The Mettle of the Pasture Part 29

Her visit lasted for some time and it was not pleasant. When Mrs.

Osborn hastened down, surprised at Isabel's return and prepared to greet her with the old warmth, her greeting was repelled and she herself recoiled, hurt and disposed to demand an explanation.

"Isabel," she said reproachfully, "is this the way you come back to me?"

Isabel did not heed but spoke: "As soon as I received this letter, I determined to come home. I wished to know at once what these things are that are being said about Rowan. What are they?"

Mrs. Osborn hesitated: "I should rather not tell you."

"But you must tell me: my name has been brought into this, and I must know."

While she listened her eyes flashed and when she spoke her voice trembled with excitement and anger. "These things are not true,"

she said. "Only Rowan and I know what pa.s.sed between us. I told no one, he told no one, and it is no one's right to know. A great wrong has been done him and a great wrong has been done me; and I shall stay here until these wrongs are righted."

"And is it your feeling that you must begin with me?" said Mrs.

Osborn, bitterly.

"Yes, Kate; you should not have believed these things. You remember our once saying to each other that we would try never to believe slander or speak slander or think slander? It is unworthy of you to have done so now."

"Do you realize to whom you are speaking, and that what I have done has been through friends.h.i.+p for you?"

Isabel shook her head resolvedly. "Your friends.h.i.+p for me cannot exact of you that you should be untrue to yourself and false to others. You say that you refuse to speak to Rowan on the street.

You say that you have broken up the friends.h.i.+p between Mr. Osborn and him. Rowan is the truest friend Mr. Osborn has ever had; you know this. But in breaking off that friends.h.i.+p, you have done more than you have realized: you have ended my friends.h.i.+p with you."

"And this is grat.i.tude for my devotion to you and my willingness to fight your battles!" said Mrs. Osborn, rising.

"You cannot fight my battles without fighting Rowan's. My wish to marry him or not to marry him is one thing; my willingness to see him ruined is another."

Isabel drove home. She rang the bell as though she were a stranger. When her maid met her at the door, overjoyed at her return, she asked for her grandmother and pa.s.sed at once into her parlors. As she did so, Mrs. Conyers came through the hall, dressed to go out. At the sound of Isabel's voice, she, who having once taken hold of a thing never let it go, dropped her parasol; and as she stooped to pick it up, the blood rushed to her face.

"I wish to speak to you," said Isabel, coming quickly out into the hall as though to prevent her grandmother's exit. Her voice was low and full of shame and indignation.

"I am at your service for a little while," said Mrs. Conyers, carelessly; "later I am compelled to go out." She entered the parlors, followed by Isabel, and, seating herself in the nearest chair, finished b.u.t.toning her glove.

Isabel sat silent a moment, shocked by her reception. She had not realized that she was no longer the idol of that household and of its central mind; and we are all loath to give up faith in our being loved still, where we have been loved ever. She was not aware that since she had left home she had been disinherited. She would not have cared had she known; but she was now facing what was involved in the disinheritance--dislike; and in the beginning of dislike there was the ending of the old awe with which the grandmother had once regarded the grandchild.

But she came quickly back to the grave matter uppermost in her mind. "Grandmother," she said, "I received a few days ago a letter from Kate Osborn. In it she told me that there were stories in circulation about Rowan. I have come home to find out what these stories are. On the way from the station I stopped at Mrs.

Osborn's, and she told me. Grandmother, this is your work."

Mrs. Conyers pushed down the thumb of her glove.

"Have I denied it? But why do you attempt to deny that it is also your work?"

Isabel sat regarding her with speechless, deepening horror. She was not prepared for this revelation. Mrs. Conyers did not wait, but pressed on with a certain debonair enjoyment of her advantage.

"You refused to recognize my right to understand a matter that affected me and affected other members of the family as well as yourself. You showed no regard for the love I had cherished for you many a year. You put me aside as though I had no claim upon your confidence--I believe you said I was not worthy of it; but my memory is failing--perhaps I wrong you."

"It is _true_!" said Isabel, with triumphant joy in reaffirming it on present grounds. "It is _true_!"

