The two young men walked along together, separated by the ridge of snow between the tracks. They had never been more than friendly acquaintances, and they talked now of indifferent topics—of the grim climatic freak which had turned late November into mid-winter, of the results of the recent elections, and then of English weather and politics as contrasted with ours. It was a desultory enough conversation, for each had been absorbed in his own mind by thoughts a thousand leagues away from snowfalls and partisan strife, and the transition back to amiable commonplaces was not easy.
The music of a sleigh-bell, which for some time had been increasing in volume behind them, swelled suddenly into a shrill-voiced warning close at their backs, and they stepped aside into the snow to let the conveyance pass. It was then that the express-man called out his cheery greeting, and that Reuben lifted his hat.
As the sleigh grew small in the near distance, Reuben turned to his companion. “I notice that you told him you weren’t quite sure about staying here for good,” he remarked. “Perhaps I was mistaken—I understood you to say a few minutes ago that it was all settled.”
Horace was not to be embarrassed by so slight a discrepancy as this—although for the instant the reappearance of Jessica had sent his wits tripping—and he was ready with a glib explanation.
“What I meant was that I am quite settled in my desire to stay here. But of course there is just a chance that there may be no opening, and I don’t want to prematurely advertise what may turn out a failure. By the way, wasn’t that that Lawton girl?”
“Yes—Ben Lawton’s oldest daughter.”
Reuben’s tone had a slow preciseness in it which caused Horace to glance closely at him, and wonder if it were possible that it masked some ulterior meaning. Then he reflected that Reuben had always taken serious views of things, and talked in that grave, measured way, and that this was probably a mere mannerism. So he continued, with a careless voice:
“I haven’t seen her in years—should scarcely have known her. Isn’t it a little queer, her coming back?”
Reuben Tracy was a big man, with heavy shoulders, a large, impassive countenance, and an air which to the stranger suggested lethargy. It was his turn to look at Horace now, and he did so with a deliberate, steady gaze, to which the wide space between his eyes and the total absence of lines at the meeting of his brows lent almost the effect of a stare. When he had finished this inspection of his companion’s face, he asked simply:
“Why?”
“Well, of course, I have only heard it from others—but there seems to be no question about it—that she—”
“That she has been a sadly unfortunate and wretched girl,” interposed Reuben, finishing the sentence over which the other hesitated. “No, you are right. Thereisno question about that—no question whatever.”
“Well, that is why I spoke as I did—why I am surprised at seeing her here again. Weren’t you yourself surprised?”
“No, I knew that she was coming. I have a letter telling me the train she would arrive by.”
“Oh!”
The two walked on in silence for a minute or two. Then Horace said, with a fine assumption of good feeling and honest regret:
“I spoke thoughtlessly, old fellow; of course I couldn’t know that you were interested in—in the matter. I truly hope I didn’t say anything to wound your feelings.”
“Not at all,” replied Reuben. “How should you? What you said is what everybody will say—must say. Besides, my feelings are of no interest whatever, so far as this affair is concerned. It is her feelings that I am thinking of; and the more I think—well, the truth is, I am completely puzzled. I have never in all my experience been so wholly at sea.”
Manifestly Horace could do nothing at this juncture but look his sympathy. To ask any question might have been to learn nothing. But his curiosity was so great that he almost breathed a sigh of relief when Reuben spoke again, even though the query he put had its disconcerting side:
“I daresay you never knew much about her before she left Thessaly?”
“I knew her by sight, of course, just as a village boy knows everybody. I take it you did know her. I can remember that she was a pretty girl.”
If there was an underlying hint in this conjunction of sentences, it missed Reuben’s perception utterly. He replied in a grave tone:
“She was in my school, up at the Burfield. And if you had asked me in those days to name the best-hearted girl, the brightest girl, the one who in all the classes had the making of the best woman in her, I don’t doubt that I should have pointed to her. That is what makes the thing so inexpressibly sad to me now; and, what is more, I can’t in the least see my way.”
“Your way to what?”
“Why, to helping her, of course. She has undertaken something that frightens me when I think of it. This is the point: She has made up her mind to come back here, earn her own living decently, face the past out and live it down here among those who know that past best.”
“That’s a resolution that will last about three weeks.”
“No, I think she is determined enough. But I fear that she cruelly underestimates the difficulties of her task. To me it looks hopeless, and I’ve thought it over pretty steadily the last few days.”
“Pardon my asking you,” said Horace, “but you have confided thus far in me—what the deuce have you got to do with either her success or her failure?”
“I’ve told you that I was her teacher,” answered Reuben, still with the slow, grave voice. “That in itself would give me an interest in her. But there has been a definite claim made on me in her behalf. You remember Seth Fairchild, don’t you?”
“Perfectly. He edits a paper down in Tecumseh, doesn’t he? He did, I know, when I went abroad.”
“Yes. Well, his wife—who was his cousin, Annie Fairchild, and who took the Burfield school after I left it to study law—she happens to be an angel. She is the sort of woman who, when you know her, enables you to understand all the exalted and sublime things that have ever been written about her sex. Well, a year or so after she married Seth and went to live in Tecumseh, she came to hear about poor Jessica Lawton, and her woman’s heart prompted her to hunt the girl up and give her a chance for her life. I don’t know much about what followed—this all happened a good many months ago—but I get a letter now from Seth, telling me that the girl is resolved to come home, and that his wife wants me to do all I can to help her.”
