Mrs. Farrell

“ Farrell stood staring, mute and distracted, upon this piteous piece of poor humanity. Its contrast with the woman he had known and loved appalled him. His jaw fell open, his nails scored into his palms, his eyes bulged beneath his brows. The face rested, white and withered, among the frillings of her gown; unaccustomed lines picked out the cheeks; the mouth was drawn pitifully small and pinched with suffering. Even as he looked she seemed to his scared gaze to shrink and shrivel under pain. ”

“ He choked with the words, and Gilbert was silent. “Oh, my dear, dear old Easton,” he broke out at last, “do let it all go! What’s Mrs. Farrell to me or I to her? If you are in love with her, why, marry her and be done with it. I could imagine any woman’s turning constant by virtue of your loving her, and I’ve no doubt she’ll be the best wife in the world for you. ”

“ Farrell seated at the foot of a rock and turning an anxious face to confront Blossom’s visage thrust through the birch-trees, with a mildly humorous gleam in her great calm eyes, as if she relished the notion of having been mistaken for a man. The next represented Blossom driven from her shelter, and at a few paces distant indignantly regarding Gilbert and Easton, who had just appeared, while Mrs. Farrell and Rachel were shown sailing down the meadow with extravagant swiftness. ”

“ Farrell,” said Rachel, sternly, “you ought to be afraid to talk as you do.”
“Why, so I am, aunty—so I am,” retorted Mrs. Farrell, incorrigibly. “It sends the cold chills over me to talk as I do, but I can’t help it. Don’t you suppose I know how nice Mr. Easton is? I do. He is the very soul of truth and honor and all uprightness. He is the noblest and best man in the world. But what could I do with him, or he with me? No, ma’am, it isn’t such a simple affair as liking or not liking. This is a case of conscience, I’d have you to know, such as doesn’t often turn up in West Pekin.” ”

“ Nothing is sacred to you. You only care for yourself and your own pleasure, and you don’t care how you make others suffer, so you please yourself.”
“Yes, I do, Rachel,” said Mrs. Farrell, humbly. “I know I’m selfish. But I do care for you, and I’m very, very sorry that I’ve wounded you. You needn’t forgive me; I don’t deserve it, but I’m sorry all the same.”
The afternoon was waning when they came into the schoolhouse, and now a level ray of the setting sun struck across Rachel’s head, fallen on the desk before her, and illumined Mrs. Farrell’s stricken beauty. ”

“ She’s very peculiar—for a woman; and I don’t know whether her peculiarity comes from her character or from{34} her circumstances. It’s a trying thing to be just the kind of handsome young widow that Mrs. Farrell is in Boston.”
Gilbert did not comment audibly, but he lifted his eyebrows, and his sister-in-law went on: “Not but that we approve of youth and beauty as much as any one. In fact, if Mrs. Farrell had simply devoted herself to youth and beauty, and waited for the right man, she could have married again splendidly and been living abroad by this time. ”

“ Gilbert, who had a flask of cologne in her hand, and moistened her forehead with it from time to time as she talked.
“Headache?” suggested Mrs. Farrell.
“Yes, only a minor headache—nothing heroic at all. It’s merely something to occupy the mind. Do you happen to know where my brother is?”
“I left him with Mrs. Stevenson on the piazza, a few moments ago—talking art, I suppose.” Mrs. Farrell adventured this. “They’re not there, now; perhaps he’s gone to look at her works.” ”

“ Farrell—if you mean Easton and me.”
“Yes, I do. Don’t scoff at my weak impressibility. You must see that it’s a thing calculated to rouse a woman’s curiosity. You seem so very different!”
“Men and women are very different, in some respects,” calmly responded Gilbert, “but there have been quite strong attachments between them.”
“True,” rejoined Mrs. Farrell with burlesque thoughtfulness. “But in this case they’re both men.”
“Nothing escapes you, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bowing his head. ”

“ Mrs. Farrell celebrated her fresh advantage with another laugh. “Why not?” she asked, taking some of the peas up in her hand and letting them drop through her fingers. “We’re all heroes till we’ve been tried, and I haven’t been tried. He’s going to put me into it. Do tell me his plan in writing it,” she entreated.
“Look here, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bending forward and looking keenly at her, “do you mean to tell me that Easton has actually been talking to you about his book, which I now perceive I mentioned first?” ”

