CHAPTER XIX.—THE WELCOME.
When Seth walked over from the Thessaly station, Sunday forenoon, to the farm, he was not, it may be imagined, in a placid frame of mind. There lay before him an interview with his brother which could not, in the nature of things, be pleasant, and which might very easily be distinctly unpleasant. It was his duty to say sundry things to Albert which were not in themselves nice, and if Albert was still in the mood shown forth by his peremptory letter, these remarks would very likely produce a scene. Seth was in no sense afraid of his brother, nor had the thrifty thought that this brother was a rich, childless man, to offend whom would be a gratuitous economic blunder, ever entered his head. The youngster had no faculty whatever for financial prudence. But he was grateful—almost ridiculously grateful—by nature. The trait is not a rare one, even in these days when a new civilization has substituted for individual patronage and beneficence the thanks-to-nobody trade-unionism of universal conceit and rivalry, but it was abnormally developed in the youngest of the Fairchilds.
He said to himself, as he crossed the fields toward the white and red land-mark of house and barns on the side hill, that he owed everything in the world to this brother. Whatever there might be in his public attitude to condemn, however pernicious his politics might be, still it was his fraternal feeling and generosity which had created the vast gulf between Seth the plow-yokel and Seth the editor. These reflections brought no comfort to the young man.
Some perverse agency whispered to him, as he strode along over the stubble, that after all he had never really liked Albert; and this liberality of his, too, might it not be a mere cheap mess of pottage, thrown to Seth to console him for the loss of his rights in the farm? John had always been incredulous as to Albert’s true goodness in this matter; might there not be something in these suspicions? Seth tried manfully to combat these ungenerous doubts, but they forced themselves upon his mind.
Then there was Albert’s treatment of his wife! Seth had never been clear as to the exact nature of Isabel’s grievance against her husband. No specific allegation of cruelty or neglect, much less of infidelity, had ever been laid by her at Albert’s door in his brother’s hearing. Indeed, so far as Seth’s observation went, Albert had always appeared to be a decent enough sort of husband, complaisant even if somewhat indifferent, and acquiescent to the verge of weakness, in her whims. He seemed to refuse her nothing, in the matter of having her own way, and if he most often broke the ruling conjugal dumbness by satirical comments on her actions and opinions, he at least never seriously attempted to fetter either. This sounded like the description of a tolerable husband, as husbands go. But up against it was to be set Isabel’s plaintive, pitiful, persistent assertion of unhappiness with him. And clearly she ought to know what her husband was like a good deal better than an outsider could.
So the arguments did battle in Seth’s mind, as he climbed the last fence, and felt his feet on ancestral soil. He had now only to cross a short stretch of pasture land to be at his journey’s end.
Perfect silence rested on the farm. The fat cows lay lazily about him, comfortably chewing the cud of sweet aftermath; the cluster of bright, neat buildings fell into picturesque lines of composition before him, in the soft, hazy sunshine of Indian summer. The background of scarlet and ochre and deep purple-browns in the woods beyond, of warm mauve hills and pale, fluffy clouds above; the shaggy old horse, standing in tranquil bliss, with his head over the fence; the aged shepherd-dog stretched asleep on the kitchen door-stone in the sunny distance—all brought to him a sense of content and beauty which warmed his heart and calmed his thoughts. The spell of the peaceful, restful scene soothed him. Then, as by magic, the whole picture seemed to take on the charm of Isabel’s presence. “I am to see her!” he said aloud, almost exultantly.
There had been no special pleasure in this prospect, a few hours before. Indeed, it had been months since he had been conscious of a genuine desire to meet his sister-in-law. At times of late it had even seemed to him that a meeting would be a source of embarrassment, just as the necessity of keeping up the clandestine correspondence presented itself often to him in the light of a bore.
But now—yes! she was walking forth swiftly to meet him—coming over the grass with a gliding haste which had a wealth of welcome in every motion. The very genius of the mellow, warm-hearted season she seemed to his eyes as she advanced, clad in some soft, indefinite stuff, loose-flowing, and that in tint under the red noon sun could be the shadow on golden grain, or the light on dark puce grapes, or the dim, violet haze over the distant valley. She was near him now, beaming with unaffected delight, reaching out her hands in greeting—and his heart went to meet her.
