They dined in the lofty, sombre room at the rear of the house, overlooking a patch of turf between the house and the stable. Above the massive sideboard hung an oil portrait of the Colonel, a youthful painting but vigorous, where something of the old man's sweetness and gentle wisdom had been caught. This dining room had been done over the year before Isabelle was married; its taste seemed already heavy and bad.
Her mother's old servants served the same rich, substantial meal they had served when she was a child, with some poor sherry, the Colonel's only concession to domestic conviviality. The room and the food subtly typified the spirit of the race,—that spirit which was illuminated in the court-room—before it had finally evolved…. The moral physiology of men is yet to be explored!
Lane leaned back in the Colonel's high-backed chair, gray and weary under the brilliant light. At first he tried to be interested in Grosvenor, asked questions of his wife, but soon he relapsed into a preoccupied silence. This mood Isabelle had never seen in her husband, nor his physical lassitude. After a time she ventured to ask:—
"Is it likely to last much longer, the trial?"
"A couple of days, the lawyers think." And after a while he added morosely: "Nobody can tell how long if it is appealed…. I have had to muddle away the better part of the winter over this business, first and last! It's nothing but popular clamor, suspicion. The government is playing to the gallery. I don't know what the devil will happen to the country with this lunatic of a President. Capital is already freezing up tight. The road will have to issue short-time notes to finance the improvements it has under way, and abandon all new work. Men who have money to invest aren't going to buy stock and bonds with a set of anarchists at Washington running the country!"
It was quite unlike Lane to explode in this manner. It was not merely the result of nervous fatigue, Isabelle felt: it indicated some concealed sore in her husband's mind.
"How do you think it will be decided?" she asked timidly.
"The trial? Nobody can guess. The judge is apparently against us, and that will influence the jurors,—a lot of farmers and sore-heads! … But the verdict will make no difference. We shall carry it up, fight it out till the last court. The government has given us enough errors,—all the opening we need!"
The government had played badly, that is. Isabelle had it on her tongue to demand: "But how do you feel about it,—the real matter at issue? What is right—just?" Again she refrained, afraid to array herself apparently on the side of his enemies.
"It is all this infernal agitation, which does nobody any good and will result in crippling business," he repeated, as they went to the library for their coffee.