“ If I had a daughter whose love affair had been so romantic as yours, I believe I should tell her to make all the surer of her heart on account of the romance. I’m afraid that in matters of love, romance is a dangerous element. Love ought to be perfectly ordinary, regular, and every-day like.”
“Those are very heretical ideas!” said Mrs. Farrell, shaking her head.
“Yes, yes, I dare say,” answered Mrs. Gilbert; “but, as I said before, I hope for both your sakes that you and Mr. Easton will have a good stupid wooing—at least a year of it—when he gets well.” ”

“ The day was one of that freshness which comes often enough to the New England hills even late in July; Mrs. Farrell leaned back with her hands clasped behind her head, and closed her eyes in luxury. “Oh, you nice old rock, you! How warm you are to a person’s back!”
Rachel crouched somewhat primly near her, with her books on her knee, and glanced with a slight anxiety at the freedom of Mrs. Farrell’s self-disposition, whose signal grace might well have justified its own daring.
“Rachel,” said Mrs. Farrell, subtly interpreting her expression, “you’re almost as modest as a man ”

“ Your men are not so good as your cows and women, Rachel. Mr. Easton isn’t such a stick as that; you know he isn’t. Oh, Rachel,” said Mrs. Farrell, sinking upon a seat behind a school desk and leaning her elbow on it, chin in hand, while she brooded on the last sketch with effective eyes, “how awfully embarrassing men are! Here is Mr. Easton, for example, who has known me a week—a week but barely two—and guess what he’s been saying to me this afternoon!” She changed her posture and sat with her hands in her lap, regarding Rachel as one does the person whom one has posed with a conundrum. ”

“ Farrell. “It wasn’t my own affair altogether. Nothing that’s wrong can be one’s own affair, I suppose; it belongs to the whole world.” Mrs. Gilbert looked a little surprised at the wisdom of this, which had its own curious pathos, coming from whom it did, and Mrs. Farrell spoke again with sudden impetuosity, “Oh, Mrs. Gilbert, I hope you are not judging me harshly!” ”

“ Mrs. Farrell stopped winding the yarn a moment, and instinctively cast down her eyes over her draperies. He smiled.
“For shame!” she cried, indignantly, while her eyes dimmed with mortification at her self-betrayal. But she boldly grappled with the situation. “Did{198} you think I was thinking you thought me stylish? I know I am so; I had no need to think that. I was thinking that if ever you left the law and followed the true bent of your genius, New York ladies needn’t go to Worth for their dresses.” ”

“ How have you been injuring me, Rosabel?” he asked, with the smile which Mrs. Farrell’s speculative seriousness was apt to call forth; the best men find it so hard to believe that a charming woman can be in earnest about anything but her good looks. ”

“ If she isn’t the wisest of her sex—so few of us are—and has been used to doing and saying quite what she pleased, without regard to consequences, and she finds herself in a position where circumspection is her duty, he ought to look about for her and guard her.”
“From what?”
“Oh—hawks, and lynxes, and—cats. They’re everywhere.”
Mrs. Farrell sat down on the benching and drew from her pocket the balls of worsted which she had loosely rolled in a handkerchief, together with some knitting already begun, and went on with the work, while Gilbert stood before her, looking down at her. ”

“ I should be the better for being your daughter, Mrs. Gilbert.”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t like to promise you that. But sometimes I think I could have been a good mother, or at least that children would have made a good mother of me, for I believe that half the goodness that women get credit for is forced upon them by those little helpless troubles. Men could be just as good if they had the care and burden of children—men are so very near being very good as it is.”
“I know it,” sighed Mrs. Farrell. “I never knew my own mother,” she added; “if I had, I might have been a better woman. ”

“ I thought you told me your friend was afraid of ladies. Mrs. Farrell seems to have persuaded him that they’re not so dangerous. He’s been here all afternoon. Oh, one can know such a thing as that even with the headache in a darkened room. No, not the whole afternoon; they were gone a long while on a walk. He follows her all about with his eyes when she won’t let him follow on foot; he’s making a perfect trophy of himself. That’s the report.”
“Very likely,” said Gilbert. “Easton never does things by halves.” ”

