While Seth tried to divert his thoughts at the _Banner_ office by going
over the freshly-arrived batch of morning dailies, and fastening his
attention upon their political editorials and reports of speeches
instead of their displayed and minute reports of the sensational tragedy
in Tallman’s ravine--John Fairchild retraced his steps toward the
farm. He had a definite purpose in his mind--to confront and silence
Isabel--and he strove hard as he went along to plan how this should be
done, and what he should say.
He felt that his dominant emotion was wrath against this sister-in-law
of his, and he said to himself as he strode along that he had never
liked her. He could recall the summer a dozen years before when she came
to the farm as a visiting cousin. He had been civil to her then, even
companionable, for she was bright, spirited, in a word good company,
but it seemed to him now that even then he had suspected the treachery
ingrained in her nature--that he had been instinctively repelled by
those hateful qualities, dormant in her girlhood, which were later to
plot infidelity to one of his brothers, and lure into trouble, shame,
perhaps even crime, the other.
This latter phase of her work was peculiarly abominable in John’s eyes.
He was not going to get up any special indignation on the first count
of the indictment; a bachelor of nearly forty who marries a sentimental
young girl does it at his own risk, John felt, and Albert had invited
just this sort of thing by exiling her to a farm, and forcing her
romantic mind to feed on itself. But that she should have selected
Seth--her own husband’s brother, the Benjamin of the flock, a veritable
child in such matters--to practise her arts upon, was grievously
unpardonable. To be sure, Seth ought to have had more sense. But then
John, habitually thinking of him as “the youngster,” thought he could
see how he had been led on, step by step, never realizing the vicious
tendency of it all, until he had all at once found himself on the brink
of a swift descent. Then, to do the boy justice, he seemed to have
stopped short, turned his back upon the siren, and for the sake of
further security, irrevocably committed himself to Annie. He had been
sadly weak in the earlier stages of the affair, no doubt; but this last
course appeared manly and sensible--and wholly incompatible, too,
with any idea of malice or crime on Seth’s part. What fault there was
belonged-to the woman, and she should be told so, too, straight and
sharp.
Thus John’s thoughts ran as he entered the house, and bade the Lawton
girl tell her mistress he wished to speak with her. He had not
seen Isabel since her husband’s death--she having kept her room
constantly--nor for a long time previous. They had, indeed, scarcely met
more than half-a-dozen times since she came to live at the homestead,
and then with considerable formality on both sides. As he stood by the
stove in the living-room, awaiting her coming, he knitted his brows and
framed some curt, terse words of address.
She entered, clad in the same black and dark-gray wrapper which his
memory associated with his mother’s funeral, and which gave the effect
of height and slender dignity to her figure. Her face was pale and
pathetic in expression, and the ghost of a smile which flitted in
greeting over it for a second accentuated its stamp of suffering. She
offered him her hand, and said, in a low mournful voice:
“It was good of you to come to me, John. I have been expecting, hoping
you would. Won’t you take off your coat and sit down?”
He had shaken hands with her, loosened his overcoat and taken a seat
before he had time to reflect that he ought to have ignored her greeting
and her proffered hand. The sharp words, too, that he had arranged in
his mind seemed too brusque now to utter to a weak, lone woman who was
so evidently suffering.
“Yes,” he said, “I thought I ought to talk things over with you. You’ve
got nobody else.”
“No--not a soul! I couldn’t be more wholly alone if I were at the North
Pole, it has seemed to me this last day. I have eaten nothing; I haven’t
slept an hour. So you must make allowances for me,” she said, with a
weak shadow of a smile, “if I seem nervous or incoherent. My mind goes
all astray, sometimes now, and I seem unequal to the task of controlling
it.”
He had thought at last of a question which might introduce the desired
subject without wounding her feelings. “Do you happen to know,” he
asked, gently, “whether Albert brought a large sum of money with him
from New York Monday?”
“I haven’t the least idea, I am sure. In fact, I only saw him for a
moment after his return. And besides, you know, he never told me a
syllable about his business arrangements. No one could be in more
complete ignorance of his affairs than I have always been.” There was
the tone of resigned regret in her voice which a wife might rightly use.
“I do indeed--there is one exception--know about his will. He told me
that, not by way of confidence, but because it came out--in some words
we once had about property of mine in New York. I might as well tell
you. The will gives everything except my third to you and your
aunt and--your brother. _He_ has the lion’s share. Don’t think I am
complaining, John. I wouldn’t have had it altered if I could. I am more
than independent, you know, apart from right of dower. If I had had the
making of the will, it would have been just the same. It is only right
that his money should go to his family.”