“Oh, Seth! How good of you to come!”
She had almost thrown herself into his arms, and had stood upon tiptoe to be kissed. He held himself back from the embrace, but he did kiss her, and he swung her hands now in his, looking into her glowing eyes with tender, responsive intentness, and smiling his joy. This reception did make him very happy, but he had also a great uneasiness lest some of the folks should be observing them from the windows of the house.
She divined his thoughts, and said, gayly: “They are all at church!”
“What? Albert too?” Seth knew that his brother was not of a religious turn; but he swiftly bethought himself, and added “Oh, I forgot that election is coming on.”
“No,” she chirruped, springing along by his side, her arm tight in his, her walk reflecting exultantly her emotion, “he is in New York. He will be back to-morrow. He has telegraphed me to have you wait.” She dropped into a mock-serious tone: “That is, of course, if you would like to wait?” She looked up archly: “Do you much mind waiting?”
“Do I mind!” He could only look his delight. His voice trembled.
She made a tiny skip, and lifted her face to him again, radiant with happiness. “Do you know,” she said, “I could run and jump like any little child, I am so wild with joy! It seems such an age since we were together last! Only letters—but they were very nice, though. You dear boy, who taught you to write such pretty letters—?”
He pressed her arm closer in his. “Who taught me everything that is sweet?” he whispered. It was all very delicious, but still it troubled him.
They entered the house, and he excused himself while he took his hand-bag up to his old room, and made his toilet after the long hot walk. As he occupied himself thus, and brushed his novel beard, his thoughts were much perturbed. It was very far from his ideas to make love to his brother’s wife. This bald statement of the situation which framed itself now in his mind, almost for the first time, repelled and alarmed him. Yet it seemed to sum up the state of affairs fairly. If there was not lovemaking in every feature of that meeting out on the lawn, then his conceptions of the tender passion were all at fault.
“By Jove, it mustn’t come to that!” he said to himself. “A fellow ought to be able to be fond of his sister-in-law, and be pleasant to her, and sympathize with her and all that, without going beyond the bounds, and making a scoundrel of himself.”
And it was with a deep resolution to be careful, and watch all his words, that he descended the stairs. He had taken out of his valise two front pages of a Sunday newspaper, containing “Jeff Brigg’s Love Story,” which he had saved a while before for Isabel, and he gave them now to her.
“Here is something I cut out for you, Isabel; it is a very pretty story, and I know you will like it.”
“Oh, how sweet of you! How well you know just what will please me most of all! And you shall read it to me! The other stories you have sent me were only moderately nice, because I had to read them by myself, but this—oh! this will be enchanting!”
She arranged an easy chair—a low, capacious chair with light blue the dominant color in its covering—close beside the window in the parlor which overlooked the poplars, and seated herself in it. Seth brought a hassock for her feet, and then put his own chair along side, where he could see her, and still get a good light on the print. It was not easy for him to begin the reading, so great was the fascination of looking at his companion. The sunlight flared upon the white curtains above her, and its reflections glowed back again from her crown of golden braids, luminous against the azure of the chair, and tipped with soft radiance her rounded profile, in cameo-relief against the deep olive of the poplars. Isabel was an artist.
He made a beginning at last, and read until the democrat-wagon drove up in the yard, with its load of church-goers. She made a little mouth at the interruption.
“I suppose Sabrina will come in now, and dinner will be ready soon. But afterwards we can be quiet again, for she always reads the Bible in her own room Sunday afternoons.”
All through the cold dinner, despite the necessity of answering Aunt Sabrina’s and Milton’s remarks, Seth found his mental vision fixed on that beautiful profile against the leafy background; especially sweet was the portrait when the eyes were closed, and the lovely fullness above the lids, as in the face of a Madonna, was revealed in the wavering light.
