THE NEW FACES.
IMMEDIATELY on my arrival, I was presented to Mr. Meadowcroft, the
father.
The old man had become a confirmed invalid, confined by chronic
rheumatism to his chair. He received me kindly, and a little wearily as
well. His only unmarried daughter (he had long since been left a
widower) was in the room, in attendance on her father. She was a
melancholy, middle-aged woman, without visible attractions of any
sort--one of those persons who appear to accept the obligation of
living under protest, as a burden which they would never have consented
to bear if they had only been consulted first. We three had a dreary
little interview in a parlor of bare walls; and then I was permitted to
go upstairs, and unpack my portmanteau in my own room.
“Supper will be at nine o’clock, sir,” said Miss Meadowcroft.
She pronounced those words as if “supper” was a form of domestic
offense, habitually committed by the men, and endured by the women. I
followed the groom up to my room, not over-well pleased with my first
experience of the farm.
No Naomi and no romance, thus far!
My room was clean--oppressively clean. I quite longed to see a little
dust somewhere. My library was limited to the Bible and the
Prayer-Book. My view from the window showed me a dead flat in a partial
state of cultivation, fading sadly from view in the waning light. Above
the head of my spruce white bed hung a scroll, bearing a damnatory
quotation from Scripture in emblazoned letters of red and black. The
dismal presence of Miss Meadowcroft had passed over my bedroom, and had
blighted it. My spirits sank as I looked round me. Supper-time was
still an event in the future. I lighted the candles and took from my
portmanteau what I firmly believe to have been the first French novel
ever produced at Morwick Farm. It was one of the masterly and charming
stories of Dumas the elder. In five minutes I was in a new world, and
my melancholy room was full of the liveliest French company. The sound
of an imperative and uncompromising bell recalled me in due time to the
regions of reality. I looked at my watch. Nine o’clock.
Ambrose met me at the bottom of the stairs, and showed me the way to
the supper-room.
Mr. Meadowcroft’s invalid chair had been wheeled to the head of the
table. On his right-hand side sat his sad and silent daughter. She
signed to me, with a ghostly solemnity, to take the vacant place on the
left of her father. Silas Meadowcroft came in at the same moment, and
was presented to me by his brother. There was a strong family likeness
between them, Ambrose being the taller and the handsomer man of the
two. But there was no marked character in either face. I set them down
as men with undeveloped qualities, waiting (the good and evil qualities
alike) for time and circumstances to bring them to their full growth.
The door opened again while I was still studying the two brothers,
without, I honestly confess, being very favorably impressed by either
of them. A new member of the family circle, who instantly attracted my
attention, entered the room.
He was short, spare, and wiry; singularly pale for a person whose life
was passed in the country. The face was in other respects, besides
this, a striking face to see. As to the lower part, it was covered with
a thick black beard and mustache, at a time when shaving was the rule,
and beards the rare exception, in America. As to the upper part of the
face, it was irradiated by a pair of wild, glittering brown eyes, the
expression of which suggested to me that there was something not quite
right with the man’s mental balance. A perfectly sane person in all his
sayings and doings, so far as I could see, there was still something in
those wild brown eyes which suggested to me that, under exceptionally
trying circumstances, he might surprise his oldest friends by acting in
some exceptionally violent or foolish way. “A little cracked”--that in
the popular phrase was my impression of the stranger who now made his
appearance in the supper-room.
Mr. Meadowcroft the elder, having not spoken one word thus far, himself
introduced the newcomer to me, with a side-glance at his sons, which
had something like defiance in it--a glance which, as I was sorry to
notice, was returned with the defiance on their side by the two young
men.
“Philip Lefrank, this is my overlooker, Mr. Jago,” said the old man,
formally presenting us. “John Jago, this is my young relative by
marriage, Mr. Lefrank. He is not well; he has come over the ocean for
rest, and change of scene. Mr. Jago is an American, Philip. I hope you
have no prejudice against Americans. Make acquaintance with Mr. Jago.
Sit together.” He cast another dark look at his sons; and the sons
again returned it. They pointedly drew back from John Jago as he
approached the empty chair next to me and moved round to the opposite
side of the table. It was plain that the man with the beard stood high
in the father’s favor, and that he was cordially disliked for that or
for some other reason by the sons.
The door opened once more. A young lady quietly joined the party at the
supper-table.
Was the young lady Naomi Colebrook? I looked at Ambrose, and saw the
answer in his face. Naomi Colebrook at last!
A pretty girl, and, so far as I could judge by appearances, a good girl
too. Describing her generally, I may say that she had a small head,
well carried, and well set on her shoulders; bright gray eyes, that
looked at you honestly, and meant what they looked; a trim, slight
little figure--too slight for our English notions of beauty; a strong
American accent; and (a rare thing in America) a pleasantly toned
voice, which made the accent agreeable to English ears. Our first
impressions of people are, in nine cases out of ten, the right
impressions. I liked Naomi Colebrook at first sight; liked her pleasant
smile; liked her hearty shake of the hand when we were presented to
each other. “If I get on well with nobody else in this house,” I
thought to myself, “I shall certainly get on well with _you_.”