“ I might set up a studio, and everybody would smile on my efforts, but if I set up a shop, nobody would associate with me. You wouldn’t, yourself! Don’t pretend to be so much better than other people,” cried Mrs. Farrell, with nothing of the convent left in her look.
“I don’t know about being better,” said Easton. “But I’ve lived too little in the world to be quite of it, I suppose. I’m afraid I am not shocked at the notion of anybody’s being a milliner that likes.”
“Oh yes, I know. Cheap ideas of equality. But you wouldn’t marry a milliner, if she was ever such a genius in her art.” ”

“ Gilbert, resorting to the cologne.
“I suppose the cologne does you no good?”
“Not the least in the world. But one must do something.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Farrell, drawing the word in with a long breath, “one must do something.” She took up her work again and knitted awhile before she added, “I wonder if a man would go on forever doing something that he knew did him no good, as a woman does?”
“No, I suppose not. Men are very queer,” said Mrs. Gilbert, gravely. “They’re quite inert. But that gives them some of their advantages.” ”

“ In fact, there is no just cause why every woman should not reduce some man to it; it is a hardship that she cannot; in a better state of things no doubt she could.
Easton found in Mrs. Farrell’s presence a relief from thoughts that troubled him when away from her; when he beheld her, or heard her speak, his bliss was so great that his heart could not harbor self-reproach; but at other times it upbraided him that he was making Gilbert wait for the explanation that was his instant due. ”

“ Gilbert came with them and flung up his fists in despair. Mrs. Farrell had Easton’s head upon her knee, and was sprinkling his face from one of many proffered flagons of cologne. “No, he shall not go to your room,” she vehemently retorted upon the last hospitable zealot; “he shall go to mine; he is mine!” she said. “Here, Rachel, Ben, Mrs. Woodward—will you help me?{169}”
The others fell back at her brave confession, and they all began to like her. They meekly suffered themselves to be dispersed, and they cowered together on the piazza while a messenger ran for the doctor. ”

“ Farrell, trailing a plume of fern through the air.
“Oh, I’m woman’s anything,” said Easton; “anything that women really want; but rights are a subject that they don’t seem very certain of, themselves.”
“Yes,” sighed Mrs. Farrell, “that’s the trouble with women; from day to day, and from dress to dress, they don’t really know what they want. There’s Rachel Woodward; she has this decided talent, but she don’t seem to want decidedly to use it, as a man would. I’m not even sure that if all the world were propitious I should open a milliner shop. ”

“ Farrell. “And the rest of his opinions?”
“Why, there are very few things that Easton hadn’t an opinion upon. It’s rather odd, don’t you think, to find a man in our age and country really caring enough for matters in general to make up his mind about them?”
“Very,” said Mrs. Farrell, twisting her slim shape round to take a handful of peas out of the basket behind her and putting them into her lap. “Go on.”
“That was all I had to say,” returned Gilbert, with a mocking light in his eyes. ”

“ Farrell, emerging upon them where they stood in a dimly lighted group, with Gilbert and Mrs. Gilbert just outside the door. She had an armful of draperies of which she had been dismantling her closet. “He’s not to be put anywhere. I’m going to stay with Rachel, and he’s to stay where he is till he gets perfectly well. It would kill him to move him!” The women were impressed, and looked to see conviction in Gilbert’s face.
“It would kill him to keep him where he is, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, dryly. “A man can’t stand too much kindness in his sensitive state. ”

“ Farrell is in her way. She’s one of the most beautiful women I ever saw; one of the brightest, the most amiable. But I should be sorry to marry her; I shouldn’t want my wife so amiable—to everybody. She isn’t meant for the domesticities. There’s no harm in her; she simply wants excitement, luxury, applause, all in one, all the time. ”

“ Mrs. Farrell sprang down from the wall and hurried to meet them. They were covered with brakes and ferns and a gay laughing and talking broke forth among the women. Mrs. Farrell attached Gilbert to her for the walk home; and it fell to Easton to accompany the two young girls. When he left them they said he was very nice-looking, and he was very hard to get along with, much harder than Mr. Gilbert, who always kept saying something to make you laugh. They did not know whether Mr. Easton was really stupid or not; he did not look stupid, and it was quite delightful to have a man so bashful. ”