“Well, that’s what I call letting a friend in for a particularly nice thing.”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” said Reuben; “I shall be only too glad if I can serve the poor girl. But how to do it—that’s what troubles me.”
“Her project is a crazy one, to begin with. I wonder that sane people like the Fairchilds should have encouraged it.”
“I don’t think they did. My impression is that they regarded it as unwise and tried to dissuade her from it. Seth doesn’t write as if he thought she would succeed.”
“No, I shouldn’t say there was much danger of it. She will be back again in Tecumseh before Christmas.” After a pause Horace added, in a confidential way: “It’s none of my business, old fellow; but if I were you I’d be careful how I acted in this matter. You can’t afford to be mixed up with her in the eyes of the people here. Of course your motives are admirable, but you know what an overgrown village is for gossip. You won’t be credited with good intentions or any disinterestedness, believe me.”
This seemed to be a new view of the situation to Reuben. He made no immediate answer, but walked along with his gaze bent on the track before him and his hands behind his back. At last he said, with an air of speaking to himself:
“But if one does mean well and is perfectly clear about it in his own mind, how far ought he to allow his course to be altered by the possible misconceptions of others? That opens up a big question, doesn’t it?”
“But you have said that you were not clear about it—that you were all at sea.”
“As to means, yes; but not as to motives.”
“Nobody but you will make the distinction. And you have your practice to consider—the confidence of your clients. Fancy the effect it will have on them—your turning up as the chief friend and patron of a—of the Lawton girl! You can’t afford it.” Reuben looked at his companion again with the same calm, impassive gaze. Then he said slowly: “I can see how the matter presents itself to you. I had thought first of going to the dépôt to meet her; but, on consideration, it seemed better to wait and have a talk with her after she had seen her family. I am going out to their place now.”
The tone in which this announcement was made served to change the topic of conversation. The talk became general again, and Horace turned it upon the subject of the number of lawyers in town, their relative prosperity and value, and the local condition of legal business. He found that he was right in guessing that Mr. Clarke enjoyed Thessaly’s share of the business arising from the Minster ironworks, and that this share was more important than formerly, when all important affairs were in the hands of a New York firm. He was interested, too, in what Reuben Tracy revealed about his own practice.
“Oh, I have nothing to complain of,” Reuben said, in response to a question. “It is a good thing to be kept steadily at work—good for a man’s mind as well as for his pocket. Latterly I have had almost too much to attend to, since the railroad business on this division was put in my charge; and I grumble to myself sometimes over getting so little spare time for reading and for other things I should like to attempt. I suppose a good many of the young lawyers here would call that an ungrateful frame of mind. Some of them have a pretty hard time of it, I am afraid. Occasionally I can put some work in their way; but it isn’t easy, because clients seem to resent having their business handled by unsuccessful men. That would be an interesting thing to trace, wouldn’t it?—the law of the human mind which prompts people to boost a man as soon as he has shown that he can climb without help, and to pull down those who could climb well enough with a little assistance.”
“So you think there isn’t much chance for still another young lawyer to enter the field here?” queried Horace, bringing the discussion back to concrete matters.
“Oh, that’s another thing,” replied Reuben. “There is no earthly reason why you shouldn’t try. There are too many lawyers here, it is true, but then I suppose there are too many lawyers everywhere—except heaven. A certain limited proportion of them always prosper—the rest don’t. It depends upon yourself which class you will be in. Go ahead, and if I can help you in any way I shall be very glad.”
“You’re kind, I’m sure. But, you know, it won’t be as if I came a stranger to the place,” said Horace. “My father’s social connections will help me a good deal”—Horace thought he noted a certain incredulous gesture by his companion here, and wondered at it, but went on—“and then my having studied in Europe ought to count. I have another advantage, too, in being on very friendly terms with Mrs. and Miss Minster. I rode up with them from New York to-day, and we had a long talk. I don’t want anything said about it yet, but it looks mightily as if I were to get the whole law business of the ironworks and of their property in general.”
Young Mr. Boyce did not wince or change color under the meditative gaze with which Reuben regarded him upon hearing this; but he was conscious of discomfort, and he said to himself that his companion’s way of staring like an introspective ox at people was unpleasant.
“That would be a tremendous start for you,” remarked Reuben at last. “I hope you won’t be disappointed in it.”
“It seems a tolerably safe prospect,” answered Horace, lightly. “You say that you’re overworked.”
“Not quite that, but I don’t get as much time as I should like for outside matters. I want to go on the school board here, for example—I see ever so many features of the system which seem to me to be flaws, and which I should like to help remedy—but I can’t spare the time. And then there is the condition of the poor people in the quarter grown up around the iron-works and the factories, and the lack of a good library, and the saloon question, and the way in which the young men and boys of the village spend their evenings, and so on. These are the things I am really interested in; and instead of them I have to devote all my energies to deeds and mortgages and specifications for trestle-works. That’s what I meant.”
“Why don’t you take in a partner? That would relieve you of a good deal of the routine.”
“Do you know, I’ve thought of that more than once lately. I daresay that if the right sort of a young man had been at hand, the idea would have attracted me long ago. But, to tell the truth, there isn’t anybody in Thessaly who meets precisely my idea of a partner—whom I quite feel like taking into my office family, so to speak.”
“Perhaps I may want to talk with you again on this point,” said Horace.
To this Reuben made no reply, and the two walked on for a few moments in silence.