For once in a way, I proved a true prophet. In the atmosphere of
smoldering enmities at Morwick Farm, the pretty American girl and I
remained firm and true friends from first to last. Ambrose made room
for Naomi to sit between his brother and himself. She changed color for
a moment, and looked at him, with a pretty, reluctant tenderness, as
she took her chair. I strongly suspected the young farmer of squeezing
her hand privately, under cover of the tablecloth.
The supper was not a merry one. The only cheerful conversation was the
conversation across the table between Naomi and me.
For some incomprehensible reason, John Jago seemed to be ill at ease in
the presence of his young countrywoman. He looked up at Naomi
doubtingly from his plate, and looked down again slowly with a frown.
When I addressed him, he answered constrainedly. Even when he spoke to
Mr. Meadowcroft, he was still on his guard--on his guard against the
two young men, as I fancied by the direction which his eyes took on
these occasions. When we began our meal, I had noticed for the first
time that Silas Meadowcroft’s left hand was strapped up with surgical
plaster; and I now further observed that John Jago’s wandering brown
eyes, furtively looking at everybody round the table in turn, looked
with a curious, cynical scrutiny at the young man’s injured hand.
By way of making my first evening at the farm all the more embarrassing
to me as a stranger, I discovered before long that the father and sons
were talking indirectly _at_ each other, through Mr. Jago and through
me. When old Mr. Meadowcroft spoke disparagingly to his overlooker of
some past mistake made in the cultivation of the arable land of the
farm, old Mr. Meadowcroft’s eyes pointed the application of his hostile
criticism straight in the direction of his two sons. When the two sons
seized a stray remark of mine about animals in general, and applied it
satirically to the mismanagement of sheep and oxen in particular, they
looked at John Jago, while they talked to me. On occasions of this
sort--and they happened frequently--Naomi struck in resolutely at the
right moment, and turned the talk to some harmless topic. Every time
she took a prominent part in this way in keeping the peace, melancholy
Miss Meadowcroft looked slowly round at her in stern and silent
disparagement of her interference. A more dreary and more disunited
family party I never sat at the table with. Envy, hatred, malice and
uncharitableness are never so essentially detestable to my mind as when
they are animated by a sense of propriety, and work under the surface.
But for my interest in Naomi, and my other interest in the little
love-looks which I now and then surprised passing between her and
Ambrose, I should never have sat through that supper. I should
certainly have taken refuge in my French novel and my own room.
At last the unendurably long meal, served with ostentatious profusion,
was at an end. Miss Meadowcroft rose with her ghostly solemnity, and
granted me my dismissal in these words:
“We are early people at the farm, Mr. Lefrank. I wish you good-night.”
She laid her bony hands on the back of Mr. Meadowcroft’s invalid-chair,
cut him short in his farewell salutation to me, and wheeled him out to
his bed as if she were wheeling him out to his grave.
“Do you go to your room immediately, sir? If not, may I offer you a
cigar--provided the young gentlemen will permit it?”
So, picking his words with painful deliberation, and pointing his
reference to “the young gentlemen” with one sardonic side-look at them,
Mr. John Jago performed the duties of hospitality on his side. I
excused myself from accepting the cigar. With studied politeness, the
man of the glittering brown eyes wished me a good night’s rest, and left
the room.
Ambrose and Silas both approached me hospitably, with their open
cigar-cases in their hands.
“You were quite right to say ‘No,’” Ambrose began. “Never smoke with
John Jago. His cigars will poison you.”
“And never believe a word John Jago says to you,” added Silas. “He is
the greatest liar in America, let the other be whom he may.”
Naomi shook her forefinger reproachfully at them, as if the two sturdy
young farmers had been two children.
“What will Mr. Lefrank think,” she said, “if you talk in that way of a
person whom your father respects and trusts? Go and smoke. I am ashamed
of both of you.”
Silas slunk away without a word of protest. Ambrose stood his ground,
evidently bent on making his peace with Naomi before he left her.
Seeing that I was in the way, I walked aside toward a glass door at the
lower end of the room. The door opened on the trim little farm-garden,
bathed at that moment in lovely moonlight. I stepped out to enjoy the
scene, and found my way to a seat under an elm-tree. The grand repose
of nature had never looked so unutterably solemn and beautiful as it
now appeared, after what I had seen and heard inside the house. I
understood, or thought I understood, the sad despair of humanity which
led men into monasteries in the old times. The misanthropical side of
my nature (where is the sick man who is not conscious of that side of
him?) was fast getting the upper hand of me when I felt a light touch
laid on my shoulder, and found myself reconciled to my species once
more by Naomi Colebrook.