Seth had gone up to his room in a state of wretchedness which, seeming
insupportable at the outset, had grown steadily worse upon reflection.
He said to himself that he had never before in his whole life been so
humiliated and unhappy, and then smiled with pitying contempt for the
inadequacy of such a statement of the case. One’s career must have been
titanic in its tragic experiences to warrant such a comparison. “I have
never known before what suffering was,” he thought, as he paced up
and down his little room, scourging himself with the lash of bitter
reflections.
To try to sleep did not enter his head. He sat for a long time on the
side of the bed, seeking to evolve something like order from the chaos
of his wits, but he could not think. Had he tried to write, to discuss
the thing in a letter, the simple familiar operation of the pen might
have led him out of the _cul de sac_. As it was, whichever turn his mind
sought to take, there rose an impassable barrier of shame, or rage or
self-recrimination. In whatever light he tried to view the situation, it
was all pain. He had been curtly, cruelly thrown off by his brother--the
man to whom he owed everything--and he had had to listen to the most
cutting, insulting language from this brother before they parted.
Then, as he clenched his fists and fumed with impotent anger at the
recollection of this language, there would come to divert this wrath,
and turn it back upon himself, the facts that he had interposed his own
boyish vanity and conceit to balk this brother’s purposes, and had been
caught trembling on the very brink of making love to this brother’s
wife. Did he not richly merit Albert’s scorn? He could remember--should
he ever forget?--the exact words of Albert’s contemptuous
characterization: “A conceited, presumptuous, offensive fool.” Did he
not deserve them all? He owed this brother everything: the honest boy
insisted upon saying this to himself over and over again, as the basis
of all argument on the subject; the opportunity came for him to repay
something of this debt. How had he improved it? By setting himself up
to oppose this brother in the chief object of his life, and, as if this
were not enough, by yielding weakly to the temptation to rob him of his
domestic honor as well! “I must be a villain as well as a fool, must I!”
the youngster growled between his set teeth, as he threw himself from
the bed, and began the gloomy pacing up and down again.
He had not lighted his lamp. The soft half-darkness of the starlight,
sufficing barely to render objects visible in the room, suited his mood.
He heard the sound of wheels now on the gravel below. Looking out,
he could see that the grays were being driven out; as they turned the
corner of the house, the full moonlight fell upon them and the carriage,
and Seth saw distinctly that it was his brother who was driving, and
that he was wrapped as for an all-night ride.
“He won’t even stay under the same roof with me!” he said half-aloud,
with a fresh bitterness of self-accusation--and then the torment of
reproaching voices began in his breast again.
As he turned from the window he heard a low rapping at his door; a
minute later, he heard Isabel’s voice, almost a whisper:
“Seth! Don’t open the door, but tell me, who was it that went out
with the carriage just now? I heard it, but from my window I could see
nothing. Was it _he?_”
Seth answered, as calmly as he could: “Yes, I am sure of it. I
recognized him.” He stood close to the door, and the thought that only
the thin pine panels divided him from her was uppermost in his mind.
There was a little pause. Once his hand involuntarily moved toward the
latch, but he drew it back. Then she spoke again:
“You had a terrible quarrel, didn’t you, and all for me! I heard your
answer, Seth, way up here. How nobly you spoke! It went straight to my
heart, to hear his brutality rebuked in that manly way. I shan’t forget
it.”
There was a moment’s silence; then she whispered with a lingering
softness, “Good night!” and he heard the faint rustling of her garments
down the hall.
Brief as the interruption was, it had changed the whole spirit of his
thoughts. The vindictive accusing demons had vanished, and left no
more than a numbing sense of past torture in his breast. The anguish of
self-condemnation, the crushing burden of self-humiliation, had passed
away. The moonlight, as it spread over the slope toward Thessaly
village, seemed to bring healing in its peaceful radiance. His own
provocation grew mountain high; his brother’s justification for his
insults and barbarity diminished. “I was doing only my duty in opposing
him,” he said confidently, and there was no voice of dissent now. “Still
more was I right in defending poor Isabel from his unmanly imputations.