They were approaching a big, ungainly, shabby-looking structure, which presented a receding roof, a row of windows with small, old-fashioned panes of glass, and a broad, rickety veranda sprawling the whole width of its front, to the highway on their left. This had once been a rural wayside tavern, but now, by the encircling growth of the village, it had taken on a hybrid character, and managed to combine in a very complete way the coarse demerits of a town saloon with the evil license of a suburban dive. Its location rendered it independent of most of the restrictions which the village authorities were able to enforce in Thessaly itself, and this freedom from restraint attracted the dissipated imagination of town and country alike. It was Dave Rantell’s place, and being known far and wide as the most objectionable resort in Dearborn County, was in reality much worse than its reputation.
The open sheds at the side of the tavern were filled with horses and sleighs, and others were ranged along at the several posts by the roadside in front—these latter including some smart city cutters, and even a landau on runners. From the farther side of the house came, at brief intervals, the sharp report of rifle-shots, rising loud above the indistinct murmuring of a crowd’s conversation.
“It must be a turkey-shoot,” said Reuben. “This man Rantell has them every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he added, as they came in view of the scene beyond the tavern. “There! Have you seen anything in Europe like that?” Let it be stated without delay that there was no trace of patriotic pride in his tone.
The wide gate of the tavern yard was open, and the path through it had been trampled smooth by many feet. In the yard just beyond were clustered some forty or fifty men, standing about in the snow, and with their backs to the road. Away in the distance, and to the right, were visible two or three slouching figures of men. Traversing laterally and leftward the broad, unbroken field of snow, the eye caught a small, dark object on the great white sheet; if the vision was clear and far-sighted, a closer study would reveal this to be a bird standing alone in the waste of whiteness, tied by the leg to a stake near by, and waiting to be shot at. The attention of every man in the throng was riveted on this remote and solitary fowl. There was a deep hush for a fraction of a second after each shot. Then the turkey either hopped to one side, which meant that the bullet had gone whistling past, or sank to the ground after a brief wild fluttering of wings. In the former case, another loaded rifle was handed out, and suspense began again; in the latter event, there ensued a short intermission devoted to beverages and badinage, the while a boy started across the fields toward the throng with the dead turkey, and the distant slouching figures busied themselves in tying up a new feathered target.
“No, it isn’t what you would call elevating, is it?” said Horace, as the two stood looking over the fence upon the crowd. “Still, it has its interest as a national product. I’ve seen dog-fights and cock-mains in England attended by whole thousands of men, that were ever so much worse than this. If you think of it, this isn’t particularly brutal, as such sports go.”
“But what puzzles me is that men should like such sports at all,” said Reuben.
“At any rate,” replied Horace, “we’re better off in that respect than the English are. The massacre of rats in a pit is a thing that you can get an assemblage of nobility, and even royalty, for, over there. Now, that isn’t even relatively true here. Take this turkey-shoot of Rantell’s, for example. You won’t find any gentlemen here; that is, anybody who sets up to be a gentleman in either the English or the American sense of the word.”
As if in ironical answer, a sharp, strident voice rose above the vague babble of the throng inside the yard, and its accents reached the two young men with painful distinctness:
“I’ll bet five dollars that General Boyce kills his six birds in ten shots—bad cartridges barred!”
The compassionate Reuben was quick to feel the humiliation with which this brawling announcement of the General’s presence must cover the General’s son. It had been apparent to him before that Horace would have to considerably revise the boyish estimate of his father’s position and importance which, he brought back with him from Europe. But it was cruel to have the work of disillusion begun in this rude, blunt form. He tried to soften the effect of the blow.
“It isn’t as bad as all that,” he said, tacitly ignoring what they had just heard. “No doubt some rough people do come to these gatherings; but, on the other hand, if a man is fond of shooting, why, don’t you see, this furnishes him with the best kind of test of his skill. Really, there is no reason why he shouldn’t come—and—besides—”
Reuben was not clever at saying things he did not wholly mean, and his good-natured attempt to gloss over the facts came to an abrupt halt from sheer lack of ideas.
“I suppose I shall have to learn to be a Thessalian all over again,” said Horace. “If you don’t mind, well go in. It’s just as well to see the thing.”
Suiting the action to the word, he moved toward the gate. Reuben hesitated for a moment, and then, with an “All right—for a few minutes”—followed him into the yard. The two young men stood upon the outskirts of the crowd for a time, and then, as opportunity favored, edged their way through until they were a part of the inner half-ring around a table, upon which were rifles, cartridges, cleaning rags, a bottle and some tumblers. At their feet, under and about the table, lay several piles of turkeys. The largest of these heaps, containing some dozen birds, was, as they were furtively informed by a small boy, the property of the “General.”
This gentleman, who stood well to the front of the table, might be pardoned for not turning around to note the presence of new-comers, since he himself had some money wagered on his work. He had on the instant fired his third shot, and stood with the smoking gun lowered, and his eyes fixed on the target in concentrated expectancy. The turkey made a movement and somebody called out “hit!” But the General’s keen vision told him better. “No, it was a line shot,” he said, “a foot too high.” He kept his gaze still fixed on the remote object, mechanically taking the fresh gun which was handed to him, but not immediately raising it to his shoulder.
General Sylvanus—familiarly called “Vane”—Boyce was now close upon sixty, of middle height and a thick and portly figure, and with perfectly white, close-cropped hair and mustache. His face had in its day boasted both regular, well-cut features and a clear complexion. But the skin was now of one uniform florid tint, even to the back of his neck, and the outlines of the profile were blurred and fattened. His gray eyes, as they swept the field of snow, had still their old, sharp, commanding glance, but they looked out from red and puffy lids.
