Christmas-Day came with a slight flurry of snow. There was also a slight
flurry in society: the Whylands drove over to the farmhouse for dinner.
Medora had suggested their presence to her mother, and Clytie had
supported the suggestion: "the more the merrier," she declared. Whyland
himself had jumped at the opportunity eagerly, and his wife, who had met
Medora a number of times at the studio and in Paris and liked her,
acquiesced after the due interposition of a few objections.
"About the children----" she began.
"They can take dinner with Murdock and his wife for once in their lives."
"I don't know whether I can be said to have called regularly on Mrs.
Giles----"
"Is Christmas-day a time for such sophistications? And do you think that
plain, simple people, like the Gileses----"
Mrs. Whyland allowed herself to be persuaded--as she had designed from
the start.
She had no great fancy for a solitary Christmas dinner, such as her
husband's rural tastes had so often condemned her to; besides, this new
arrangement would give her an opportunity to take a look at Miss Clytie
Summers, of whom she had heard things.
Medora received Edith Whyland with some empressement; she regarded her
guest as the model of all that the young urban matron should be. Mrs.
Whyland was rather languid, rather elegant, rather punctilious, rather
evangelical, and Abner Joyce, before he realized what was happening to
him, was launched upon a conversation with a woman who, as Clytie Summers
intimated at the first opportunity, was really high in good society.
"One of the swells, I suppose you mean," said Abner.
"I mean nothing of the kind. Swell society is one thing and good society
is another. If you don't quite manage to get good society, you do the
next best thing and take swell society. _I'm_ swell," said Clyde humbly.
"But I'm going to be something better, pretty soon," she added hopefully.
Abner had his little talk with Edith Whyland, all unteased by
consideration of the imperceptible nuances and infinitesimal gradations
that characterize the social fabric. He thought her rather quiet and
inexpressive; but he felt her to be a good woman, and was inclined to
like her. She dwelt at some length on Dr. McElroy's Christmas sermon, and
it presently transpired that, whether in town or country, she made it a
point to attend services. Abner, who for some dim reason of his own had
expected little from the wife of Leverett Whyland, put down as mere
calumnies the reports that made her "fashionable." Through the dinner he
talked to her confidently, almost confidentially; with half the bulk of
Eudoxia Pence she made twice the impression; and by the time the feast
had reached the raisins and hickory-nuts his tongue, working
independently of his will, was promising to call upon her in town.
This outcome was highly gratifying to Medora--it was just the one, in
fact, that she had hoped to bring about. City and country, oil and water
were mixing, and she herself was acting as the third element that made
the emulsion possible. From her place down the other side of the table
she kept her eyes and ears open for all that was going on. She saw with
joy that Abner was almost chatting. He had given over for the present the
ponderous consideration of knotty abstractions; he totally forgot the
unearned increment; and what he was offering to quiet and self-repressed
Edith Whyland was being accepted--thanks to the training and temperament
of his hearer--for "small talk." Yes, Abner had broken a large bill and
was dealing out the change. He knew it; he was a little ashamed of it;
yet at the same time he looked about with a kind of shy triumph to see
whether any one were commenting upon his address.
To tell the truth, Abner felt his success to such a degree that presently
he began to presume upon it. He had heard about the children, left behind
for a lonely dinner with the farm superintendent, and he began to scent
cruelty and injustice in their progenitors. The wrongs of the child--they
too had their share in keeping our generous Abner in his perennial state
of indignation. He became didactic, judicial, hortatory; Edith Whyland
almost questioned her right to be a mother. But she understood the spirit
that prompted this intense young man's admonitions and exhortations; his
feelings did him credit. She made a brief and quiet defence of herself,
and thought no worse of Abner for his championship, however mistaken, of
distressed childhood. He understood and pardoned her; she understood and
pardoned him. And the more she thought things over, the more--despite his
heckling of her--she liked him.
"He's a fine, serious fellow, my dear," she said to Medora, "and I'm glad
to have met him."
Medora flushed, wondering why Edith Whyland should have spoken just--just
like that. And Edith, noting Medora's flush, considerately let the matter
drop.
Mrs. Whyland also looked over Clytie Summers, and found no serious harm
in her. "She is rather underbred--or 'modern,' I suppose I should call
it, and she's more or less in a state of ferment; but I dare say she will
come out all right in the end. However, my Evelyn shall never be taken
through the slums: I think Leverett will be willing to draw the line
there." And, "Remember!" she said to Abner, as she drove away.
Medora was delighted. She saw two steps into the future. Abner should
call on Mrs. Whyland. And he should read from his own works at Mrs.
Whyland's house. Why not? He read with much justness and expression; he
was thoroughly accustomed to facing an audience. Indeed he had lately
spoken of meditating a public tour, in order to familiarize the country
with _This Weary World_ and _The Rod of the Oppressor_ and the newer work
still unfinished. Well, then: the reading-tour, like one or two other
things, should begin at home.
While these generous plans pulsed through the girl's heart and brain
Abner, all unaware of the future now beginning to overshadow him, was out
in the stable considering the case of a lame horse and inveighing against
the general irksomeness of rural conditions. He threw back his abundant
hair as he rose from the study of a dubious hoof,--a Samson unconscious
of the shining shears that threatened him.