want you to try them,” he said, almost pleadingly, “I’m sure you’ll like them. They are a special brand the steward at the Union League gets for me.”
This time John consented, and he seemed to feel that the act involved a responsibility to talk, for he said, with an effort at amiability as he struck a match:
“Your wife seems to be looking very well.”
“Yes, Isabel’s health is perfect, and it always benefits her to get out in the country. That’s a kind of Irishism isn’t it? I mean it makes her good health more obvious.”
“Good health is a great thing,” John answered.
The conversation was running emptings again, almost at the start. Albert made a heroic effort to strengthen it.
“Well, this is a regular quakers’ meeting,” he said, briskly. “We see each other so seldom, we are almost strangers when we do meet. I want to be frank with you, come now, and you should be frank with me. You have something on your minds, I can see. Isn’t it something I ought to know?”
Seth spoke again: “Perhaps on the evening of one’s mother’s funeral it isn’t to be expected that even brothers should feel chatty.”
The village journalist felt the injustice of this comment from the youngster.
“No, Seth,” he said, “Don’t snap Albert up in that fashion. I dare say he feels the thing, in his own way, as much as the rest of us. You are right, Albert; there is something, and I’ll tell you plainly what it is. Do you see those poplars over there? In the morning their shadows Come almost to our front door. Father planted them with his own hands. When I was a boy, I used to play over there, and climb up on to the bolls, and pretend I was to build houses there, like in Swiss Family Robinson. Well, that land passed out of our hands so long ago—it’s been an old story for years. Do you see the roof of the red school-house over back of the hill?” turning toward the South. “Or no, the light is too poor now, but you know where it is. When I used to cut ’cross lots to school there, I went the whole way over father’s land. Now, if I wanted to go there, how many people would I trespass on, Seth?”
“Ferguson owns the clover meadow, and Pratt has the timothy meadow, and what we used to call the berry patch belongs to Sile Thomas; he’s begun to build a house on it.”
“Precisely. Why even the fence close to where mother’s grave is, divides ours from another man’s land now.”
“Sabrina spoke to me about all this this afternoon,” said Albert hesitatingly, “and I tried, as I often have before, to make her understand that that must be the natural course of affairs, so long as the East tries to compete with the West in farming.”
“Well that may be all right, but Elhanan Pratt seems to manage to compete with the West, as you call it, and so do the Fergusons and all the rest of them. We are the only ones who appear to get left, every time. Of course, it’s somebody’s fault. Father’s been a poor manager, no use of denying that. But that doesn’t make it any the easier to bear. Father hardly knows which way to turn for ours from another man’s now. Money; he might have scraped through the year if hops had had a good season, but at nine cents a pound it was hardly worth while to take them to the depot. You can’t clear expenses at less than eleven cents. And then if he does have a fairly decent year, his hop-pickers are always the most drunken, idle gang of them all, who eat their heads off, and steal more fruit and chickens than they pick boxes, and if anybody’s hops are spoiled in the kiln, you can bet on their being Fairchild’s, every time. And three years ago, it was the hop merchant who failed, just at the opportune moment, and let Father in for a whole years’ profit and labor. Of course, it’s all bad luck, mismanagement, whatever you like to call it, and it can’t be helped, I suppose. But it makes a man sour, and it broke poor mother’s heart. And then here’s Seth.”
“Oh, never mind me, I can stand it, I guess, if the rest can. I’m not complaining” came from the figure on the bucket—only dimly to be seen now, in the shadow of the curb, and the increasing darkness.
“Here’s Seth,” continued John, without noting the disclaimer. “You and I had some advantages—of course, mine were not to be compared with yours, but still I was given a chance, such as it was and I don’t know that I would trade what I learned at work during college years for a college education—but this poor boy, who’s thought about him, who’s given him a chance to show what’s in him? He’s been allowed to come up as he could, almost like any farm laborer. His mother tried to do her little, but what spirit did she have for it, and what time did the drudgery here give him? Thank God! He’s had the stuff in him to work at education himself, and he’s got the making of the best man of us three. But it’s no thanks to you. And that’s why we feel hard, Albert. Nobody supposes you could make a good farmer and manager out of father; nobody blames you for a bad hop season, or the dishonesty of Biggs. But I do say that of us three brothers there’s one who frets and worries over the thing, and though he’s a poor man, does all he can afford to do, and more too, to help make it better; and there’s another, young, ambitious, capable, whose nose is held down to the grindstone, and the best years of whose life are being miserably spent in a hopeless wrestling with debt and disaster; and there’s a third brother, the oldest brother, rich, easy, enjoying all the luxuries of life, who don’t give a damn about it all! That’s what I say, and if you don’t like it, you needn’t!”
The silence which ensued was of the kind that can be felt. The two cigars at the corners of the old curb glowed intermittently in the darkness. John’s had gone out during his speech, and as he re-lighted it, the glare of the match showed an excited, indignant face. There was no room for doubt, after the momentary exhibit which the red light made, that John was very much in earnest.
Albert was thinking laboriously on his answer. Meantime, he said, to fill the interval “Do you like the cigar?”
“Yes; a fifteen center, isn’t it?”
Albert had it in his mind to say truthfully that he paid $180 per thousand, but the fear of invidious comparisons rose before him in time, and he said “About that, I think.”
He waited a moment, still meditating, and threw out another stop-gap: “It’s curious how the rhetorical habit grows on a man who writes leading articles. I noticed that you used three adjectives every time, the regular cumulative thing, you know.”
“Maybe so; it would be more to the purpose to hear what you think about the spirit of my oration; the form doesn’t matter so much.”
“Well, I will tell you, John,” said Albert, slowly, still feeling his way, “to speak frankly, no doubt there’s a good deal in what you say. I feel that there is. But you ought to consider that it isn’t easy for a man living in a great city, immersed in business cares, and engrossed in the labors of his profession, to realise all these things, and see them as you, who are here on the ground, see them. It’s hardly fair to attack me as heartless, when you present these facts to me for the first time.”
“For the first time! You ought to have seen them for yourself without presenting. And then you said Sabrina had often discussed the subject with you.”
“Oh, but her point of view is always family dignity, the keeping up of the Fairchilds’ homestead in baronial state, and that sort of thing. You should have heard her this afternoon, telling me how her fathers name used to be coupled with Dearborn County, just as Silas Wright’s was with Dutchess—either Dutchess or Delaware, I forget which she said—but it was very funny.”
“Sabrina
