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.