and when her mother died, this young lady was left at a tender age with her seafaring father on her hands, and they didn’t know what to do with each other. But the paternal pirate had a particular friend in a Mr. Farrell, the merchant who owned most of his vessel, and this Mr. Farrell had the little girl brought up and educated with his half sisters—he was a bachelor and very much their elder. One day the captain came home from a voyage, and was drowned by the capsizing of his sailboat in the bay; I believe that’s the death that old sea captains generally die; and this seemed to suggest a new idea to old Mr. Farrell. He thought he would get married, and he observed that the little girl under his charge was an extremely beautiful young woman, and he fell in love with her, and married her—to the disgust of his half sisters, who didn’t like her. He was a very respectable old party; Robert knew him quite well in the way of business, but I never saw anything of her in society; and if she liked age and respectability, it was all very well, especially as he died pretty soon afterward—I don’t know exactly how soon.”
“He left her his money, I suppose?”
“Yes, he did; and that’s the oddest part of it; there was very little of the money, and Mr. Farrell was supposed to be rich. Still, there was enough to have supported her in comfort while she quietly waited for her second husband, if she’d been content to wait quietly; and she could easily have kept Mr. Farrell’s level in society if she had remained with his family. In fact, she could have risen some notches higher; there are plenty of people who would have been glad of her as a sort of ornamental protégée, don’t you know; and if she had got a few snubs, it would have done her good. But she wouldn’t be patronized and she wouldn’t wait quietly.”
“Perhaps you’ve grown to be something of a snob, Susan.”
“I know it; I own it. Did I ever deny it? It’s the only safe ground for a woman. But Mrs. Farrell preferred to go living on in that demi-semi-Bohemian way—”
“What demi-semi-Bohemian way?”
“Oh, skirmishing round from one shabby-genteel boarding house to another, and one family hotel to another, and setting up housekeeping in rooms, and studying music at the Conservatory, and taking lessons in all the fine arts, and trying to give parlor readings, and that—and not doing it in earnest, but making a great display and spectacle of it. And so instead of keeping her little income to dress on, and getting invitations to Newport for the summer, she’s here in a farmhouse with us old fogies and decayed gentles and cultivated persons of small means. But it’s rather odd about Mrs. Farrell. I don’t believe she would enjoy herself in society; it has limitations; it doesn’t afford her the kind of scope she wants; it doesn’t respond with the sort of immediate effects that she likes—at least Boston society doesn’t. What Mrs. Belle Farrell wishes to do is something vivid, stunning; and that isn’t quite what society smiles upon—in Boston. Besides, society may be very selfish, but it really requires great self-sacrifice, and I don’t believe Mrs. Belle Farrell is quite equal to that. Don’t you see?”
“Dimly. Did she ever try the Cause of Woman, among her other experiments?”
“Well, that requires self-sacrifice, too, in its way; and Mrs. Farrell doesn’t like women very much, and she does like men very much; and she couldn’t bear to be grotesque in men’s eyes. Not that she would respect men much, or more than she does women. She’s very queer. I suppose she has streaks of genius; just enough to spoil her for human nature’s daily food.”
“We do find genius indigestible—in women,” allowed Gilbert, thoughtfully. “But isn’t life a little less responsive to her vivid intentions at Woodward farm than it would be anywhere else? Forgive the remark if there seems to be any unpleasant implication in it.”
“You’ve nothing to be forgiven, William. We know we are dull; we glory in our torpidity. But I suppose Mrs. Farrell has had the immense relief, here, of not trying to produce any effect. Consciously, I mean; unconsciously, she never can stop trying it till she’s in her grave.”
Gilbert, who had leaned forward with interest, in the course of Mrs. Gilbert’s tale, now fell back again in his chair, and said: “Oh, I see. You are prejudiced against Mrs. Belle Farrell. You have among you here a woman of extraordinary beauty, who strives in her own fashion after the ideal, who struggles to escape from the stupid round of your cares and duties and proprieties, and you want to hem her in with the same dread and misapprehension that imprison her life in your brutal Boston. She longs for a breath of free mountain air, and you stifle her with your dense social atmosphere. I see it all, plainly enough. You misinterpret that sensitive, generous, proud spirit. But no matter; I shall soon be able to make my own version.”
“She’ll give you every facility. I have no doubt she’s in her room now, preparing little hints and suggestions for your fancy to-morrow. Her dress at breakfast will tell the tale. But you needn’t flatter yourself, William, that she’ll care for you personally or individually; it’s you in the abstract that will interest her, as a handsome young man that certain effects of posture and drapery and gesture may be tried upon. I should like to know just how she stood and stared when you met her, you two, there in the berry pasture, alone. Did she look magnificently startled, splendidly frightened? The woman wouldn’t really have minded meeting a panther.”
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