Isabelle saw the fat headlines in the Pittsburg paper that the porter
brought her,--"Congressman Darnell and his wife killed!" The bodies had
been found at the bottom of an abandoned quarry. It was supposed that
during a thunder-storm the night before, as he was driving from Torso to
his farm in company with his wife, the horses had become uncontrollable and
had dashed into the pit before Darnell could pull them up. He had just
taken his seat in Congress. Isabelle remembered that he called the day
before she left Torso, and when she had congratulated him on his election,
had said jokingly: "Now I shall get after your husband's bosses, Mrs. Lane.
We shan't be on speaking terms when next we meet." He seemed gay and vital.
So it had ended thus for the tempestuous Kentuckian....
John was waiting for her at the station in Torso, where she was to break
the journey. His face was eager and solicitous. He made many anxious
inquiries about her health and the journey. But she put it all to one side.
"Tell me about the Darnells. Isn't it dreadful!"
"Yes," he said slowly, "it is very bad." Lane's voice was grave, as if he
knew more than the published report.
"How could it have happened,--he was such a good driver? He must have been
drunk."
"Tom Darnell could have driven all right, even if he had been drunk. I am
afraid it's worse than that."
"Tell me!"
"There are all sorts of rumors. He came up from Washington unexpectedly,
and his wife met him at the station with their team. They went to the hotel
first, and then suddenly started for the farm in the midst of the storm. It
was a terrible storm.... One story is that he had trouble with a bank; it
is even said he had forged paper. I don't know! ... Another story was about
the Adams woman,--you know she followed him to Washington.... Too bad! He
was a brilliant fellow, but he tied himself all up, tied himself all up,"
he observed sententiously, thus explaining the catastrophe of an unbalanced
character.
"You mean it was--suicide?" Isabelle questioned.
"Looks that way!"
"How awful! and his wife killed, too!"
"He was always desperate--uncontrolled sort of fellow. You remember how he
went off the handle the night of our dinner."
"So he ended it--that way," she murmured.
And she saw the man driving along the road in the black storm, his young
wife by his side, with desperate purpose. She remembered his words in the
orchard, his wistful desire for another kind of life. "The Adams woman,
too," as John expressed it, and "he couldn't hold his horses." This nature
had flown in pieces, liked a cracked wheel, in the swift revolution of
life. To her husband it was only one of the messes recorded in the
newspapers. But her mind was full of wonder and fear. As little as she had
known the man, she had felt an interest in him altogether disproportionate
to what he said or did. He was a man of possibilities, of streaks, of
moods, one that could have been powerful, lived a rich life. And at
thirty-three he had come to the end, where his passions and his ideals in
perpetual warfare had held him bound. He had cut the knot! And she had
chosen to go with him, the poor, timid wife! ... Surely there were strange
elements in people, Isabelle felt, not commonly seen in her little
well-ordered existence, traits of character covered up before the world,
fissures running back through the years into old impulses. Life might be
terrible--when it got beyond your hand. She could not dismiss poor Tom
Darnell as summarily as John did,--"a bad lot, I'm afraid!"
"You mustn't think anything more about it," her husband said anxiously, as
she sat staring before her, trying to comprehend the tragedy. "I have
arranged to take you on to-morrow. The Colonel writes that your brother
Ezra is seedy,--touch of malaria, he thinks. The Colonel is looking forward
a lot to your coming."
He talked on about the little domestic things, but she held that picture in
the background of her mind and something within her said over and over,
'Why should it be like that for any one!'
And all the next day, on their way to St. Louis, she could not dismiss the
thought from her mind: 'Why, I saw him only a few weeks ago. How well he
read that poetry, as if he enjoyed it! And what he said that night at
dinner he really meant,--oh, he believed it! And he was sorry for his
wife,--yes, I am sure he was sorry for her. But he loved the other
woman,--she understood him. And so he ended it. It's quite dreadful!'
* * * * *
The Colonel met them at the station with his new motor. His face was a bit
grave as he said in answer to their inquiry:--
"No, it is not malaria, I am afraid. The doctors think it is typhoid. There
has been a great deal of it in the city this summer, and the boy wouldn't
take a vacation, was afraid I would stay here if he did. So I went up to
Pelee, instead."
It was typhoid, and young Price died within the week. In the hush that
followed the death of her brother Isabelle lay waiting for the coming of
her child.... Her older brother Ezra! He was like a sturdy young tree in
the forest, scarce noticed in the familiar landscape until his loss. Quiet,
hard-working "Junior," as the family called him,--what would the Colonel do
without him? The old man--now he was obviously old even to Isabelle--would
come to her room and sit for long hours silent, as if he, too, was waiting
for the coming of the new life into his house.
These two deaths so unlike, the tragic end of Darnell and her brother's
sudden removal, sank deep into her, sounding to her in the midst of her own
childish preoccupation with her own life, the intricacy, the mystery of all
existence. Life was larger than a private garden hedged with personal
ambitions. She was the instrument of forces outside her being. And in her
weakness she shrank into herself.
They told her that she had given birth to a daughter--another being like
herself!
PART TWO