Just as he lifted his gun, an interested bystander professed to discover Horace for the first time, and called out exuberantly: “Why, hello, Hod! I say, ‘Vane, here’s your boy Hod!”
“Oh, here, fair play!” shouted some of the General’s backers; “you mustn’t try that on—spoiling his aim in that way.” Their solicitude was uncalled for.
“Damn my boy Hod, and you too!” remarked the General calmly, raising his rifle with an uninterrupted movement, levelling it with deliberation, firing, and killing his bird.
Amid the hum of conversation which arose at this, the General turned, laid his gun down, and stepped across the space to where Horace and Reuben stood.
“Well, my lad,” he said heartily, shaking his son’s hand, “I’m glad to see you back. I’d have been at the dépôt to meet you, only I had this match on with Blodgett, and the money was up. I hope you didn’t mind my damning you just now—I daresay I haven’t enough influence to have it do you much harm—and it was Grigg’s scheme to rattle my nerve just as I was going to shoot. How are you, anyway? How de do, Tracy? What’ll you both drink? This is rye whiskey here, but they’ll bring out anything else you want.”
“I’ll take a mouthful of this,” said Horace; “hold on, not so much.” He poured back some of the generous portion which had been given him, and touched glasses with his father.
“You’re sure you won’t have anything, Tracy?” said the General. “No? You don’t know what’s good for you. Standing around in the cold here, a man needs something.”
“But I’m not going to stand around in the cold,” answered Reuben with a half-smile. “I must be going on in a moment or two.”
“Don’t go yet,” said the General, cheerily, as he put down his glass and took up the gun. “Wait and see me shoot my score. I’ve got the range now.”
“You’ve got to kill every bird but one, now, General,” said one of his friends, in admonition.
“All right; don’t be afraid,” replied the champion, in a confident tone.
But it turned out not to be all right. The seventh shot was a miss, and so was the tenth, upon which, as the final and conclusive one, great interest hung. Some of those who had lost money by reason of their faith in the General seemed to take it to heart, but the General himself displayed no sign of gloom. He took another drink, and then emptied his pockets of all the bank-bills they contained, and distributed them among his creditors with perfect amiability. There was not enough money to go around, evidently, for he called out in a pleasant voice to his son:
“Come here a minute, Hod. Have you got thirty dollars loose in your pocket? I’m that much short.” He pushed about the heap of limp turkeys on the snow under the table with one foot, in amused contemplation, and added: “These skinny wretches have cost us about nine dollars apiece. You might at least have fed ’em a trifle better, Dave.”
Horace produced the sum mentioned and handed it over to his father with a somewhat subdued, not to say rueful, air. He did not quite like the way in which the little word “us” had been used.
While the General was light-heartedly engaged in apportioning out his son’s money, and settling his bill, a new man came up, and, taking a rifle in his hands, inquired the price of a shot. He was told that it was ten cents, and to this information was added with cold emphasis the remark that before he fooled with the guns he must put down his money.
“Oh, I’ve got the coin fast enough,” said the newcomer, ringing four dimes on the table.
“Wait a moment,” said Horace to his father and Reuben, who were about to quit the yard. “Let’s watch Ben Lawton shoot. I might as well see the last of my half-dollar. He’s had one drink out of it already.”
Lawton lifted the gun as if he were accustomed to firearms, and after he had made sure of his footing on the hard-trodden snow, took a long, careful aim, and fired. It was with evident sorrow that he saw the snow fly a few feet to one side of the turkey. He decided to have only two shots more, and one drink, and the drink first—a drink of such full and notable dimensions that Dave Rantell was half-tempted to intervene between the cup and the lip. The two shots which followed were very good shots indeed—one of them even seemed to have cut some feathers into the air—but they killed no turkey.
Poor Ben looked for a long time after his last bullet, as if in some vague hope that it might have paused on the way, and would resume its fatal course in due season. Then he laid the rifle down with a deep sigh, and walked slowly out, with his hands plunged dejectedly into his trousers pockets, and his shoulders more rounded than ever. The habitual expression of helpless melancholy which his meagre, characterless visage wore was deepened now to despair.
“Well, Ben,” said Horace to him, as he shuffled past them, “you were right. You might just as well have hung around the dépôt, and let some one else carry my things. You’ve got no more to show for it now than if you had.”
The young man spoke in the tone of easy, paternal banter which prosperous people find it natural to adopt toward their avowedly weak and foolish brethren, and it did not occur to Lawton to resent it. He stopped, and lifted his head just high enough to look in a gloomy way at Horace and his companions for a moment; then he dropped it again and turned to resume his course without answering. On second thought he halted, and without again looking up, groaned out:
“There ain’t another such a darned worthless fool as I be in the whole darned county. I don’t know what I’ll say to her. I’m a good mind not to go home at all. Here I was, figurin’ on havin’ a real Thanksgiving dinner for her, to try and make her feel glad she’d come back amongst us again; and if I’d saved my money and fired all five shots, I’d a got a bird, sure—and that’s what makes me so blamed mad. It’s always my darned luck!”
While he spoke a boy came up to them, dragging a hand-sled upon which General Boyce’s costly collection of poultry was piled. Horace stopped the lad, and took from the top of the heap two of the best of the fowls.
“Here, Ben,” he said, “take these home with you. We’ve got more than we know what to do with. We should only give them away to people who didn’t need them.”
