It was the last day but one of Seth’s vacation on the farm. He was not
sorry, although the last week, by comparison, had been pleasant enough.
He had seen a good deal of Mr. Ansdell, who interested him extremely,
and who had come for him three or four times for long walks in the
fields. He sat now in the living room near Isabel, dividing his
attention between her and his book--one of Albert’s innumerable novels.
The desultory conversation mixed itself up with the unfolding work of
fiction so persistently that he presently gave over the attempt to read,
and drew his chair nearer to his sister-in-law. It was raining outside,
and wet weather always made her want to talk. She said:
“Tell me, Seth, if you have noticed any change in Alvira.”
“No, I can’t say that I have. In fact, she seems to me the one person
about the place who has _not_ altered a bit.”
“See what eyes men have! Why, she has grown ages older. She goes about
now muttering to herself like an old, old woman. And the way she looks
at one, sometimes, it is enough to give one the chills. I tell Albert
often that I am almost afraid to have her in the house.”
Seth chuckled audibly, in good-natured derision. “What a mountain out of
a mole hill! Why Alvira has glared at people that way, with her little
black-bead eyes, ever since I was a boy. She doesn’t mean anything by
it,--not the least in the world. The trouble is, Isabel, that you let
your imagination run away with you. You are desperately lonesome here,
and you amuse yourself by conjuring up all sorts of tragic things. You
will have Aunt Sabrina a professional witch next thing you know, and
Milton a mystic conspirator, and this plain old clap-boarded farm house
a castle of enchantment.”
He had never before assumed even this jocose air of superiority over
his blond sister-in-law, and he closed his sentence in some little
trepidation lest she should resent it. But no, she received it with
meekness, and only protested mildly against the assumption underneath.
“No, I am sure there is something in it. She is brooding about Milton.
Not in any sentimental way, you know, but it used to be understood, I
think, that they were to marry, and now he carries himself way above
her. Why, I can remember, as long ago as when I visited here that
summer, when we were all boys and girls and cousins together, I heard
your mother say they would make a match of it some time. But now he
avoids the kitchen and her. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, for me to
be speculating in this way about the love affairs of the servants. But
you are driven to it here. You have no idea how grateful one gets to be,
here in the country, for the smallest item of human gossip.”
Seth was still considering whether it was possible for him, in careful
language, to suggest his own--or rather the Lawton girl’s--view of the
Milton-Alvira affair, when Isabel spoke again:
“Speaking of gossip, there is something I have been tempted half a dozen
times to mention to you--something I heard almost every day during the
little time that the women round-about were calling on me. You will
guess what I mean--the talk about you and Annie.”
Seth did not immediately answer, and she continued:
“Of course, you know, Seth, that I wouldn’t speak of it if I thought it
would be distasteful to you. But I know it used to be the idea that you
two were marked for each other. I have heard ever so much about it
since we have lived here. And yet you don’t seem to me to be at all like
lovers--hardly even like affectionate cousins. I think she has rather
avoided the house since you have been here, although that, of course,
may be only imagination. She is such a dear, good girl, and I am _so_
fond of her, but still I can hardly imagine her as your wife. You don’t
mind my speaking about it, do you?”
Seth was still at a loss what to say, or, better, how to say it. While
she had been speaking the contrast between the two young women, which
had been slumbering in his mind for a year, had risen vividly before
him. The smile, half-deprecating, half-inviting, with which she looked
this last question at him, as she laid the everlasting embroidery down,
and leaned slightly forward for a reply, gave the final touch to his
vanishing doubts.
“Mind _your_ speaking about it? No, no, Isabel.” He scarcely knew
his own voice, it was so full of cooing softness. “I am glad you
did--for--for who has a better right? No, there is nothing in the
gossip. Our people--my mother, her grandmother--had it in mind once,
I believe, but Annie and I have never so much as hinted at it between
ourselves. Ever since mother’s death old Mrs. Warren has, however, taken
a deep dislike to me--you remember how she forbade Annie to go with us
on that fishing trip--but even without that----”
“Ah, I shan’t forget that fishing trip,” Isabel whispered, still with
the tender smile.
“Nor I, you may be very sure.” The caressing tone of his voice sounded
natural to him now. “As I was saying, even if we two young people had
once thought of the thing, I fancy it would be different now, anyway.
_Then_, I was going to be a farmer. _Now_, of course, that is all
changed. My career is in the city, in circles where Annie would not be
at home. She is a dear, good girl, as you say: nobody knows that better
than I do. But you must admit she _is_--what shall I say?--rural. Now
that I have got my foot on the ladder, there is no telling how far I may
not climb. It would be simply suicide to marry a wife whom I perhaps
would have to carry up with me, a dead weight.”
The youngster was not in the least conscious of the vicious nonsense
he was talking. In the magnetic penumbra of Isabel’s presence his words
seemed surcharged with wisdom and good feeling. And the young woman,
too, who was four years his senior, and who should have known better,
never suspected the ridiculous aspect of the sentiments to the
expression of which she listened with such sweet-faced sympathy. We
_are_ such fools upon occasion.