The story was not to be finished that afternoon, for Elhanan Pratt and his daughter dropped in almost before the meal was finished, and a little later Annie Fairchild came. There was not even much consolation in the pretty grimaces expressive of discontent which Isabel from time to time, when the visitors were not looking, confided to Seth. It was a very dull afternoon.
The venerable Mr. Pratt, a weazen, verbose little “gentleman-farmer,” who wore a huge black satin stock over his high flaring collar opening behind, and remained clean-shaven, in pious memory of Henry Clay and the coon campaign, sat on the edge of his chair and droned commonplaces by the hour. He evidently had an axe to grind by his visit, and he was much disappointed by Albert’s absence. But if he could not see “the coming Congressman,” as he called him once or twice, and sound that new political magnate as to his own renomination for the Assembly, he could at least enjoy the monopoly of a long conversation with the Editor of the Tecumseh Chronicle, and impress that young man with the breadth and value of his views. So Seth was forced to spend three dreary hours, answering as briefly as might be, listening wearily, and stealing stray glances at the three young women, who made a brighter group on the other side of the parlor stove. Once or twice he tried tentatively to engraft himself upon their conversation, and choke old Elhanan off, but the solemn little bore relentlessly brought him back to the dry bones of politics. Thus it happened that he had barely had an opportunity of exchanging a word with his cousin Annie, when she stood up and said, “I must be going.”
He walked over to her now, and put his hand in a brotherly way on her shoulder, as he helped her on with her cloak.
“I’ve scarcely had a word with you, Annie,” he said, smiling. “How is your grandmother? I needn’t ask how you are. You grow prettier everyday. And how do you get on with your school?”—for the girl was now teaching in the district school house over the hill.
She answered, “Oh, grandmother is about the same; perhaps a little weaker, but as bright mentally as ever. You are looking well, Seth, and quite the man now. Your beard becomes you—doesn’t it, Isabel? We are so sorry you can’t come to-morrow night. We see so little of you since you have become a city man.”
“Sorry that I can’t come!” repeated Seth after her.
“Come where?” Isabel interposed with a ready explanation. “There is to be a husking over at Crump’s to-morrow evening—the first of the season. There will be a big party of young people, and Crump sent over by Annie an invitation for us. But I have explained that you are here on business, which may very likely occupy you to-morrow evening, and that in any case you would have to write your leaders for the next day’s paper. We are ever so sorry, Annie,” she added, turning to the school-teacher now, “but you know this is a terribly busy time with Seth, and we mustn’t think of letting our little country sociables interfere with his work. Some time, soon, he will come for a real vacation, instead of a flying business trip, and then we can monopolize him—and we will, too, won’t we, Annie?”
Annie smiled, a little faintly, as if her heart were not altogether in it, and replied, “Yes, to be sure we will.” She added, to Seth, “I won’t say goodbye. I suppose I shall see you again.”
He assented, and went to the door with her, and stood on the steps watching her as she walked away in the autumn dusk. Decidedly she was a pretty girl!
The Pratts, father and daughter, consented upon the shadowiest suggestion of an invitation to stay and partake of the picked-up Sunday tea, and that involved their spending the evening. Aunt Sabrina came in, and the talk was dreary and general. So “Jeff Briggs” and his amatory affairs went over to the morrow.
In the morning Seth walked over to Thessaly and saw John. The interview depressed him. John had had some idea of following the Chronicle’s lead, and bolting the State ticket, but the county politicians had bullied him out of the thing by threatening the destruction of the job-printing business connected with the Banner of Liberty, and the boycotting of the paper itself. All his inclinations, too, were toward Ansdell in the Congressional race; but Albert had loaned him some money, and, beside, he couldn’t see his way clear to disregarding, openly at least, the fraternal tie. He was consequently in a savage mood.
“I’m thinking of taking out the head-line of the paper this week,” he growled, with a sardonic humor, “and putting in instead a cut of a runaway slave, with a bundle over his shoulder, which is in the job-room here, left over from the days when there was slavery in New York State, and masters used to advertise in the old paper for fugitives. ‘Banner of Liberty ’ indeed! By heaven, it ought to be ‘Banner of Bondage!”
