The Dead Alive

For once in a way, I proved a true prophet. In the atmosphere of smoldering enmities at Morwick Farm, the pretty American girl and I remained firm and true friends from first to last. Ambrose made room for Naomi to sit between his brother and himself. She changed color for a moment, and looked at him, with a pretty, reluctant tenderness, as she took her chair. I strongly suspected the young farmer of squeezing her hand privately, under cover of the tablecloth.

The supper was not a merry one. The only cheerful conversation was the conversation across the table between Naomi and me.

For some incomprehensible reason, John Jago seemed to be ill at ease in the presence of his young countrywoman. He looked up at Naomi doubtingly from his plate, and looked down again slowly with a frown. When I addressed him, he answered constrainedly. Even when he spoke to Mr. Meadowcroft, he was still on his guard—on his guard against the two young men, as I fancied by the direction which his eyes took on these occasions. When we began our meal, I had noticed for the first time that Silas Meadowcroft’s left hand was strapped up with surgical plaster; and I now further observed that John Jago’s wandering brown eyes, furtively looking at everybody round the table in turn, looked with a curious, cynical scrutiny at the young man’s injured hand.

By way of making my first evening at the farm all the more embarrassing to me as a stranger, I discovered before long that the father and sons were talking indirectly at each other, through Mr. Jago and through me. When old Mr. Meadowcroft spoke disparagingly to his overlooker of some past mistake made in the cultivation of the arable land of the farm, old Mr. Meadowcroft’s eyes pointed the application of his hostile criticism straight in the direction of his two sons When the two sons seized a stray remark of mine about animals in general, and applied it satirically to the mismanagement of sheep and oxen in particular, they looked at John Jago, while they talked to me. On occasions of this sort—and they happened frequently—Naomi struck in resolutely at the right moment, and turned the talk to some harmless topic. Every time she took a prominent part in this way in keeping the peace, melancholy Miss Meadowcroft looked slowly round at her in stern and silent disparagement of her interference. A more dreary and more disunited family party I never sat at the table with. Envy, hatred, malice and uncharitableness are never so essentially detestable to my mind as when they are animated by a sense of propriety, and work under the surface. But for my interest in Naomi, and my other interest in the little love-looks which I now and then surprised passing between her and Ambrose, I should never have sat through that supper. I should certainly have taken refuge in my French novel and my own room.

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