Lawton had been moved almost to tears by the force of his self-depreciatory emotions. His face brightened now on the instant, as he grasped the legs of the turkeys and felt their weight. He looked satisfiedly down at their ruffling circumference of blue-black feathers, and at their pimply pink heads dragging sidewise on the snow.
“You’re a regular brick, Hod,” he said, with more animation than it was his wont to display. “They’ll be tickled to death down to the house. I’m obliged to you, and so she’ll be—”
He stopped short, weighed the birds again in his hand with a saddened air, and held them out toward Horace. All the joy had gone out of his countenance and tone.
“No; I’m much obliged to you, Hod, but I can’t take ’em,” he said, with pathetic reluctance.
“Nonsense!” replied the young man, curtly. “Don’t make a fool of yourself twice in the same afternoon. Of course you’ll take them. Only go straight home with them, instead of selling them for drinks.”
Horace turned upon his heel as he spoke and rejoined his father and Reuben, who had walked on slowly ahead. The General had been telling his companion some funny story, and his eyes were still twinkling with merriment as his son came up, and he repeated to him the gist of his humorous narrative.
Horace did not seem to appreciate the joke, and kept a serious face even at the most comical part of the anecdote. This haunting recurrence of the Lawton business, as he termed it in his thoughts, annoyed him; and still more was he disturbed and vexed by what he had seen of his father. During his previous visit to Thessaly upon his return from Europe, some months before, the General had been leading a temperate and almost monastic life under the combined restraints of rheumatism and hay-fever, and this present revelation of his tastes and habits came therefore in the nature of a surprise to Horace. The latter was unable to find any elements of pleasure in this surprise, and scowled at the snow accordingly, instead of joining in his father’s laughter. Besides, the story was not altogether of the kind which sits with most dignity on paternal lips.
The General noted his son’s solemnity and deferred to it. “I’m glad you gave that poor devil the turkeys,” he said. “I suppose they’re as poor as they make ’em. Only—what do you think, Tracy; as long as I’d shot all the birds, I might have been consulted, eh, about giving them away?”
The query was put in a jocular enough tone, but it grated upon the young man’s mood. “I don’t think the turkey business is one that either of us particularly shines in,” he replied, with a snap in his tone. “You say that your turkeys cost you nine dollars apiece. Apparently I am by way of paying fifteen dollars each for my two.”
“‘By way of’—that’s an English expression, isn’t it?” put in Reuben, hastily, to avert the threatened domestic dispute. “I’ve seen it in novels, but I never heard it used before.”
The talk was fortunately turned at this from poultry to philology; and the General, though he took no part in the conversation, evinced no desire to return to the less pleasant subject. Thus the three walked on to the corner where their ways separated. As they stood here for the parting moment, Reuben said in an aside to Horace:
“That was a kindly act of yours—to give Lawton the turkeys. I can’t tell you how much it pleased me. Those little things show the character of a man. If you like to come down to my office Friday, and are still of the same mind about a partnership, we will talk it over.”
IREMEMBER having years ago been introduced to one of America’s richest men, as he sat on the broad veranda of a Saratoga hotel in the full glare of the morning sunlight. It is evident that at such a solemn moment I should have been filled with valuable and impressive reflections; yet, such is the perversity and wrong-headedness of the human mind, I could for the life of me evolve no weightier thought than this: “Here is a man who can dispose of hundreds of millions of dollars by a nod of the head, yet cannot with all this countless wealth command a dye for his whiskers which will not turn violet in the sunshine!”
The sleek and sober-visaged butler who moved noiselessly about the dining-room of the Minster household may have had some such passing vision of the vanity of riches, as he served what was styled a Thanksgiving dinner. Vast as the fortune was, it could not surround that board with grateful or lighthearted people upon even this selected festal day.
The room itself must have dampened any but the most indomitably cheerful spirits. It had a sombre and formal aspect, to which the tall oleanders and dwarf palms looking through the glass on the conservatory side lent only an added sense of coldness. The furniture was of dark oak and even darker leather; the walls were panelled in two shades of the same serious tint; the massive, carved sideboard and the ponderous mantel declined to be lifted out of their severe dignity by such trivial accessories as silver and rare china and vases of flowers. There were pictures in plenty, and costly lace curtains inside the heavy outer hangings at the windows, and pretty examples of embroidery here and there which would have brightened any less resolutely grave environment: in this room they went for nothing, or next to nothing.
Four women sat at this Thanksgiving dinner, and each, being in her own heart conscious of distinct weariness, politely took it for granted that the others were enjoying their meal.
Talk languished, or fitfully flared up around some strictly uninteresting subject with artificial fervor the while the butler was in the room. His presence in the house was in the nature of an experiment, and Mrs. Minster from time to time eyed him in a furtive way, and then swiftly turned her glance aside on the discovery that he was eying her. Probably he was as good as other butlers, she reflected; he was undoubtedly English, and he had come to her well recommended by a friend in New York. But she was unaccustomed to having a man servant in the dining-room, and it jarred upon her to call him by his surname, which was Cozzens, instead of by the more familiar Daniel or Patrick as she did the gardener and the coachman. Before he came—a fortnight or so ago—she had vaguely thought of him as in livery; but the idea of seeing him in anything but what she called a “dress suit,” and he termed “evening clothes,” had been definitely abandoned. What she chiefly wished about him now was that he would not look at her all the time.
