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.