At last the unendurably long meal, served with ostentatious profusion, was at an end. Miss Meadowcroft rose with her ghostly solemnity, and granted me my dismissal in these words:
“We are early people at the farm, Mr. Lefrank. I wish you goodnight.”
She laid her bony hands on the back of Mr. Meadowcroft’s invalid-chair, cut him short in his farewell salutation to me, and wheeled him out to his bed as if she were wheeling him out to his grave.
“Do you go to your room immediately, sir? If not, may I offer you a cigar—provided the young gentlemen will permit it?”
So, picking his words with painful deliberation, and pointing his reference to “the young gentlemen” with one sardonic side-look at them, Mr. John Jago performed the duties of hospitality on his side. I excused myself from accepting the cigar. With studied politeness, the man of the glittering brown eyes wished me a goodnight’s rest, and left the room.
Ambrose and Silas both approached me hospitably, with their open cigar-cases in their hands.
“You were quite right to say ‘No,’” Ambrose began. “Never smoke with John Jago. His cigars will poison you.”
“And never believe a word John Jago says to you,” added Silas. “He is the greatest liar in America, let the other be whom he may.”
Naomi shook her forefinger reproachfully at them, as if the two sturdy young farmers had been two children.
“What will Mr. Lefrank think,” she said, “if you talk in that way of a person whom your father respects and trusts? Go and smoke. I am ashamed of both of you.”
Silas slunk away without a word of protest. Ambrose stood his ground, evidently bent on making his peace with Naomi before he left her.
Seeing that I was in the way, I walked aside toward a glass door at the lower end of the room. The door opened on the trim little farm-garden, bathed at that moment in lovely moonlight. I stepped out to enjoy the scene, and found my way to a seat under an elm-tree. The grand repose of nature had never looked so unutterably solemn and beautiful as it now appeared, after what I had seen and heard inside the house. I understood, or thought I understood, the sad despair of humanity which led men into monasteries in the old times. The misanthropical side of my nature (where is the sick man who is not conscious of that side of him?) was fast getting the upper hand of me when I felt a light touch laid on my shoulder, and found myself reconciled to my species once more by Naomi Colebrook.
CHAPTER III. THE MOONLIGHT MEETING.
“I WANT to speak to you,” Naomi began “You don’t think ill of me for following you out here? We are not accustomed to stand much on ceremony in America.”
“You are quite right in America. Pray sit down.”
She seated herself by my side, looking at me frankly and fearlessly by the light of the moon.
“You are related to the family here,” she resumed, “and I am related too. I guess I may say to you what I couldn’t say to a stranger. I am right glad you have come here, Mr. Lefrank; and for a reason, sir, which you don’t suspect.”
“Thank you for the compliment you pay me, Miss Colebrook, whatever the reason may be.”
She took no notice of my reply; she steadily pursued her own train of thought.
“I guess you may do some good, sir, in this wretched house,” the girl went on, with her eyes still earnestly fixed on my face. “There is no love, no trust, no peace, at Morwick Farm. They want somebody here, except Ambrose. Don’t think ill of Ambrose; he is only thoughtless. I say, the rest of them want somebody here to make them ashamed of their hard hearts, and their horrid, false, envious ways. You are a gentleman; you know more than they know; they can’t help themselves; they must look up to you. Try, Mr. Lefrank, when you have the opportunity—pray try, sir, to make peace among them. You heard what went on at supper-time; and you were disgusted with it. Oh yes, you were! I saw you frown to yourself; and I know what that means in you Englishmen.”
There was no choice but to speak one’s mind plainly to Naomi. I acknowledged the impression which had been produced on me at supper-time just as plainly as I have acknowledged it in these pages. Naomi nodded her head in undisguised approval of my candor.
“That will do, that’s speaking out,” she said. “But—oh my! you put it a deal too mildly, sir, when you say the men don’t seem to be on friendly terms together here. They hate each other. That’s the word, Mr. Lefrank—hate; bitter, bitter, bitter hate!” She clinched her little fists; she shook them vehemently, by way of adding emphasis to her last words; and then she suddenly remembered Ambrose. “Except Ambrose,” she added, opening her hand again, and laying it very earnestly on my arm. “Don’t go and misjudge Ambrose, sir. There is no harm in poor Ambrose.”
The girl’s innocent frankness was really irresistible.
“Should I be altogether wrong,” I asked, “if I guessed that you were a little partial to Ambrose?”
An Englishwoman would have felt, or would at least have assumed, some little hesitation at replying to my question. Naomi did not hesitate for an instant.
“You are quite right, sir,” she said with the most perfect composure. “If things go well, I mean to marry Ambrose.”
“If things go well,” I repeated. “What does that mean? Money?”
She shook her head.
“It means a fear that I have in my own mind,” she answered—“a fear, Mr. Lefrank, of matters taking a bad turn among the men here—the wicked, hard-hearted, unfeeling men. I don’t mean Ambrose, sir; I mean his brother Silas, and John Jago. Did you notice Silas’s hand? John Jago did that, sir, with a knife.”
“By accident?” I asked.
“On purpose,” she answered. “In return for a blow.”
This plain revelation of the state of things at Morwick Farm rather staggered me—blows and knives under the rich and respectable roof-tree of old Mr. Meadowcroft—blows and knives, not among the laborers, but among the masters! My first impression was like your first impression, no doubt. I could hardly believe it.
“Are you sure of what you say?” I inquired.
“I have it from Ambrose. Ambrose would never deceive me. Ambrose knows all about it.”
My curiosity was powerfully excited. To what sort of household had I rashly voyaged across the ocean in search of rest and quiet?
“May I know all about it too?” I said.
“Well, I will try and tell you what Ambrose told me. But you must promise me one thing first, sir. Promise you won’t go away and leave us when you know the whole truth. Shake hands on it, Mr. Lefrank; come, shake hands on it.”
There was no resisting her fearless frankness. I shook hands on it. Naomi entered on her narrative the moment I had given her my pledge, without wasting a word by way of preface.
“When you are shown over the farm here,” she began, “you will see that it is really two farms in one. On this side of it, as we look from under this tree, they raise crops: on the other side—on much the larger half of the land, mind—they raise cattle. When Mr. Meadowcroft got too old and too sick to look after his farm himself, the boys (I mean Ambrose and Silas) divided the work between them. Ambrose looked after the crops, and Silas after the cattle. Things didn’t go well, somehow, under their management. I can’t tell you why. I am only sure Ambrose was not in fault. The old man got more and more dissatisfied, especially about his beasts. His pride is in his beasts. Without saying a word to the boys, he looked about privately (_I_ think he was wrong in that, sir; don’t you?)—he looked about privately for help; and, in an evil hour, he heard of John Jago. Do you like John Jago, Mr. Lefrank?”