The Darnells had a farm a few miles out of Torso, and this spring they had
given up their house on the square and moved to the farm permanently.
Bessie said it was for Mrs. Darnell's health; men said that the lawyer was
in a tight place with the banks; and gossip suggested that Darnell
preferred being in Torso without his wife whenever he was there. The farm
was on a small hill above a sluggish river, and was surrounded by a growth
of old sycamores and maples. There was a long stretch of fertile fields in
front of the house, dotted by the huge barns and steel windmills of
surrounding farms.
One Sunday in early May the Lanes were riding in the direction of the
Darnell place, and Isabelle persuaded her husband to call there. "I
promised to ride out here and show him the horses," she explained. The
house was a shabby frame affair, large for a farmhouse, with porticoes and
pillars in Southern style. They found the Darnells with the Falkners in the
living-room. Tom Darnell was reading an Elizabethan play aloud, rolling out
the verse in resounding declamation, punctuated by fervid
appreciation,--"God! but that's fine!" "Hear this thing sing." "Just listen
to this ripper."
"O God! O God! that it were possible
To undo things done; to call back yesterday!
That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass,
To untell the days, and to redeem the hours!" ...
When the Lanes had found chairs before the fire, he kept on reading, but
with less enthusiasm, as if he felt an alien atmosphere. Falkner listened
to the lines with closed eyes, his grim jaw relaxed, the deep frown
smoothed. Bessie stroked a white cat,--it was plain that her thoughts were
far away. Mrs. Darnell, who looked slovenly but pretty, stared vacantly out
of the window. The sun lay in broad, streaks on the dusty floor; there was
an air of drowsy peace, broken only by the warm tones of the lawyer as his
voice rose and fell over the spirited verse. Isabelle enjoyed it all; here
was something out of her usual routine. Darnell's face, which reflected the
emotion of the lines, was attractive to her. He might not be the "right
sort"; but he was unusual.... Finally Darnell flung the book into the
corner and jumped up.
"Here I am boring you good people with stuff dead and gone these hundreds
of years. Falkner always starts me off. Let's have a drink and take a look
at the horses."
The living-room was a mess of furniture and books, wineglasses, bottles,
wraps, whips, and riding-boots. Lane looked it over critically, while
Darnell found some tumblers and poured out wine. Then they all went to the
stable and dawdled about, talking horse. The fields were green with the
soft grass, already nearly a foot high. Over the house an old grape-vine
was budding in purple balls. There was a languor and sweetness to the air
that instigated laziness. Although Lane wished to be off, Isabelle lingered
on, and Darnell exclaimed hospitably: "You stay to dinner, of course! It is
just plain dinner, Mrs. Lane,"--and he swept away all denial. Turning to
his wife, who had said nothing, he remarked, "It's very good of them to
come in on us like this, isn't it, Irene?"
Mrs. Darnell started and mumbled:--
"Yes, I am sure!"
His manners to his wife were always perfect, deferential,--why should she
shrink before him? Isabelle wondered.... Dinner, plentiful and appetizing,
was finally provided by the one negro woman. Darnell tried to talk to Lane,
but to Isabelle's surprise her husband was at a disadvantage:--the two men
could not find common ground. Then Darnell and Falkner quoted poetry, and
Isabelle listened. It was all very different from anything she knew. While
the others waited for their coffee, Darnell showed her the old
orchard,--"to smell the first blossoms." It was languorously still there
under the trees, with the misty fields beyond. Darnell said dreamily:--
"This is where I'd like to be always,--no, not six miles from Torso, but in
some far-off country, a thousand miles from men!"
"You, a farmer!" laughed Isabelle. "And what about Congress, and the real
anarchists?"
"Oh, you cannot understand! You do not belong to the fields as I do." He
pointed ironically to her handsome riding skirt. "You are of the cities, of
people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial
Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. While I--" He
made a gesture of despair,--half comic, half serious,--and his dark face
became gloomy.
Isabelle was amused at what she called his "heroics," but she felt
interested to know what he was; and it flattered her that he should see her
"spreading gay wings among the houses of men." These days she liked to
think of herself that way.
"You will be in Washington, while we are still in Torso!" she answered.
"Maybe," he mused. "Well, we play the game--play the game--until it is
played out!"
'He is not happy with his wife,' Isabelle concluded sagely; 'she doesn't
understand him, and that's why she has that half-scared look.'
"I believe you really want to play the game as much as anybody," she
ventured with a little thrill of surprise to find herself talking so
personally with a man other than her husband.
"You think so?" he demanded, and his face grew wistful. "There is nothing
in the game compared with the peace that one might have--"
Lane was calling to her, but she lingered to say:--
"How?"
"Far away--with love and the fields!"
They walked back to where John was holding the horses. She was oddly
fluttered. For the first time since she had become engaged a man had
somehow given her that special sensation, which women know, of confidence
between them. She wished that John had not been so anxious to be off, and
she did not repeat to him Darnell's talk, as she usually did every small
item. All that she said was, after a time of reflection, "He is not a happy
man."
"Who?"
"Mr. Darnell."
"From what I hear he is in a bad way. It is his own fault. He has plenty of
ability,--a splendid chance."
She felt that this was an entirely inadequate judgment. What interested the
man was the net result; what interested the woman was the human being in
whom that result was being worked out. They talked a little longer about
the fermenting tragedy of the household that they had just left, as the
world talks, from a distance. But Isabelle made the silent
reservation,--'she doesn't understand him--with another woman, it would be
different.'...
Their road home lay through a district devastated by the mammoth sheds of
some collieries. A smudged sign bore the legend:--
PLEASANT VALLEY COAL COMPANY
Lane pulled up his horse and looked carefully about the place. Then he
suggested turning west to examine another coal property.
"I suppose that Freke man is awfully rich," Isabelle remarked, associating
the name of the coal company with its president; "but he's so common,--I
can't see how you can stand him, John!"
Lane turned in his saddle and looked at the elegant figure that his wife
made on horseback.
"He isn't half as interesting as Tom Darnell or Rob," she added.
"I stand him," he explained, smiling, "for the reason men stand each other
most often,--we make money together."
"Why, how do you mean? He isn't in the railroad."
"I mean in coal mines," he replied vaguely, and Isabelle realized that she
was trespassing on that territory of man's business which she had been
brought up to keep away from. Nevertheless, as they rode homeward in the
westering golden light, she thought of several things:--John was in other
business than the railroad, and that puffy-faced German-American was in
some way connected with it; business covered many mysteries; a man did
business with people he would not ordinarily associate with. It even
crossed her mind that what with sleep and business a very large part of her
husband's life lay quite beyond her touch. Perhaps that was what the
Kentuckian meant by his ideal,--to live life with some loved one far away
in companionship altogether intimate.
But before long she was thinking of the set of her riding-skirt, and that
led to the subject of summer gowns which she meant to get when she went
East with her mother, and that led on to the question of the summer itself.
It had been decided that Isabelle should not spend another summer in the
Torso heat, but whether she should go to the Connecticut place or accept
Margaret Lawton's invitation to the mountains, she was uncertain. Thus
pleasantly her thoughts drifted on into her future.