John reflected for some moments before he answered. “I am almost sorry
you told me,” he said then. “It makes me wretched and ashamed to think
of the injustice I have done him in my mind. It sounds brutal, in the
light of what you have told me,--but I am going to confess it to you--I
suspected all along that he intended to come some game over us about
the farm; and now, instead----. Oh, it’s _too_ bad. I wish he could
hear me!” John continued, with a glance toward the folding doors of
the parlor, once more the chamber of death. “I wish he could know how I
despise myself for having wronged him in my mind.”
Isabel said nothing, but her responsive eyes seemed to express
appreciation and sympathy. John lost all sense of wrath toward her as he
went on:
“Yes, from the very start we wronged him. We didn’t understand him.
He was different from us--he was a man of the world, and we were
countrymen, and we thought all the while that he held himself outside
the family. I never gave him credit for good motives when he came to the
farm; neither did Seth. We both thought he was playing his own game, for
himself, and nobody else. And here, by George! he turns out to have had
more brotherly feeling, more family feeling, than we ever had. It makes
me miserable to think of it. It’ll break Seth’s heart, too; he’ll always
torture himself with the thought that the last time he ever saw Albert
alive they parted in anger.”
The words were out before he realized their significance. He stopped
short, and felt himself changing color as he looked at her to see
whether she too was thinking about that terrible night.
She made a motion as if to rise from her chair; then dropped back again
and returned his inquiring glance with a fixed, intent look.
“So you know something about _that_,” she said.
“Did Seth tell you?”
“Yes!” he answered, falteringly. “Seth told me. We had a long talk this
forenoon. I think he told me about every thing there was to tell. In
fact, that is mostly why I’ve come back now to see you.”
She was silent, but her eyes seemed to John to be saying disagreeable
things.
He began again to realize that it was his duty to be indignant in
attitude and peremptory in tone, but he was also conscious of feeling
very sorry for Isabel. The village editor often described himself, and
was uniformly characterized by others, as being “no hand for women.” His
own brief career as a married man--it seemed almost a dream now, and
a very painful dream, with a short period of great happiness, then a
slightly longer season of illness, poverty, debt, despair, and then the
rayless gloom of death in his scarcely established home--had taught him
next to nothing of the sex, and inclined him against learning more.
The impressions of womankind which clustered about the memories of
his girl-wife were, however, all in the direction of gentleness and
softness. As he reflected, it grew increasingly difficult for him to put
on a harsh demeanor toward his sister-in-law. She might deserve it well
enough, but it was not in his heart to speak ugly words to a pretty and
troubled woman at such a time. He stumbled on:
“Yes, the youngster is fearfully cut up about the whole thing, and
he _had_ to talk to somebody. He’s always been used to telling me
everything. He is not a tattler, though, and I’m bound to say he only
told me because I questioned him, and insisted on his making a clean
breast of it. Then I sent him down to the office, and I came back here,
thinking it might be best for all concerned to have a frank talk with
you about it.”
She had a course mapped out now in her mind. “I am sure that your
motives are good, John,” she said, “and that you will be fair and
candid. I confess I don’t see what there is to be gained, specially, but
you no doubt know best. What is it you wanted to talk over?”
“Well, it isn’t easy to state it, off hand. Perhaps I might as well
begin by speaking of motives, as you did. I own that when I came in I
wasn’t so sure that your motives were good, as you say you are about
mine.”
“That is candid, at all events.”
“I want to be perfectly open and above-board with you, Isabel. You seem
to have got into your head yesterday--I won’t say you have it now--some
horrible and ridiculously wild suspicion of Seth----”
“I know what you mean,” she interposed, with nervous haste. “You
mustn’t think of that at all! You mustn’t blame me for it! I was simply
distracted--mad--out of my senses. I don’t know _what_ awful thing my
fancy didn’t conjure up. Don’t pay any attention to that!”
“But the mischief of it is that you seem to have spoken of this
to--to somebody else. It would have been unimportant otherwise. _This_
complicates it badly. Don’t you see it does?”
She made no answer, and kept her eyes on the figures in the carpet.
“Don’t you see it does?” he repeated.
“How do you know that I spoke of it to anybody?” she asked, after a
pause, and still with downcast eyes.
“That has nothing to do with it, Isabel. It’s true, isn’t it, that you
did speak of it?”
