“I’m awfully glad to see you, Rachel,” said Mrs. Farrell, who was lying on her lounge, reading Shakespeare. “Do sit down and visit;” and she shut her book and rose upon her elbow.
“No,” said Rachel, stiffly, as she stood shading with one hand the kerosene lamp she held in the other, “I have come to say that I think I have treated you badly; for whatever you did, I had no right to say the things to you that I said. I—”
“Oh, never mind about that,” said Mrs. Farrell. “You’re all right. I dare say it was all true enough. But what I can’t understand is this, Rachel: when I’ve been doing anything wrong, I’m as sorry as can be, and I have no rest till I go off and make a glib apology. That’s as it should be, of course, but it isn’t like your repentance. You’ve been abusing me, frightfully, and you come here and fire your regrets into the air, so to speak; you don’t seem to care whether they hit me or not; you discharge ’em, and there you are all nicely, with a perfectly clean conscience. Well now, you know, when I apologize to any one, I like to see the apology hit them; I like to see them writhe and quiver under it, and go down before it, and I feel a good deal wickeder after I’ve repented than I did before. What do you suppose is the reason?”
Rachel made no reply, and Mrs. Farrell seemed not to have expected any. She went on: “Well, now, I’ll tell you what I think it is; I think it’s sense of duty. I’m sorry when I’m sorry because it’s so very uncomfortable to think of people suffering; it’s like stepping on something that squirms; but when you’re sorry, it’s because you’ve done wrong. There! Now I’m going to keep that distinction clearly in mind, and go in for a sense of duty—at the earliest opportunity.”
Mrs. Farrell fell back upon her lounge with an air of refreshment and relief, which nobody could resist, and Rachel laughed a reluctant, protesting laugh, while the other kept a serious face.
“Crimps, I suppose,” she mused, aloud, “would be very unbecoming to a person who was going in for a sense of duty, and I must give them up. I ought to have my hair brushed perfectly flat in front, and I shall come down with it so to breakfast. I wonder how I shall look?” She went to the bureau, took a brush, and smoothed down the loose hair above her forehead; then holding it on either side with her hands to keep it down she glanced into the mirror. “Oh, oh, oh!” she cried out with a great laugh, “I look slyer than anything in the world! No! A sense of duty will never do for me. I must chance it with unregenerate nature. But you can’t say after this that I didn’t try to be good, can you, Rachel?” She put her hand on Rachel’s cheek and pressed the girl’s head against her breast, while she looked down into her clear eyes. “I do love you, Rachel, and I’m glad you felt sorry for having flown out at me. I didn’t mean anything—I didn’t indeed;” and she tenderly kissed Rachel good night.
Chapter IX
IT had been rather too warm on Saturday. On Sunday the breeze that draws across Woodward farm almost all summer long, from over the shoulder of Scatticong, had fallen, and the leaves of the maples along the roadside and in the grove beyond the meadow hung still as in a picture; the old Lombardy poplars at the gate shook with a faint, nervous agitation. Up the valley came the vast bath of the heat, which inundated the continent and made that day memorable for suffering and sudden death. In the cities there were sunstrokes at ten o’clock in the morning; some who kept withindoors perished from exhaustion when the sun’s fury was spent. The day was famous for the heat by the seashore, where the glare from the smooth levels of the salt seemed to turn the air to flame; at the great mountain resorts, the summer guests, sweltering among the breathless tops and valleys, longed for the sea.
Easton lay awake all night, and at dawn dressed and watched the morning gray turn to clear rose, and heard the multitude of the birds sing as if it were still June; then he lay down in his clothes again, and, meaning to wait till he could go out and sit in the freshness of the daybreak, fell asleep. When he woke, the sun was high in his window and the room was full of a sickly heat. He somehow thought Gilbert had come back, but he saw, by a glance through the door standing ajar, that his room was yet empty.
After breakfast, which could be only a formality on such a morning, even for a man not in love, he went out on the gallery of the hotel, and, as he had done the first Sunday, watched the people going to church. The village folk came as usual, but the bell brought few of the farmers and their wives. The meadows were veiled in a thin, quivering haze of heat; far off, the hilltops seemed to throb against the sky.