It was no light task to spend a vacation contentedly on the farm. There
were thousands of city people who did it, and seemed to enjoy it, but
Seth found it difficult to understand how they contrived to occupy
themselves. What work on a farm meant, he knew very well; but the trick
of idling in the country was beyond him. It was too hot, in these July
days, for driving much, and besides, Albert rarely invited him into the
buggy when the grays were brought around to the step. The two brothers
saw little of each other, in fact. It was not precisely a coolness,
but Albert seemed to have other things on his mind beside fraternal
entertainment. The old pastime of fishing, too, failed him. In
the renovation of the house his fine pole and tackle had somehow
disappeared, and he had no money wherewith to replace them. He had
entered upon his vacation unexpectedly, at a time when he happened to be
particularly short of cash--and there was something in Albert’s manner
and tone which rendered it impossible to apply to him, even if pride had
not forbidden it.
There was, it is true, the increasing delight of being in Isabel’s
company, but alongside this delight grew a doubt--a doubt which the
young man shrank from recognizing and debating, but which forced its
presence upon his mind, none the less--a doubt whether it was the part
of wisdom to encourage too much of a friendship with his sister-in-law.
This friendship had already reached a stage where Aunt Sabrina sniffed
at its existence, and she hinted dimly to Seth of the perils which
lurked in the lures of a citified siren, with an expression of face
and a pointedness of emphasis which clearly had a domestic application.
There was nothing in this, of course, but the insensate meddlesomeness
of a disagreeable old maid, Seth said to himself, but still it annoyed
him.
More serious, though, was his suspicion--lying dormant sometimes for
days, then suddenly awakened by a curt word or an intent glance--that
Albert disliked to see him so much with Isabel. Often this rendered him
extremely nervous, for Isabel had no discretion (so the young man put
it to himself) and displayed her pleasure in his society, her liking for
him, quite as freely in her husband’s presence as when they were alone.
There was nothing in this, either, only that it made him uneasy. Hence
it came about that, just when one set of inclinations most urgently
prompted him to stay about the house, another set often prevailed upon
him to absent himself. On these occasions he generally walked over to
Thessaly, and chatted with John.
“John and I have so much to talk about, you know, being both newspaper
men,” he used to say, with a feeling that he owed an explanation of some
sort to Isabel. “And then I can see the daily papers there. That gets to
be a necessity with a journalist--as much so as his breakfast.”
“I scarcely dare to read a paper now,” Isabel once replied. “It drives
me nearly mad with longing to get back among people again. I only read
heavy things, classic poetry and history--and then, thank Heaven, there
is this embroidery.”
It was at John’s, or rather on the way there, that Seth met one day
a man of whom he was in after life accustomed to say, “He altered the
whole bent of my career.” Perhaps this was an exaggerated estimate
of the service Richard Ansdell really rendered Seth; but it is so
difficult, looking back, to truly define the influence upon our fortunes
or minds by any isolated event or acquaintance, and moreover, gratitude
is so wholesome and sweet a thing to contemplate, and the race devotes
so much energy to civilizing it out of young breasts, that I have not
the heart to insist upon any qualification of Seth’s judgment.
Mr. Ansdell at this time was nearly forty years of age, and looked to be
under thirty. He was small, thin-faced, clean-shaven, dark of skin
and hair, with full, clear eyes, that by their calmness of expression
curiously modified the idea of nervousness which his actions and mode
of speech gave forth. He was spending his fortnight’s vacation in the
vicinity, and he was strolling with his friend the school-teacher,
Reuben Tracy, toward the village when Seth overtook them. Seth and
Reuben had been very intimate in the old farm days--and _here_ was
a young man to the latent influence of whose sobriety of mind and
cleanliness of tastes he never fully realized his obligation--but since
his return they had not met. After greetings had been exchanged, they
walked together to the village, and to the _Banner of Liberty_ office.
