Margaret had forced Linda to go school, but the girl, after one year, had rebelled, and nothing Margaret could do could persuade her to return. John stood with Linda against Margaret. Though the girl hated him as much as she hated Margaret, she had respect for him. Moreover, she was cunning.
Without guessing the reason, she had sensed the estrangement between husband and wife. Soon she was playing up to it. In all her gestures to him, he felt her partisanship and in gratitude, he sided with the girl at every opportunity. Margaret’s efforts at discipline, guidance, were scouted by him. Linda was always right; it was Margaret who was the fool. He began to like the girl; he was unusually generous to her. She accepted everything with her smug and pretty smile; it would have amazed him had he guessed how she hated him.
She was nearly eighteen now, and her blonde loveliness seemed to outshine Margaret’s darker beauty. She was tall and slender, soft roses and gold. She dressed with conscious effect; she planned her gestures.
Despite all this, she had few admirers among the eligible young men in the county. She suspected that it was because of Margaret, though she did not know why. But she saw that Margaret did not encourage visitors, that she had no friends. She told herself that it was “because folks see into her.”
Ezra King and his wife had two daughters and a son. Parsimonious as they were, they were reluctant to employ a hired girl, and so the daughters did all the house and farm work. Quiet, drab girls, one was never conscious of them in a room. But the son, young Bill, was handsome, arrogant, lazy, the pride of his mother. He had been educated, according to the standard of the country, and gave copious advice about new agricultural methods. Ezra King, after reluctantly testing them, was forced to admit their value, and he developed a profound admiration for his son.
The farm was prosperous though small. John held a heavy mortgage upon it. It might have been paid off, but young Bill liked to travel about the county and to Williamsburg during the winter; he also had his own smart buggy and horse. John had great contempt for the youth, but he seemed pleased when Bill, having noticed Linda for the first time at a church supper, called her. Linda was overwhelmed. She went riding with Bill, and soon it was accepted in the county that she was his girl. Mrs. King at first objected to his courting the sister of Maggie Hamilton, but when John hinted that he might do something for the young couple her objections were silenced. Eventually, she began to make much of Linda.
One day John said to young Bill half sourly, half goodnaturedly, “When you and Linda get hitched, and your dad don’t pay me the mortgage, maybe I’ll give you both his farm for a weddin’ present.”
Young Bill merely laughed evasively. He had no intention of marrying Linda.
Little Dick, at four, was pretty, but rather small for his age, and sensitive. He was afraid of his father and deathly afraid of the farm animals, so when John tried to seat him on a horse Dick had violent hysterics. He loved his mother, and fled to her for protection when he heard John’s step.
Little Gregory was different. He had his mother’s straight black hair and his father’s blue eyes. He was a strong, exuberant baby, who screamed with delight when his father tossed him in the air. He adored John; he was restive with Margaret. When he was two, and Dick five, he had already developed a feeling of superiority over his shy and gentle brother. Dick would sit quietly near his mother; Gregory’s sturdy legs usually scampered over the yard and the garden.
Margaret loved both her children, but from the first she had felt alien to Gregory. There was something about Dick which reminded her painfully of Ralph. Because of this she protected him. He would have his chance.
She had heard, through Susan Blodgett, that Ralph had a child, a pretty little girl, and that he and his wife were doing well in New York. “He’s got a twelve-room house, now,” wrote Susan proudly. “And three hired girls.” She wrote to Margaret only when she wished to convey news of Ralph’s increasing success.
Ralph with a wife and child! Margaret still remembered that night so long ago on the hilltop when she had given him what he wanted, but of love and pity. But she didn’t remember how she had failed to respond to him, how she had shrunk from that contact. And she didn’t compare this with the still violent upsurge of her blood when John held her to him. When he took her, she forgot everything, even that she loved Ralph.
For the rest of the time she had made him miserable with her silences, her remotenesses, her pale face. And quarreled with him at every occasion.