“Besides, there is no reason why I should think of marriage at all,
for a long time to come--at least not until I have made my way up in
my profession a bit. When the time does come, it will be because I have
found my ideal--for I have an ideal, you know, a very exalted one.”
He looked at her keenly, blushing as he did so, to discover if she had
caught the purport of his words; then he addressed himself, with an
absence of verbal awkwardness at which he was himself astonished, to
making it more clear.
“I mean, Isabel, that my brother has won a prize which would make
anything less valuable seem altogether worthless in my eyes. If there
is not another woman in the world like my brother Albert’s wife, then I
shall never marry.”
“Brother Albert’s wife” looked up at the speaker for an instant--a
glance which seemed to him to be made of smiles, sadness, delight,
reproach and many other unutterable things; then she bent over her work,
and he fancied that the pretty fingers trembled a little between the
stitches. There was a minute of silence, which seemed a half hour. At
last she spoke:
“Does your brother impress you as being a particularly happy man? I
won’t ask a similar question about his wife.”
Seth found it necessary to stand up, to do this subject justice. “No!”
he answered. “He doesn’t deserve such a wife. But because one man is
incapable of appreciating a treasure which he has won, it’s no reason
why another man shouldn’t--shouldn’t say to himself ‘I will either marry
that kind of woman or I’ll marry none.’ Now, _is_ it, Isabel?”
“Perhaps this wife is not altogether the treasure you think she is,” the
young woman answered, with the indirection of her sex.
Seth found words entirely inadequate to express his dissent. He could
only smile at her, as if the doubt were too preposterous to be even
suggested, and walk up and down in front of her.
Still intent upon her work, and with her head inclined so that he saw
only a softened angle of face beneath the crown of glowing light-hued
hair, she made answer, speaking more slowly than was usual with her, and
with frequent pauses:
“I don’t think you know all my story, though it is a part of your
family’s history on both sides. You remember my father--a sporting,
horse-racing man of the world, and you know that my mother died
when I was a baby. You knew me here, one summer, as a visiting cousin,
and we played and quarrelled as children do. Now you know me again as
your brother’s wife--but that is all. You know nothing of the rest--of
how my father, proud about me as he was common in other things, kept me
mewed up among governesses and housekeepers in one part of the house,
while his flash companions rioted in another part; of how my wretched,
chafing girlhood was spent among servants and tutors, with not so much
as a glimpse of the world outside, like any Turkish girl; of how, when
your brother, because he was a cousin, did become the one friend of my
father’s who might be invited into the drawing room, and be introduced
to me, and took a fancy that he would like to marry me, I welcomed even
such a chance for emancipation, and almost cried for joy; and of how
I woke up afterward--no, this is what you do not know.” There was a
considerable pause here. “And I do not know why I tell this to you now,
except that I want you to understand.”
“I _do_ understand, Isabel.”
As a matter of fact he did not understand at all, but he thought he did,
which, for present purposes, came to the same thing.
“And you can realize,” she went on, “how I feel at the thought of
staying here the rest of my life--or, even if we go elsewhere--of
having my life mapped out for me without any regard to my wishes and
aspirations, while you are just pluming your wings for soaring, and can
fly as high as you like with no one to gainsay you. Oh, what it must be
to be a man!” She was looking up at him now, with enthusiasm supplanting
the repining in her eyes. “And you love your work, so, too! You are so
clever and capable! You can be anything you like in your profession--and
it is impossible that I should ever be anything that I want to be.”
A month ago, when he first came to the farm, this calm assumption of his
ability to carve whatever part he desired out of the journalistic cake
would have fallen upon Seth like cruel and calculated sarcasm. As
it was, he winced a little under its exaggeration, but the substance
pleased him. He squared his shoulders unconsciously as he answered:
“Well, I am only at the threshold as yet, but if there is any such
thing as doing it, I am going to push my way on. It doesn’t seem so easy
always, when you are right in the thick of the fight, but now, after my
rest here, I feel like an eagle refreshed. I am full of new ideas and
ambitions. I owe a good deal of it to Ansdell, I suppose. You never
saw such a fellow for making everybody believe as he does, and take
an exalted view of things, and long to be doing something great. John
prescribed him to me as a doctor would some medicine, and I took him
more or less under protest, but I feel immensely better already.”
Isabel took only a languid interest in the inspiring qualities of this
prodigy, and reverted to her own grievance:
“Yes, you will go and conquer your position. I will stay here and
count those miserable poplars across the road--did you ever see a more
monotonous row?--and work anti-macassars for no one to see, and mope my
heart out. Why, do you know, I haven’t one single correspondent!”
The full enormity of the situation thus revealed was lost upon Seth, who
had never written more than half-a-dozen letters in his life, and did
not see why people who did not have to write letters should want to do
so. But he said “Indeed!” as compassionately as he could.
“No, not one. I did think you might have taken pity on me, but for all
the year that you have been away, I have never heard a word from you.”
