper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Last evening, I met for the second time since I have been here, an
- elderly gentleman from your part of the State, named Beekman. Like myself,
- he is down here to look around, and get an idea of things. It is the first
- time, I should judge, that he has been so far away from home, and his
- comments are extremely droll—often very clever, too. He seems to
- know you very well, and asked me to remember him kindly to you, and
- express his congratulations upon your purchase of a controlling interest
- in the paper. He wanted me to be sure and say to you that while the
- experiment of electing Ansdell had worked very well—he seems to
- admire Ansdell greatly—you mustn’t allow that to lead you into the
- habit of thinking that all bolters are saints and all straight-party men
- devils. It seems that since he has been here he has encountered some
- foolish and exceptional Southern Congressman who provoked him by saying ‘<i>Your</i>
- Government’ and <i>your</i> laws’ instead of using the pronoun and that
- has made him a great Stalwart again—for the time-being.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie looked up from the sheet. “I must say I don’t see anything in all
- this to particularly disturb anybody. This seems just the harmless sort of
- letter I should expect your innocuous Mr. Dent to write.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Read the rest of it,” was Seth’s reply.
- </p>
- <p>
- She went on:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “By the way, I met your sister-in-law among the guests at a reception the
- other evening, to which Mr. Ansdell kindly secured me an invitation. Her
- residence on K street—she gave me the number, which I have somewhere—is
- said to be one of the most charming homes in Washington. She is
- very-popular in society here, and I am told that you meet her at every
- fashionable gathering. She was certainly very pleasant with me, when Mr.
- Ansdell presented me and explained who I was. She especially asked me if I
- knew what you had named your baby-girl, but I could not tell her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>I</i> could tell her if she asked <i>me!</i>” remarked the young wife,
- grimly. “The very idea!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go on,” said Seth—“or I shall feel that we ought to have named her
- Proscrastinatia instead of Annie; get to the end of the thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annie got to the end with a single sentence:
- </p>
- <p>
- “By the way, it may interest you—and I hope you won’t be annoyed at
- my mentioning it, and indeed you may very possibly have heard it already—to
- learn that everybody here seems to understand that Mr. Ansdell is shortly
- to marry your sister-inlaw, and he himself, speaking to me, referred to
- her in a way which amounted to a declaration of the fact.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, there you have it!” said Seth slowly, after a long pause in which
- husband and wife looked at each other. “That <i>is</i> news, isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should think so!” Annie spoke deliberately, too, turning the letter
- over with a meditative air. “I should think so!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The gravity of his wife’s tone seemed to Seth to be more profound than the
- circumstances altogether demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know after all,” he said, in half-apology for his own earlier
- confession of gloom, “but that it would be a tolerable match. I don’t say
- that they would be happy in the sense that we are happy, my girl; but she
- has a great many qualities which would make her a helpful wife to an
- ambitious, successful, masterful sort of public man like Ansdell. Come,
- now, let’s be fair to her. Dent says that she is very popular in
- Washington.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” replied Annie thoughtfully, drawing her daughter closer to her
- breast, “she always will be popular with people who are not married to
- her. Such women are!”
- </p>
- <h3>
- THE END.
- </h3>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's Seth's Brother's Wife, by Harold Frederic
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SETH'S BROTHER'S WIFE ***
-
-***** This file should be named 54987-h.htm or 54987-h.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
- http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/8/54987/
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
-be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
-law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
-so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
-States without permission and without paying copyright
-royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
-of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
-concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
-and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
-specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
-eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
-for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
-performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
-away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
-not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
-trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
-
-START: FULL LICENSE
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
-Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-
-1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
-destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
-possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
-Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
-by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
-person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
-1.E.8.
-
-1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
-paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
-agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
-Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
-of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
-works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
-States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
-United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
-claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
-displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
-all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
-that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
-free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
-works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
-Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
-comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
-same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
-you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
-in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
-check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
-agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
-distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
-other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
-representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
-country outside the United States.
-
-1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
-immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
-prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
-on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
-performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
-
- This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
- most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
- restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
- under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
- eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
- United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
- are located before using this ebook.
-
-1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
-derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
-contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
-copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
-the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
-redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
-either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
-obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
-additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
-will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
-posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
-beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
-any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
-to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
-other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
-version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
-(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
-to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
-of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
-Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
-full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-provided that
-
-* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
- the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
- you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
- to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
- agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
- Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
- within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
- legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
- payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
- Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
- Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
- Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
- you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
- does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
- License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
- copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
- all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
- works.
-
-* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
- any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
- electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
- receipt of the work.
-
-* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
- distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
-are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
-from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
-Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
-Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
-contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
-or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
-intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
-other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
-cannot be read by your equipment.
-
-1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
-with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
-with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
-lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
-or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
-opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
-the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
-without further opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
-OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
-LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
-damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
-violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
-agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
-limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
-unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
-remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
-accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
-production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
-including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
-the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
-or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
-additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
-Defect you cause.
-
-Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
-computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
-exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
-from people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
-generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
-Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
-www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
-U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
-mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
-volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
-locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
-Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
-date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
-official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-
- Dr. Gregory B. Newby
- Chief Executive and Director
- gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
-DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
-state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
-donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
-freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
-distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
-volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
-the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
-necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
-edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
-facility: www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
- </body>
-</html>
|
