While Seth tried to divert his thoughts at the Banner office by going over the freshly-arrived batch of morning dailies, and fastening his attention upon their political editorials and reports of speeches instead of their displayed and minute reports of the sensational tragedy in Tallman’s ravine—John Fairchild retraced his steps toward the farm. He had a definite purpose in his mind—to confront and silence Isabel—and he strove hard as he went along to plan how this should be done, and what he should say.
He felt that his dominant emotion was wrath against this sister-in-law of his, and he said to himself as he strode along that he had never liked her. He could recall the summer a dozen years before when she came to the farm as a visiting cousin. He had been civil to her then, even companionable, for she was bright, spirited, in a word good company, but it seemed to him now that even then he had suspected the treachery ingrained in her nature—that he had been instinctively repelled by those hateful qualities, dormant in her girlhood, which were later to plot infidelity to one of his brothers, and lure into trouble, shame, perhaps even crime, the other.
This latter phase of her work was peculiarly abominable in John’s eyes. He was not going to get up any special indignation on the first count of the indictment; a bachelor of nearly forty who marries a sentimental young girl does it at his own risk, John felt, and Albert had invited just this sort of thing by exiling her to a farm, and forcing her romantic mind to feed on itself. But that she should have selected Seth—her own husband’s brother, the Benjamin of the flock, a veritable child in such matters—to practise her arts upon, was grievously unpardonable. To be sure, Seth ought to have had more sense. But then John, habitually thinking of him as “the youngster,” thought he could see how he had been led on, step by step, never realizing the vicious tendency of it all, until he had all at once found himself on the brink of a swift descent. Then, to do the boy justice, he seemed to have stopped short, turned his back upon the siren, and for the sake of further security, irrevocably committed himself to Annie. He had been sadly weak in the earlier stages of the affair, no doubt; but this last course appeared manly and sensible—and wholly incompatible, too, with any idea of malice or crime on Seth’s part. What fault there was belonged-to the woman, and she should be told so, too, straight and sharp.
Thus John’s thoughts ran as he entered the house, and bade the Lawton girl tell her mistress he wished to speak with her. He had not seen Isabel since her husband’s death—she having kept her room constantly—nor for a long time previous. They had, indeed, scarcely met more than half-a-dozen times since she came to live at the homestead, and then with considerable formality on both sides. As he stood by the stove in the living-room, awaiting her coming, he knitted his brows and framed some curt, terse words of address.
She entered, clad in the same black and dark-gray wrapper which his memory associated with his mother’s funeral, and which gave the effect of height and slender dignity to her figure. Her face was pale and pathetic in expression, and the ghost of a smile which flitted in greeting over it for a second accentuated its stamp of suffering. She offered him her hand, and said, in a low mournful voice:
“It was good of you to come to me, John. I have been expecting, hoping you would. Won’t you take off your coat and sit down?”
He had shaken hands with her, loosened his overcoat and taken a seat before he had time to reflect that he ought to have ignored her greeting and her proffered hand. The sharp words, too, that he had arranged in his mind seemed too brusque now to utter to a weak, lone woman who was so evidently suffering.
“Yes,” he said, “I thought I ought to talk things over with you. You’ve got nobody else.”
“No—not a soul! I couldn’t be more wholly alone if I were at the North Pole, it has seemed to me this last day. I have eaten nothing; I haven’t slept an hour. So you must make allowances for me,” she said, with a weak shadow of a smile, “if I seem nervous or incoherent. My mind goes all astray, sometimes now, and I seem unequal to the task of controlling it.”
He had thought at last of a question which might introduce the desired subject without wounding her feelings. “Do you happen to know,” he asked, gently, “whether Albert brought a large sum of money with him from New York Monday?”
“I haven’t the least idea, I am sure. In fact, I only saw him for a moment after his return. And besides, you know, he never told me a syllable about his business arrangements. No one could be in more complete ignorance of his affairs than I have always been.” There was the tone of resigned regret in her voice which a wife might rightly use. “I do indeed—there is one exception—know about his will. He told me that, not by way of confidence, but because it came out—in some words we once had about property of mine in New York. I might as well tell you. The will gives everything except my third to you and your aunt and—your brother. He has the lion’s share. Don’t think I am complaining, John. I wouldn’t have had it altered if I could. I am more than independent, you know, apart from right of dower. If I had had the making of the will, it would have been just the same. It is only right that his money should go to his family.”