It was the beginning of the week, and publication day was far enough off
to enable John to devote all his time to his visitors. There was an
hour or more of talk--on politics, county affairs, the news in the city
papers, the humors and trials of conducting a rural newspaper, and so
forth. When they rose to go, John put on his hat, and said he would
“walk a ways” with them. On the street he held Seth back with a
whispered “Let us keep behind a bit, I want to talk to you.” Then he
added, when the others were out of hearing:
“I have got some personal things to say, later on. But--first of
all--has Albert said anything since to you about the farm?”
“Not a word.”
“Well, I have been thinking it all over, trying to see where the
crookedness comes in--for I feel it in my bones that there _is_
something crooked. But I am not lawyer enough to get on to it. I’ve had
a notion of putting the whole case to Ansdell, who’s a mighty bright
lawyer, but then again, it seems to be a sort of family thing that we
ought to keep to ourselves. What do you think?--for after all, it is
mostly your affair.”
“I can’t see that Albert isn’t playing fair. It must be pretty nearly as
he says--that he has put as much money in the farm as it was worth when
he took it. It’s true that father’s will leaves it to him outright--and
that wasn’t quite as Albert gave us to understand it should be--but
Albert pledges us that our rights in it shall be respected, and it seems
to me that that is better than an acknowledged interest in a bankrupt
farm would be, which we hadn’t the capital to work, and which was
worthless without it.”
“Perhaps you are right.” John paused for a moment, then began again in
a graver tone: “There’s something else. How are you getting on on the
_Chronicle?_”
“Oh, well enough; I get through my work without anybody’s finding fault.
I suppose that is the best test. A fellow can’t do any more.”
“That is where you are wrong. ‘A fellow’ can do a great deal more. And
when you went there I, for one, expected you were going to do a deuced
sight more. You have been there now--let’s see--thirteen months. You are
doing what you did when you went there--sawing up miscellany, boiling
down news notes, grinding out a lot of departments which the office boy
might do, if his own work weren’t more important. In a word you’ve just
gone on to the threshold, and you’ve screwed yourself down to the floor
there--and from all I hear you are likely to stay there all your life,
while other fellows climb over your head to get into the real places.”
“From all you _hear?_ What do you mean by that--who’s been telling you
about me?”
“That you shan’t know, my boy. It is enough that I _have_ heard. You
haven’t fulfilled your promise. I thought you had the makings of a big
man in you; I believed that all you needed was the chance, and you would
rise. You were given the chance--put right in on the ground floor, and
there you are, just where you were put. You haven’t risen worth a cent.”
“What do you expect a fellow to do? Get to be editor-in-chief in
thirteen months? What could I do that I haven’t done? There have been no
vacancies, so no one has climbed over my head. I’ve done the work I was
set to do--and done it well, too. What more can you ask?”
Seth spoke in an aggrieved tone, for this attack seemed as unjust as it
had been unexpected.
John replied, “Now keep cool, youngster! Nobody expected you to get to
be editor-in-chief in thirteen months, so don’t talk nonsense. And I
am not blaming you for not getting promotion, when there have been no
vacancies. What I do mean, if you want to know, is that you have failed
to make a good impression. You are not in the line of promotion. Workman
doesn’t say to himself when he thinks of you ‘There’s a smart, steady,
capable young man on whom we can count, who’s able to go as high as we
are able to put him.’ No! instead of that he says--but no, never mind. I
don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Oh, you are mighty considerate, all at once,” retorted Seth, angrily.
“Go on! Say what you were going to say! What is it that Workman says,
since you’ve been spying on me behind my back?”
“Now you are talking like a fool,” said the elder brother, keeping his
temper. “I haven’t been spying on you. I have only been commenting on
facts which have come to my knowledge without seeking and which were
brought to me by one who has your interests at heart. I have only been
talking to you as I ought to talk, with the sole idea of benefiting you,
helping you. If you don’t want to hear me, why I can shut up.”
Seth did not reply for a minute or so; then he growled moodily: “Go
ahead! Let’s hear it all.”
“The ‘all’ can be said in a few words. You have been wasting your time.
I grant that you have done your work well enough to escape blame--but
what credit is there in that? a million mechanics do that every day.
