Isabelle noticed that Mrs. Adams"s eyes glowed, as she gazed at the man.
"I sent in my resignation last week."
"Getting ready for the public platform?" some one suggested. "You won"t find much enthusiasm for those sentiments; wages are too high!"
There was a moment of unpleasant silence. The Kentuckian raised his head as if to retort, then collected himself, and remarked meekly:--
"Pardon me, Mrs. Lane, this is not the occasion for such a discussion. I was carried away by my feelings. Sometimes the real thought will burst out."
The apology scarcely bettered matters, and Isabelle"s response was flat.
"I am sure it is always interesting to hear both sides."
"But I can"t see that to a good citizen there can be two sides to the lamentable ma.s.sacre of our President," the Senator said severely. "I had the privilege of knowing our late President intimately, and I may say that I never knew a better man,--he was another Lincoln!"
"I don"t see where Mr. Darnell can find this general discontent," the Vice-president of the A. and P. put in suavely. "The country has never been so prosperous as during the McKinley-Hanna regime,--wages at the high level, exports increasing, crops abundant. What any honest and industrious man has to complain of, I can"t see. Why, we are looking for men all the time, and we can"t get them, at any price!"
""Ye shall not live by bread alone,"" Darnell muttered. It was a curious remark for a dinner-party, Isabelle thought. Mrs. Adams"s lips curled as if she understood it. But now that the fiery lawyer had taken to quoting the Bible no one paid any further attention to him, and the party sank back into little duologues appropriate to the occasion. Later Bessie confessed to Isabelle that she had been positively frightened lest the Kentuckian would do "something awful,"--he had been drinking, she thought. But Darnell remained silent for the brief time before the ladies left the room, merely once raising his eyes apologetically to Isabelle with his wine-gla.s.s at his lips, murmuring so that she alone could hear him,--"I drink to the G.o.ds of Prosperity!" She smiled back her forgiveness. He had behaved very badly, almost wrecked her successful dinner; but somehow she could not dislike him. She did not understand what he was saying or why he should say it when people were having a good time; but she felt it was part of his interesting and uncertain nature....
Presently the coffee and cigars came and the women went across the hall, while the men talked desultorily until the sound of Bessie"s voice singing a French song to Isabella"s accompaniment attracted them. After the next song the visitors went, their car being due to leave on the Eastern express. They said many pleasant things to Isabelle, and the Senator, holding her hand in his broad, soft palm, whispered:--
"We can"t let so much charm stay buried in Torso!"
So when the last home guest had departed and Lane sat down before the fire for another cigar, Isabelle drew her chair close to his, her heart beating with pleasant emotions.
"Well?" she said expectantly.
"Splendid--everything! They liked it, I am sure. I felt proud of you, Belle!"
"It was all good but the fish,--yes, I thought our party was very nice!"
Then she told him what the Senator had said, and this time Lane did not repel the idea of their moving to wider fields. He had made a good impression on "the New York crowd," and he thought again complacently of the Torso and Northern equipment bonds.
"Something may turn up before long, perhaps."
New York! It made her heart leap. She felt that she was now doing the wife"s part admirably, furthering John"s interests by being a competent hostess, and she liked to further his interests by giving pleasant dinners, in an attractive gown, and receiving the admiration of clever men. It had not been the way that her mother had helped on the Colonel; but it was another way, the modern way, and a very agreeable way.
"Darnell is an awful fool," Lane commented. "If he can"t hold on to himself any better than he did to-night, he won"t get far."
"Did you know that he had resigned?"
"No,--it"s just as well he has. I don"t think the A. and P. would have much use for him. He"s headed the wrong way;" and he added with hardly a pause, "I think we had better cut the Darnells out, Isabelle. They are not our sort."
Isabelle, thinking that this was the man"s prejudice, made no reply.
"It was too bad Rob Falkner wouldn"t come. It would have been a good thing for him to meet influential people."
Already she spoke with an air of commanding the right sort that her husband had referred to.
"He doesn"t make a good impression on people," Lane remarked. "Perhaps he will make good with his work."
As a man who had made his own way he felt the great importance of being able to "get on" with people, to interest them, and keep them aware of one"s presence. But he was broad enough to recognize other roads to success.
"So you were quite satisfied, John?" his wife asked as she kissed him good-night.
"Perfectly--it was the right thing--every way--all but Darnell"s rot; and that didn"t do much harm."
So the two went to their rest perfectly satisfied with themselves and their world. Lane"s last conscious thought was a jumble of equipment bonds, and the idea of his wife at the head of a long dinner table in some very grand house--in New York.