John reflected for some moments before he answered. “I am almost sorry you told me,” he said then. “It makes me wretched and ashamed to think of the injustice I have done him in my mind. It sounds brutal, in the light of what you have told me,—but I am going to confess it to you—I suspected all along that he intended to come some game over us about the farm; and now, instead——. Oh, it’s too bad. I wish he could hear me!” John continued, with a glance toward the folding doors of the parlor, once more the chamber of death. “I wish he could know how I despise myself for having wronged him in my mind.”
Isabel said nothing, but her responsive eyes seemed to express appreciation and sympathy. John lost all sense of wrath toward her as he went on:
“Yes, from the very start we wronged him. We didn’t understand him. He was different from us—he was a man of the world, and we were countrymen, and we thought all the while that he held himself outside the family. I never gave him credit for good motives when he came to the farm; neither did Seth. We both thought he was playing his own game, for himself, and nobody else. And here, by George! he turns out to have had more brotherly feeling, more family feeling, than we ever had. It makes me miserable to think of it. It’ll break Seth’s heart, too; he’ll always torture himself with the thought that the last time he ever saw Albert alive they parted in anger.”
The words were out before he realized their significance. He stopped short, and felt himself changing color as he looked at her to see whether she too was thinking about that terrible night.
She made a motion as if to rise from her chair; then dropped back again and returned his inquiring glance with a fixed, intent look.
“So you know something about that,” she said.
“Did Seth tell you?”
“Yes!” he answered, falteringly. “Seth told me. We had a long talk this forenoon. I think he told me about every thing there was to tell. In fact, that is mostly why I’ve come back now to see you.”
She was silent, but her eyes seemed to John to be saying disagreeable things.
He began again to realize that it was his duty to be indignant in attitude and peremptory in tone, but he was also conscious of feeling very sorry for Isabel. The village editor often described himself, and was uniformly characterized by others, as being “no hand for women.” His own brief career as a married man—it seemed almost a dream now, and a very painful dream, with a short period of great happiness, then a slightly longer season of illness, poverty, debt, despair, and then the rayless gloom of death in his scarcely established home—had taught him next to nothing of the sex, and inclined him against learning more. The impressions of womankind which clustered about the memories of his girl-wife were, however, all in the direction of gentleness and softness. As he reflected, it grew increasingly difficult for him to put on a harsh demeanor toward his sister-in-law. She might deserve it well enough, but it was not in his heart to speak ugly words to a pretty and troubled woman at such a time. He stumbled on:
“Yes, the youngster is fearfully cut up about the whole thing, and he had to talk to somebody. He’s always been used to telling me everything. He is not a tattler, though, and I’m bound to say he only told me because I questioned him, and insisted on his making a clean breast of it. Then I sent him down to the office, and I came back here, thinking it might be best for all concerned to have a frank talk with you about it.”
She had a course mapped out now in her mind. “I am sure that your motives are good, John,” she said, “and that you will be fair and candid. I confess I don’t see what there is to be gained, specially, but you no doubt know best. What is it you wanted to talk over?”
“Well, it isn’t easy to state it, off hand. Perhaps I might as well begin by speaking of motives, as you did. I own that when I came in I wasn’t so sure that your motives were good, as you say you are about mine.”
“That is candid, at all events.”
“I want to be perfectly open and above-board with you, Isabel. You seem to have got into your head yesterday—I won’t say you have it now—some horrible and ridiculously wild suspicion of Seth——”
“I know what you mean,” she interposed, with nervous haste. “You mustn’t think of that at all! You mustn’t blame me for it! I was simply distracted—mad—out of my senses. I don’t know what awful thing my fancy didn’t conjure up. Don’t pay any attention to that!”
“But the mischief of it is that you seem to have spoken of this to—to somebody else. It would have been unimportant otherwise. This complicates it badly. Don’t you see it does?”
She made no answer, and kept her eyes on the figures in the carpet.
“Don’t you see it does?” he repeated.
“How do you know that I spoke of it to anybody?” she asked, after a pause, and still with downcast eyes.
“That has not............