Instead of improving yourself, elevating and polishing yourself, by
good reading, by studying the art of writing, above all by choosing
your associates among men who are your superiors, and from whom you can
learn, you have settled down in a Dutch beer saloon, making associates
out of the commonest people in town, and having for your particular chum
that rattle-headed loafer Tom Watts. Do you suppose Mr. Workman doesn’t
know this? Do you suppose he likes it, or that it encourages him to hope
for your future?”
Seth was silent longer than ever, this time. When he spoke it was to
utter something which he instantly regretted: “I haven’t been able to
gather from your old friends that you were altogether a bigot, yourself,
on the subject of beer, when you were my age.”
Fortunately John did not get angry; Seth honestly admired and envied his
elder brother’s good temper as he heard the reply:
“That’s neither here nor there. Perhaps I did a good many things that I
want you to avoid. Besides, there was nothing in me. I am good enough as
far as I go, but if I had worked on a daily paper till my teeth all
fell out, I should never have got any higher than I was. With you it is
different; you can go up to the head of the class if you are a mind to.
But the beer saloon isn’t the way--and Tom Watts isn’t the guide.”
“He is the only friend I have got. What was I to do? It is easy enough
to talk, John, about my knowing good people and all that, but _how?_
That is the question? It isn’t fair to blame me as you do. All the men
like Workman and Samboye--I suppose you mean them--hold themselves miles
above me. Do you suppose I’ve ever seen the inside of their houses or of
their club? Not I! You dump a young countryman in a strange city, new at
his work, without knowing a solitary soul--and then you complain because
he gets lonesome, and makes friends with the only people who show any
disposition to be friendly with him. Do you call that fair play?”
“Well, there’s something in that,” John replied, meditatively. “Some
time I’m going to write a leader on the organized indifference of modern
city society to what becomes of young men who deserve its good offices
and drift into beer saloons because they are not forthcoming. It would
make the _Banner_ immensely solid with orthodox people.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted me to go to the Young Men’s Christian
Association, I suppose?”
“No-o, I don’t know that I would. I don’t know, after all, that you
could have done much differently. But you’ve done enough of it, do you
understand? You have served your time; you have taken your diploma. It
is time now to quit. And I can put you on to a man, now, who will help
you on the other tack. Do you see Ansdell, ahead there?”
“Yes;--is he the man who told you about Workman and me?”
John ignored the question. “Ansdell is one of the cleverest men going;
he’s head and shoulders over anybody else there is in Tecumseh, or in
this part of the State. For you to know him will be a college education
in itself. He is more than a big lawyer, he is a student and thinker;
more than that, he is a reformer; best of all, he is a man of the world,
who has sown more wild oats than would fill Albert’s new bins, and
there’s not an atom of nonsense about him. He knows about you. We’ve
talked you over together. He understands my idea of what you ought to
be, and he can help you more than any other man alive--and what is more
he will.”
“It was he who told you about me, wasn’t it?” Seth persisted.
“If you will know, it was and it wasn’t. All he said was that he had
heard Workman speak of you; that he had got the idea from his tone that
you were not making the most of your opportunities; that he thought this
was a great pity; and that if he could be of any use to you he would be
very glad. That is all--and not even your sulkiness can make anything
but kindness out of it.”
This practically ended the dialogue, for the others had stopped to let
the brothers come up, and John shortly after left the party.
The three men had a long stroll back to the hillside road, with a still
longer lounge on the grass under the elms by the bridge. Seth watched
and listened to this swarthy, boyish-looking mentor who had, so to
speak, thrust himself upon him, very closely, as was natural. Did he
like him? It was hard, he found, to determine. Mr. Ansdell was extremely
opinionated. He seemed to have convictions on almost every subject,
and he clung to them, defended them, expanded them, with almost tearful
earnestness. His voice was as strong and powerful as his figure was
diminutive; he talked now chiefly about the Tariff, which he denounced
with a vibrating intensity of feeling. Seth knew nothing about the
Tariff, or next to nothing, but he admired what Ansdell said, mainly
because it was said so well. But he grew quite enthusiastic in his
endorsement when he heard his Editor, Mr. Samboye, used as a typical
illustration of the dishonesty with which public men treated that
question. After that he felt that it would be easy to make friends with
Mr. Ansdell.