“I wrote once or twice to Albert,” Seth answered, tentatively, to occupy
time until he could turn around in his mind the immense suggestion
involved in this complaint.
“Yes, and I used to hear at the breakfast table--‘Oh, by the way, Aunt
Sabrina, Seth sends his love to you and Isabel--’ only this and nothing
more! What is the good of having a literary man in the family, if he
doesn’t write you long, nice letters?” The vista which had flashed
itself before Seth’s mental vision was filled with dazzling light. He
could not mask the exultation in his voice as he asked:
“Do you really want me to write to you?”
“You ought not to have waited to be asked,” she said, smiling again.
“Yes, you shall write me--and long letters too, mind--as often as you
like.” She added after a moment’s pause, in which both had been turning
over the same idea, “You needn’t be afraid of writing too often. The
bundle from the post office always comes to me in the morning, hours
before _he_ gets downstairs. Dana brings it up when he comes back from
the cheese-factory, and it never goes into any one’s hands but mine.
Beside, henceforth I shall watch for it all the more carefully.”
*****
Next morning Seth prepared once again to leave the homestead, but this
time with a light heart and a gay demeanor. A month’s absence had served
so to remodel his views of the _Chronicle_, that he already felt himself
to be a personage of importance, in its control. He had been constantly
spoken of in the village as “one of the editors” of that journal, and
found so much pleasure in the designation that he had come to use it in
thinking of himself. He felt himself fired, too, with new enthusiasm and
power by his talks with Ansdell, and he believed, not only that he
saw where his past errors had lain, but that he knew now the trick of
success. Above all, he was to write long letters to Isabel, and receive
answers equally long and nice from her, and--this gave him an especial
sense of delight--it was all to be a secret between them.
The sun shone brightly, too, after the rain, as if to be in harmony with
his mood. Albert was more affable than he had been before, and after
breakfast, and while the carriage was being brought around, gave him
some cigars for the journey, and a $20 bill for pocket money. These were
pleasant preludes to a little brotherly conversation.
“I wish you would hurry up and get to have a say on the _Chronicle_ as
soon as you can, Seth,” said the lawyer, holding him by the lappel in
fraternal fashion. “You can help me there, help me very materially. I
am going to be nominated for Congress in this district next year--don’t
whisper about it yet, but I’ve got it solid. I haven’t let any grass
grow under my feet since I moved here, and they can’t beat me in the
Convention. But the _Chronicle_ can do a good deal in the election, and
I look to you for that. I am not going to Washington without knowing my
business after I get there. There is a big thing on hand, big for
me, big for you too. Good-bye now, my boy; I must get upstairs to my
writing. You won’t forget!”
No, Seth promised, very cordially and heartily, he would not forget.
When his traps had been piled again into the carriage, and he said
good-bye to his Aunt and to Alvira, no Isabel was to be seen. She had
been at breakfast, but had subsequently disappeared. Seth went into
the living room--no one was there. He opened the door to the stairs and
called out her name--no answer. As he closed the door again, he heard
the faintest tinkle imaginable from a piano key. He had not thought
of the parlor, which was ordinarily unused, but he hastened to it
now. Isabel stood at the instrument, her head bowed; her finger still
pressing the key. She turned with a dear little exclamation, which might
be either of surprise or satisfied expectancy, and held out her hand.
“So you _wouldn’t_ go, after all, without saying good-bye to me!”
“Why, Isabel, you know better!” answered Seth, still very downright for
his years. He was actually pained at her having fancied him capable of
such a thing, and while he held her hand, he looked at her with mild
reproach in his eyes.
“Oh, do I?” she answered, rather inconsequently. Then she sighed, and
bowed her fair head again. “Have you given it a thought at all--how
lonely it will be after you are gone for--for those who are left behind?
I can’t bear to think of it--I came in here because I couldn’t stand and
see the horses at the door, and the preparations for your going. It
is as if the tomb door were swinging back on me again. I am foolish,
I know--” here the words were much hampered in their flow by incipient
sobs--“but if you could realize my position--the awful desolation of it,
the--the--” She broke down altogether, and, with the disengaged hand,
put her handkerchief to her eyes.
Seth had never seen a young and beautiful woman in tears before, off the
stage, but his racial instincts served him in the emergency. He gently
took her hand down again, holding them both, now, in his. He told her,
again surprising himself by the smoothness and felicity of his words,
how delightful she had made his visit, how deeply he prized her sympathy
and compassionated her lot, and how the pangs of regret at parting were
only solaced by the thought that she had permitted him to write. Then he
kissed her--and hurried out to the carriage.
The handsome, high-bitted grays made short work of the drive to Thessaly
station, where John was waiting to have a parting word, so that Seth
scarcely had time to collect his thoughts and settle accounts with
himself, before the train started. Three hours later when he got off at
Tecumseh, he had progressed no further in his work of striking a moral
balance than:
“After all, she is my cousin as well as my sister-in-law.”