CHAPTER IX
The Darnells had a farm a few miles out of Torso, and this spring they had given up their house on the square and moved to the farm permanently.
Bessie said it was for Mrs. Darnell"s health; men said that the lawyer was in a tight place with the banks; and gossip suggested that Darnell preferred being in Torso without his wife whenever he was there. The farm was on a small hill above a sluggish river, and was surrounded by a growth of old sycamores and maples. There was a long stretch of fertile fields in front of the house, dotted by the huge barns and steel windmills of surrounding farms.
One Sunday in early May the Lanes were riding in the direction of the Darnell place, and Isabelle persuaded her husband to call there. "I promised to ride out here and show him the horses," she explained. The house was a shabby frame affair, large for a farmhouse, with porticoes and pillars in Southern style. They found the Darnells with the Falkners in the living-room. Tom Darnell was reading an Elizabethan play aloud, rolling out the verse in resounding declamation, punctuated by fervid appreciation,--"G.o.d! but that"s fine!" "Hear this thing sing." "Just listen to this ripper."
"O G.o.d! O G.o.d! that it were possible To undo things done; to call back yesterday!
That Time could turn up his swift sandy gla.s.s, To untell the days, and to redeem the hours!" ...
When the Lanes had found chairs before the fire, he kept on reading, but with less enthusiasm, as if he felt an alien atmosphere. Falkner listened to the lines with closed eyes, his grim jaw relaxed, the deep frown smoothed. Bessie stroked a white cat,--it was plain that her thoughts were far away. Mrs. Darnell, who looked slovenly but pretty, stared vacantly out of the window. The sun lay in broad, streaks on the dusty floor; there was an air of drowsy peace, broken only by the warm tones of the lawyer as his voice rose and fell over the spirited verse. Isabelle enjoyed it all; here was something out of her usual routine. Darnell"s face, which reflected the emotion of the lines, was attractive to her. He might not be the "right sort"; but he was unusual.... Finally Darnell flung the book into the corner and jumped up.
"Here I am boring you good people with stuff dead and gone these hundreds of years. Falkner always starts me off. Let"s have a drink and take a look at the horses."
The living-room was a mess of furniture and books, winegla.s.ses, bottles, wraps, whips, and riding-boots. Lane looked it over critically, while Darnell found some tumblers and poured out wine. Then they all went to the stable and dawdled about, talking horse. The fields were green with the soft gra.s.s, already nearly a foot high. Over the house an old grape-vine was budding in purple b.a.l.l.s. There was a languor and sweetness to the air that instigated laziness. Although Lane wished to be off, Isabelle lingered on, and Darnell exclaimed hospitably: "You stay to dinner, of course! It is just plain dinner, Mrs. Lane,"--and he swept away all denial. Turning to his wife, who had said nothing, he remarked, "It"s very good of them to come in on us like this, isn"t it, Irene?"
Mrs. Darnell started and mumbled:--
"Yes, I am sure!"
His manners to his wife were always perfect, deferential,--why should she shrink before him? Isabelle wondered.... Dinner, plentiful and appetizing, was finally provided by the one negro woman. Darnell tried to talk to Lane, but to Isabelle"s surprise her husband was at a disadvantage:--the two men could not find common ground. Then Darnell and Falkner quoted poetry, and Isabelle listened. It was all very different from anything she knew. While the others waited for their coffee, Darnell showed her the old orchard,--"to smell the first blossoms." It was languorously still there under the trees, with the misty fields beyond. Darnell said dreamily:--
"This is where I"d like to be always,--no, not six miles from Torso, but in some far-off country, a thousand miles from men!"
"You, a farmer!" laughed Isabelle. "And what about Congress, and the real anarchists?"
"Oh, you cannot understand! You do not belong to the fields as I do." He pointed ironically to her handsome riding skirt. "You are of the cities, of people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. While I--" He made a gesture of despair,--half comic, half serious,--and his dark face became gloomy.
Isabelle was amused at what she called his "heroics," but she felt interested to know what he was; and it flattered her that he should see her "spreading gay wings among the houses of men." These days she liked to think of herself that way.
"You will be in Washington, while we are still in Torso!" she answered.
"Maybe," he mused. "Well, we play the game--play the game--until it is played out!"
"He is not happy with his wife," Isabelle concluded sagely; "she doesn"t understand him, and that"s why she has that half-scared look."
"I believe you really want to play the game as much as anybody," she ventured with a little thrill of surprise to find herself talking so personally with a man other than her husband.