Mrs. Farrell - William Dean Howells

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at once, she was told that she would see the change when she got home in the fall. Two or three, in the meantime, were nearly always sick in bed, or kept from meals by headache. From time to time the well ones had themselves weighed at the village store, to know whether they had gained or lost. They all talked together a good deal about their complaints, of which, whether they were sick or well, they each had several.

      These were the interests and occupations, this the life, at Woodward farm, to the entire simplicity of which I am afraid I have not done justice, when a thing happened that complicated the situation and for the moment robbed it of its characteristic repose. It appears that while Mrs. Stevenson was quietly multiplying cat-tail rushes in her cool, airy, upstairs room, one of the Woodward girls, who taught school and in vacation waited on the boarders at the table, had also been employed—somewhere in the mysterious L part, where her family bestowed itself—on a work of art, a head of the Alderney cow known to the whole household as Blossom. Whether it was ever meant to be seen or not is scarcely certain; that lady who alone had the intimacy of the Woodwards came out with it from the kitchen one morning, as by violence, and showed it to the boarders after breakfast, while they still loitered at the table, none of the artist’s kindred appearing. They all recognized Blossom in a moment, but the exhibitor let them suffer and guess awhile who did it. Then she exploded the fact upon them, and the excitement began to rise. They said that it was a real Rosa Bonheur; and Mrs. Stevenson, who was indeed in another line of art and need feel no envy, set her head on one side, held the picture at arm’s length in different lights, and pronounced it perfect, simply perfect, for a charcoal sketch. They had looked at it in a group; now they looked at it singly and from a distance, cautioning one another that the least touch would ruin it. Then they began to ask the exhibitress if she had known of Miss Woodward’s gift before, the young girls listening to her replies with something of the zeal and reverence they felt for the artist. At last they said Mrs. Gilbert must see it, and followed it in procession to the room of the public-spirited lady on the first floor. She had been having her breakfast in bed, and now sat in a beruffled, sweet-scented dishabille, which became her pale, middle-aged, invalid good looks—her French-marquise effect, one young girl called it, Mrs. Gilbert’s hair being quite gray, and her thick eyebrows dark, like those of a powdered old-regime beauty. They set the drawing on her chimney-piece, and she considered it a long while with her hands lying in her lap. “Yes,” she sighed at last, “it’s very fair indeed, poor thing.”

      “Blossom or Rachel, Mrs. Gilbert?” promptly demanded the lady who had been chaperoning the picture, with a tremor of humorous appreciation at the corners of her mouth, and a quick glance of her very dark-brown eyes.

      “Rachel,” answered Mrs. Gilbert. “Blossom is a blessed cow. But a woman of genius in a New England farmhouse where they take summer boarders—oh dear me! Yes, it’s quite as bad as that, I should say,” she added, thoughtfully, after another stare at the picture.

      “Quite.”

      The company had settled and perched and poised upon the different pieces of furniture, as if they expected Mrs. Gilbert to go on talking; but she seemed to be out of the mood, and chose rather to listen to their applauses of the picture. The sum of their kindly feeling appeared to be that something must be done to encourage Miss Woodward, but they were not certain how she ought to be encouraged, and they began to stray away from the subject before anything was concluded. When the surprise had been drained to the dregs, a natural reaction began, and they left Mrs. Gilbert somewhat sooner than usual and with signs of fatigue. Presently no one remained but the lady who had exhibited the picture; her, as she made a movement to take it from the mantel, Mrs. Gilbert stopped, and began to ask about the artistic history of Miss Woodward.

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      MRS. BELLE FARRELL, one of the summer boarders, stood waiting at the side of the road for Rachel Woodward, who presently appeared on the threshold of the red schoolhouse, with several books on her arm. It was Saturday afternoon; her school term had ended the day before, and she had returned now for some property of hers left in the schoolhouse overnight. She laid down the books while she locked the door and put the key in her pocket, and then she gathered them up and moved somewhat languidly toward Mrs. Farrell. This lady was slender enough to seem of greater height than she really was, but not slender enough to look meager, and she wore a stuff that clung to her shape, and, without defining it too statuesquely, brought out all its stylishness. Her dress was not so well suited to walking along country roads as it was to some pretty effects of pose; caught with the left hand, and drawn tightly across from behind, its plaited folds expanded about Mrs. Farrell’s feet, and as she turned her head for a sidelong glance at her skirt it made her look like a lady on a Japanese fan. The resemblance was heightened by Mrs. Farrell’s brunette coloring of dusky red and white, and very dark eyes and hair; but for the rest her features were too regular; she knitted her level brows under a forehead overhung with loose hair like a French painter’s fancy of a Roman girl of the decadence, and she was not a Buddhist half the time. This afternoon, for example, she had in the hand with which she swept her skirt forward, a very charming little English copy of Keble’s Christian Year, in mouse-colored, flexible leather, with red edges. It was a book that she had carried a good deal that summer.

      She now looked up and down the road, and, seeing no one but Rachel, she undid her attitude and pinned her draperies courageously out of the way. “Let us go home through the berry pasture,” she said, and at the same time she stepped out toward the bars of the meadow with a stride that showed the elastic beauty of her ankles and the neat fit of her stout walking shoes; she mounted and was over before the country girl could let down one of the bars and creep through. In spite of Mrs. Farrell’s stylishness, the pasture and she seemed joyously to accept each other as parts of nature; as she now lounged over the tough, springy knolls and leaped from one gray-lichened rock to another, and glided in and out of the sun-shotten clumps of white birches, she suggested a well-millinered wood nymph not the least afraid of satyrs; she suffered herself to whistle fragments of opera as she stooped from time to time and examined the low bushes to see if there were any ripe berries yet. Such as she found she ate with a frank, natural, charming greed; but there were not many of them.

      “We shall have to stick to custard pie for another week,” she said; “I’m glad it’s so good. Don’t let’s go home at once, Rachel. Sit down and have a talk, and I’ll help you through afterward, or get you out of the trouble somehow. Halt!” she commanded.

      The girl showed a conscientious hesitation, while Mrs. Farrell sank down at the base of a bowlder on which the sunset had been shining. 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; I’m always putting you to the blush. There, will that do any better?” she asked, modifying her posture. She gazed into the young girl’s face with a caricatured prudery, and Rachel colored faintly and smiled.

      “Perhaps I wasn’t thinking what you thought,” she said.

      “Oh yes, you were, you sly thing; don’t try to deceive my youth and inexperience. I suppose you’re glad your school’s over for the summer, Rachel.”

      “I don’t know. Yes, I’m glad; it’s hard work. I shall have a change, at least, helping about home.”

      “What shall you do?”

      “I suppose I shall wait on table.”

      “Well, then, you shall not. I’ll arrange that with your mother, anyway. I’ll wait on table myself, first.”

      “I

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