He thought upon this, and felt piqued at it. He wondered, too if he was not sitting clumsily in his chair—if it was not impolite in him to cross his legs. Gradually, however, he grew out of his reserve. It dawned upon him that Annie was timorous, nervous, about the impression she was making on him, and that Isabel listened with real respect and deference to what he had to say. He grew bold, and took the lead of the conversation, and the two women followed meekly. It was a delightful sensation. He said to himself: “It is the easiest thing in the world, once you make the plunge. I could talk with women now in the finest drawing room in the land.” He sat back in his chair, and told them some anecdotes about Mr. Samboye, from which somehow they gathered the notion that he was at the best coordinate in rank with Seth. They were more than ever proud of their relative, who had so rapidly conquered a high and commanding position for himself in that mystic, awesome sphere of journalism. Seth expanded and basked in this admiration.
He had heretofore found the evenings on the farm stupidly tedious. To sit at the big table till bed time, reading by the light of a single kerosene lamp, or exchanging dry monosyllables with Albert, offered a dismal contrast to the cheerful street lamps, the bright store-windows, the noise and gaiety and life of the places of evening resort in Tecumseh. But this evening revealed a far more attractive side of country life than he had known before. Annie stayed after tea, and the three played dominoes. Albert seemed somewhat out of sorts, but they did not mind his silence in the least. They chatted gaily over their games, and time flew so merrily and swiftly, that Seth was surprised when Annie said she must leave, and he discovered that it was a quarter to ten.
“How pleasantly the evening has passed,” Isabel said, and smiled at him, and Annie answered, “Hasn’t it! I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so much—” and she, too, smiled at him.
The old walk over the fields, down the poplar lane, to see Annie home—how like the old times it seemed! And yet how far away they were! Sometimes in these bye-gone walks, as they came up now in Seth’s memory, he and Annie had been almost like lovers—not indeed, in words, but in that magnetic language which the moon inspires. It occurred to neither of them to saunter slowly, now. They walked straight ahead, and there were no “flashes of eloquent silence.” Their conversation was all of Isabel.
“Not as happy as she expected!” said Annie, repeating a question of Seth’s; “you can’t guess how wretched she is! Sometimes it’s all she can do to keep from breaking down. I am literally the only person she has to talk to, that she cares about, week in and week out. Albert is away a great deal. I don’t think he is much company when he is home. She did try, when she first came, to make some acquaintances round about, among the well-to-do farmers’ wives. But she couldn’t bear them, and they said she was stuck up, and so that came to nothing. She doesn’t get on at all with Aunt Sabrina, either. Poor girl! she is so blue at times that my heart aches for her. Of course she wouldn’t let you see it. Besides she has been ever so much more cheerful since you came. I do hope you will stay as long as you can—just for her sake.”
She added this explanation with what sounded to Seth’s ear like gratuitous emphasis. The disposition rose swiftly within him to resent this.
“You are very careful,” he said, “to have me understand that it’s for her sake you want me to stay.” Then he felt, even while the sound of his voice was in the air, that he had made a fool of himself.
His cousin did not accept the individual challenge. “No, of course we are all glad to see you. You know we are. But she specially needs company; it’s a mercy to her to have somebody to brighten her up a little. Really, I get anxious about her at times. I try to run over as much as I can, but then I have grandmother to tend, you know.”
“How is the old lady, by the way? And oh—tell me, Annie, what it was that all at once set her against me so. You remember—the day before we went fishing, and Isabel saved my life.”
The answer did not come immediately. In the dim starlight Seth could see that his cousin’s face was turned away, and he guessed rather than saw that she was agitated.