There was no comfort or profit in discussing the situation, either general or local, with John. He neither knew nor cared, he swore, what Albert’s chances were to dissolve the deadlock on the morrow. He might or he mightn’t; it was all one to him, and apparently to the party, who were the——!
Seth left John to his bad temper and language, and returned to the farm in the afternoon. A telegram from Albert awaited him.
“New York, Oct. 19.—If possible conclude business, home to-night, at latest to-morrow morning. Wait for me at all hazards.—Albert.”
To provide against a possible delay over Tuesday, Seth devoted the afternoon, and the earlier part of the evening, to writing matter for his paper, which Dana was to convey to Thessaly for the early morning train, when he went to the cheese-factory. If Albert was coming at all that night, he would arrive about eight.
Nine o’clock came. Aunt Sabrina, after sitting in stem silence by the living-room stove for an hour or two, looking at the wall-paper as her brother Lemuel had been won’t to do, went up to bed with a frigid “good night.” The farm people had all retired with the chickens, long before.
Scarcely raising his eyes from his writing, Seth remarked:
“How Aunt Sabrina has failed since I left the farm! She grows ever so much like father. Poor old woman, she was so eager to have Albert come here, so elated with the idea that the family was to be restored to social and political dignity again—and now the apples seem to be all dead-sea fruit to her. I can’t see that she takes the slightest interest in Albert’s campaign. Odd, isn’t it?”
Isabel was sitting near the stove, around the corner of the table from him. The reddish radiance reflected down from the shaded lamp fell upon her rounded chin and her smooth white neck, dainty in tint as the ruffle in which it lost itself. Above this lace at the back, as she bent over her embroidery, some stray curling wisps of hair gleamed like gold in the light. She replied:
“It isn’t that at all. She’s interested enough in the Congress idea, or would be if she hadn’t something else on her mind. The prying old piece found out, by quizzing Dana, about our writing to each other. She has got it into her ridiculous old head, I feel sure, that there is something between us. Didn’t you notice the way she eyed us at the dinner table yesterday?”
Seth did not answer. His article was unfinished, but he suddenly found himself in doubt whether it was not already long enough. He reflected, or tried to reflect, for a moment, while the soft tones of her voice murmured in his ears, then added a sentence which might serve as a conclusion, and scrawled a dash underneath.
“There! I’m through!” he said, and looked up.
Her eyes were fixed upon his face. They were in the shadow of the tinted lamp-shade, but they had a light of their own—a languorous, alluring glow. He had never looked into such eyes before; they fascinated him, and he knew, in a delicious trembling, that his own were answering them in kind.
“You can read to me now,” she said, the rapt, wistful gaze melting into a smile. “He will not come to-night.”
Seth took the story, as she gave it to him from her workbox, and glanced over it to pick up the thread of the narrative where it had been dropped. As he was still thus engaged, he felt her hand laid upon his, and, as their eyes met again, heard her low, soft voice murmur:
“Do you know why I declined our invitation for the husking?”
There was a silence, which the young man felt that his face made full of acquiescent meaning.
She answered her own question: “I wanted you here, all for myself.”
Seth lost himself in an uplifting, floating sensation of ethereal beatitude. Her hand was in his now, warm and palpitating, and he raised it to his lips. It was difficult to breathe, but the oppression in his breast was all delight. He rose to his feet, his arms outstretched, his heart beating in exultant tumult. He heard her whisper—he could scarcely see her for the magnetic waving before his eyes—the refrain of the story: “So strong and yet so gentle!” His lips were formed for the passionate utterance—already framed in his heart—“My darling!” when there came the sound of footsteps on the path without, and of a hand upon the latch.
Seth mechanically took up the manuscript of his article, and turned toward the door. Beneath an impassive mien, far more composed than he dared to hope, there was the sensation of being hurled down, down, through the air, to unwelcome earth.
It was Albert. He looked at the two cursorily but closely, and only said, as he tossed his bag into a chair:
“Train was late. You go to bed at once, Isabel. I have particular business with Seth.”