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.