Mrs. Minster, being occupied in this way, contributed very little to what conversation there was during the dinner. It was not her wont to talk much at any time. She was perhaps a trifle below the medium height of her sex, full-figured rather than stout, and with a dark, capable, and altogether singular face, in which the most marked features were a proud, thin-lipped mouth, which in repose closed tight and drew downward at the corners; small black eyes, that had an air of seeing very cleverly through things; and a striking arrangement of her prematurely white hair, which was brushed straight from the forehead over a high roll. From a more or less careful inspection of this face, even astute people were in the habit of concluding that Mrs. Minster was a clever and haughty woman. In truth, she was neither. Her reserve was due in part to timidity, in part to lack of interest in the matters which seemed to concern those with whom she was most thrown into contact outside her own house. Her natural disposition had been the reverse of unkindly, but it included an element of suspicion, which the short and painful career of her son, and the burden of responsibility for a great estate, had tended unduly to develop. She did not like many of the residents of Thessaly, yet it had never occurred to her to live elsewhere. If the idea had dawned in her mind, she would undoubtedly have picked out as an alternative her native village on the Hudson, where her Dutch ancestors had lived from early colonial times. The life of a big city had never become even intelligible to her, much less attractive. She went to the Episcopal church regularly, although she neither professed nor felt any particular devotion to religious ideals or tenets. She gave of her substance generously, though not profusely, to all properly organized and certified charities, but did not look about for, or often recognize when they came in her way, subjects for private benefaction. She applied the bulk of her leisure time to the writing of long and perfectly commonplace letters to female relatives in various sections of the Republic. She was profoundly fond of her daughters, but was rarely impelled to demonstrative proofs of this affection. Very often she grew tired of inaction, mental and physical; but she accepted this without murmuring as a natural and proper result of her condition in life, much as one accepts an uncomfortable sense of repletion after a dinner. When she did not know what else to do, she ordinarily took a nap.
It must have been by the law of oppositive attraction that her chosen intimate was Miss Tabitha Wilcox, the spare and angular little lady who sat across the table from her, the sole guest at the Thanksgiving dinner. The most vigorous imagination could not conceiveherin the act of dozing for so much as an instant during hours when others kept awake. Vigilant observation and an unwearying interest in affairs were written in every line of her face: you could read them in her bright, sharp eyes; in the alert, almost anxious posture of her figure; in the very conformation of the little rows of iron-gray curls, which mounted like circular steps above each ear. She was a kindly soul, was Miss Tabitha, who could not listen unmoved to any tale of honest suffering, and who gave of her limited income to the poor with more warmth than prudence.
Her position in Thessaly was a unique one. She belonged, undoubtedly, to the first families, for her grandfather, Judge Abijah Wilcox, had been one of the original settlers, in those halcyon years following the close of the Revolution, when the good people of Massachusetts and Connecticut swarmed, uninvited, across the Hudson, and industriously divided up among themselves the territorial patrimony of the slow and lackadaisical Dutchmen. Miss Tabitha still lived in the roomy old house which the judge had built; she sat in one of the most prominent pews in the Episcopal church, and her prescriptive right to be president of the Dorcas Mite Society had not been questioned now these dozen years. Although she was far from being wealthy, her place in the very best and most exclusive society of Thessaly was taken for granted by everybody. But Miss Tabitha was herself not at all exclusive. She knew most of the people in the village: only the insuperable limitations of time and space prevented her knowing them all. And not even these stern barriers availed to bound her information concerning alike acquaintances and strangers. There were persons who mistook her eager desire to be of service in whatever was going forward for meddlesomeness. Some there were who even resented her activity, and thought of her as a malevolent old gossip. These latter were deeply in the wrong. Miss Tabitha loved everybody, and had never consciously done injury to any living soul. As for gossip, she could no more help talking than the robin up in the elm boughs of a sunny April morning can withhold the song that is in him.
It has been said that the presence of the butler threw a gloom over the dinner-party. It did not silence Miss Tabitha, but at least she felt constrained to discourse upon general and impersonal subjects while he was in hearing. The two daughters of the house, who faced each other at the ends of the table, asked her questions or offered comments at intervals, and once or twice their mother spoke. All ate from the plates that were set before them, in a perfunctory way, without evidence of appreciation. There was some red wine in a decanter on the table—I fancy none of them could have told precisely what it was—and of this Miss Tabitha drank a little, diluted with water. The two girls had allowed the butler to fill their glasses as well, and from time to time they made motions as of sipping from these, merely to keep their guest in company. Mrs. Minster had no wine-glasses at her plate, and drank ice-water. Every time that any one of the others lifted the wine to her lips, a common thought seemed to flash through the minds around the table—the memory of the son and heir who had died from drink.
When the butler, with an accession of impressiveness in his reserved demeanor, at last handed around plates containing each its thin layer of pale meat, Ethel Minster was moved to put into words what all had been feeling:
“Mamma, this isn’t like Thanksgiving at all!” she said, with the freedom of a favorite child; “it was ever so much nicer to have the turkey on the table where we could all see him, and pick out in our minds what part we would especially like. To have the carving done outside, and only slices of the breast brought in to us—it is as if we were away from home somewhere, in a hotel among strangers.”
