They both hated Isabel, with her citified notions, her forks and napkins, and stuck-up airs generally. It had pleased Aunt Sabrina’s mood to regard herself as included in the edict which ordained that servants should eat in the kitchen, and only the sharpest words she had ever heard Albert speak had prevented her acting upon this. She had come to the family table, then, but always with an air of protest; and she had a grim pleasure in leaving her napkin unfolded, month after month, and in keeping everybody waiting while she paraded her inability to eat rapidly or satisfactorily with the new fangled “split spoon.”
She and Alvira had a never-failing topic of hostile talk in the new mistress. To judge by their threats, their jibes and their angry complaints, they were always on the point of leaving the house on her account. So imminent did an outbreak seem to Seth, when he first heard their joint budget of woes and bitter resolves, that he was frightened, but the Lawton girl reassured him. They had talked just like that, she said, every day since she had been there, which would be “a year come August,” and she added scornfully: “They go away? You couldn’t chase ’em away with a clothes-pole!”
The two elderly females had another bond of sympathy, of course, in Milton’s affectation of superiority.
They debated this continually, though as Sabrina had the most to say about her niece-in-law, with Alvira as a sympathetic commentator, so the hateful apotheosis of the whilom hired-man was recognized to be Alvira’s special and personal grievance, in girding at which Sabrina bore only a helping part.
Seth accounted for this by calling up in recollection an old vague understanding of his youth that Milton was some time going to marry Alvira. He could remember having heard this union spoken of as taken for granted in the family. Doubtless Alvira’s present attitude of ugly criticism was due to the fear that Milton’s improved prospects would lead him elsewhere. The Lawton girl indeed hinted rather broadly to him that there were substantial grounds for Alvira’s rage. “I’d tear his eyes out if I was her, and he wouldn’t come up to the scratch,” she said, “after all that’s happened.” Seth understood her suggestion, but he didn’t believe it. The Lawtons were a low-down race, anyway. He had seen one of the girls at Tecumseh once, a girl who had gone utterly to the bad, and this sister of hers seemed a bold, rude huzzy, with a mind prone to mean suspicions.
It was a relief to go back again to the living-room, where Isabel was, and he both verbally and mentally justified her gentle hint that the kitchen was not a good place for young men to spend their time.
“You have no idea,” she said, letting her embroidery fall in her lap for the moment, “how ruinous to discipline and to household management generally this country plan of making companions of your servants is. I had to put a complete stop to it, very soon after I came. There would be no living with them otherwise. There’s not much comfort in living with them as it is, for your Aunt sits out in the kitchen all day long, pretending that she is abused and encouraging them to think that they are ill-used too. She makes it very hard for me—harping all the time on my being a Richardson, just as she did with your mother.
“Then there’s Milton. I did not want to make any difference between him and the other hired people, but your brother insisted on it—on having him at the table with us, and treating him like an equal. He is as coarse and rough and horrid as he can be, but it seems that he is very necessary on the farm, and your brother leaves so much to him and relies so much on him that I couldn’t help myself. He hasn’t got to calling me ‘Isabel’ yet, but I expect him to begin every day of my life. You can’t imagine what an infliction it is to see him eat—or rather, to hear him, for I try not to look.”
Isabel took up her work again, and Seth looked at her more closely than he had done before. She sat at the window, with the full summer light on her bright hair and fair, pretty face. Her tone had been melancholy, almost mournful; looking at her, Seth felt that she was not happy, and more—for he had never supposed her to be particularly happy—that she was bitterly disappointed with the result of the farm experiment. She had not said so, however, and he was in doubt whether it would be wise for him to assume it in his conversation.
“Albert seems to thrive on country fare,” he said, perhaps unconsciously suggesting in his remark what was turning in his mind—that she herself seemed not have thrived. The rounded outlines of her chin and throat were not so perfect as he remembered them. She looked thin and tired now, in the strong light, and there was no color to speak of in her face.