CHAPTER XXX.—JOHN’S DELICATE MISSION.
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.