Seth's Brother's Wife by Harold Frederic

Author:Harold Frederic [Frederic, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Klassiker
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-06-22T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIX. - THE WELCOME.

When Seth walked over from the Thessaly station, Sunday forenoon, to the farm, he was not, it may be imagined, in a placid frame of mind. There lay before him an interview with his brother, which could not, in the nature of things, be pleasant, and which might very easily be distinctly unpleasant. It was his duty to say sundry things to Albert which were not in themselves nice, and if Albert was still in the mood shown forth by his peremptory letter, these remarks would very likely produce a scene. Seth was in no sense afraid of his brother, nor had the thrifty thought that this brother was a rich, childless man, to offend whom would be a gratuitous economic blunder, ever entered his head. The youngster had no faculty whatever for financial prudence. But he was grateful — almost ridiculously grateful — by nature. The trait is not a rare one, even in these days when a new civilization has substituted for individual patronage and beneficence the thanks-to-nobody trade-unionism of universal conceit and rivalry, but it was abnormally developed in the youngest of the Fairchilds.

He said to himself, as he crossed the fields toward the white and red land-mark of house and barns on the side hill, that he owed everything in the world to this brother. Whatever there might be in his public attitude to condemn, however pernicious his politics might be, still it was his fraternal feeling and generosity which had created the vast gulf between Seth the plough-yokel and Seth the editor. These reflections brought no comfort to the young man.

Some perverse agency whispered to him, as he strode along over the stubble, that after all he had never really liked Albert; and this liberality of his, too, might it not be a mere cheap mess of pottage, thrown to Seth to console him for the loss of his rights in the farm? John had always been incredulous as to Albert's true goodness in this matter; might there not be something in these suspicions? Seth tried manfully to combat these ungenerous doubts, but they forced themselves upon his mind.

Then there was Albert's treatment of his wife!

Seth had never been clear as to the exact nature of Isabel's grievance against her husband. No specific allegation of cruelty or neglect, much less of infidelity, had ever been laid by her at Albert's door in his brother's hearing. Indeed, so far as Seth's observation went, Albert had always appeared to be a decent enough sort of husband, complaisant even, if somewhat indifferent, and acquiescent to the verge of weakness, in her whims. He seemed to refuse her nothing, in the matter of having her own way, and if he most often broke the ruling conjugal dumbness by satirical comments on her actions and opinions, he at least never seriously attempted to fetter either. This sounded like the description of a tolerable husband, as husbands go. But up against it was to be set Isabel's plaintive, pitiful, persistent assertion of unhappiness with him.

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