CHAPTER XXXV.—“SUCH WOMEN ARE!”
THE story, such as it is, is told.
Before the daily press of the State, which had given great attention to the tragedy in Dearborn County, became fairly aware that a mystery attached to it, the wretched Milton had confessed his crime. He had followed and come up with his employer, who stopped at his call. There was a conversation—then the killing. The prisoner made a weak effort to pretend that there was a quarrel first, and that his deed was in self-defence, but he deceived no one. He had with much difficulty led the grays off the side of the ravine, the murdered man being first thrown over, and the horses and buggy purposely hurled down upon him. There was some angry criticism when it became known that the District Attorney had agreed to accept a plea of murder in the second degree, and the popular explanation—that it was done from motives of consideration for the family—provoked not a few jibes from people who wanted to know why the Fairchilds were any better than other folk. But the course of the law was not affected by this comment, nor did the District Attorney suffer appreciably from it when he came up the succeeding autumn for re-election. The money was all recovered—and, if you have the influence requisite to obtain a visiting pass to New York’s forest-girt prison on the Eastern watershed of the Adirondacks—that terrible subterranean place of woe from which even Siberian gaolers might get some hints of new things in anguish—you may still see a thin, bent, evil-faced wretch dragging out existence in the mines, who once was reckoned a likely man in Dearborn County, and who cast its united vote at the most famous of all Tyre’s Conventions.
The funeral of Albert Fairchild will long be remembered in all the section round. More than one State official attended, and there was a vast concourse of lesser political lights, who kept a shrewd eye upon opportunities for profitable discourse with each other, before and after the services, while they put themselves dignifiedly in evidence before the public by getting their names in the local papers.
There were no surprises to the inner circle of the family when the will came to be read. Subject to the widow’s third, the farm was devised in equal parts to the two brothers, but the major share of the other property went to Seth. The partner from New York remained at the homestead long enough to arrange the details by which the widow’s portion was bought by the brothers, and her leave-taking accomplished.
John Fairchild lives in high contentment on the ancestral farm. He grows stout now, in the accustomed Fairchild fashion, and though his light ruddy face and brown beard are hostile to the suggestion, people profess to see the family likeness in him as he grows older. Aunt Sabrina especially cherishes this fancy with fondness. She has come to regard this nephew, whom once she so deeply disliked, with some affection and vast esteem, and she devotes her hours to dreaming of the great things he may accomplish as the Fairchild of Dearborn—what time she is not joining Alvira in prayer that he may not be moved to marry a city woman. Thus far there are no indications that he thinks of marrying any one, and his ambitions seem to take no higher form than the re-invigoration of the Banner of Liberty, which he drives over to Thessaly three times a week to superintend, and which, they say, promises soon to blossom into a daily.
One closing scene we may glance at—a pretty room, with modern furniture, and wide, flower-clad windows looking upon one of the best of Tecum-seh’s residential streets. Annie, grown brighter-faced and yet no older in looks, despite the nearly four years of married life which have gone by, stands at the window with a baby in her arms, and laughs as she tosses the infant forward toward the panes, in greeting to the paternal parent, who is coming up the front steps. The wife is in gay spirits, not only because the head of the house has come home to dinner instead of stopping at the Club, but for another reason, compared with which all dinners were trivial.
“O Seth, her first tooth has come through!”
“That so? It’s about time, I should-think.”
His reception of the great tidings is so calm, not to say indifferent, that the beaming wife looks at him in mock surprise. Seth has not aged specially either, but he wears this evening an unwontedly serious expression of face, and gets into his dressing-gown and slippers with an almost moody air.
Baby is brought up in frowning, blinking proximity to her sire and made by proxy to demand an explanation of this untoward gloom, on an occasion which ought to be given over to rejoicing.
“Oh, I’m tired,” Seth answers; “and then—then I have a letter which puzzles and annoys me a little.”
“Is it anything that I know about?” Annie has seated herself beside him now, and looks sweet inquiry.
“Well, yes. It is a letter from Dent—you know I’ve let him go down to Washington to get an idea of the place and the men while the session is on—and along with a letter to the paper, pretty good stuff, too, he sends me this personal note. Read it for yourself.”
Annie took the letter, and reads steadily along through its neat chirography:
“Washington, March 7th.
“Dear Fairchild:
“I send a letter going into the Silver question from the standpoint of some of the Western men I have talked with. They impress me as being more sincere than sensible on the subject. I think the trip will be of vast service to me—and also, I trust, to the paper.
“Last evening, I met for the second time since I have been here, an elderly gentleman from your part of the State, named Beekman. Like myself, he is down here to look around, and get an idea of things. It is the first time, I should judge, that he has been so far away from home, and his comments are extremely droll—often very clever, too. He seems to know you very well, and asked me to remember him kindly to you, and express his congratulations upon your purchase of a controlling interest in the paper. He wanted me to be sure and say to you that while the experiment of electing Ansdell had worked very well—he seems to admire Ansdell greatly—you mustn’t allow that to lead you into the habit of thinking that all bolters are saints and all straight-party men devils. It seems that since he has been here he has encountered some foolish and exceptional Southern Congressman who provoked him by saying ‘Your Government’ and your laws’ instead of using the pronoun and that has made him a great Stalwart again—for the time-being.”
Annie looked up from the sheet. “I must say I don’t see anything in all this to particularly disturb anybody. This seems just the harmless sort of letter I should expect your innocuous Mr. Dent to write.”
“Read the rest of it,” was Seth’s reply.
She went on:—
“By the way, I met your sister-in-law among the guests at a reception the other evening, to which Mr. Ansdell kindly secured me an invitation. Her residence on K street—she gave me the number, which I have somewhere—is said to be one of the most charming homes in Washington. She is very-popular in society here, and I am told that you meet her at every fashionable gathering. She was certainly very pleasant with me, when Mr. Ansdell presented me and explained who I was. She especially asked me if I knew what you had named your baby-girl, but I could not tell her.
“I could tell her if she asked me!” remarked the young wife, grimly. “The very idea!”
“Go on,” said Seth—“or I shall feel that we ought to have named her Proscrastinatia instead of Annie; get to the end of the thing.”
Annie got to the end with a single sentence:
“By the way, it may interest you—and I hope you won’t be annoyed at my mentioning it, and indeed you may very possibly have heard it already—to learn that everybody here seems to understand that Mr. Ansdell is shortly to marry your sister-inlaw, and he himself, speaking to me, referred to her in a way which amounted to a declaration of the fact.”
“Well, there you have it!” said Seth slowly, after a long pause in which husband and wife looked at each other. “That is news, isn’t it?”
“I should think so!” Annie spoke deliberately, too, turning the letter over with a meditative air. “I should think so!”
The gravity of his wife’s tone seemed to Seth to be more profound than the circumstances altogether demanded.
“I don’t know after all,” he said, in half-apology for his own earlier confession of gloom, “but that it would be a tolerable match. I don’t say that they would be happy in the sense that we are happy, my girl; but she has a great many qualities which would make her a helpful wife to an ambitious, successful, masterful sort of public man like Ansdell. Come, now, let’s be fair to her. Dent says that she is very popular in Washington.”
“Yes,” replied Annie thoughtfully, drawing her daughter closer to her breast, “she always will be popular with people who are not married to her. Such women are!”