To his surprise and embarrassment she began weeping, and hid her face
in her handkerchief. He sat mutely watching her, wishing that she
would stop, and perplexed at encountering on the very threshold of
his inquiries and argument this un-meetable demonstration of a woman’s
resources.
She presently sobbed out, from behind the perfumed cambric: “You _can’t_
hold me accountable for what I did yesterday, or what I said! I was
beside myself! I scarcely know what I thought, or what I said! I acted
like a crazy woman--and felt like one, too! It is easy enough for you to
be cool and collected about the thing. You are a _man!_”
“Yes, I know, Isabel,” he said, kindly, “I understand all that, and I
can make all the allowances in the world for you, in your position. But
still that doesn’t alter the fact that the thing has been said, and the
harm done. To be sure, I suppose, the harm will be only temporary, but
as it stands it affects the prospects of more than one person--of two
persons, in fact, near to us--very materially. You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what can be done to remedy it? That is the question. I am not
going to blame you, but still the fault _was_ yours, and the steps to
set it right ought to be yours, too, oughtn’t they?”
“What do you mean?” She looked up now, forgetting her tears.
“I am not quite sure what I do mean. I haven’t thought over details.
There is simply a given situation, with the question how to get out of
it, and the onus of action on you. I want you to help me think what the
best way will be.”
“How logically you state it! Suppose I disavowed the whole thing,
ignored it, refused to do anything or say anything. What then?”
“I won’t consider that at all. You couldn’t be so unfair as that--so
ungenerous.”
“Unfair! Ungenerous!” Isabel rose to her full height, and frowned down
at her brother-in-law, without a trace of tears in her eyes. “Fine
fairness, distinguished generosity, have been shown to _me_, haven’t
they! There has been so much delicacy in regarding _my_ feelings! I
ought to leap at the opportunity of smoothing over matters between Mr.
Seth and his lady-love. My husband’s awful death, my position here,
alone in the world, the shock and suffering of it all--these are mere
trifles compared with the importance of seeing that their love affairs
are uninterrupted! Perhaps I might get a chance at the funeral to have
them kiss and make up--or would you prefer me to leave my dead now and
go----”
“_Your_ dead!”
The brother had risen also, and taken his hat. The exclamation carried
in its tone all the bitterness with which his mind had stored itself on
his walk back to the farm. Pity for the woman, perhaps something too of
innate susceptibility to beauty and grace, had restrained and covered up
this bitterness, so that he had supposed it gone. It flamed forth now,
in wrathful satire.
As she put her handkerchief up again to her eyes, as a token of more
tears, he went on, in a cold kind of excitement:
“You talk very cleverly--more so than any other woman I ever knew.
But you should pick your strong phrases with more discrimination. For
instance, when you want to produce a really striking effect upon me, it
is unwise to use an expression which recalls to me at once things that
you would rather I didn’t think about. I wouldn’t say ‘_my_ dead ’ if
I were you, especially when you are talking to his brother. It may do
for outsiders, but here in the family it is a bad waste of words.”
Her only answer was a gust of sobs. They failed to move him and he went
on:
“I don’t know that I have any means of forcing you to do anything, or
say anything, against your will. If you take that position, perhaps
it won’t be necessary. The wicked, ridiculous thing you thought, or
pretended to think, and said to that poor girl, can be straightened out
very easily. We can’t prevent the pain it has already caused, but we can
stop its causing more. But if you lisp it to another human being--well,
I don’t know what to threaten you with. It isn’t easy to guess what
considerations will weigh with a woman who has your ideas of wifely
duty, and of her responsibilities towards young and foolish members of
her husband’s family, and----”
“How _can_ you be so cruel, so mean, John? What right have you to talk
to me like that? Everybody attacks me like an enemy. You never have been
decent to me since I was married. Your whole family has treated me like
an outsider, almost a criminal, since I came here. Your old cat of an
aunt never looked at me except to wish me evil. Your brother--yes, if he
could hear me now, from where he lies, I would say it!--never was fond
of me, never tried to make a companion of me, never treated me as a wife
should be treated, or even as his intellectual equal. _You_ avoided me
as if I were poison. The neighborhood disliked me, gossiped about me,
and I hated them. Only one there was of you all who was pleasant with
me, and good to me--and now that you have turned him against me, too,
you come and insult me because I was pleased and grateful for his
friendship. That is _manly_ isn’t it?”