Mrs. Minster, by way of answer, looked at the butler, the glance being not so much an inquiry as a reference of the matter to one who was a professor of this particular sort of thing. Her own inclination jumped with that of her daughter, but the possession of a butler entailed certain responsibilities, which must be neither ignored nor evaded. Happily Cozzens’s mind was not wholly inelastic. He uttered no word, but, with a slight obeisance which comprehended mistress and daughter and guest in careful yet gracious gradations of significance, went out, and presently returned with a huge dish, which he set in front of Mrs. Minster. He brought the carving instruments, and dignifiedly laid them in their place, as a chamberlain might invest a queen with her sceptre. Even when Miss Kate said, “If we need you any more, Cozzens, we will ring,” he betrayed neither surprise nor elation, but bowed again gravely, and left the room, closing the door noiselessly behind him.
“I am sure he will turn out a perfect jewel,” said Miss Tabitha. “You were very fortunate to get him.”
“But there are times,” said Kate, “when one likes to take off one’s rings, even if the stones are perfection itself.”
This guarded reference to the fact that Mrs. Minster had secured an admirable servant who was a nuisance at small feminine dinner-parties sufficed to dismiss the subject. Miss Tabitha assumed on the moment a more confidential manner and tone:
“I wonder if you’ve heard,” she said, “that young Horace Boyce has come back. Why, now I think of it, he must have come up in your train.”
“He was in our car,” replied Mrs. Minster. “He sat by us, and talked all the way up. I never heard a man’s tongue run on so in all my born days.”
“He takes that from his grandmother Beekman,” explained Miss Tabitha, by way of parenthesis. “She was something dreadful: talking ‘thirteen to the dozen’ doesn’t begin to express it. You don’t remember her. She went down to New York when I was a mere slip of a girl, to have a set of false teeth fitted—they were a novelty in those days—and it was winter time, and she wouldn’t listen to the dentist’s advice to keep her mouth shut, and she caught cold, and it turned into lockjaw, and that was the last of her. It was just after her daughter Julia had been married to young Sylvanus Boyce. Dear me, how time flies! I can remember her old bombazine gown and her black Spanish mits, and her lace cap on one side of her head, as if it were only yesterday. And here Julia’s been dead twenty years and more, and her grown-up son’s come home from Europe, and the General—”
The old maid stopped short, because her sentence could not be charitably finished. “How didyoulike Horace?” she asked, to shift the subject, and looking at Kate Minster.
The tall, dark girl with the rich complexion and the beautiful, proud eyes glanced up at her questioner impatiently, as if disposed to resent the inquiry. Then she seemed to reflect that no offence could possibly have been intended, for she answered pleasantly enough:
“He seemed an amiable sort of person; and I should judge he was clever, too. He always was a smart boy—I think that is the phrase. He talked to mamma most of the time.”
“How can you say that, Kate? I’m sure it was because you scarcely answered him at all, and read your book—which was not very polite.”
“I was afraid to venture upon anything more than monosyllables with him,” said Kate, “or I should have been ruder still. I should have had to tell him that I did not like Americans who made the accident of their having been to Europe an excuse for sneering at those who haven’t been there, and that would have been highly impolite, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t think he sneered,” replied Mrs. Minster. “I thought he tried to be as affable and interesting as he knew how. Pray what did he say that was sneering?”
“Oh, dear me, I don’t in the least remember what he said. It was his tone, I think, more than any special remark. He had an air of condoling with me because he had seen so many things that I have only read about; and he patronized the car, and the heating-apparatus, and the conductor, and the poor little black porter, and all of us.”
“He was a pretty boy. Does he hold his own, now he’s grown up?” asked Miss Tabitha. “He used to favor the Boyce side a good deal.”
“I should say he favored the Boyce side to the exclusion of everybody else’s side,” said Kate, with a little smile at her own conceit, “particularly his own individual section of it. He is rather tall, with light hair, light eyes, light mustache, light talk, light everything; and he looks precisely like all the other young men you see in New York nowadays, with their coats buttoned in just such a way, and their gloves of just such a shade, and a scarf of just such a shape with the same kind of pin in it, and their hats laid sidewise in the rack so that you can observe that they have a London maker’s brand in-side. There! you have his portrait to at. Do you recognize it?”
“What will poor countrified Thessaly ever do with such a metropolitan model as this?” asked Ethel. “We shall all be afraid to go out in the street, for fear he should discover us to be out of the fashion.”
“Oh, he is not going to stay here,” said Mrs. Minster. “He told us that he had decided to enter some law firm in New York. It seems a number of very flattering openings have been offered him.”
“I happen to know,” put in Miss Tabitha, “that heisgoing to stay here. What is more, he has as good as struck up a partnership with Reuben Tracy. I had it this morning from a lady whose brother-in-law is extremely intimate with the General.”
“That is very curious,” mused Mrs. Minster. “He certainly talked yesterday of settling in New York, and mentioned the offers he had had, and his doubt as to which to accept.”
“Are you sure, mamma,” commented Kate, “that he wasn’t talking merely to hear himself talk?”
“I like the looks of that Reuben Tracy,” interposed Ethel. “He always suggests the idea that he is the kind of man you could tie something to, and come back hours afterward and find it all there just as you had left it.”
The girl broke into an amused laugh at the appearance of this metaphor, when she had finished it, and the others joined in her gayety. Under the influence of this much-needed enlivenment, Miss Tabitha took another piece of turkey and drank some of her wine and water. They began talking about Tracy.
“It will be a good thing for Horace Boyce,” said Miss Tabitha. “He couldn’t have a steadier or better partner for business. They tell me that Tracy handles more work, as it is, than any other two lawyers in town. He’s a very good-hearted man too, and charitable, as everybody will admit who knows him. What a pity it is that he doesn’t take an interest in church affairs, and rent a pew, and set an example to young men in that way.”