If a man is incapable of appreciating such a wife----.”
He did not follow out his thought, but surrendered himself instead
to calling up, and enjoying in detail, the sweet scene which Albert’s
coming had so rudely broken into. How delicious it all was, as fancy now
limned its outlines--yet not all the dainty graces of imagination and
memory could reproduce in its full charm the original. He could think,
and think, until the whole room seemed instinct with her presence, but
how poor a counterfeit it all was, lacking the perfume of her hair and
laces, the deep, languorous glow of her eyes, the thrilling melody of
her low voice. The tender, caressing prolongation of syllables in that
whispered “good night” made soft soul-music still in his ears. The
insane thought--he did not dare ask himself if it were also a hope--that
she might come again, took possession of him, and he stood for a long
time close by the door, listening, waiting.
It was while Seth stood thus, seeing only with the eyes of the mind,
that Milton stole past on the grass below, with the black mare, on his
mission of murder. Had the young man been at the window instead, much
that followed might have been different.
Seth stood at the door for what seemed to him a long time, until
gradually the futility of the action became apparent to him. “Of course
she would not come!” he said, and resumed his pacing once more.
The Faust-like vision began to dance before his eyes again, but with
a witchery now which was uncanny. The calm of waiting had brought him
enough strength of control to feel the presence of the cloven hoof in
it all. The temptation was more urgent, strenuous than ever, but he was
conscious of a deeper, more dogged spirit of resistance within him
than ever, as well. There was no renewal of the savage, chaotic war
of emotions under which he had suffered at the outset, groaning in
the self-infliction of purposeless pain. This was a definite, almost
scientific, struggle between two distinct forces, and though they
fought their battle with all manner of sophistical weapons, and employed
feints, pretended retreats and false advances in highest strategical
form, he was never deceived for a moment as to which was the bad and
which the good.
The issue forced itself upon him, finally, with a demand for decision
which was imperative. He could stay no longer in his room. There was
neither sleep nor rest of any kind there for him.
He went to the door, and opened it. Through the blackness he could see
a faint vertical line of light at the front end of the low hall, as of a
lamp burning, and a door left ajar. The yellow ray gleamed as he looked
at it, and seemed to wave itself in fascinating motions of enticement.
He stood for a moment undecided, all his impulses strongly swaying
towards the temptation, all his resisting reasons growing weaker in
their obstruction, and some even turning coward, and whispering, as they
laid down their arms, “After all, youth has its rights.” Then he squared
his shoulders, with the old gesture of resolution, and walked steadily
away from the line of light, down the stairs, and out of the door,
bareheaded under the stars.
He had walked for a long, long time, before he became conscious that he
had left his hat behind. The night air was exceptionally mild for the
season, but it grew cool enough to bring this fact to his notice. As he
put his hand to his head, and stopped short at the discovery, his whole
mind seemed to clarify itself. He had been walking aimlessly, almost
unconsciously--it must have been for much more than an hour. In a vague
way, he knew where his steps had led him. He had walked through the
orchard to his mother’s grave, and stood for some time by the brier-clad
wall and fence which surrounded it, thinking of his boyhood, and of
her. Then he had struck across through Sir Thomas’s pasture, to the main
road; thence by the way of the school-house, and skirting the hill, to
the Burfield road, at the farthermost end of the line of poplars.
As he stopped here now collecting his thoughts, awakening himself as
it were, the sound of chorussinging reached him, faint at first, then
growing more distinct. A wagon-load of young people were returning from
Leander Crump’s husking, enjoying themselves in the fair moonlight.
From the sounds, they must have been about in front of the Fairchild
homestead, and they were coming rapidly toward Seth. If he remained in
the road, they must pass and recognize him.
There was a division line of thorn hedge, long since grown into tall
young trees, coming to the road here, and a path beside it leading to
a rude stile in the turnpike fence. This path went straight to Mrs.