John had listened to the beginning of this impassioned speech with
a callous heart. But he was a just man, and he had in almost unmeted
degree that habit of mind which welcomes statements of both sides of a
controversy. He might have been a wealthier man, and the owner of a more
thriving paper, if he had had more of the partisan spirit. But to
be strictly fair was the rule of his being. He would not criticise
political opponents for doing things which in his heart he approved,
and, on the same principle he would not condemn unheard even this woman,
if she had any justification. As she went on, he began to feel that
there was considerable force in her argument. She certainly had been
most disagreeably situated, connubially and socially, and her definition
of the Seth episode was plausible, if that were all there was of it. He
softened perceptibly in tone as he answered:
“No, I am sorry if you think I wanted to insult you. Perhaps I did speak
too strongly. I apologize for it. But I feel very earnestly on this
subject. I’ve always been a sort of father and big brother combined
to Seth, and the idea of his getting into a mess, or doing foolish or
discreditable things, cuts me to the quick. You can see my position in
the matter. I am anxious not to hurt your feelings, but my first duty is
to him. Perhaps the two need not come into conflict. After all, no real
harm has been done, I fancy, except in this one case of repeating your
hysterical suspicion of him. _That_ was inexcusable; can’t you _see_
that it was? I’m sure that if you’ll think it over calmly, you’ll be
disposed to do what is fair and right. I’m not blaming you particularly
for the other thing. You might have remembered that you were older than
Seth, to be sure, but then I realize that you were not at all pleasantly
placed----”
“Never mind what you realize! We won’t discuss that at all. There is
nothing to discuss. You and your aunt seem bound to make yourselves
ridiculous about me. I won’t demean myself by answering--or no! I _will_
say this much to you. There has never a word passed between Seth and me
that every soul of you might not have heard, and welcome. He was simply
pleasant and friendly to me--and I was grateful to him and fond of him,
as I might be of a brother. Where was the harm? In no decent state of
society would any one ever have dreamed of suspecting wrong. But
_here_--why, people live and breathe suspicion! It is the breath of
their nostrils.”
“I thought you used to correspond,” John said, tentatively.
“Correspond! There it is again! What of it, I should like to know?
Why shouldn’t my cousin, my brother, write to me? I have all the
letters;--you may see them every one. They gave me a great deal of
pleasure. They represented my sole point of contact with civilization,
with fine feelings and pretty thoughts. But you can go over them all, if
you like. You won’t find a single whisper of proof of your aunt’s mean
suspicion. I am almost ashamed of myself for having stooped to defend
myself--but it is just as well to let you know the truth.”
“Yes!” John breathed a sigh which was not altogether of relief, but
carried a fair admixture of bewilderment. This ingenious explanation
did not at all points tally with the inferences drawn from Seth’s
confession. Perhaps it was true enough in the letter, but he felt that
as a revelation of the spirit it left much to be desired. He added:
“Well, I am sorry if I misjudged you. Probably I did. However, even if
Seth had come near getting into a scrape, he’s safe out of it now.”
This complaisant conclusion nettled-the woman. She went on, as if her
explanation had not been interrupted:
“Of course, we had what you might call a community of grievance to talk
about, and draw us together. It wouldn’t be fitting in me to say more
now than that my life here was not congenial: you won’t mind my
saying _that_ much? I had dreamed of a very different kind of married
existence. Seth, too, had his trouble. In his boyhood, when it seemed
assured that he was to remain the farmer of the family, his mother had
planned a marriage for him. It isn’t for me to say a word against Annie.
She is a good enough girl, in her way. But when Seth got out of his
chrysalis, and learned what there really was in him, the thought that he
was committed in a sense to marrying a farm girl made him very gloomy.
He used to talk with me about it, not saying anything against Annie,
mind you, but----”
“That’ll do!” said John, curtly. “We won’t go into that. Evidently there
was no limit to Seth’s asininity. Let that pass. Whatever he said, or
didn’t say, during his vealy period, he’s going to marry Annie now.
There never was a time, and I fear there never will be one, when I would
not call her his superior. The question is: Are you going to retract
before her the false, cruel things you have said?”
“I am going upstairs again,” she said. “I think I will lie down awhile,”
and moved towards the stair-door.
The brother looked at her, amazed, pained, indignant. She had her hand
on the latch by the time his emotions found words:
“I’ve wasted my time in pitying you. God forbid that any of our family,
young or old, should ever fall in with such a woman as you are again!”
He pulled on his hat and left the house.