A Strange, Sad Comedy

by Molly Elliot Seawell

It was quite dusk when the ramshackly old coach rattled and banged up to the door of Corbin Hall. The house looked exactly as it had on that November night ten years before, when Sir Archy had made his entry there.

The hall door was wide open, and from it poured the ruddy glow of the fire in the great drawing-room fireplace, and two candles sent a pale ray into the darkness. The Colonel stood waiting to receive them, with Letty and Miss Jemima in the background. When the two men alighted and entered the house, the Colonel nearly sawed their arms off.

“Delighted to see you, my dear young friends,” he cried, “and most fortunate and agreeable for us all that you are here together.”

The Colonel, in his simplicity, actually believed this. Miss Jemima’s greeting and Letty’s was not less cordial, and each of the two men would have felt perfectly satisfied under the circumstances but for the presence of the other.

The shabby, comfortable old library looked exactly as it had done ten years before. The identical square of rag carpet was spread over the handsome floor, polished by many decades of “dry rubbin’.” Everything in the room that could shine by rubbing did so—for Africans were plentiful still at Corbin Hall. The brass fender and fire dogs, the old mahogany furniture, all shone like looking-glasses.

Miss Letty regulated her conduct toward her two admirers with the most artful impartiality, and both Sir Archy and Farebrother realized promptly that their visit was to be a season of enjoyment, and not of lovemaking—which last is too thorny a pursuit and too full of pangs and apprehensions to be classed strictly under the head of pleasure. Miss Jemima gave them a supper that was simply an epic in suppers—so grand, so nobly proportioned, so sustained from beginning to end. Afterward, sitting around the library fire, they had to hear a good many of the Colonel’s stories, with Letty in a little low chair in the corner, her hands demurely folded in her lap, and the fire-light showing the milky whiteness of her throat and lights and shadows in her hazel eyes. Letty was very silent—for, being a creature of caprice, when she was not laughing and talking like a running brook, she maintained a mysterious silence. One slender foot in a black slipper showed from under the edge of her gown—the only sign of coquetry about her—for no matter how much Puritanism in air and manner Letty might affect, there was always one small circumstance—whether it was her foot, her hand, or her hair, or the turn of her head,—in which the natural and incorrigible flirt was revealed. The evening passed quickly and pleasantly to all. The Colonel would not hear of a week being the limit of their visit. Within a few days the Romaine party would be at Shrewsbury, and then there would be a “reunion,” as the Colonel expressed it.

When Farebrother was consigned to his bed-room that night, with a huge four-poster like a catafalque to sleep in, and a dressing-table with a frilled dimity petticoat around it, and the inevitable wood-fire roaring up the chimney, he abandoned himself to pleasing reflections, as he smoked his last cigar. How pleasant, home-like, and comfortable was everything! Nothing was too good to be used—and the prevailing shabbiness seemed only a part of the comfort of it all. And Letty, like all true women, was more charming in her own home than anywhere else in the world.

Sir Archy, in the corresponding bed-room across the hall, with a corresponding catafalque, petticoated dressing-table, etc., likewise indulged in retrospection before he went to bed. He was not so easy in his mind—no man can be at peace who has two women in his thoughts. He was very sorry the Romaine party were coming. He had not discriminated enough in his attentions between Letty and Ethel Maywood, and the feeling that he might be playing fast and loose with Ethel troubled and annoyed him. But love with him was a much more prosaic and conventional matter, though not less sincere, than with Farebrother, who had the American disregard of consequences in affairs of the heart.

Next morning was an ideal morning for shooting. A white haze lay over the land, tempering the glory of the morning sun. The rime lay over the fields just enough to help the scent of the dogs, and there was a calm, chill stillness in the air that boded ill for partridges.

The Colonel turned his two young friends over to the care of Tom Battercake, and the trio started off accompanied by a good-sized pack of pointers. Sir Archy had on the usual immaculate English rig for shooting—immaculate in the mud and stains necessary for correct shooting clothes. His gun, game-bag, and whole outfit were as complete as if he had expected to be cast ashore on a desert island, with only his trusty weapon to keep him from starvation. Farebrother’s gun, too, was a gem—but in other respects he presented the makeshift appearance of a man who likes sport, but does not affect it. His trousers, which had belonged, not to a shooting-suit, originally, but had attended first a morning wedding, were so shabby as to provoke Letty’s most scathing sarcasm. His coat and hat were shocking, and altogether he looked like a tramp in hard luck. Tom Battercake, much to Sir Archy’s surprise, was provided with an ancient and rusty musket of the vintage of 1840, with which he proposed to take a flyer occasionally. Sir Archy privately expressed his surprise at this to Farebrother, who laughed aloud.