Warren’s house, as Seth had known from boyhood, but he gave this no
thought as he stepped over the stile, and moved along in the shadow of
the thorns. He walked a score of yards or so, and then stepped closer
into the obscurity of the hedge, to wait till the hay-wagon and its
caroling crew had passed by on the road outside. He was feeling very
cold now, and tired to boot, and said to himself that as soon as the
road was clear he would go home and go to bed.
To his surprise the singing came to an abrupt halt, just as the wagon
approached the end of the hedge.
There was a chorus of merry “whoas!” as the horses drew up, and through
the clear air Seth could hear a confused babel of voices, all jovially
discussing something. One male voice, louder than the rest, called out:
“You’d better let me come along with you!”
There was some giggling audible, out of which rose a clear, fresh
girlish voice which Seth knew:
“No, thanks! I can cut across by this path in less than no time. I’m
not afraid. The tramps are all abed and asleep by this time, like other
honest people.”
With more laughter, and a salvo of “good nights!” the wagon started off
again, and Annie Fairchild, singing lightly to herself the refrain of
the chorus, and holding her face up to catch the full radiance of the
moonlight, came walking briskly down the path.
Despite her valiant confidence the young woman gave a visible start of
alarm as Seth stepped out from the shadows to speak to her. She threw
herself forward as if to run, then looked again, stopped, and then gave
a little tremulous laugh, and cried:
“Why, Seth! is that you. Mercy! How you frightened me!”
He could think of nothing better than a feeble parody of her words:
“Yes, it is time all honest people were abed and asleep.”
He said this with a half-smile, but the girl’s face grew more serious
still as she looked at her cousin. She spoke eagerly:--
“Why, what’s the matter with you to-night? Where is your hat? You look
as white as a ghost! Oh--have you come from our house? Is it something
about grandmother?”
“No, it’s nothing about her. I haven’t been nearer your place than this.
I only stepped in here so as to avoid the wagon. I didn’t want them to
see me like this.”
“But why should you _be_ like this? Now, Seth, I know something _has_
happened. What is it? Am I wanted? Can I do anything?”
“Let me walk with you to your house,” he said, and they turned together
down the path. “Something _has_ happened. I don’t know that I can tell
you what it is, but only to be with you like this rests and comforts
me.”
He was walking in the shadow; the strong light, which only tipped his
shoulder occasionally, enveloped her. He watched her furtively as they
moved along, and, just in proportion as he found relief and solace
in the contemplation of her clear, frank, serene face, he shrank from
confiding his own weak woes to her. But, as he said, it was a comfort to
be with her.
They had walked almost to within sight of the Warren farmhouse before
he broke the silence. She had scarcely looked at him since they started,
but kept her gray eyes straight ahead, as if viewing some fixed, distant
object. Her lips were tightly pressed together--the only sign of emotion
on her face--and this proof that she was hard at work thinking tended
further to embarrass him.
“I truly don’t know how to tell you, Annie,” he said at last. “But
Albert and I have--have had words together; in fact--we’ve quarrelled.”
Her lips quivered a little. She did not turn her face toward him, but
said, nervously: “I have been expecting that.”
Seth did not ask himself the cause of his cousin’s anticipatory
confidence, but went on gloomily: “Well, it has come. We had it out,
this evening, to the very last word. And then, as if that were not
enough, the devil himself got hold of me afterward, and tugged and tore
at me to--but I can’t tell you _that_. I can scarcely realize myself
what I’ve been through this night. Why, I’ve been wandering about here
on the hill-side for hours, not knowing where I was going, or even
what I was thinking of, like a mad man. You can see how my hands
are scratched, and my clothes torn; that is from the berry-bushes, I
suppose, up by mother’s grave. I remember being there. I didn’t even
know that my head was bare, until just before the wagon came up.” Before
this remarkable recital of insane things, Annie was properly silent.
Seth added, after a pause, “But it is all over now. And I can’t tell
you, you can’t begin to guess, how it brings me to my senses, and
soothes and restores me to have met you like this.”