“On the contrary, I sometimes think, Tabitha,” said Miss Kate, idly crumbling the bread on the cloth before her, “that it is worth while to have an occasional good man or woman altogether outside the Church. They prevent those on the inside from getting too conceited about their own virtues. There would be no living with the parsons and the deacons and the rest if you couldn’t say to them now and then: ‘See, you haven’t a monopoly of goodness. Here are people just as honest and generous and straightforward as you are yourselves, who get along without any altar or ark whatever.’”
Mrs. Minster looked at her daughter with an almost imperceptible lifting of the brows. Her comment had both apology and mild reproof in it:
“To hear Kate talk, one would think she was a perfect atheist. She is always defending infidels and such people. I am sure I can’t imagine where she takes it from.”
“Why, mamma!” protested the girl, “who has said anything about infidels? We have no earthly right to brand people with that word, simply because we don’t see them going to church as we do. We none of us know this Mr. Tracy to even bow to him—at least I don’t—and we know no more about his religious opinions than we do about—what shall I say?—about the man in the moon. But I have heard others speak of him frequently, and always with respect. I wasn’t defending him. Why should I? I merely said it was worth while to keep in mind that men could be good without renting a pew in church.”
“I don’t like to hear you speak against religion, that is all,” replied the mother, placidly. “It isn’t—ladylike.”
“And if you come to inquire,” interposed Miss Tabitha, speaking with great gentleness, as of one amiably admonishing impetuous and ill-informed youth, “you will generally find that there is something not quite as it should be about these people who are so sure that they need no help to be good. Only last evening Sarah Cheeseborough told me something about your Mr. Tracy—”
“MyMr. Tracy!”
“Well, abouttheMr. Tracy, then, that she saw with her own eyes. I would scarcely have believed it. It only goes to show what poor worms the best of us are, if we just rely upon our own strength alone.”
“What was it?” asked Mrs. Minster, with a slight show of interest.
Miss Tabitha by way of answer threw a meaning glance at the two girls, and discreetly took a sip of her wine and water.
“Oh, don’t mind us, Tabitha!” said Kate. “I am twenty-three, and Ethel is nearly twenty, and we are allowed to sit up at the table quite as if we were grown people.”
The sarcasm was framed in pleasantry, and Miss Tabitha took it in smiling good part, with no further pretence of reservation.
“Well, then, you must know that Ben Lawton—he’s a shiftless sort of coot who lives out in the hollow, and picks up odd jobs; the sort of people who were brought up on the canal, and eat woodchucks—Ben Lawton has a whole tribe of daughters. Some of them work around among the farmers, and some are in the button factory, and some are at home doing nothing; and the oldest of the lot, she ran away from here five years ago or so, and went to Tecumseh. She was a good-looking girl—she worked one season for my sister near Tyre, and I really liked her looks—but she went altogether to the dogs, and, as I say, quit these parts, everybody supposed for good. But, lo and behold! what must she do but turn up again like a bad penny, after all this time, and, now I think of it, come back on the very train you travelled by, yesterday, too!”
“There is nothing very remarkable about that,” commented Kate. “So far as I have seen, one doesn’t have to show a certificate of character to buy a railway ticket. The man at the window scowls upon the just and the unjust with impartial incivility.”
“Just wait,” continued Miss Tabitha, impressively, “wait till you have heard all! This girl—Jess Lawton, they call her—drove home on the express-sleigh with her father right in broad daylight. And who do you think followed up there on foot—in plain sight, too—and went into the house, and stayed there a full half hour? Why, the immaculate Mr. Tracy! Sarah Cheeseborough saw him pass the place, and watched him go into their house—you can see across lots from her side windows to where the Lawtons live—and just for curiosity she kept track of the time. The girl hadn’t been home an hour before he made his appearance, and Sarah vows she hasn’t seen him on that road before in years.Nowwhat do you think?”
“I think Sarah Cheesborough might profitably board up her side windows. It would help her to concentrate her mind on her own business,” said Kate. Her sister Ethel carried this sentiment farther by adding: “So do I! She is a mean, meddlesome old cat. I’ve heard you say so yourself, Tabitha.”
The two elder ladies took a different view of the episode, and let it be seen; but Mrs. Minster seized the earliest opportunity of changing the topic of conversation, and no further mention was made during the afternoon of either Reuben Tracy or the Lawtons.
The subject was, indeed, brought up later on, when the two girls were alone together in the little boudoir connecting their apartments. Pale-faced Ethel sat before the fire, dreamily looking into the coals, while her sister stood behind her, brushing out and braiding for the night the younger maiden’s long blonde hair.
“Do you know, Kate,” said Ethel, after a long pause, “it hurt me almost as if that Mr. Tracy had been a friend of ours, when Tabitha told about him and—and that woman. It is so hard to have to believe evil of everybody. You would like to think well of some particular person whom you have seen—just as a pleasant fancy of the mind—and straightway they come and tell odious things about him. Didn’t it annoy you? And did you believe it?” Kate drew the ivory brush slowly over the flowing, soft-brown ringlets lying across her hand, again and again, but kept silence until Ethel repeated her latter question. Then she said, evasively:
“When we get to be old maids, we sha’n’t spend our time in collecting people’s shortcomings, as boys collect postage-stamps, shall we, dear?”