"Very well," said Mrs. Conyers, "we shall let that pa.s.s. It was of consequence then; it is of no consequence now: these little personal matters are very trivial. But there was a serious matter that you left on my hands; the world always demands an explanation of what it is compelled to see and cannot understand. If no explanation is given, it creates an explanation. It was my duty to see that it did not create an explanation in this case. Whatever it may have been that took place between you and Rowan, I did not intend that the responsibility should rest upon you, even though you may have been willing that it should rest there. You discarded Rowan; I was compelled to prevent people from thinking that Rowan discarded you. Your reason for discarding him you refused to confide to me; I was compelled therefore to decide for myself what it probably was. Ordinarily when a man is dropped by a girl under such circ.u.mstances, it is for this," she tapped the tips of her fingers one by one as she went on, "or for this, or for this, or for this; you can supply the omitted words--nearly any one can--the world always does. You see, it becomes interesting. As I had not your authority for stating which one of these was the real reason, I was compelled to leave people at liberty to choose for themselves. I could only say that I myself did not know; but that certainly it was for some one of these reasons, or two of them, or for all of them."

"You have tried to ruin him!" Isabel cried, white with suffering.

"On the contrary, I received my whole idea of this from you.

Nothing that I said to others about him was quite so bad as what you said to me; for you knew the real reason of your discarding him, and the reason was so bad--or so good--that you could not even confide it to me, your natural confidant. You remember saying that we must drop him from the list of our acquaintances, must not receive him at the house, or recognize him in society, or speak, to him in public. I protested that this would be very unjust to him, and that he might ask me at least the grounds for so insulting him; you a.s.sured me that he would never dare ask. And now you affect to be displeased with me for believing what you said, and trying to defend you from criticism, and trying to protect the good name of the family."

"Ah," cried Isabel, "you can give fair reasons for foul deeds. You always could. We often do, we women. The blacker our conduct, the better the names with which we cover it. If you would only glory openly in what you have done and stand by it! Not a word of what you have said is true, as you have said it. When I left home not a human being but yourself knew that there had been trouble between Rowan and me. It need never have become public, had you let the matter be as I asked you to do, and as you solemnly promised that you would. It is you who have deliberately made the trouble and scattered the gossip and spread the scandal. Why do you not avow that your motive was revenge, and that your pa.s.sion was not justice, but malice. Ah, you are too deep a woman to try to seem so shallow!"

"Can I be of any further service to you?" said Mrs. Conyers with perfect politeness, rising. "I am sorry that the hour of my engagement has come. Are you to be in town long?"

"I shall be here until I have undone what you have done," cried Isabel, rising also and shaking with rage. "The decencies of life compel me to s.h.i.+eld you still, and for that reason I shall stay in this house. I am not obliged to ask this as a privilege; it is my right."

"Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you often."

Isabel went up to her room as usual and summoned her maid, and ordered her carriage to be ready in half an hour.

Half an hour later she came down and drove to the Hardages'. She showed no pleasure in seeing him again, and he no surprise in seeing her.

"I have been expecting you," he said; "I thought you would be brought back by all this."

"Then you have heard what they are saying about Rowan?"

"I suppose we have all heard," he replied, looking at her sorrowfully.

"You have not believed these things?"

"I have denied them as far as I could. I should have denied that anything had occurred; but you remember I could not do that after what you told me. You said something had occurred."

"Yes, I know," she said. "But you now have my authority at least to say that these things are not true. What I planned for the best has been misused and turned against him and against me. Have you seen him?"

"He has been in town, but I have not seen him."

"Then you must see him at once. Tell me one thing: have you heard it said that I am responsible for the circulation of these stories?"

"Yes."

"Do you suppose he has heard that? And could he believe it? Yet might he not believe it? But how could he, how could he!"

"You must come here and stay with us. Anna will want you." He could not tell her his reason for understanding that she would not wish to stay at home.

"No, I should like to come; but it is better for me to stay at home. But I wish Rowan to come to see me here. Judge Morris--has he done nothing?"

"He does not know. No one has told him."

Her expression showed that she did not understand.

"Years ago, when he was about Rowan's age, scandals like these were circulated about him. We know how much his life is wrapped up In Rowan. He has not been well this summer: we spared him."

"But you must tell him at once. Say that I beg him to write to Rowan to come to see him. I want Rowan to tell him everything--and to tell you everything."