As he paused suddenly, they both turned to listen and look. From the
knoll to the east, where the turnpike ran through a cutting, there came
a curiously muffled sound, like yet unlike the first measured drumming
of a partridge. It swelled a second later into something more definite,
as they saw a dark horse, the rider crouching low over its neck,
galloping like the wind along the high-road toward Thessaly. The pace
was something prodigious--the horse had vanished like an apparition
before they could look twice. But there had been nothing like a
commensurate volume of sound.
“The horse was running on the grass beside the road,” Seth remarked.
“Probably going for a doctor,” was her comment. “I wonder who is ill!”
“It looked to me more like the headless horseman than a sick-messenger.”
As he said this, and they turned to walk again, his face lighted up
once more. The thought seemed to please him, and he smiled on her as he
added:
“Let me be superstitious enough to fancy that the thing which just
flashed by, in a rumble of low thunder, was the demon that has been
torturing me all this while. We will say that he has been defeated,
baffled, and has fled in despair, and that”--he looked still more
smilingly at her--“the fiend has been beaten and driven away by you. Do
you know, Annie, that here in this lovely light you are the very picture
of a good angel? Perhaps angels don’t wear seal-skin cloaks, or have
such red cheeks, but if they knew how becoming they were, they would.”
Annie’s face, which had been immobile in thought, softened a little. She
was accustomed to her cousin’s hyperbole.
“I am delighted if you feel better,” she laughed back. “But it is no
credit specially to me. Contact with any other rational human being
would probably have had the same effect upon you. If I had helped you
in any way, or advised you, perhaps I might own the angelic impeachment.
But I don’t even know the first thing about your trouble, except that
you’ve quarrelled with Albert, and--and had a temptation.”
She had begun gayly enough, but she uttered the last words soberly,
almost gravely. Instinct and observation alike told her that Seth’s
experiences had been of a deeply serious nature.
He sighed heavily, and looked on the ground. How much could he tell
her?--in what words should he put it? Even as he sought in his mind
for safe and suitable phrases, an Idea--a great, luminous, magnificent
Idea--unfolded itself before his mental vision. It was not new to
him--years ago he had often entertained and even nourished it--yet it
had been hidden, dormant so long, and it burst forth now so grandly
transformed and altered, that for an instant he stopped abruptly, and
put his hand to his breast as if to catch his breath. Then he walked
on again, still with his eyes on the ground. He fancied that he was
meditating; instead, he was marvelling at the apotheosized aptness of
the Providence which had sent this Idea at just this time, and swearing
grateful fealty to it with all the earnestness of his being.
He looked up at last, and drew her arm through his. They were near the
house now. “I am going to make a clean breast of it, Annie,” he said.
“If I have not finished when we get to the bars, shall we turn back? I
want you to hear it all.”
“It is pretty late, Seth,” she said, but neither in tone, nor in the
manner in which she allowed her arm to be taken, was there the kind of
refusal which dismays.
There was no need now to seek words. They came fast, keeping pace with
the surge of his thoughts.
“Annie,” he began, “I have been as near the gates of hell to-night as
it is given to a man to go, and bring back his soul. I have fancied
all this while that I was strong because I was successful; that I was
courageous because I happened to be clever. I found myself put to the
test to-night, and I was weak as water. I am afraid of myself. More,
I have been making a fool of myself. I know now the measure of my
weakness. I have the brains, perhaps, but I have no balance-wheel. I fly
off; I do insensate things; I throw myself away. I need a strong, sweet,
wise nature to lean upon, to draw inspiration from. Oh if you could
realize the peace, the happiness your simple presence brought me this
evening! I haven’t said it yet, Annie, but you have guessed it--I want
to pledge myself to you, to swear that you are to be my wife.”
The girl had drawn her arm from his before the last sentence was
finished, and stood facing him. They were within call of the house, but
she did not offer to renew the walk. She answered him with no trace of
excitement, looking him candidly in the face:
“I am not sure just how to answer you, Seth. Hardly any girl would know,
I think, how to treat such a declaration as that. Wait a moment--let me
finish! In the first place, I am in doubt whether I ought to treat it
seriously at all. You are disturbed, excited, to-night; when we first
met you looked and acted like a madman. And then again--understand, I
am trying to talk to you as a friend of all your life, instead of a
mere girl acquaintance--I would not marry any man who I did not firmly
believe loved me. You have not even pretended that you love me. You
have simply complimented me on my disposition, and pledged yourself to a
partnership in which I was to be a balance-wheel.”
“You are laughing at me!”
“No, Seth, my dear cousin, not at all. I am only showing you the exact
situation. You are too excited, or too unpractical, to see it for
yourself. You talk now about being at the gates of hell and expressions
like that--wild words which signify only that you have had trouble
during the evening. I fancy that all men are apt to exaggerate such
things--I _know_ you are. Why, do you even know what trouble is? Have
_I_ had no trouble? Have I not lived a whole life of trial here with a
bed-ridden invalid? And there are other things that--that I might speak
of, if I chose to complain. For instance”--her face brightened as she
spoke, now, and a suggestion of archness twinkled in her eyes--“was it
not a terrible thing that I should have waded into the water, that day
of the fishing party, and got you out all by myself, and then heard the
credit coolly given to another--person, who never got so much as the
soles of her shoes wet?”
Annie had begun seriously enough, but the softness of her real mood
toward her cousin, together with the woman’s natural desire to have
justice done her in affairs of the heart, had led her into a halfplayful
revelation of pique. Seth would have answered here, but she held up her
hand, and went on: “Wait till I am through. You didn’t know the truth
in that matter of the log-jam. I understand that. There are a good many
other things the truth of which you don’t know. You don’t, for
instance, know the real facts about your own mind. You have had trouble
to-night--for all your talk about making a clean breast of it you
haven’t told me yet what it was--and your imagination makes a mountain
out of what was probably a molehill, and you straightway rush off
bareheaded to wander about like a ghost, and frighten people out of
their wits; and then, happening to meet a girl who, by the deceptive
light of the moon, looks as if she had some sense about her, you take
without consideration the most important step a man can take in his
whole life. Isn’t that a fair statement of the case? And, thinking
it all over, don’t you agree with me that you would better tie my
handkerchief about your head and go home and go to bed?”
Seth laughed--a reluctant, in-spite-of-himself laugh. “You always would
make fun of me when I tried to be serious. But if I ever _was_ serious
in my life, it is now. Listen to me, Annie! It is not my fault if I see
you now, truly as you are, for the first time. I have been a fool.
I know it I said so at the start. But a man is the creature of
circumstances, you know. Things have happened tonight which have opened
my eyes. I realize now that you have been closest to my heart all the
while, that I have loved you all----”
Annie stopped him, with her hand upon his arm.
“I don’t want you to finish that to-night. Please don’t, Seth. It would
not be fair to me--or to yourself. Perhaps some other time when you have
thought it over calmly--we will talk about it--that is, if you are of
the same mind. If you are not, why, everything shall be just as it was
before. And more than that, Seth, you--you mustn’t feel in the least
bound by what has been said to-night. You know that I am older than
you--two whole months! That isn’t as much as four years”--the meekest of
her sex could scarcely have foregone that shaft--“but it gives me some
sort of authority over you. And I am going to use it for your good. If
it becomes necessary, I shall treat you like a perverse little boy, who
doesn’t in the least know what is good for him.”
There was no discouragement to Seth in the tones of her speech, however
non-committal its text might be. He put his arm about her and murmured:
“To think that I never _knew_ until now! Ah, you make me very happy,
Annie. And shall you be happy, too, do you think, happier than if we
hadn’t met?”
She smiled as she disengaged herself, and gave him both hands to say
that they must separate: “Happier at least than on the night of the
fishing party. I cried myself to sleep that night.”
Seth found the house wholly dark, upon his return. He had no difficulty
in getting to sleep, and his heavy slumber lasted until long after the
breakfast hour the following forenoon.